EDITORIAL
Ukraine suckers Russia, but Good!
Last week, Ukraine’s new president Victor Yanukovich sold a piece of his country to Putin’s Russia in exchange for wildly reduced prices on natural gas.
Specifically, Yanukovich renewed Russia’s lease on its naval base on the Black Sea at Sevastopol from 2017 to 2042. For Yanukovich, it was the deal of the century. For Russian “president” Dima Medvedev, it was yet another amazing sucker move.
The irony in light of our lead editorial in this issue is palpable: Russia is running out of gas rapidly, yet it is going to send a flow of cheap energy to Ukraine indefinitely in order to secure a naval base which offers Russia absolutely no strategic value, since the Russian “navy” is a mere figment of the Kremlin’s imagination, in reality nothing more than rusty, creaking bucket of bolts.
One might well ask why Russia didn’t simply give Ukraine a pile of cash to keep the base open. The answer is simple: Because the amount of money Ukraine has demanded to be paid is so astronomical that Russia cannot directly reveal it to the Russian people, who would run wild in the streets with rage. By trading gas supplies, the sum remains highly secretive.
So let’s be clear: the people of Russia are getting royally screwed not once, not twice, but three separate times in this little deal. First, they send piles of cash to Ukraine that they simply don’t have to spare in the wake of the global economic crisis. Then, they send vast quantities of rapidly depleting energy resources right after the cash. Finally, what they get in return is something they don’t need and can’t use, something that serves no purpose except to stroke the cold-war egos of the madmen who occupy the Kremlin.
La Russophobe 
Well, I am very sorry that this base agreement was signed, even if it seems good economically for Ukraine, but of course, this was a clear aim of Putin’s election huge support for Victor Yanukovich.
Now what else will be given away to Moscow?
Perhaps a large landmass part of Ukraine, as Crimea? Or…perhaps, all of Ukraine?
‘Give them an inch, and they will take a mile’ is an old and omnious saying. Sure, it sounds good, that Ukraine will (supposidly) get many years worth of cheap gass, but then, how can anyone really trust Moscow, to keep it’s aggrements on ANYTHING?
Past history on that throny subject, is not complimentary to Moscow, is it?
Well said Psalomschick! no argument from me on that point.
But than what do you expect from a power crazy KGB ex spy master, who has ‘zilch’ knowledge on how to successfully look after his citizens or run a nation.
Just keep on playing you harp, comrade Putin, while Moscow and the rest of RuSSia burns to a disastrous meltdown.
PS And dont’ forget, new ‘vozd’ comrade Putin, to bow and scrape each evening to your beloved – but delapidated – picture of old ‘vozd’ comrade Stalin just before you turn the lights off and go to ‘bed – i – bye’s’ in your bed of roses.
Do you know if this has to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament? If yes, perhaps there is a hope that the parliament would not approve this monstrosity.
RV, you are spot on!
1. My relatives in western Ukraine have told me that an united opposition is building up to oppose this at either the Wednesday or Thursday sitting of the Verkhovna Rada, next week. Consisting of a) Block Yulia, b) Our Ukraine, c) Front for Change, d) National Party, e) Swoboda f) Yedynyj Centre and Narodna Oborona. With one of the above not having any elected ‘Deputaty’, but swearing on his word that some listen to him and will support their motion to rescind this ‘sellout’ by Yanukovych. .
2. Newspaper wise, Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc as initiating an extraordinary session of parliament on April 24 and promising to submit a draft parliamentary resolution on cancellation of the agreement between Ukraine and Russia on extending the Russian Black Sea naval fleet’s presence on Ukrainian territory by 25 years.
The parliamentary faction of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc (OU-PSD) has expressed support for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc’s initiative on convening an extraordinary session of the parliament on April 24.
However, Lytvyn has said that he sees no reason to convene an extraordinary session of the parliament on April 24 because the 150 signatures necessary to convene an extraordinary session of the parliament have not yet been collected and there are no official proposals on the agenda of the session.
Parliamentary Deputy Arsenii Yatseniuk of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc has expressed confidence that the opposition would collect the 150 votes needed to convene an extraordinary session.
“In a rare show of unity, Ukraine’s fractured opposition forces are decrying the April 21 deal by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Some are calling for his impeachment. Under the pact, Russia could keep its Black Sea naval fleet in Crimea until 2042, in exchange for the Kremlin granting a 30 percent discount to Ukraine for natural gas imports this decade.”
