The Battle for Novorussiya

[Peter Lemkin]

This is INSANITY!....there are definitely idiots willing to risk nuclear war and worse [if possible] over this matter. What ever happened to diplomacy? Sanity? Honoring laws and agreements? The propaganda on all sides is hiding [for most] the truth of what is going on and why. Madness...and getting worse, fast!

[David Guyatt]

William Engdahl interview on Obama's admission that the US brokered a transition of power in Ukraine - where "transition" is a nice comfy word for coup d'etat

[Paul Rigby]

A quick plug for the women of the Ukrainian anti-fascist resistance. Here's one of them, Nataliya Vitrenko, telling it straight, in defiance of the CIA's fascist dregs:

[video=youtube_share;e1bx5I-w19s]http://youtu.be/e1bx5I-w19s[/video]

[Lauren Johnson]

That woman has courage! Wow! A lot of people have suffered hideous deaths for less.

[David Guyatt]

How do these leaders speak to each other when they meet to discuss things like this? Do they discard the lies and propaganda and get down to brass tacks, or do they hide behind the lies and perpetuate the deceits - all knowing the whole while that everything they utter is based on utter bs?

Ukraine crisis talks end after five hours with no word of a new peace plan with Russia



Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Vladimir Putin are set to resume talks over the phone

LOULLA-MAE ELEFTHERIOU-SMITH

Friday 06 February 2015

Five hours of talks between European leaders and Russian president Putin have ended without any word of an agreement to resolve the crisis in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francoise Holland arrived in Moscow to discuss a new Ukraine peace plan with Russia.
The joint mission from the two European leaders sent out signals of concern that the conflict has reached a dangerous new phase in Ukraine, which has already had a damaging effect on Russia's ties with Europe, and which is beginning to negatively impact EU economies.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the leaders had agreed on "constructive talks" in order to continue working towards a possible joint document on implementing a ceasefire agreement reached in the Belarusian capital of Minsk last September.
Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande were expected to speak next by phone on Sunday, Peskov said, indicating that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko would also take part in the conversation.

READ MORE:US WARNS OF UNCHECKED RUSSIAN AGGRESSION FOR UKRAINE
HOLLAND AND MERKEL MAKE DESPERATE ATTEMPT AT UKRAINE PEACE PLAN
REBELS IN UKRAINE BOLSTER TROOP NUMBERS AGAINST GOVERNMENT FORCES

Merkel and Hollande had already held talks with Poroshenko on Thursday when they visited Ukraine.
"The talks are over for now and our guests are already on their way to the airport," Peskov told reporters at the Kremlin.
"At the moment joint work is under way on preparing the text of a possible joint document on implementation of the Minsk agreements - a document which would include proposals made by the president of Ukraine and proposals formulated today and added by Russian President Putin."
More than 5,000 people have now been killed in fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces in east Ukraine.

[David Guyatt]

It seems that Europe and the US are on course for a split over the US sending arms to Ukraine.

Maybe the penny has dropped that this war damages Europe very badly but harms the US not one jot?

I wouldn't surprise me if we soon start see to some damaging stories in the media soon about Merkel?

Fears of Western split over Ukraine as Germany rebuffs American threat to send weapons

European ministers warn that allowing US arms to be used against separatist rebels would "pour oil onto the flames" in the Ukraine conflict

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Ukrainian servicemen take part in combat drills near the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol Photo: AFP/Getty






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By Colin Freeman, Bruno Waterfield in Brussels, Tom Parfitt in Moscow and Henry Samuel in Paris

9:58PM GMT 06 Feb 2015


Fears of a split in Western strategy towards Ukraine grew on Friday night after Germany directly rebuffed America over its threats to send weapons to Kiev.

As Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, arrived in Moscow for 11th hour peace talks with Vladimir Putin, her ministers said that allowing US arms to be used against separatist rebels would "pour oil onto the flames".

