Putin Says DPR, LPR Military Fight for Liberation From Nazis as Did Their Ancestors

Sputnik News ^ | 5/8/22

[Jan_Sobieski]

1. “Ukraine’s parliament has voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovich from office, hours after he abandoned his Kiev office to protesters and denounced what he described as a coup (armed militants).”

2. The impeachment, which was backed by 328 of the 447 deputies, argues that Yanukovich abused his powers (NOT 75% required by the constitution)

It was a coup.

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

Interpol has put the ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on the international wanted list on charges of embezzlement and financial wrongdoing. Ukrainian authorities said Interpol’s publication of a so-called 'red notice' against the 64-year-old, who has been living in Russia since being ousted by street protests almost a year ago, empowered any police force to hand him over to Ukraine if he was detained. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/12/viktor-yanukovych-interpol-wanted-list-ukraine

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

Following a day of extraordinary drama, Ukraine faces a new and uncertain future after the country’s parliament voted to impeach the president, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister, was released from prison.

Viktor Yanukovych, fled the capital, and parliament voted to strip him of his powers.

However, those willing to stand by Yanukovych diminished by the hour as his aides fled Ukraine and the president himself was accused by border officials of a FAILED ATTEMPT TO FLY of the country.

The army said it would not get involved, and police in key eastern areas said they were “with the people”.

There are fears that, with Yanukovych losing control of the west of the country and Kiev, Russia may attempt to promote separatist movements in Crimea.

In a dramatic twist, Tymoshenko was set free on Saturday evening, heading straight to Kiev where she hailed gathered protesters as “heroes” and urged them to continue their fight until change had been secured.

“This is your victory because no politician, no diplomat could do what you have done, you have removed this cancer from this country,” she told them. Tymoshenko said she regretted not being with them as they manned the barricades and people were killed. “Every bullet that killed those people was a bullet in the heart of all of us,” she said. “You have to remember their faces, you have to have their faces before your eyes and remember their sacrifices,” she said.

“Now you have a right to rule this country and decide for this country. Ukraine has an opportunity to build its own future today.” Tymoshenko was jailed in 2011 for “abuse of office”, in a trial many said was Yanukovych’s revenge against his arch-rival. She spent much of her sentence under armed guard in a hospital in the eastern city of Kharkiv being treated for back problems.

Even in the east of the country, Yanukovych’s authority was eroding rapidly. In Dnepropetrovsk, one of the region’s biggest cities, the police force released a statement saying it was “with the people”, while in the eastern city of Kharkiv the mayor and governor were reported to have fled to Russia.

On the streets of Kiev and at the Maidan, after a tumultuous day in which the three-month protest appeared to have won a decisive victory, there was celebration, but also a sense that with the job finally done in removing Yanukovych, the real work now begins.

“So many things have happened these days, some pleasant, some not, it is hard to know how I feel,” said Denis Romanov, 30, an engineer. “Ukraine won’t ever be the same again, and I mean this in a good way. Ukraine has been reborn in these events.”

Mykhailo Gavryliuk, a Cossack who in January was stripped naked and humiliated by riot police, sat on a pile of sandbags with rain trickling down his face. He offered a sober view of the future, saying that this was not yet a decisive victory. “For that we need a leader who loves Ukraine more than himself,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/22/ukraine-president-yanukovych-flees-kiev

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

Mykhailo Gavryliuk, a Cossack who in January was stripped naked and humiliated by riot police, sat on a pile of sandbags with rain trickling down his face. He offered a sober view of the future, saying that this was not yet a decisive victory. “For that we need a leader who loves Ukraine more than himself,” he said.

UKRAINE has found such a President:
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky

[Cronos]

You haven’t replied to tye proofs that your statements about Yanukovych are wrong. No coup.

[Jan_Sobieski]

You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts. It was a coup pure and simple, which never happens with Democracies. US Ambassador Victoria Nuland was recorded on a phone call planning the coup and her replacement for Yanukovich. Once the coup d’etet was complete, 3 Russian speaking Ukrainian Oblasts separated and declared themselves autonomous republics. There has been a civil war ever since. You can read the following, or watch “Ukraine on Fire” by Oliver Stone

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25182830

[Cronos]

No opinions, only facts

The link you give says nothing about a “coup”

As to the facts on the ground

In 2014, the Presidents of Ukraine, Yanukovych, went back on his election pledge to seek cooperation with the EU. He did this as the anti corruption reforms is not what he wanted.

He moved secretly to sign a deal with Putin.