“A president who has violated the norms of the Ukrainian Constitution [that forbids] foreign military bases on Ukrainian territory should be impeached,” Our Ukraine, the political party which ex-President Viktor Yushchenko heads, said in a statement. “Yanukovych’s command is evidently preparing to give the Russians Ukraine’s last strategic resources: aviation production, atomic energy and underground gas depositories.”
Vide; kyivpost.com
3. Or as one of my Ukrainian friends put it; “most Ukrainians don’t care much about the Black Sea Fleet, because it doesn’t threaten them or cause them any trouble. Strangely enough, the few who do care are the ones who live furthest away from the base. Ukraine might as well make some money off the BSF as long as it is there. …”
The only thing that worries me, is the 25 year lease? That’s a very long way into the future.
Now I ask is it a price that will be adjusted yearly for the inflation (good), or is it fixed for the term of the 25 year contract (very bad)??
I don’t understand your purpose here, Psalomschik and Bohdan. Can’t you read the editorial:
EDITORIAL: Ukraine suckers Russia, but Good!
the amount of money Ukraine has demanded to be paid is so astronomical
Ukraine is going to profit astronomically! This agreement is a victory for Ukraine and defeat for Russia. Why are you trying to contradict the brilliant author here? Are you trying to prove that you are smarter? You should be banned.
Dear so-called, ‘Voice of Reason’,
No, I do not agree with the otherwise highly intelligent author’s main theme of this exuberant/overly joyful article.
Must we?
Of course, I wish that this would be so,..i.e. that Ukraine has truly gained a great economic/political victory over Putin’s corrupt Russian Federation, but all past evidence of Moscow’s dealings, would give us much caution and doubts.
Putin’s gang, wants Ukraine, all of it.
If he gets his way now, with this navy-base deal, then what?
So, sorry to qualify for being banned from this site, in your estimation, Mr. supposed Voice of Reason, but I and many others cannot be so happy over this caving in to Putin, as that is what it REALLY is.
And in that undesirable end result of this great deal, if this is just the first domino to fall, and the Kremlin gangsters get all of Ukraine, then of what ‘value’ will be this paltry little sum of, promised future money payments, really be worth?
In Spanish the word is NADA!
Voice of Freedom! You are a lying jerk, PERIOD.
Your comment “I don’t understand your purpose here, Psalomschik and Bohdan.” explains your muddled thinking perfectly. Well, don’t let that worry your little bird brain, as it may send off a terrible migraine in your little pin head.
Don’t twist words to suit your warped view of this matter. Crawl back into the crap heap you emerged from!!! Besides, hiding behind a new nom de plume, does not hide the fact that you are very conversant with the rules of LR’s guide lines – indicating strongly that you, have been or are banned for your past stupidity, by this superb Blog. In fact your ‘modus operandi’ reminds me ‘sooo muuuch’ of that – recently banned – imbecile RTR that to read your irrelevant comments and lying is just unbelievable.
Coming to your “Why are you trying to contradict the brilliant author here? Are you trying to prove that you are smarter? You should be banned.” Now be kind enough to show me, or for that matter LR and the rest of the readers here, where I am – in your factitious comment – ‘trying to contradict the brilliant author here?’ You are sick chump, sick.
Unlike you I have learned a lot from LR’s input; i.e. I agree 100% with her “Ukraine’s new president Victor Yanukovich sold a piece of his country to Putin’s Russia in exchange for wildly reduced prices on natural gas.” As too, do I agree with the rest of her (this blog). Sure within my mind, I have not as yet been able to get all the facts of this matter, like the real costs (in money and inter nation relationship) involved both to Russia and Ukraine. But then I believe that this point will sooner or later come to light.
So imbecile, or should I correctly say RTR, please answer my questions?
Finally, here in the free world, unlike your beloved ruSSia, we can express our honest thoughts, rather then follow your beloved Putin’s laid down lies, OR ELSE suffer dire consequences!
Bohdan wrote: “Voice of Freedom! Your comment “I don’t understand your purpose here, Psalomschik and Bohdan.” explains your muddled thinking perfectly. Well, don’t let that worry your little bird brain, as it may send off a terrible migraine in your little pin head.”
Assuming your own brilliant intelligence, is it any wonder that the little me would look like a “bird brain”, Bohdan? I never denied that your brain is superior to mine, did I?
“You are a lying jerk, PERIOD.”
Why would you say that, Bohdan? Where did I deny your intellectual superiority over me? What did I say that qualifies as a “lie”, Bohdan?
