Ukraine

Dutch board says Russian-made missile downed MH17

October 13, 2015 by Nasheman

Findings do not specify who launched BUK missile which brought down passenger jet over eastern Ukraine in July 2014.

Two hundred and ninety eight people – most of them Dutch and including 80 children – died in the crash on July 17, 2014 [FILE – AP]

by Al Jazeera

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was hit and downed by a Russian-made surface-to-air BUK missile over eastern Ukraine last year, the Dutch Safety Board said.

“Flight MH17 crashed as a result of the detonation of a warhead outside the airplane against the left-hand side of the cockpit,” the chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, Tjibbe Joustra, told a press conference on Tuesday.

“This warhead fits the kind of missile that is installed in the BUK surface-to-air missile system.”

While he insisted investigators had not pinned down the exact location of the missile’s launch site, maps shown to reporters clearly showed the area near Donetsk held by pro-Russian separatists.

Even before the highly-anticipated release of the official report on the disaster, Russian officials were disputing the findings which are sure to further degrade strained ties between Moscow and the West.

Joustra also hit out at the Ukrainian authorities for allowing civil aircraft to continue to fly above the eastern part of the country despite the raging conflict between Kiev’s forces and pro-Russian separatist insurgents.

Visibly shaken

“We have concluded as a precaution there was sufficient reason for the Ukrainian authorities to close the air space above the eastern part of their country,” he said.

Relatives earlier emerged visibly shaken after being privately briefed by Joustra in an conference centre in The Hague about the fate of the Boeing 777 which was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it went down on July 17 last year.

Relative Robby Oehlers said a wave of sadness had swept through the room.

“They showed us the fragments that were inside the plane,” Oehlers said, adding in the room “it was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop.”

Findings disputed

The findings were swiftly disputed by the missile maker Almaz-Antey, which has carried out its own tests into the crash.

The Russian company had performed a test which “disputes the version of the Dutch,” and the damage to the MH17 pointed to the use of an older type of missile.

“The results of the experiment completely dispute the conclusions of the Dutch commission about the type of the rocket and the launch site,” said Yan Novikov, director of Almaz-Antey.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk meanwhile blamed Russia’s security service.

“I personally have no doubt that this was a planned operation of the Russian special services aimed at downing a civilian aircraft,” Yatsenyuk told a televised cabinet meeting.

The long-awaited findings of the board, which was not empowered to address questions of responsibility, did not specify on Tuesday who launched the missile.

All 298 people – most of them Dutch and including 80 children – died in the crash on July 17, 2014.

Photos: One of Ukraine’s most nationalistic cities has become a refuge for nearly 2,000 Muslims

March 2, 2015 by Nasheman

Elmaz and her husband Timur Barotov, refugees from Crimea who now live in Lviv.(Misha Friedman)

by Misha Friedman, Quartz

Among the million-plus Ukrainians displaced by the fighting in the east are thousands of Jews and Muslims. Life is complicated for both groups. In a previous photo-essay, Misha Friedman documented the Jews of Dnipropetrovsk; in this one, he highlights the Crimean Tatars, a Muslim community who, like the Jews, have a long history of persecution in the region. Thousands have fled Crimea since Russia annexed it last year, and many have gone to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

It’s an unlikely destination. While the city has a long and cosmopolitan history, reflected in its picturesque mix of architecture, its recent past has been less friendly. When Germany invaded in 1941, the city was in Polish hands, and its ethnic Ukrainian residents—at the time outnumbered heavily by Poles and Jews—enthusiastically helped the Nazi forces round up and kill Jews, and later took part in massacres of Poles. Since then the city has been a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism.

Yet one thing unites the Muslim Crimean Tatars and the Orthodox Christian Ukrainians: their enmity towards Russia. And so, for now at least, the Tatars are welcome in Lviv. By the time Friedman visited in January, some 1,700 had made it their home, and more were arriving. (Except where noted, all photos are by Friedman; text is reported by Friedman and written by Gideon Lichfield.)

People congregate after Friday prayers. There is no mosque, so they use a space rented by another Muslim diaspora, the Dagestanis.