The public didn’t like this and held peaceful demonstrations in Majdan.

late 2013 a group of students protested against the fact that Yanukovich would not sign the Eastern Partnership agreement with the EU (Moldova and Georgia already had). Yanukovich had used this agreement to go to Moscow and get more money from Russia in exchange for not signing. These students disagreed so they set up a protest on Kreschatyk the main street of Kyiv.

This was for months, extending to 2014.

Yanukovych government response was to send in law enforcement who beat up the protesters and sent several into the clinic. This brutality pissed of more people who then started their own protest which merged with the student protest. And soon people from all ages joined for different reasons: anti-corruption, against high unemployment, the low pensions, poor life for war veterans etc. The original protest served as a catalyst that suddenly burst open the dissatisfaction that lived with many

Things were at a standstill when Yanukovich gave orders to the Berkut, Ukrainian special police force (bit like SWAT in the US) to organise a wide spread attack to break up the protests and restore order. For this they gathered troops from outside of Kyiv too and put snipers on the rooftops. The rest is history. A real battle followed and people died.

Yanukovych sent in the militias to beat the demonstrators. That caused a larger demonstration of people asking for a change from corruption.

Yanukovych was in process of being impeached for gross corruption and was going to be removed one way or another. He said he would not step down even if impeached. The day parliament voted 73% for his impeachment, he willingly tucked tail to Russia when he knew it was inevitable.

He placed Russia-style limits on assembly and free speech that people yearning for freedom were NEVER going to accept peacefully. Only after the subsequent crackdowns on peaceful protestors did the protests turn violent.

Yanukovich got scared, grabbed all the cash and jewellery he could and fled East to Donetsk where he came from. Unfortunately for him he had burned his bridges there as well by scamming the Donbas maffia while in office. When he was then refused passage by the Ukrainian border guards at the Russian border Putin sent in special forces to extradite Yanukovich, his family and some of his most loyal supporters to Russia where he know lives in wealth and at the mercy of Putin should he come in useful ever again. All Yanukovich had had to do was like those before him make some promises to the protesters, sign some symbolic legislation and then continue business as usual. Instead he chose the confrontation and lost.

Note that the successor to Yanukovych was Poroshenko, a Russian speaker.

Poroshenko was voted out by the people and the new president was Zelensky, another Russian speaker

[Jan_Sobieski]

Going back on an election pledges is par for the democratic course! You then vote them out of office. You refuse reality. I’ve been on the ground in Ukraine and have relatives there. Yanukovich was driven out by an unconstitutional revolution. This does not happen in Democracies. Don’t waste my time any more

[David Chase]

The Nazi gimmick worked so well with Americans to create a divide Putin is going to over use it (like now) and soon he’ll need a new evil person/thing.

Bummer Russia is buddies with China…….a Chinese/Ukraine connection would be great right about now.

Something like: “Oh no! China and Ukraine or working together to make clones of Mao!”

That would work, or clones of JFK jr. The Q tards will love it!

[Cronos]

And you say Watch Ukraine on Fire by Oliver Stone -- I did watch it in 2018/19 and didn't think much of it - it was as bad as a Michael Fatty "documentary" -- just one-sided interviews

He interviews Putin, Yanukovich, and the head of police who oversaw police brutality attacking peaceful student protesters. There are no interviews with any civilians who were actually at these protests and all protesters are lumped into "Neo-Nazi supporters and some random civilians who fell prey to their misleading propaganda." - but nothing from the other side

Then he portrays false stories -

1. That Ukraine is a "invented nation" - historically this is demonstrably false, forgetting about Chmielinski, about Kyivan Rus etc.
   
   
2. That Ukraine "split from Russia thanks to historical coincidences. " -- this is again demonstrably false. Kyiv, Muscowy, Novgorod were different daughters of Kyivan Rus. the Muscowites are partially "descended" from Kyivan Rus but more administratively and culturally from the Mongol Khaganate
   
   
3. “The history of Ukraine was made by third parties” as Stone alleges - this forgets baotu Ivan Mazepa etc. and completely forgets about the Russification of the 1800s
   
   
4. He then “trying to preserve the gains of the revolution” (a phrase from Soviet textbooks) was forced to give Ukraine to the Germans, who turned it into their protectorate. This is an outright lie: at the moment when Lenin’s envoys were signing the peace treaty at Brest-Litovsk, it had already been signed by a delegation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, newly-formed in Kiev,
   
   
5. Finally - how can you believe a film that supposedly talks of the history of Ukraine in the first decade of its independence, and the main and only speaker appearing as an expert on Ukraine in the 1990s is... Vladimir Putin. On behalf of ordinary Ukrainians Putin complains at length about the robbery of privatisation, the appropriation of state property and extortion of the ordinary people – in other words, about everything that he himself, his friends and his benefactors did in Russia in the 1990s.