The warning from Ursula von der Leyen, the German defence minister, followed Washington's announcement on Thursday that it might give Ukrainian government forces sophisticated defensive weapons to halt the rebels' recent rapid advance.

Elements within the Pentagon now believe that the only way to force the rebels to the negotiating table is to even the military balance.

But Mrs von der Leyen claimed that would simply give Mr Putin an excuse to arm the rebels more more heavily, or even send in the Russian army openly. "In Ukraine there are already far too many weapons," she said. "The resupply (of weapons) to the separatists is potentially unlimited.

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Mrs Merkel, who is travelling with the French president, Francois Hollande, arrived in Moscow after spending Thursday in talks with the Ukrainian government in Kiev.
The two leaders' visit was ahead of a major international security conference in Munich this weekend, which will be dominated by the Ukraine crisis.
Ms Merkel, the only European leaders who has anything approaching a working relationship with Mr Putin, wants to persuade Moscow to stick to the terms of last September's Minsk ceasefire agreement.

[SUP]Merkel, Hollande and Putin hold talks in Russia[/SUP]
It has been unravelling ever since as the rebels - backed by Russian tanks and heavy weaponry - have seized around 200 square miles of extra territory.
Western diplomats say the new plan is similar to the Minsk document, but offers the separatists a "high degree of autonomy" over a much larger area, reflecting their recent land grabs.
The hope is that the rebels, some of who are content to remain part of a more de-centralised Ukraine, will be tempted into downing their weapons.
But their response will in large part be dictated by the mood in the Kremlin. Though both they and Moscow deny it, the rebels' bargaining power is largely dependent on Russia's willingness to continue supplying extra military muscle.
A separate question is whether international peacekeepers might be deployed to the region. Citing European diplomats, Russia's Kommersant newspaper said on Friday that the Merkel-Hollande proposal included having such a force to police an agreed ceasefire line.
That report, though, contradicts earlier comments from European sources that deploying peacekeepers would create a "frozen conflict" zone. That would amount to a de facto recognition that the war was a genuine civil conflict, rather than a Kremlin-inspired insurgency.

[SUP]People looks out from a bus as a convoy of buses prepares to leave the Ukrainian town of Debaltseve (AFP/Getty)[/SUP]
On the ground in eastern Ukraine on Friday, the rebels and the Ukrainian authorities agreed to a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians from heavy fighting in Debaltseve, a key railway hub between the two main rebel-controlled cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Around 1,000 residents trapped for nearly a fortnight in sub-zero temperatures without heating or running water were shuttled out in convoys of buses. Artillery duels continued, however, in the regional capital, Donetsk.
While Washington has stressed it will make no decision on sending weapons to Kiev until the latest Merkel-Hollande overtures have run their course, the chances of any peace plan now succeeding were questioned by Joe Biden, the US vice-president.
"[Putin] continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside," Mr Biden said during a visit to Brussels. "He absolutely ignores every agreement that his country has signed in the past and that he has signed."
Some European diplomats believed the US threats are simply a "bluff", given the Obama administration's professed lack of appetite for US military interventions abroad. Only on Friday, Mr Obama warned of the risk of "over-reaching" in a new document outlining his national security priorities.

[SUP]A move by Ukraine's central bank to ditch an unofficial peg for the hryvnia has plunged the foreign exchange market into confusion (Reuters)[/SUP]
There is, however, a wide consensus that the government in Kiev is at renewed risk of collapse, given recent further tumbles in the value of Ukrainian hryvnia, which is now the world's worst-performing currency.
One European diplomat said that reports of American plans to provide defensive arms to Ukraine showed a shift in sentiment, but added: "we don't see much evidence that President Obama has much enthusiasm".
Another senior EU diplomat said: "No one seriously wants to start sending arms. It is a bluff."
According to senior sources, the German Chancellor and French President "scrambled onto their plane" because of growing fears about the stability of the administration in Kiev and that the conflict was "on the edge of something palpably worse".
"The sense is that the situation is radically deteriorating, both militarily and economically," said a senior European diplomat.
It also emerged on Friday that Anatoly Antonov, the Russian deputy defence minister, will be among those on a new sanctions list due to be formally endorsed by European Union foreign ministers on Monday.
Mr Antonov would be the most senior of five Russians on the list alongside 14 Ukrainian separatists.
Meanwhile, members of parliament in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine passed a resolution on Friday saying the territory was the legitimate successor to the DonetskKrivoy Rog Republic, a short-lived independent territory founded in 1918 by a close associate of Joseph Stalin.
Denis Pushilin, a rebel representative who has welcomed the Moscow talks, said he was troubled by suggestions the US could arm Ukraine. "I believe that would cause an escalation of the conflict," he said. "It would bring new victims, but no peace."