Diaspora is nothing new for the Crimean Tatars (who are not to be confused with the Volga Tatars in central Russia). In 1944, after the Soviet Union had recaptured Ukraine from the German army, Josef Stalin ordered the entire Crimean Tatar population—some 180,000 people—deported, allegedly for collaborating with the Nazis. They were given 15-20 minutes to collect some belongings, and packed on to trains. Most were sent to Uzbekistan. Not until the mid-1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms, were they allowed to start coming back.

Alim Aliev, founder of Crimea SOS, a local NGO that helps new arrivals fit in, at its office in Lviv.

By the time of the 2001 census there were 240,000 Tatars back in Crimea. It’s estimated that fewer than 10% have left; Russia conducted a census late last year but hasn’t released figures about ethnicity (pdf, in Russian).

Like the displaced Jews in Dnipropetrovsk, the Tatars who have moved to Lviv have had to find new professions. “I didn’t meet anybody who does what he did back home,” Friedman says. Yashar, a former high-school French teacher, learned to make plov, the rice-and-meat stew that is Uzbekistan’s national dish, when he was living there; now he cooks and sells it from a street stall in Lviv.

Yashar, a high-school French teacher from Crimea who now cooks and sells Uzbek plov at a street stall.

On a good day Yashar sells two large pots’ worth of plov at around $2 a serving.

Ernest Abkelyanov, 44, owned a convenience store in Simferopol. He came to Lviv with his wife and four children and is now unemployed. He acts as a religious leader for the community and helps deliver humanitarian aid and orient new arrivals from Crimea.

Ernest Abkelyanov, a former convenience-store owner in Crimea, and his family in Lviv.

Suleiman, a truck driver, came to Lviv with his wife and six children. Also unemployed, he works part-time making dumplings at the Crimea, a café frequented by Tatars. The café’s name is a kind of local joke, Friedman explains. “The men spend a lot of time in the café, and when someone calls their phones and asks where they are, they say, ‘I’m in Crimea!’”

Suleiman, who was a truck driver in Crimea, with his family.

The door of the Krym (Crimea) cafe in Lviv, a hangout for the Tatar community.

Suleiman and Ernest say a prayer during a Muslim naming ceremony for a two-week-old baby, born to another Tatar family in Lviv.

Suleiman at the baby-naming ceremony.

Lviv wears its nationalism on its sleeve. The people killed during the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in 2014, which led to the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, are martyrs here as much as in the capital.

Graffiti commemorating the “heavenly hundred,” the people killed during the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in 2014.

Unity Day, a government holiday on Jan. 22, is taken especially seriously in Lviv. It marks the unification of eastern and western Ukraine in 1919 and their brief existence as an independent country before the USSR and Poland took over and redivided the country in 1920. Members of the Crimean Tatar community join in the ceremonies.

New army recruits sing the national anthem at a ceremony on Ukrainian Unity Day.

Alim Aliev (center) singing the national anthem on Unity Day.

Ernest Abkelyanov and his daughter at the Unity Day celebration.

A protestor during Unity Day celebrations with posters demonizing Russian president Vladimir Putin. “Putin, remember how Hitler ended” is one of his signs.

Though his signs compared Putin to Hitler, the old man told Friedman, “The Yids are to blame for everything.”

In Dnipropetrovsk, Friedman had encountered the family of Asher Cherkassky, an Orthodox Jew who fights in one of Ukraine’s volunteer battalions against the pro-Russian separatists. In Lviv, he met Timur Barotov (link in Ukrainian), a former Ukrainian naval officer who joined a volunteer battalion to fight the Russian forces in Crimea. When Russia annexed the peninsula, some members of the Ukrainian military there switched their allegiances to Moscow. Barotov left instead, and has become a minor celebrity, playing a part in a film about Ukrainian history (link in Ukrainian). Barotov’s wife Elmaz (pictured with him at the top of this story) is Crimean Tatar; he himself is part Ukrainian, part Tajik.

Timur Barotov, a retired naval officer in Crimea who joined a Ukrainian volunteer battalion to fight against the Russian invasion.