The documentary doesn't even attempt to be balanced. Getting Putin to talk about Ukraine post 1991 and the problems there is like asking the Ayatollah to talk about the USA in the 1990s.

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

Thanks Cronos!
You are totally spot-on!

[Cronos]

I think Jan has been misled with the entire Russian propaganda claiming a coup that is a false statement

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

ROTFL!

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

TRUE. “Jan has been misled with the entire Russian propaganda”

When someone or something challenges you, it’s natural to reject them or their ideas initially. The reason is that you feel that offended, perhaps a bit disrespected, and vulnerable. Even if you are incorrect, you don’t want to consider it.

Emotions are powerful and can get in the way of the ability to use logic. When there’s a topic you care deeply about, your emotions kick into overdrive. Reasoning skills get thrown out the window as you’re willing to argue to the bitter end.

If there is something that challenges your beliefs, you may find it tough to accept that what you believe isn’t true.

When someone or something challenges you, it’s natural for you to reject them or their ideas initially. The reason is that you feel that offended, perhaps a bit disrespected, and vulnerable.

Admitting you’re mistaken takes immense strength.
https://www.powerofpositivity.com/wrong-admission-why-it-is-so-hard/

[Jan_Sobieski]

The first Amendment to the US Constitution protects your right to believe Biden, MSNBC, and the NWO.

The Ukrainian constitution defends a President’s right to change his mind on trade agreements. Especially if that agreement jeopardizes or is detrimental to the country’s other trade agreements. Armed insurrections are not Constitutional and naturally result in disenfranchised voters and separatist movements. Hence, the civil war since 2014

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

CORRUPT YANUKOVYCH REGIME

After assuming the presidency, Yanukovych seemed to embrace a time-tested approach of using Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt judicial system to consolidate his political authority. He quickly moved to prosecute his main political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, his most serious challenger in the 2010 election.

Yanukovych used the corruption issue as a political cudgel: Tymoshenko ended up being convicted of abuse of power and embezzlement in connection with a gas supply agreement with Russia in 2009, receiving a seven-year prison term and a $188-million fine.

The case was widely viewed by international watchdogs as politically motivated. In 2013, the European Court for Human Rights ruled that her arrest and conviction were “arbitrary and unlawful.”

Svyatoslav Piskun, a former member of the Party of Regions who served as Ukraine’s general prosecutor, remembers that Yanukovych was obsessed with putting Tymoshenko away: “He had one problem: how to jail Tymoshenko.” She ended up not being released from prison until after the Euromaidan Revolution ousted Yanukovych in early 2014.

THE FAMILY

Starting in 2010, Yanukovych is alleged to have started consolidating various business interests under the umbrella of a single, tight group of individuals closely associated with him. This group was often referred to as “The Family.”

Some of its alleged members held senior government posts, including First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov, Minister for Taxes and Revenues Oleksandr Klymenko, Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko and Energy Minister Eduard Stavitsky.

Many of these associates had personal connections to Yanukovych’s elder son Oleksandr, who was at the center of the Family. Before his father’s presidency, Oleksandr Yanukovych worked as a dentist, but by 2013 he had assembled an array of business interests and had accumulated an estimated personal fortune of $133 million.

The Family’s business interests spread far and wide, from oil and gas to prime real estate in the capital. Land for these real estate projects was often annexed from public parks and green zones, and even a public school in one case. According to media reports, armies of lawyers, phony firms and complex networks of offshore companies were used to service this business empire.

One person in this group stood out: Serhiy Kurchenko. He was 28 in 2013, when the Family’s business practices started coming under scrutiny from investigative journalists. After Yanukovych gained power, Kurchenko became known as a wunderkind financial genius.

He later was referred to as “Yanukovych’s wallet.”

Kurchenko had an array of fictitious firms registered in flats in Kharkiv and Simferopol, whose residents had no idea they were company directors. They were linked, through financial transactions, to numerous offshore firms that churned millions of dollars for Kurchenko’s corporations.

