Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Putin’s ‘Human Rights Council’ Accidentally Posts Real Crimean Election Results – 15%-30% of Residents Voted for Annexation

As you may recall, the official Crimean election results, as reported widely in the Western press, showed a 97 percent vote in favor of annexation with a turnout of 83 percent. No international observers were allowed. The pro-Russia election pressure would have raised the already weak vote in favor of annexation, of course.

Yesterday, however, according to a major Ukrainian news site, TSN.ua, the website of the President of Russia’s Council on Civil Society and Human Rights (shortened to President’s Human Rights Council) posted a report that was quickly taken down as if it were toxic radioactive waste. According to this purported report about the March referendum to annex Crimea, the turnout of Crimean voters was only 30 percent. And of these, only half voted for the referendum–meaning only 15 percent of Crimean citizens voted for annexation.

The TSN report does not link to a copy of the cited report. However, there is a report of the Human Rights Council, entitled “Problems of Crimean Residents,” still up on the president-sovet.ru website, which discusses the Council’s estimates of the results of the March 16 referendum. Quoting from that report: “In Crimea, according to various indicators, 50-60% voted for unification with Russia with a voter turnout (yavka) of 30-50%.” This leads to a range of between 15 percent (50% x 30%) and 30 percent (60% x 50%) voting for annexation. The turnout in the Crimean district of Sevastopol, according to the Council, was higher: 50-80%.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/05/putins-human-rights-council-accidentally-posts-real-crimean-election-results-only-15-voted-for-annexation/

Intercepted Phone Calls Show Putin Called The Shots On European Hostages In Ukraine

Russia has publicly asserted that the hostage taking was a purely local matter, over which they have no influence or control.

Russia’s lie is exposed by tapped phone calls, obtained by the Ukraine Security Service (SBU), that took place on May 1 and 2 between Colonel Igor Girkin (alias Igor Strelkov), the military commander of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk,” and Putin’s special envoy, Vladimir Lukin.

In their calls, Lukin gives Girkin aka Strelkov his instructions about how to carry out this “thing.” Girkin a.k.a. Strelkov has no objections to this “thing” because he has already “been informed.” In their calls, Lukin refers to “verification from the highest levels.” As the President’s special envoy, I imagine this refers to Putin himself. . . .

Conversation between Lukin and Girkin/Strelkov, May 1 evening

Mirza: Hello, Good day. I am calling on behalf of Lukin. He asked me to tell you that we are flying tomorrow from Moscow at 10 a.m. plus-or-minus.

Girkin/Strelkov: Who will be coming?

Mirza: Lukin, Mirzha, Kozokhin.

Girkin/Strelkov: So, I’ll pass along these names. What should I say?

Mirza: Say that we are flying in tomorrow. All further details are known. Everybody is informed.

Conversation between Lukin and Girkin/Strelkov, May 2, 10:59 a.m.

Lukin: Excuse me. This is Vladimir Petrovich [Lukin]. I have arrived here as we have agreed upon. Greetings Igor Ivanovich [Girkin/Strelkov]. We have agreed to meet. I am in Donetsk right now in good company. And if I may I’d like to ask you two questions.

Girkin/Strelkov: Go ahead.

Lukin: First how “warm” is it at your place and can we talk? You do have a general idea about the “thing” I have been assigned to do, don’t you?

Girkin/Strelkov: Yes I know. I have been informed.

Lukin: You do not have any objections about this “thing,” do you? The job is to carry out this “thing.” The representatives, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, will be in Donetsk today. We are carrying out this “thing” together.

Girkin/Strelkov: I have no objections for one simple reason. All this has already been discussed with me.

Lukin: Very good, then we have to figure out how to get there to carry out this “thing?” So let me call you a little later.

Girkin/Strelkov: Call me, call, but I had instruction to assist you and not the European partners.

Lukin: Yes I understand. The problem is, well, we have to keep working on this matter together to carry out this “thing.”

Girkin/Strelkov: Keep working on it. I must manage the defense [of Slovyansk].

Conversation between Lukin with Girkin/Strelkov, May 2, 5:04 p.m.

Girkin/Strelkov: I am listening Vladimir Petrovich [Lukin].

Lukin: Forgive me that I have to interrupt you all the time.

Girkin/Strelkov: No bother.

Lukin: So Igor Ivanovich [Girkin/Strelkov] the problem is the following. When is it convenient to arrive? OSCE provides the transportation. I’ll be in the first car. And we will be carrying out this “thing” once we are allowed to pass. There seems to be an order to let us pass, but it is being verified at the highest level. What is better: In a few hours or if we arrive tomorrow morning say 5-7?

Girkin/Strelkov: For me it is more convenient if you come in the morning for one simple reason. After you leave, the fighting will resume.

Lukin: I see. So you think morning is better. Yes. Okay It is agreed. So we’ll call sometime near 7 a.m.

