Free Republic

The NYT ran a long article yesterday describing the administration’s Hamlet-like agonizing over whether to provide Ukraine with real time intelligence useful for targeting rebel forces. (For the record, I called for this in the immediate aftermath of the flight of Yanukovych. It should be an easy decision.) One part jumped out at me: “We’ve been cautious to date about things that could directly hit Russia — principally its territory,” but also its equipment, the official said. A proposal to give the Ukrainians real-time information “hasn’t gotten to the president yet,” the official said, in part because the White House...

NEW BRITAIN — More than 20 people showed up Saturday as Maidan United, a nonprofit solidarity organization between Polish and Ukrainian friends, held a fundraiser in Falcon Field Saturday to benefit victims of violence in Ukraine. The event, which featured an appearance by Yulia Marushevska, a young Ukrainian woman who created the viral YouTube video “I am a Ukrainian” in which she spoke her support of the protestors in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. There was also Polish and Ukrainian beer and food, cotton candy, face painting, a bouncy house, and a dunk tank with one of the group’s members wearing...

The Ukrainian revolution that took place on Kiev’s Independence Square in February unleashed a chain of irreversible events for Ukraine, and in some mystical fashion also facilitated an irreversible event of even greater scale for its neighbor: Russia became pregnant with Ukraine. The yellow-and-blue sperm of Independence Square did its manly job under the colorful fireworks of grenades, the flares of Molotov cocktails, and the whistle of snipers’ bullets. During that hot month, sitting in front of an overheated television set, Russia conceived. A new life stirred in her enormous womb: Free Ukraine. The authorities were horrified, the liberals were...

Here is recent map, sorry I didn't find one in English. In yellow and blue is Ukrainian territory, Russia is brown and separatists controlled territory is in between. There is two or three pockets where Ukrainian army having hard time, it is near Russian border. They are between separatists and Russians who fire from Russian territory. Pentagon admitted today that Russia is firing artillery from its own territory into Ukraine to hit Ukrainian military sites. They doing it for second week. To understand what future may hold for us let me remind how it went with Osetia in 2008....

Today, Ukrainian authorities exhumed a mass grave in Sloviansk, in eastern Ukraine. By the time I left the site, they had discovered eight decomposed bodies and they were still searching for more. From April until July 2, the city, now back under Ukrainian government control, had been under the control of anti-government insurgents. Two neighbors who usually walk their dogs on the lawn next to the burial site told me that on the morning of June 11 an excavator arrived and dug a hole. Later, they said, they saw two men in camouflage drive a truck to the newly dug...

<p>This photo was taken in Luhansk, which this days is quite usual sight. If 8 month ago someone would say that here in Ukraine we'll have dead civilians laying around on the streets no one would believe. This is how fast war enter you life. It is really difficult to find out whose fire has killed civilians. People trying to stay away from separatists because those are moving targets for Ukrainian army. Also often people getting killed when some armed men shooting civilians to make picture for Russian TV. When Russian TV leave then civilians can be at ease, no more killings for the day Russian TV left, they say.</p>

I had been planning to write on the latest round of sanctions, but of course that story has been overtaken by an utterly horrific event: the shooting down, by a surface-to-air missile, of a Malaysian Air 777 flying over Donetsk. This is an unspeakable crime. Unspeakable. I can state with near metaphysical certainty that this was the work of Russian-supported and inspired rebels from the Donetsk People’s Republic, or perhaps even the Russian military itself. The jet was downed in the same area where two Ukrainian military planes were destroyed by SAM fire in the last couple of days. The...

<p>Back in the days when Vladimir Putin was first launching his crackdown on Russian mainstream media, killing and arresting reporters and publishers and seizing or shutting down publications, the Russia apologists rationalized his actions by claiming that the Russian Internet was free and always would be, and would counter any state propaganda.  It’s now clear that these statements were made simply ruse to induce the defenders of free speech to drop their guard and allow Putin to take over mainstream media unchallenged. It worked like a charm. And now we can clearly see how utterly false these statements were as Putin systematically exterminates the Runet.</p>

Media report that protesters gathered in Kiev on Sunday to voice their anger at President Poroshenko's truce with rebels. Around 8.000 people came to Maydan central square. From myself I shall add that it was not just protesters, there were many self-defence units and commanders of battalions who warned president openly that he going to repeat fate of former president Yanukovich if he won't do what he promised and also they warned that action on Maydan on Sunday was last peaceful gathering. Today so called truce coming to an end and gas addicted eurocrats must come up with the sanctions...

If election were today one month after they went on May 25 then our new president would receive no votes at all. Today's headlines President Poroshenko extends truce for east... What they call truce turned out to be killing of Ukrainian soldiers. All country was waiting for action, tens thousand of refugees living in fields and parks wait for army to restore order and our president decide to extend truce. Meanwhile Russians dig in and bringing more tanks and heavy artillery from Russia while Ukraine wait for what western masters will tell them to do. With other words our new...