By 2013, he was worth an estimated $400 million. Much of his wealth was acquired through opaque connections with state companies, especially in various segments of the oil-and-gas sector.
For example, soon after Yanukovych came to power in 2010, an entity controlled by Kurchenko, VETEK, cornered Ukraine’s liquefied gas market, buying up the entire output that had previously been sold to bidders through an auction, and then reselling it at a substantial profit.

In 2014, after his escape from Ukraine along with Yanukovych and other members of the Family, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) accused Kurchenko and his associates of various crimes connected to energy trading, including price gouging of state-controlled entities, fictitious supply deals to state firms and the embezzlement of state funds. Criminal proceedings into these accusations continue in Ukraine.

The SBU also alleged that Kurchenko diverted at least $1 billion from state coffers for his personal benefit. Later, he reportedly tried to move a lot of his assets to Russia, according to documents recovered by journalists. Ukrainian courts have frozen much of those assets. Overall, the Family amassed about $12 billion in wealth, estimates Anders Aslund, a prominent Swedish-American economist who specializes in the former Soviet Union.

In 2014, after his escape from Ukraine along with Yanukovych and other members of the Family, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) accused Kurchenko and his associates of various crimes connected to energy trading, including price gouging of state-controlled entities, fictitious supply deals to state firms and the embezzlement of state funds. Criminal proceedings into these accusations continue in Ukraine.

The SBU also alleged that Kurchenko diverted at least $1 billion from state coffers for his personal benefit. Later, he reportedly tried to move a lot of his assets to Russia, according to documents recovered by journalists. Ukrainian courts have frozen much of those assets. Overall, the Family amassed about $12 billion in wealth, estimates Anders Aslund, a prominent Swedish-American economist who specializes in the former Soviet Union. When Yanukovych fled Ukraine, evidence documenting these contributions was found in his residence.

A ROYAL-LIKE LIFESTYLE: MEZHYHIRYAROYAL

Hunting was just one of Yanukovych’s secret pleasures. He maintained a lifestyle like no other Ukrainian president before or after. Over the years, Yanukovych spent much of his time at an opulent estate, commonly referred to as Mezhyhirya, named after its location about 25 kilometers north of Kyiv.

Spread over 140 hectares of landscaped gardens with artificial lakes, the estate featured every conceivable luxury; spas and gyms, a tennis court, a golf course, a party ship, a helipad, a collection of retro cars and modern yachts, a state-of-the-art lab for testing food, greenhouses for growing it, and even a zoo and dog-breeding facility.

The estate was shrouded in secrecy, with prison-like security and a five-meter fence surrounding its perimeter. As documented in a trove of papers recovered following the Euromaidan Revolution, no expense was spared in Mezhyhirya’s construction. When decorative woodwork was commissioned for the billiards room of the main house, typically referred to as Honka, the bill amounted to $2.2 million. Wooden elements elsewhere in the house cost $3.7 million. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on bathroom accessories, making them so over-the-top that the common reference became “the golden toilets.”

The estate was later transformed into a museum, run by volunteers, that bears witness to Yanukovych’s profligacy.

YANUKOVYCH OUSTER

The treaty would open the way for substantial EU economic assistance and other perks, such as visa-free travel to Europe for Ukrainian citizens. But it would also mandate compliance with transparency and accountability provisions that gave Yanukovych and his associates reason to pause. In addition, Russia, the Ukrainian president’s main foreign patron, was steadfastly against seeing Ukraine take even the tiniest step toward Europe.

The EU association agreement was scheduled to be finalized in late November 2013, but in order to proceed, Brussels conditioned that Tymoshenko be released from Ukrainian custody. While the Yanukovych administration released other perceived political enemies to satisfy EU concerns, it could not, or would not engineer Tymoshenko’s release. Multiple parliamentary motions on November 21, 2013, to set Tymoshenko free were defeated.

What became known as the Euromaidan movement erupted. Ultimately, after almost three months, and the deaths of over a hundred protesters, Yanukovych’s administration collapsed, and he along with other Family members fled to Russia or Russian-controlled territory.

In early 2019, Yanukovych, who remains in Russia, was convicted on treason charges in absentia and given a 13-year prison sentence.
https://eurasianet.org/a-brief-history-of-corruption-in-ukraine-the-yanukovych-era

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

In 2014, the parliament responded by overwhelmingly approving the restoration of the 2004 constitution, thus reducing the power of the presidency.

In subsequent votes, the parliament approved a measure granting full amnesty to protesters, fired internal affairs minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko for his role in ordering the crackdown on the Maidan, and decriminalized elements of the legal code under which Tymoshenko had been prosecuted.