Ukraine Massacre has CIA Fingerprints Says Oliver Stone

January 1, 2015 by Nasheman

The director drew comparisons between the Ukrainian and Venezuelan coups, which, he argued, both involved third-party agitators.

More than 50 people were killed in the Ukrainian coup in February 2014 | Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

Revered film maker Oliver Stone revealed that the overthrow of the Ukrainian president in February 2014, in which more than 50 people were killed, has the hallmarks of the techniques used by the CIA to remove undesirable leaders in Venezuela, Chile and Iran.

After a four-hour interview with the ousted, legitimately elected president Viktor Yanukovych, Stone concluded that a “third party” played a part in the massacre, and that the resulting shooting had “CIA fingerprints on it.”

“It seems clear that the so-called ‘shooters’ who killed 14 police men, wounded some 85, and killed 45 protesting civilians, were outside third party agitators. Many witnesses, including Yanukovych and police officials, believe these foreign elements were introduced by pro-Western factions — with CIA fingerprints on it,” the director wrote on his Facebook page.

Stone went on to point out the “similar technique” used against former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s elected government in 2002, when he was briefly driven out, which also used “mysterious shooters in office buildings.” Just like in the Maiden Massacre, the mainstream media portrayed the latter event as the work of a brutal, authoritarian government.

“Create enough chaos, as the CIA did in Iran ‘53, Chile ‘73, and countless other coups, and the legitimate government can be toppled. It’s America’s soft power technique called ‘Regime Change 101,’” Stone said.

The documentary-maker, who spoke to Yanukovych for a new film, said that the United States would not be able to hide its crimes for much longer.

“The truth is not being aired in the West. It’s a surreal perversion of history that’s going on once again, as in Bush pre-Iraq ‘WMD’ campaign. But I believe the truth will finally come out in the West, I hope, in time to stop further insanity,” Stone concluded.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warns new Cold War is looming

December 13, 2014 by Nasheman

by David Wroe, SMH

Visiting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has warned Europe is sliding towards a new Cold War and urged the world to stand up to Russia for the sake of global law and order.

Speaking in Sydney during a three-day tour as part of closer relations with Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the wake of the MH17 disaster, Mr Poroshenko also vowed that any Australian uranium sold to his country under a possible deal would be safely used.

But Russia – whose dominance of energy exports to Ukraine would be undermined by any deal between Canberra and Kiev – has already raised doubts about the prospect of Australian uranium sales, which Mr Abbott and Mr Poroshenko flagged on Thursday.

A spokesman for Moscow’s embassy in Canberra branded talk of a uranium deal a “political statement” and warned that given the conflict in eastern Ukraine, nuclear material could “fall into the wrong hands” – though Kiev’s adversaries in the conflict are rebels backed by Russia itself.

Mr Poroshenko told Sydney’s Lowy Institute that the crisis resulting from Russia’s aggression towards its smaller neighbour needed to be “tackled” by the world, not just for Ukraine’s sake but for the good of world peace and order.

“Ukraine is burning, and Europe is dangerously close to slipping back to the Cold War,” he said. “This is not a question of Ukrainian or regional security, this is a question of global security because this aggression demonstrates uneffectiveness of the post-war security system based on the Security Council of the United Nations.”

Russia wields considerable power as a veto-holding member of the Security Council but Mr Poroshenko said “we should propose to the world another idea to keep the world stable”.

Australia and Ukraine have been drawn together by the downing of flight MH17, for which Kiev and the West believe Russian-backed rebels were responsible. Fighting continues in eastern Ukraine with what are believed to be Kremlin arms and troops steadily encroaching on the region.

Mr Poroshenko said Ukraine would welcome further help from the West, including Australia, in military technology for communications, reconnaissance and intelligence “to defend ourselves” but did not need weapons.

Australia is already supplying Ukraine with non-lethal military equipment and clothing.

Mr Poroshenko also vowed the safety of any Australian uranium exports to his country, saying: “We have state of the art technology to keep it safe.”

Ukraine already has a nuclear power sector, with 15 reactors supplying about half the nation’s electricity.