Girkin/Strelkov; Yes, call me when you near the city so I can instruct the blockade to let you in.

I am convinced the recorded calls are authentic. I have personally met Lukin several times, and it would be difficult to imitate his voice and super-polite manner of speech. Their conversation rings like two acquaintances arranging a golf game.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/04/intercepted-phone-calls-show-putin-called-shots-on-international-hostages/

Blogger: Chechens Forced to Serve as Mercenaries in Ukraine

In Chechnya, threats and torture recruit mercenaries in Ukraine
05/06/2014

People who refuse to go to the Donbass and fight on the side of terrorists , beaten and tortured .

This writes the Russian blogger Oleg Leusenko , referring to a letter from a student from Elmira from Grozny .

” Yes, this set is carried out , but wishing to enroll very little – she writes . – And those who signed up , but understanding how they want to use , refused – kidnapped, beaten, tortured and threatened to make disabled.

Tell your story . I have a relative . On Friday, he went to record to be sent to the Crimea. Enrolled , passed documents . But when he realized that the ” guards ” they need demanded documents back .

Recorded it in the center on the recruitment of mercenaries in Ukraine , located on Mayakovsky Street in Grozny.

My cousin from a needy family. Learning about such big earnings, which promise to power, he decided to enroll . But when he realized the situation , and refused to take the documents ”

According to the writer , when her cousin came to pick up their instruments , the organizers , who are recruiting mercenaries , began to shout at him, call , mother of the last words , insulted , called a coward. She stressed that recruiters work closely with the local police .

” Then the story evolved so – she writes . – At 23 o’clock the same day, at night , masked gunmen broke into the house and my cousin took him. The alarm had been raised all the relatives . Began to search . Finally figured out where he was being held . The police told relatives that they say to him have a couple of questions , and let him go now . But released only in the morning .

He was beaten to a pulp. He was tortured and beaten for refusing to go to Ukraine mercenary .

http://kavkasia.net/Russia/2014/1399419526.php

Why does Russia dislike the US?

http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Russia-dislike-the-US?share=1

People who engage Putin and Russia fail to understand how the nation as a whole feels humiliated by the actions of the west and the current events of history. This is actually something George Bush understood and why he was so chummy with Putin. In the lifespan of most Russians alive today, they went from being co-rulers of the world, to a backwater nation that even while it was dysfunctional before, nevertheless was feared and respected by everybody on the planet. Their military, science and reputation reigned co-supreme. Russia (the USSR) sat at every table and had a say in almost every global decision.

Today, the west completely disrespects Russia and what’s worse, Russians by and large don’t even respect Russia. They look around their country and they see a glorious past but doubt any such future. They are dying earlier than before. Birthrates are low. The population has stagnated and is predicted to contract by 25-50% in the next 50 years. Their cities are filled with crime and corruption. Their industries and factories are rusting and collapsing. Their best educated talent flees the nation at the first sign of opportunity or completely sells out to the oligarchs.

Across the oceans, is their century-old foe. Despite its troubles, the USA still acts like the best days are yet to come and they throw it in everybody’s face. Americans think they are better than they are, still chant patently offensive, jingoistic nonsense like “American Exceptionalism” as if the whole world believed it (and act patently surprised when others reject that notion, like, “What? You mean you DON’T think we’re better than you!???”). They think they are smarter than they are and despite all of their peculiar decision making, have effectively stripped much of the “Russia’s” old sphere of influence away from her. Russia’s only circle are second world nations who may or may not one day become first world nations. America’s circle of friends seemingly bow to the US interests even when it appears that the US shouldn’t be getting that kind of respect. What’s worse, despite American actions that enrage the world, whole geographic segments run to the American sphere of influence at their first chance (Eastern Europe; East Asia; Africa; South America).

The nations that SHOULD be jumping on Russia’s side — China, India, Brazil — pay lip service to that only while recognizing that their future lies in continuing and building their reputations with the EU and USA. So, to that end, Russia has a lot to be angry about. It’s easier to be angry with the USA when — in fact — Russians should be angry with themselves. They are sitting on what is arguably the world’s largest stock of natural resources. The sum total of that natural wealth should provide Russia with so much riches that it should be one of — if not the — wealthiest nation(s) on the planet.

But they cannot seem to make it work. Something is preventing this future. Running the nation is a team of kleptocratic-oligarchs who orchestrate murders and oppression of their people while robbing from both themselves and what little there is to be had. Beijing put on the world’s largest Olympic celebration. . . EVER for $30 billion. Russia spent $50 billion on theirs (20% of which is estimated to have ended up in oligarch hands for bribes), with less attendance and couldn’t stop — LITERALLY — toxic brown, fecal SHIT from oozing from the pipes into hotels. Lights didn’t work. Doors didn’t work. The Olympic show itself was a joke. Hotel’s weren’t finished. Ground water was left contaminated. The press in every nation was basically laughing at the complete and utter disgrace of the Sochi Olympics in 2014. How could a nation spend 25 TIMES what Salt Lake City spent. . . and still need to put signs in hotel rooms saying, (basically) “Don’t let this fecal water touch your face or you will die.” How ridiculous!