Jeez, I take off a few days for a conference in Amsterdam, a quick trip to Bern to discuss commodity trading firms with the Swiss government, and some R&R, and the world careens to hell in a rocket propelled hand basket. During this brief hiatus, Russian tanks and Grad rocket launchers conducted a probe into Ukraine, and a transport plane carrying Ukrainian paratroopers was shot down, killing all aboard. What’s more, the world’s most vicious, brutal, and crazed jihadist group, ISIL (aka ISIS) captured Iraq’s second largest city (Mosul), where it immediately instituted a reign of terror. Not content with...

Youtube video - 26 mins. and 12 secs. February 2014, Ukraine's Euromaidan revolution against the government of Viktor Yanukovych had reached another stalemate after the violence in late January. But on the 18th, massive and fatal clashes broke out between police and protesters outside the Ukrainian parliament building, the Rada. After hours of fierce fighting, the protesters were pushed back onto their last lines of defense in Independence square and just about forced the police back after an attempt to clear the square. Once the dust had settled almost 30 police and protesters had been killed, on a day where...

I conducted three interviews in recent days about the struggle for freedom in Ukraine, Venezuela and Romania. From writer and political analyst Sammy Eppel, I learned how the Communists are coping with powerful opposition forces in Venezuela. I also spoke, once again, with Ukrainian activist Boris Chykulay who updated me on events in Ukraine and offered his analysis; and I interviewed Anca-Marie Cernea, who was kind enough to explain the Ukraine crisis as seen from Romania – a country which struggles, even now, to break its old Communist shackles. But first, before offering choice bits from these interviews, I would...

<p>Vladimir Putin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th Century. Western leaders have been quick to brand this as old-fashioned thinking.</p> <p>Their condescension sounds eerily like Neville Chamberlain’s remark that Hitler “missed the bus” in the Czech crisis.</p>

The dogs of war were howling at the moon in Vladimir Putin’s Russia last week. You could hear them all the way in California. And they sounded for all the world just like nuclear bombers. General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle broke the news: “They've come with their long-range aviation off the coast of California, they circumnavigated Guam,” he said, showing a picture of a U.S. F-15 fighter “intercepting” a Russian Tu-95 “Bear” bomber off the Pacific island. The United States does not buzz Russian shores with nuclear bombers, forcing Russian fighters to scramble to ward them off, at any time and...

I sometimes feel foolish writing to defend this country. Why do I even bother? Last Thursday I quoted George Washington's Farewell Address, in which he asked his countrymen to indignantly frown "upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts." One would think I had quoted the devil, given the negative mail I received in response. Only one correspondent appeared to agree. The rest were of the opinion that quoting Washington was a "bogus" thing to do. After all,...

Fascism returns to the continent it once destroyedWe easily forget how fascism works: as a bright and shining alternative to the mundane duties of everyday life, as a celebration of the obviously and totally irrational against good sense and experience. Fascism features armed forces that do not look like armed forces, indifference to the laws of war in theirapplication to people deemed inferior, the celebration of “empire” after counterproductive land grabs. Fascism means the celebration of the nude male form, the obsession with homosexuality, simultaneously criminalized and imitated. Fascism rejects liberalism and democracy as sham forms of individualism, insists on...

There is a tendency, especially today, to reduce all political analysis to an ideological formula, and to judge everything according to this formula. Such a reduction is usually erroneous, even dangerous, when applied to a complicated world. It is, of course, easier to simplify everything in order to make it more comprehensible. But the world does not become simpler when we ideologically simplify. We become simpler – to the point of stupidity. Most people ideologically simplify because they are distracted and have no time for political studies, or historical studies, so they adopt an ideological template. This allows them to...

<p>I will take credit for being one of the first to point out the fact that Snowden’s whistleblower narrative was a total crock because after the initial flurry his leaks had little to do with NSA surveillance of individuals, but instead revealed information that was highly damaging to US national security and foreign policy. The only question in my mind was when he was when he became a Russian asset. I still don’t know, but as I also pointed out a while ago, the fact that collected disproportionately such national security-related information made it very plausible that he was tasked to collect this information, and given the identity of the ultimate beneficiary-Russia-it was also plausible that he was Russia’s witting or unwitting tool from the get go.</p>

Traveling and family obligations, so limited time to comment on events. But an opportunity (sitting at the gate in Greenville) to take a few quick hits. The US announced some additional sanctions today. To indicate how lame these sanctions are, the Russian market (MICEX) was up 2.35 percent when the names on the list (or more accurately, the names that weren’t on the list) were announced. One notable name: Sechin. Roseneft was down 1.7 percent, and BP, tied to the hip with Rosneft, was down about two percent. Other than that. Zip. In an inversion of the usual expression, this...