[Lauren Johnson]

BREAKING: Donetsk about an hour ago.

[video=youtube_share;ZuQ5EPnSE_4]http://youtu.be/ZuQ5EPnSE_4[/video]

[Lauren Johnson]

The above video appears to be a TOCHKA-U missile hitting a chemical or munitions plant.

Here is a SITPREP from Col. Cassad (February 9th)

As it was already noted http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2027363.html (in Russian) on February 3rd, the NAF offensive has reached its saturation stage and has stopped on the majority of locations. However, offensive action in the area of Debalcevo and Popasnaya continued and, with great effort, the NAF managed to achieve a number of tactical successes related to squeezing the Debalcevo protrusion even at this stage of the operation. By the 9th the junta still controls the M-103 road, but the NAF already managed to establish quite dense fire control over this key transport artery and the counter-attacks with the goal of widening the bottleneck haven't been very successful for the junta. Moreover, after capturing Uglegorsk the NAF continued action with the goal of narrowing the bottleneck on both sides of the road, attacking in the area of Kalinovka and Nizhnyaya Lozovaya (today there have been announcements even of capturing Nizhnyaya Lozovaya, but for now it is worth waiting for video and photo confirmations). If Nizhnyaya Lozovaya has indeed been captured, then in essence the junta keeps only Logvinovo in the bottleneck and so the threat of a complete encirclement of the Debalcevo group is still quite realistic. Often there are complaints that the offensive is slow, is accompanied by losses, and is often quite strained. But in the area of Debalcevo we still see that the inertia of the offensive still pushes our forces forward and the enemy bends under their pressure, however, there was no break in the junta defense that was expected in mid-January. The enemy suffers losses, abandons settlements, but overall it is holding the front for now.

Chernukhino still couldn't be captured, fierce fighting (including inside urban area) for now don't lead to decisive results. After the loss of Redkodub, Chernukhino is in essence the main hub of the defense of the north-east part of the Debalcevo protrusion and after its loss the protrusion will become significantly smaller and the front may roll back to the line Kamenka Ilyinka Debalcevo. In this area tactical fighting may still lead to serious operational result.

The junta continues its attacks on the NAF positions in the area of Svetlodarsk and adjacent settlements in order to protect the bottleneck near the Mironovka water reservoir. Troitskoye remains under the junta control. In the area of Krasnyi Pakhar the junta hasn't abandoned its attempts to push the NAF back. North of the protrusion the attacks on Popasnaya still didn't lead to capturing the city. As it was already announced in local reports, the enemy defense is fairly robust there.

What's remarkable: by pulling reserves the junta has tried to start an offensive on a number of locations, trying to use the fact that many NAF units are exhausted and suffered losses after almost a month of fighting. This is a rather straightforward attempt to use the numerical superiority on the side of the junta, which, however, hasn't delivered any major dividends for it yet. The junta is much worse at attacking than at defending. But within the confines of fighting for initiative this is a reasonable decision for the junta, the problems with communications of the Debalcevo group if unresolved will lead to an imminent catastrophe. That is why over the last couple of days the enemy has not only tried to carry out local offensive action, but also significantly increased the intensity of shelling frontline cities, using the whole range of artillery systems, showing, so to say, activity.