I asked you whether you agree with LR’s opinion that “Ukraine suckers Russia, but Good!” or not. I assume you answered this question somewhere in your brilliant rant, but I am too stupid to see it.
Take a good care of yourself and your temper, Bohdan.
@You should be banned
Uh-oh. RTR is back with a vengeance!
Robert, you notice how Voice of Unreason has totally ignored my comments about him being RTR!
Also please note his changing/twisting of the subject matter – all RTR trademarks. If I may I would like to only add one word to your last paragraph so that it would now read “Uh-oh. ‘IMBECILE’ RTR is back with a vengeance!”
I like RTR’s new nickname “Voice of Treason” more than his banned one.
Ah Robert. Must say I like your version of “Voice of Treason” very much, suits him superbly.
If my memory serves me right there was a radar base in the west of Ukraine way back at Soviet times monitoring the European airspace.
Might be the next step in their relations in case of the US advance in BMD in Europe just to eliminate North Korean missile threat? Top class former Soviet airfields all across Ukraine may be equally part of prospective agreements in the near future in view of the growing Iranian threat.
They learned on how to be progmatic from their western friendly handshaking “partners”. NATO has been a good teacher since the voluntary Russian retreat from Germany in 1990.
Putler – Stalin the new leader for the international proletariat ?
Nice with RTS as a good teacher in Stalinist: revision analysis
The Crisis of Stalinism ?
The Soviet bureaucracy’s decision to permit a Solidarnosc-led government in Poland in August 1989 signaled that the Kremlin was no longer prepared to guarantee its East European satellites militarily. This changed the whole political landscape of the region, as the Stalinist regimes began to crumble. While the armed forces at the core of the deformed workers states were still intact, openly pro-democrasy governments were established across Eastern Europe.
The ‘‘pro-democracy’’ movements that sprang up in one country after another were increasingly dominated by restorationist forces. Amidst the euphoria, revolutionaries have to tell the truth: the reimposition of the system of private property in Eastern Europe would be a
defeat for the international proletariat ?
In the same 1989, great leader Deng Xiaoping squashed several thousand “pro-democracy” students with tank tracks on the Tiananmen Square. Today China is a lot better off than the East European limitrophes.
You are out of your mind, or so atrociously provincial and ignorant as to have no idea whatever what is going on in the world outside Russia. The most impoverished Bulgarian peasant would not swap his position with that of a Chinese counterpart; one of the strongest waves of illegal immigration into Europe is that of Chinese doing anything, paying any amount of money, placing themselves not just in debt but in slavery to vicious mafia gangs, just in order to be able to place their feet on European soil. China is an underdeveloped country with an unemployment rate in nine figures, controlled by a brutal and enriched elite which shifts whole populations at whim (just look at what they did to the people of Beijing, their own capital, practically under the eyes of the world, for the Olympics). No European wants to go there. Every Chinese wants to come here. That they have done better than Russia is no wonder and does not take much effort, and other countries (South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, even India) have managed better without secret police, concentration camps, and institutionalized state murder.
Turn over the keyboard on which you’ve typed this invective; I bet you’ll read Made in China there.
As a matter of fact, no, it has MADE IN TAIWAN. It is a neat little Asus EEE box, takes little space, works well, and it is altogether a neat example of what a free state, even if hounded by a huge and lawless neighbour, can achieve.
Mine says: “+`
`
Mine says: “Microsoft” in the front and “Made in China” in the back.
But my giant HDTV/monitor says “Made in South Korea” or samsung like it. Shows what a right-wing dictatorship can do: take a backward country to the heights of economic development. No wonder Putin admires the South Korean and Chilean models so much.
`
Voice of Unreason, get rid of all those Soviet-age textbooks. South Korea has been a democracy for a generation, and it is as a democracy that it has become a world economic power.
Fabio,
Not only did S. Korea become a great economy while it was ruled by a dictator, but so did your beloved Taiwan. And so did Chile.
Om the other hand, the dirt poor India is a real democracy.
Read some history yourself.
Voice of Unreason: I don’t need to read on what I was there to witness. Certainly, Taiwan and South Korea and Chile suffered from murderous tyrannies of the Putler kind. Those tyrannies were got rid of as the countries began to become prosperous, as soon as the citizens were no longer terrified by poverty. It was as democracies that these countries became known as “tiger economies”, because freedom and prosperity go together, and indeed one cannot have the one without the other. The military tyrannies of Taiwan and South Korea were mainly desperate devices to preserve what was left of two peasants societies after decades of Japanese Fascist and then Communist aggression; the mere fact that Communist tyranny was avoided meant that enough shreds of freedom were left to build on – and prosperity brought more freedom.