But talk by Mr Abbott of supplying uranium and coal to Ukraine sends a strong political signal because it would unshackle the country from its heavy dependence on energy, including uranium and gas from its adversary Russia.

Russian embassy spokesman Alexander Odoevskiy said Australia should bear in mind that eastern Ukraine was “a conflict zone”.

“Given Ukraine’s current geopolitical situation, can it provide enough security for this nuclear industry and safeguards so [uranium] doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? I’m not sure about whether the government institutions in Ukraine are capable of providing these stringent controls.”

Gorbachev: U.S 'triumphalism' fueling new Cold War

December 4, 2014 by Nasheman

Former Soviet leader: ‘We need to return to the starting line when we began building a new world’

Mikhail Gorbachev at the European Parliament in 2008. (Photo: <a href=

@European Parliament/Pietro Naj-Oleari/flickr/cc)” width=”955″ height=”500″ /> Mikhail Gorbachev at the European Parliament in 2008. (Photo: @European Parliament/Pietro Naj-Oleari/flickr/cc)

by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said the United States is the cause of emerging signs of a new Cold War as a result of the country’s sense of “triumphalism.”

The 83-year-old made the comments Monday in an interview with the Russian state-owned news agency TASS.

“Now the signs of cold war have again emerged,” he said. “Fences are being built around us.”

“I don’t want to praise our government too much,” the UK’s Telegraph quotes Gorbachev as saying in the interview. “It has also made quite a few errors, but today the danger comes from the American position. They are tortured by triumphalism.”

“This whole process may and needs to be stopped. It was stopped in the 1980s. And we opted for deescalation and reunification. Back then it was harsher than today. And now we can also do this,” Gorbachev said.

“We need to return to the starting line when we began building a new world in Europe and everywhere,” he said, referring to his historic 1989 meeting in Malta with President George H. W. Bush.

“There will be people who have the courage to stop this [new Cold War] and start building a new world order that would answer the challenges that the world community is facing,” he said.

Gorbachev’s comments come as the latest ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia appears to have failed. Ongoing violence has killed over 4,000 people since the conflict erupted in April.

Russia to lose $40bn due to Western sanctions: Russian Finance Minister

November 25, 2014 by Nasheman

Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov

by Press TV

Russia’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov says Moscow will be losing around USD 40 billion (32 billion euros) per annum due to the Western sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine.

“We are losing around $40 billion per year due to geopolitical sanctions,” Anton Siluanov said on Monday.

The Russian minister also said that his country is “losing some $90 to $100 billion per year due to oil prices falling 30 percent.”

On Sunday, Russian President Valdimir Putin criticized the United States and the European Union (EU) for imposing sanctions against Russia and certain people close to him, calling the move a “systemic mistake.”

“The Americans made a systemic mistake by believing that I have personal business interests because of ties to people they put on their sanctions list,” Putin said.

Also on Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of seeking a “regime change” in Russia through its sanctions against Moscow.

The United States and the European Union (EU) have imposed a series of sanctions against Russian figures in recent months as they accuse Moscow of destabilizing Ukraine. Moscow, however, rejects the accusation, saying it is concerned about Kiev’s violent attacks on the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine.

YH/HJL/HRE

All-Out War in Ukraine: NATO’s ‘Final Offensive’

November 24, 2014 by Nasheman

by James Petras

There are clear signs that a major war is about to break out in Ukraine: A war actively promoted by the NATO regimes and supported by their allies and clients in Asia (Japan) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia). The war over Ukraine will essentially run along the lines of a full-scale military offensive against the southeast Donbas region, targeting the breakaway ethnic Ukraine- Russian Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the intention of deposing the democratically elected government, disarming the popular militias, killing the guerrilla resistance partisans and their mass base, dismantling the popular representative organizations and engaging in ethnic cleansing of millions of bilingual Ukraino-Russian citizens. NATO’s forthcoming military seizure of the Donbas region is a continuation and extension of its original violent putsch in Kiev, which overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in February 2014.