YANUKOVYCH, his power base crumbling, FLED THE CAPITAL AHEAD OF AN IMPEACHMENT VOTE THAT STRIPED HIM OF HIS POWERS AS PRESIDENT. ALSO, the parliament responded by overwhelmingly approving the RESTORATION OF THE 2004 CONSTITUTION OF UKRAINE which REDUCED the power of the presidency.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Perhaps you are right! Perhaps everything was constitutional. If so, answer this easy questions…

Why did Luhansk, Donetsk, and Crimea declare independence from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution if everything was constitutional? Why is it called a Revolution if everything was constitutional?

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

I bet you would appreciate this photojournalism series by VICE news: Russian Roulette

Russia has invaded the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine and taken over its civilian and military infrastructure. VICE News is on the ground covering the conflict as it unfolds.

There are 111 Dispatch VIDEOS.
The first will answer your question:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw613M86o5o7DfgzuUCd_PVwbOCDO472B

PLEASE NOTE:
The population of Ukraine voted overwhelmingly for independence in the referendum of December 1, 1991. (About 84 percent of eligible voters turned out for the referendum, and about 90 percent of them endorsed independence.)

The point is the minority Russian or Russian speakers with other ethnic minorities in Crimea & Donbass region were living peacefully For most of the first two decades after Ukraine independence.

In other words, being an ethnic Russian or a Russian speaker did not indicate that a person saw themself as part of the Russian World.

There has been an increase in sentiment of a strong, unified Ukrainian identity since 1991. Most Ukrainians see their future as a sovereign country that is part of Europe. Of course, this directly CONTRADICTS Putin’s goals!

Sequence of events:
-18–23 February 2014: Revolution of Dignity [MAIDAN]

-President Viktor Yanukovych escaped Ukraine to avoid impeachment & imprisonment.
-On 22 February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove him from his post and schedule new elections on the grounds that he “has restrained himself from performing his constitutional duties” and effectively resigned, rather than by following the impeachment process for criminal acts under Article 108 of the Ukrainian constitution.
-Parliament set 25 May as the date for the special election to select his replacement, and two days later issued a warrant for his arrest.

2014 INVASION OF UKRAINE BY RUSSIA,

Putin dispatched his army to Ukraine’s borders for an unexpected military exercise, and fighter jets along Russia’s western borders were put on high alert.

Thursday Feb. 27, gunmen with no insignia on their uniforms seized government buildings in Crimea, and then took control of two Crimean airports the day after.Groups of armed men whose uniforms lacked any clear identifying marks [aka Little Green Men] surrounded the airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol. Putin at first denied they were invading Russian soldiers. Putin stated, “Maybe the soldiers want to take a vacation!”

These masked gunmen occupied the Crimean parliament building and raised a Russian flag, then pro-Russian lawmakers dismissed the sitting government and installed Sergey Aksyonov, the leader of the Russian Unity Party, as Crimea’s prime minister. Aksyonov declared “He, and not the government in Kyiv, was in command of Ukrainian police and military forces in Crimea.

Ukraine stated this action was a provocation and a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. That is why most nations still do not recognize Crimea as Russian territory. “

On March 16, 2014, a referendum to ‘join Russia’ was held with observers noting many irregularities in the voting process including the presence of armed men at polling stations. With the result, an overwhelming 97 percent in favor of joining Russia.

[SIDE NOTE: In 2014 with the Russian invasion of Donbas began, many of RNU members [Russia Nazi’s] joined pro-Russian forces in Ukraine. A telephone conversation of Barkashov and a local Donetsk activist Boitsov was intercepted. Barkashov said to Boitsov that he could CALL-OFF the referendum on independence of the territory. Barkashov said that it is NOT NECESSARY to perform referendum the LEGIT way. He said, “in the end no one would care about it. All that Boitsov has to do is to write whatever he finds suitable. If he wants, he can say that 99% of people voted for joining Russia.”]

On March 18 Putin met with Aksyonov and other regional representatives and signed a treaty incorporating Crimea into the Russian Federation.

Ukrainian Gov’t, and the world, protested. However, within hours of the treaty’s signing, a Ukrainian soldier was killed when masked gunmen stormed a Ukrainian military base outside Simferopol.

Russian troops moved to occupy bases throughout the peninsula, including Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol, as Ukraine initiated the evacuation of some 25,000 military personnel and their families from Crimea.

On March 21 after the ratification of the annexation treaty by the Russian parliament, Putin signed a law formally integrating Crimea into Russia.