Shelling of Donetsk, which has recently become more active, serve a terrorist goals rather than military ones. The international community, as usual, prefers to ignore this systematic war crime and the junta continues to clown around, saying that it is the separatists who hammer their own city. The degree of cynicism is unimaginable.

The junta also became active in the area of Mar'inka, where our forces confidently pushed it back in the end of January and now the junta tries to analogously push back the NAF. Here the fighting has a local nature. In the area of the airport the junta still holds Avdeyevka and the majority of Peski. In the area of Gorlovka the offensive actions of both sides led to a dynamic equilibrium of the front on the line MayorskShumy.

As before, the most threatening situation has unfolded in the area of Dokuchayevsk and Yelenovka, where the enemy continues to gather forces for a strike.

The north-Lugansk front and the front line Granitnoye Mariupol didn't change significantly. It is worth noting the attempts at activity by the Mariupol group of the enemy in the area of Shirokino. Apparently they probe the NAF intentions on the Mariupol direction. In the area of the Bakhmutka road, after mutual attacks and counter-attacks, the NAF kept the battered 31-st checkpoint and the high-point 175.9. Novotoshkovskoye couldn't be fully captured in the end. For an offensive on Krymskoye the NAF need to regroup their forces and replenish their first-line detachments.

The enemy attempts to use aviation and drones expectedly led to losses. Our aviation, represented by a single attack jet Su-25, already managed to fly successful sorties, due to which the enemy suddenly became concerned with fortifying its air defense. Overall there are many benefits from even a single attack jet even without bombing raids: the enemy is forced to spend its quite limited efforts on establishing the air-defense system on a huge front line.

Also it is worth pointing out that after the suffered losses and unsuccessful counter-attacks, where the enemy already engaged a part of its reserves, a large-scale redeployment of forces towards the front continues: trains with armored vehicles (including the vehicles from Poland), SpHs and IFVs confidently crawl towards Donbass. This is mostly various Soviet junk, but there are a few new vehicles of Ukrainian origin. The shipments of military gear for the AFU from the "western partners" also continue. And the increasingly more frequent instances of discovering foreign weapon samples suggest that the "voentorg" also works on their side too, albeit not at full strength.

Overall, the situation on the front line is moderately favorable for now. The junta still cannot resolve a serious operational crisis in the area of Debalcevo. Despite the fact that our offensive here mostly ran out of steam, the junta attempts at attacking for now point to the junta not being in the best shape. No matter how you spin it, if the junta managed to take advantage of its numerical superiority over a month of fighting somewhere, then it did so in defense, because our forces attacked with essentially a smaller force. What's the most important: they managed to inflict a number of painful tactical defeats on the junta and also to create a serious threat of a large-scale military catastrophe for it.

Certainly, various stages of the offensive were accompanied by various screw-ups of objective and subjective nature, but overall it is more likely to be an asset for the NAF. Besides the captured settlements and the recaptured territories, this offensive already led to certain political changes and buried the demarcation line that was set in Minsk in September, which among other things forced the EU to agree that the old demarcation line is no longer relevant. Actually, such a turn of the EU diplomatic line became possible to a great extent due to the heroism of common soldiers of the NAF, who captured obscure settlements and numerically labeled high points under harsh conditions, changing not just the front line but also the overall situation around Donbass.

It is worth remembering that overall the junta managed to beat off (except for Debalcevo) and will in the nearest time (unless a diplomatic operational pause will follow) try to attack, both with the goal of returning the positions that were lost in January and with the purpose of helping the Debalcevo group. Despite the fact that the junta spent a part of its reserves in January, the junta still keeps some of its trump cards and it is quite possible that we'll see another attempt to reverse the situation by military means.

Of course, the achieved tactical successes don't cancel the posed goals on pushing the junta forces away from the key cities of Novorossia with the goal of putting an end to their shelling and approaching the borders of the DPR and the LPR with Ukraine.