The Kiev junta and its newly ‘elected’ client rulers, and its NATO sponsors are intent on a major purge to consolidate the puppet Poroshenko’s dictatorial rule. The recent NATO-sponsored elections excluded several major political parties that had traditionally supported the country’s large ethnic minority populations, and was boycotted in the Donbas region. This sham election in Kiev set the tone for NATO’s next move toward converting Ukraine into one gigantic US multi-purpose military base aimed at the Russian heartland and into a neo-colony for German capital, supplying Berlin with grain and raw materials while serving as a captive market for German manufactured goods.

An intensifying war fever is sweeping the West; the consequences of this madness appear graver by the hour.

War Signs: The Propaganda and Sanctions Campaign, the G20 Summit and the Military Build Up

The official drum- beat for a widening conflict in Ukraine, spearheaded by the Kiev junta and its fascist militias, echoes in every Western mass media outlet, every day. Major mass media propaganda mills and government ‘spokesmen and women’ publish or announce new trumped-up accounts of growing Russian military threats to its neighbors and cross-border invasions into Ukraine. New Russian incursions are ‘reported’ from the Nordic borders and Baltic states to the Caucuses. The Swedish regime creates a new level of hysteria over a mysterious “Russian” submarine off the coast of Stockholm, which it never identifies or locates – let alone confirms the ‘sighting’. Estonia and Latvia claim Russian warplanes violated their air space without confirmation. Poland expels Russian “spies” without proof or witnesses. Provocative full-scale joint NATO-client state military exercises are taking place along Russia’s frontiers in the Baltic States, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

NATO is sending vast arms shipments to the Kiev junta, along with “Special Forces” advisers and counter-insurgency experts in anticipation of a full-scale attack against the rebels in the Donbas.

The Kiev regime has never abided by the Minsk cease fire. According to the UN Human Rights office 13 people on average –mostly civilians –have been killed each day since the September cease fire. In eight weeks, the UN reports that 957 people have killed –overwhelmingly by Kiev’s armed forces.

The Kiev regime, in turn, has cut all basic social and public services to the Peoples’ Republics’, including electricity, fuel, civil service salaries, pensions, medical supplies, salaries for teachers and medical workers, municipal workers wages; banking and transport have been blockaded.

The strategy is to further strangle the economy, destroy the infrastructure, force an even greater mass exodus of destitute refugees from the densely populated cities across the border into Russia and then to launch massive air, missile, artillery and ground assaults on urban centers as well as rebel bases.

The Kiev junta has launched an all-out military mobilization in the Western regions, accompanied by rabid anti-Russian, anti-Eastern Orthodox indoctrination campaigns designed to attract the most violent far right chauvinist thugs and to incorporate the Nazi-style military brigades into the frontline shock troops. The cynical use of irregular fascist militias will ‘free’ NATO and Germany from any responsibility for the inevitable terror and atrocities in their campaign. This system of ‘plausible deniability’ mirrors the tactics of the German Nazis whose hordes of fascist Ukrainians and Ustashi Croats were notorious in their epoch of ethnic cleansing.

G20-plus-NATO: Support of the Kiev Blitz

To isolate and weaken resistance in the Donbas and guarantee the victory of the impending Kiev blitz, the EU and the US are intensifying their economic, military and diplomatic pressure on Russia to abandon the nascent peoples’ democracy in the south-east region of Ukraine, their principle ally.

Each and every escalation of economic sanctions against Russia is designed to weaken the capacity of the Donbas resistance fighters to defend their homes, towns and cities. Each and every Russian shipment of essential medical supplies and food to the besieged population evokes a new and more hysterical outburst – because it counters Kiev-NATO strategy of starving the partisans and their mass base into submission or provoking their flight to safety across the Russian border.

After suffering a series of defeats, the Kiev regime and its NATO strategists decided to sign a ‘peace protocol’, the so-called Minsk agreement, to halt the advance of the Donbas resistance into the southern regions and to protect its Kiev’s soldiers and militias holed-up in isolated pockets in the East. The Minsk agreement was designed to allow the Kiev junta to build up its military, re-organize its command and incorporate the disparate Nazi militias into its overall military forces in preparation for a ‘final offensive’. Kiev’s military build-up on the inside and NATO’s escalation of sanctions against Russia on the outside would be two sides of the same strategy: the success of a frontal attack on the democratic resistance of the Donbas basin depends on minimizing Russian military support through international sanctions.