Russia’s sole source of wealth is its commodities, despite having a century old tradition of high education in the sciences and quite LITERALLY putting humans into space. It’s so bad, that it almost seems like it cannot possibly be the fault of Russia. There must be some wider conspiracy, working nefariously behind the scenes to destroy the valiant Russian attempts at becoming a great nation again.

For the first time, a Russian flag is burned. Odesa.

Hundreds of pro-unity Ukrainians burn the Russian flag at the site of bloody clashes on Friday.

They’re claiming victory over the separatists who had seized control of this Odessa Square.

Forty Ukrainians — mostly pro-Russian separatists — died trapped in a fire at the building they’d occupied.

The protesters observed a minute of silence to remember the dead.

http://www.news-republic.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=4&articleid=22588286

The Kremlin’s marriage of convenience with the European far right

I’m in the middle of writing a similar article. Stay tuned!

Crimea, 16 March. Here they are: international ‘observers’ at the illegal and illegitimate ‘referendum’ held in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea occupied by the Russian ‘little green men.’ The overwhelming majority of the ‘observers’ are representatives of a broad spectrum of European extreme-right parties and organisations: Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei (FPÖ) and Bündnis Zukunft, Belgian Vlaams Belang and Parti Communautaire National-Européen, Bulgarian Ataka, French Front National, Hungarian Jobbik, Italian Lega Nord and Fiamma Tricolore, Polish Samoobrona, Serbian ‘Dveri’ movement, Spanish Plataforma per Catalunya. They were invited to legitimise the ‘referendum’ by the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections (EODE) – a smart name for an ‘international NGO’ founded and headed by Belgian neo-Nazi Luc Michel, a loyal follower of Belgian convicted war-time collaborationist and neo-Nazi Jean-François Thiriart. Presented by Michel as ‘a non-aligned NGO’, the EODE does not conceal its anti-Westernism and loyalty to Putin, and is always there to put a stamp of ‘legitimacy’ on all illegitimate political developments, whether in Crimea, Transnistria, South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Moscow’s money talks.

Yet the EODE is only a drop in the ocean of extensive co-operation between the Kremlin and the European far right. Front National’s Marine Le Pen now visits Moscow on a seemingly regular basis: in August 2013 and April 2014 she had meetings with Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Speaker of the Russian parliament Sergey Naryshkin. Le Pen’s adviser on geopolitical matters Aymeric Chauprade participated, as an ‘expert’, in the meeting of the Committee for Family, Women and Children Issues in the Russian parliament to endorse the laws banning adoption of Russian orphan children by LGBT couples. Several former members of the Front National run ProRussia.TV, an extension of the Kremlin’s international PR instruments such as Russia Today and the Voice of Russia. . . .

Jobbik’s leader Gábor Vona gave a lecture at Moscow State University at the invitation of Russian right-wing extremist Aleksandr Dugin; according to Vona, it would be better for Hungary to leave the EU and join the Russia-dominated Eurasian Union. Dugin himself gave a talk in the United Kingdom at the invitation of the far-right Traditional Britain Group and wrote a letter of support to Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the now jailed leader of the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, whose political programme urges Greek society to turn away from ‘American Zionists’ and ‘Western usury’ towards Russia. Just a few days ago, Bulgarian Ataka’s leader Volen Siderov launched his party’s European election campaign in Moscow. . . .

For the European extreme right, Putin is a powerful leader, who has challenged the political status quo of the West and has questioned the global role of the US, which the European extreme right openly loathe. The allegedly anti-globalist agenda of the Kremlin – which, in reality, is a concealed attempt at seizing and securing the position of the global superpower for Russia itself – attracts the European far left too, especially in Germany, France, Greece, Portugal and the Czech Republic.

Russia’s rise as an anti-Western power is seen by the European extreme right as an amazing example of national sovereignty and self-determination. These ideas are most prominent in today’s Eurosceptic rhetoric of the extreme right parties based in the EU, ‘a technocratic monster that only serves the interests of bankers’ (Le Pen), from which, according to Geert Wilders of the Dutch far right Partij voor de Vrijheid, European nation-states should ‘liberate’ themselves. Forza Nuova even calls upon Putin to destroy ‘the Europe of technocrats.’ . . .