In this respect it must be clearly understood that the fight will be hard and bloody and that the January NAF offensive, regardless of the final results of the fighting for Debalcevo, will be just another stage of this protracted war. So I would like to forewarn both against excessive pessimism and against facile optimism.

[Lauren Johnson]

Needs verification:

Mark Sleboda ‏@MarkSleboda1 39m39 minutes ago

NAF Commander reports LPR positions attacked by American Apache attack helicopters #[B]Ukraine http://rusvesna.su/news/1423359810 [/B]

[David Guyatt]

Well, there does seem to be a growing rupture between the US and Europe as the Neocons come streaming out of their smelly holes to snap at Merkel and Hollande's peace attempts: "Moscow bullshit" and Hitler like "appeasement" they scream, as their plans for a major war in Europe look less certain.

By the way, where's Obama in all this - or has he just turned over foreign policy to John McCain and withdrawn into the safer realm of pure domestic politics, to protect his "legacy"?

Ukraine crisis: US officials compare peace efforts to appeasing Hitler

"History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them," says John McCain, comparing Angela Merkel and François Hollande's talks with Vladimir Putin to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler

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French President Francois Hollande ® with Russian President Vladimir Putin © and German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow Photo: Kremin Pool






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By Justin Huggler in Berlin

1:49PM GMT 08 Feb 2015


A rift between Europe and the US over the Ukraine crisis appears to be growing after senior American figures reportedly compared the peace initiative by Angela Merkel and François Hollande to appeasement of Hitler in the run-up to the Second World War.

In a meeting attended by General Philip Breedlove, Nato's military commander, and Victoria Nuland, the US's most senior European diplomat, Angela Merkel was described as "defeatist" for her opposition to arming Ukrainian forces, according to details leaked to Bild newspaper.

Mrs Merkel and Mr Hollande's peace initiative was dismissed as "Moscow bull****" at the meeting of American delegates to the Munich Security Conference, held behind closed doors at the conference hotel.

Senator John McCain reportedly compared the initiative to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister at the time, and Adolf Hitler, which allowed Nazi Germany to annexe the Sudetenland.

"History shows us that dictators will always take more if you let them," Senator McCain allegedly said. "They will not be dissuaded from their brutal behaviour when you fly to meet them to Moscow just as leaders once flew to this city." The reported remarks came as a new peace summit to be held in Minsk on Wednesday was announced, following a phone call between Mrs Merkel, Mr Hollande, Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president.

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The four leaders plan to meet face-to-face at the summit in the Belarusian capital, together with representatives of the pro-Russian separatists rebels, to continue talks on Mrs Merkel and Mr Hollande's peace initiative.
But Mr Putin said the summit would go ahead only if leaders reach agreement on a "number of points".
"We will be aiming for Wednesday, if by that time we manage to agree on a number of points which we've been intensely discussing lately," the Russian president said in televised remarks.
Delegates at the American meeting in Munich discussed how to press ahead with arming Ukrainian forces despite the new push for peace, according to the report in Bild.
"We would not be able to deliver enough weapons for Ukraine to defeat Russia. That's not our goal," Gen Breedlove reportedly said.

"But we must try to raise the price on the battlefield for Putin to slow this whole problem down so sanctions and other measures have time to work," the military commander added.
John Kerry, the secretary of state, denied there was a rift in his speech to the security conference on Sunday morning.
"Let me assure everybody there is no division, there is no split I hear people trying to create one," Mr Kerry said.
"We are united, we are working closely together, we all agree that this challenge will not end through military force."
But Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German foreign minister, appeared to address the issue in his speech. "I cannot consider it as easy as those who suspect cowardice or forgetfulness of history behind our scepticism," he said.
"Those who are so sure also have to address the question: would the alternatives that are currently being discussed ... really achieve our common goal of preventing thousands more deaths and getting out of the spiral of escalation?
"Are not we already close to the point of no return?"