NATO’s virulent hostility to Russian President Putin was on full display at the G20 meeting in Australia: NATO-linked presidents and prime ministers, especially Merkel, Obama, Cameron, Abbott, and Harper’s political threats and overt personal insults paralleled Kiev’s growing starvation blockade of the besieged rebels and population centers in the south-east. Both the G20’s economic threats against Russia and the diplomatic isolation of Putin and Kiev’s economic blockade are preludes to NATO’s Final Solution – the physical annihilation of all vestiges of Donbas resistance, popular democracy and cultural-economic ties with Russia.

Kiev depends on its NATO mentors to impose a new round of severe sanctions against Russia, especially if its planned invasion encounters a well armed and robust mass resistance bolstered by Russian support. NATO is counting on Kiev’s restored and newly supplied military capacity to effectively destroy the southeast centers of resistance.

NATO has decided on an ‘all-or-nothing campaign’: to seize all of Ukraine or, failing that, destroy the restive southeast, obliterate its population and productive capacity and engage in an all-out economic (and possibly shooting) war with Russia. Chancellor Angela Merkel is on board with this plan despite the complaints of German industrialists over their huge loss of export sales to Russia. President Hollande of France has signed on dismissing the complaints of trade unionists over the loss of thousands French jobs in the shipyards. Prime Minister David Cameron is eager for an economic war against Moscow, suggesting the bankers of the City of London find new channels to launder the illicit earnings of Russian oligarchs.

The Russian Response

Russian diplomats are desperate to find a compromise, which allows Ukraine’s ethnic Ukraine- Russian population in the southeast to retain some autonomy under a federation plan and regain influence within the ‘new’ post-putsch Ukraine. Russian military strategists have provided logistical and military aid to the resistance in order to avoid a repeat of the Odessa massacre of ethnic Russians by Ukrainian fascists on a massive scale. Above all, Russia cannot afford to have NATO-Nazi-Kiev military bases along its southern ‘underbelly’, imposing a blockade of the Crimea and forcing a mass exodus of ethnic Russians from the Donbas. Under Putin, the Russian government has tried to propose compromises allowing Western economic supremacy over Ukraine but without NATO military expansion and absorption by Kiev.

That policy of conciliation has repeatedly failed.

The democratically elected ‘compromise regime’ in Kiev was overthrown in February 2014 in a violent putsch, which installed a pro-NATO junta.

Kiev violated the Minsk agreement with impunity and encouragement from the NATO powers and Germany.

The recent G20 meeting in Australia featured a rabble-rousing chorus against President Putin. The crucial four-hour private meeting between Putin and Merkel turned into a fiasco when Germany parroted the NATO chorus.

Putin finally responded by expanding Russia’s air and ground troop preparedness along its borders while accelerating Moscow’s economic pivot to Asia.

Most important, President Putin has announced that Russia cannot stand by and allow the massacre of a whole people in the Donbas region.

Is Poroshenko’s forthcoming blitz against the people of southeast Ukraine designed to provoke a Russian response – to the humanitarian crisis? Will Russia confront the NATO-directed Kiev offensive and risk a total break with the West?

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. Latest book: “The New Extractivism. A Post-Neoliberal Development Model or Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century?” Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras. Zed Books. http://petras.lahaine.org/

Putin: ‘U.S wants to subdue Russia, but no one did or ever will’

November 20, 2014 by Nasheman

President of Russia Vladimir Putin. (RIA Novosti / Alexey Druzhinin)

by RT

The US has no plans to humiliate Russia, but instead wants to subdue it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said, adding that no one had ever succeeded in doing so – and never will.

Speaking at a forum of the All-Russia Peoples’ Front in Moscow on Tuesday, the Russian leader said that history was not about to change, and that no one would manage to suppress the country.