Russia’s authoritarian conservatism is yet another source of attraction for the European extreme right that consider Russia a country where ‘traditional’, ‘family’ and ‘Christian values’ have triumphed. For Jobbik’s Vona, Russia is ‘a better Europe’ because it ‘preserves its traditions and does not follow the culture of money and the masses’. Russia’s anti-gay laws, in particular, were a hit among many European ultranationalists, especially in France and in Italy, where the far-right Fronte Nazionale expressed its support for Putin’s ‘courageous position against the powerful gay lobby’ (as well as anti-EU and pro-Assad stances) through dozens of posters in Rome. . . .

Putin’s far-right government is eager to co-operate with any European ultranationalist party unless it is critical of Russia for historical or other reasons. . . .

Second, as the ideological approach of the majority of the European ‘observers’ at the Crimean ‘referendum’ demonstrated, right-wing extremists are the main pool of EU-based politicians who can legitimise Russian actions domestically and internationally. When reporting on the work of the international ‘observers’, the Russian state media never mentioned their ideological positions. On the contrary, they were presented in a boringly neutral way: FPÖ’s Johann Gudenus was simply ‘an MP from Austria’, Front National’s Aymeric Chauprade – ‘a political scientist’, neo-Nazi Enrique Ravello – ‘an observer from Catalunya’, etc. These trivial representations were needed to reassure the Russian audience that the Crimean ‘referendum’ was perfectly legitimate. . . .

The only exception is Slovenia where the far-right Slovenska Nacionalna Stranka is insignificant, and the current political establishment is democratic and pro-EU. . . .

http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/anton-shekhovtsov/kremlin%E2%80%99s-marriage-of-convenience-with-european-far-right

Rising Russian Intelligence Activity in Hungary

Although Hungary is a member of both the EU and NATO, since 2004 and 1999 respectively, it plays an ambivalent role currently, as Fidesz, a Euroskeptic, national-conservative party, has displayed certain admiration for Putinism, with which it has some ideological affinity. Moreover, Orbán’s government, which has soured on much of the European project, has sought unusually close economic ties with Putin’s Russia that promise to have long-term political impacts.

Perhaps most ominously, Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party, which took an astonishing twenty-one percent of the vote in last month’s national elections, despite – or perhaps because of – its vehemently xenophobic and anti-Western policies, makes no effort to disguise its admiration for Putin. Jobbik regurgitates Kremlin propaganda regularly, including about Ukraine, and the affinity may be more than merely ideological. It’s been an open secret in European security circles that Jobbik appears to be on the payroll of Russian intelligence, an allegation that has appeared several times in quasi-respectable media over the years, as the party has risen from the paramilitary anti-Semitic fringe to nationwide prominence in Hungary. (Jobbik is equally pro-Tehran, and there are persistent rumors that it takes money from Iranian intelligence too.)

Not surprisingly, such secret Russian interference in Hungarian politics has been a source of concern to the country’s security services for some time. Today’s Budapest daily Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation) has a story, entitled “Increasing activity of Russian intelligence agents,” that elaborates the counterintelligence worries of Hungary’s military during the Ukraine crisis. In recent months, Hungarian security services have observed a noticeable uptick in Russian espionage inside the county, by both the civilian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), aimed at purloining NATO secrets as Hungary finds itself an Alliance frontline state in the Ukraine crisis.

http://20committee.com/2014/05/02/rising-russian-intelligence-activity-in-hungary/

Donetsk Militia Overruns a Police Station (VICE)

Are they on the Kremlin payroll?

Is this grass roots?

Are they Russian agents (probably not)?

Are they being coordinated by Russian agents?

I would love to see Donbas gain some measure of autonomy. That’s hard to accomplish, however, with Russian agents and special forces running around, kidnapping journalists, murdering pro-Ukrainian activists, torturing pro-Ukrainian politicians.

Let’s arm the local, and then, after a year of gun ownership, allow their referendum.

Slava Donbas!

Kolomoysky wants to create a coordinating council for Southeastern Ukraine

The head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Administration, Ihor Kolomoyskyy, is calling for the creation of a council of governors of Southeastern Ukraine, according to his statement posted on the website of the Oblast State Administration, as reported by Ukrainska Pravda, May 4.

“As a result of a chain of political events, including those inspired from outside the country, Ukraine is in grave danger of losing its territorial integrity,” Kolomoysky says.

Since the scenarios for this threat will be played out first of all in the southeast oblasts, Kolomoysky argues for the absolute necessity of creating a coordinating body to ensure organized and effective work by the governors in these areas.

“I propose that very soon we create a Board of the Governors of Southeastern Ukraine and include the heads of the oblast administrations of the Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolayiv and Odesa oblasts,” he says.

According to Kolomoysky, the main task of the Board of Governors would be to create the necessary conditions for holding transparent and honest presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25, 2014, under the supervision of international observers.

http://euromaidanpr.com/2014/05/05/kolomoysky-wants-to-create-a-coordinating-council-for-southeastern-ukraine/#more-8361