“Throughout history no one has ever managed to do so toward Russia – and no one ever will,” Putin said.

Responding to a question about whether America was trying to humiliate Russia, Putin disagreed, saying that the US wanted “to solve their problems at our expense.”

He said that people in Russia really like the Americans, but it’s the US politics that are not accepted so well. “I think America and its people are more liked than disliked by people here [in Russia]. It’s the politics of the ruling class [in the US] that is likely negatively viewed by the majority of our citizens,” he said.

The Russian leader said the US had managed to subordinate its allies to its influence – with such countries “trying to protect foreign national interests on obscure conditions and perspectives.”

One of the means of changing the balance of power in the world to eventually subdue Russia was NATO’s gradual approach to its borders, which made Russia “nervous”, Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told BBC.

Russia needs a “100% guarantee that no-one would think about Ukraine joining NATO,” Peskov added.

Heads of states and international organizations pose for the “family photo” during the G20 Summit in Brisbane on November 15, 2014. (AFP Photo/Saeed Khan)

The Russian president has last met with his American counterpart last week, while attending the G20 summit in Australia. Despite the focus on the world economy, the crisis in Ukraine was one of the hottest topics at the G20. Talking about the summit’s results at a press conference, US President Barack Obama did not announce any significant changes in his country’s approach to Russia.

“We would prefer a Russia that is fully integrated with the global economy,” the US president told a news conference, adding that his country was “also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles.”

Before leaving Brisbane, Putin said that a solution to the crisis in Eastern Ukraine was possible. “Today the situation [in Ukraine] in my view has good chances for resolution, no matter how strange it may sound,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.

The Russian leader also said he was satisfied with both the results and atmosphere of the meetings.

Australian authorities created an exceptionally friendly atmosphere for discussing solutions to economic challenges at the G20 summit in Brisbane, the Russian president said, dispelling rumors there were any confrontations.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) shaking hands with members of his motorcycle escort at the airport in Brisbane as he leaves the G20 Summit.(AFP Photo / Steve Holland)

“Our Australian partners created an exceptionally friendly working atmosphere, very heartfelt, I should say, that was conducive to finding solutions to the challenges faced by the global economy,” Putin said at a forum of the All-Russian People’s Front, adding that it was a pleasant surprise for him to see the warm reception of the Russian delegation from Australian citizens on the streets of Brisbane.

Answering a question about Abbott’s idea to “shirtfront” Putin over the downing of the MH17 jetliner, the Russian president said no such confrontation took place at the Brisbane summit.

“We had very constructive discussions of not only the themes that had brought us together, but some very grave issues involving the Malaysian Boeing. We discussed that in every detail. I can assure you that everything was decent and rather friendly,” said the Russian leader.

Though many media outlets speculated that Putin had left the summit early, skipping a Sunday working breakfast because of an icy welcome at the G20, the Russian leader reiterated on Tuesday that practically all work had been finished by that time. “I addressed all sessions,” Putin said, adding: “Our stance was heard.”

Putin leaves G20 early after harsh reception

November 17, 2014 by Nasheman

Leaders threaten Russian president with further sanctions over Ukraine

by Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams

Russian president Vladimir Putin left the Group of 20 (G20) summit in Brisbane, Australia early, flying back to Moscow on Sunday after world leaders accused him of bullying and warned him to drop his support of separatists in Ukraine.

In meetings with British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin accused the Ukrainian government of making punitive sanctions against cities in the eastern region of the country that voted for independence last month, while Cameron said Russia was “bullying a smaller state in Europe.”

President Barack Obama said the U.S. was “opposing Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which is a threat to the world.” He added that Russia had failed to hold up its part of the ceasefire plan agreed upon in Minsk in September.

European Union President Herman von Rompuy told reporters on Saturday that foreign ministers were ready to consider additional actions against Russia. “Russia has still the opportunity to fulfill its Minsk agreements and chose the path of de-escalation, which could allow sanctions to be rolled back,” von Rompuy said. “If it does not do so however, we are ready to consider additional action.”

“We need to avoid a return to a full-scale conflict,” he added.

Obama echoed that sentiment, saying that if Russia engaged in diplomatic efforts to deescalate the fighting in Ukraine, the U.S. would suggest lifting sanctions “that are frankly having a devastating effect on the Russian economy.”

The Guardian writes:

The crisis has been deepened by the creation of the declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) led by Alexander Zakharchenko, an electrician turned battalion commander. Earlier this month the region occupied by separatists for six months organised an unauthorised vote to appoint a prime minister.

The Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, announced in response that all state funding would be cut off, arguing that the elections violated the Minsk peace accords signed in September.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also reportedly told Putin, “I guess I’ll shake your hand but I have only one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.”

More than 4,000 people have been killed in that country since April, where separatist fighting has continued to escalate. The Russian government has repeatedly denied involvement in the conflict, including the downing of Malaysian airliner MH17 on July 17, killing 298 people, as it flew over rebel-held territory.

Putin denied that he was leaving over the barrage of criticism, instead saying that he needed to return to work in Moscow.

In an interview with German TV, Putin also said that additional sanctions against Russia could backfire on Western countries.

“Do they want to bankrupt our banks? In that case they will bankrupt Ukraine,” Putin said. “Have they thought about what they are doing at all or not? Or has politics blinded them? As we know eyes constitute a peripheral part of brain. Was something switched off in their brains?”

The Guardian continues:

Nato claims 300 Russian troops remain in Ukraine training the separatist forces ahead of likely fresh offensives. Several of the contested areas are crucial for the republic’s long-term survival, including the port city of Mariupol and a power station north of Luhansk….

Putin has insisted he will not cut funding to Ukraine, or demand early repayment of loans.

“We do not want to aggravate the situation. We want Ukraine to get back on its feet at last,” the president has previously said.

Although the western media has portrayed Putin as an isolated figure at the summit, he has continued to forge close relations with the Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) a grouping that is becoming increasingly organised at the G20 and, in terms of economic size, more than matches the size of the G7 economies.

Satellite image shows fighter jet launching missile at Malaysian Boeing MH17

November 17, 2014 by Nasheman

by Pravda.Ru

An anonymous individual sent a letter with a satellite image and results of their own investigation into the disaster of Malaysian Airlines MH17 flight in Ukraine, writes LifeNews. The letter arrived from the USA. One of the photos, which was exposed to the general public by First Channel on November 13th, clearly depicts the Malaysian Boeing and the attacking fighter, supposedly a MiG-29.

The photo also depicts the moment of the missile launch from the fighter jet into the cockpit of the passenger liner. Experts note that the terrain, weather conditions and the dimensions of the aircraft fully correspond to the circumstances of the disaster.

“We saw a satellite image that was taken from not very high orbit for general reconnaissance of air and ground space. In accordance with the coordinates specified on the picture, we may assume that the picture was taken from an American or a British satellite. We conducted a detailed analysis of the image and found no signs of forgery,” vice president of the Russian Union of engineers, Ivan Andrievsky, told First Channel.

The Malaysian Airlines airliner, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, crashed on July 17 at about 19:00 Moscow time near the village of Snezhnoye, in the Donetsk region. The crash left no survivors – all 298 people were killed. Official international investigation, led by the Netherlands, has been unable to shed light on the circumstances of the tragedy.

On board the airplane, there were 298 people, 154 nationals of the Netherlands, 27 Australians, 45 Malaysians (including 15 crew members), 12 Indonesians, nine Britons and four German nationals, four Belgians, three Filipinos and one Canadian.

Noteworthy, Pravda.Ru analyzed this version of the disaster in August in an article about Romanian military expert and pilot Valentin Vasilescu, who said that the plane was shot down by Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter that was possibly piloted by a Polish pilot.

Also read: Boeing-777 was downed by Ukrainian MiG-29, Romanian expert says

The expert strongly rejected the version, according to which the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, which, according to American and Ukrainian versions, was launched from a Buk-M1 complex owned by militia forces.

The plane, as shown by black boxes, fell apart in the air, which was possible only in case of horizontal peak from an altitude of ten thousand feet.