As for India, do you have the least idea of what you are talking about? India is everything that Russia is not: a rising world power, a country that is coping responsibly with the immense difficulties of growth, a country that has been a democracy since its inception and that has managed to preserve democracy among the most enourmous difficulties. I have been there, and I have Indian friends, and I have put my own work and capital in a company that is investing in India. Whereas the only person I know who invested in Russia left years ago, after a colleague had had to flee, losing his whole investment, because of the Russian mafia. India has had average economic growth of 8% a year more or less since its foundation – find me another country with a record like that, anywhere.
“because freedom and prosperity go together”
Another myth.
You say oil and gas could come to end?
That’s quite possible is not the most pressing matter for the US and the UK governments:
(US Congress’ point of view of what it means to be screwed).
Let me remind, 2050 is the time when most of us are going to be retired, I presume.
I bet that was some damned liberal who invented this thing.
The Size of Derivatives Bubble = $190K Per Person on Planet
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2008/10/the_size_of_der.php
Yes, it takes one really democratic democracy and a Planet to create such a heading.
This deal is proof positive that Russia does use its energy reserves as a political tool. I see this as another wake up call for the EU. Russia can’t be trusted, we must redouble our efforts to lesson our need for Russian gas, Investment from the EU and US should be target at developing Poland’s giant shale gas reserves, so they can enter the LNG spot market as soon as possible, the US should enter as a supplier nation within the decade lets get Poland in during the same time frame, There should be no more 8 year contracts with Russia let them compete for customers. We should give them 1 year contracts and let them jump through the same hoops they forced Ukraine to jump through from 2005 till their man got elected.
Apart from the prolongation of the Black Sea Fleet stationing in Crimea, for the gas price rebate Russia will also buy out the Antonov Airplane Designing Buro, the Ukrainian nuclear energy and telecom facilities and the Murom Diesel Locomotive Plant.
http://www.rosbalt.ru/2010/04/21/730615.html
Sebastopol does have some sentimental value for Russia. Colossal battles were fought there both in 1856 and in the Second World War; the 1856 war, in particular, had a major importance in Russian culture (among the witnesses was a junior officer named Lew Ivanovich Tolstoy). Mind you, so does Gallipoli for Australians and New Zealanders – and they never tried to purchase the Gallipoli Peninsula from Turkey.
That sentiment will cost Russia THREE BILLION DOLLARS this year alone.
Such a sentimental country! Who knew?
I never said otherwise. To the contrary, I compared this odd behaviour to that of two rational countries – Australia and New Zealand – who, although they have a great emotional link with a bloody battlefield in another country, don’t think of making a claim for it. ON the other hand, as some other posters have pointed out, this is a contract signed by Putin, and would YOU put a plugged nickel on a contract with that signature?
This contract is signed by Medvedev, not Putin.
Which is like saying that a contract was signed by the fingers of my right hand, not by me. Gimme a break!
The contract wasn’t signed by you, clown.
No, and I don’t murder people by habit and invade small countries for fun, either.
You mean Italy pulled their troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan already?
Our troops are still there. And we have not been accused by anyone of systematic mass murder, rape and “disappearances”. Our politicians, whatever their faults, don’t kill people, and our journalists are, if anything, too bold.
Are these good reasons to take part in the occupation of sovereign countries?
The promotion of international terrorism is – but that is not something you would want to understand (apart from the recent Litvinenko murder case, don’t think that we in Italy have forgotten who raised, trained and unleashed upon us the Red Brigades).
Besides, you Russian twit, you should not try and bad-mouth the country to which so many of your fellow countrymen are so desperate to escape. Yes, we do have a Russian people trafficking problem.
You sound like you’re giving up and asking for mercy. Fine then.
And yes, Italy is a great country with a lot of great people.
You managed to block any answer to your grotesque statement. Give up? To the likes of you? You have no idea who you are dealing with, do you? I will only tell you that when I meet you begging on our streets, you had better not make yourself known to me. God knows that I am critical enough of my country, but to have the likes of you talking about her is like having one’s favourite woman raped by a dog.
“In spite of the crisis and the fact that the affairs in the country’s economy were not so good as we would like, 280 thousand people immigrated Russia in 2009, while only 30 thousand left it.” (с) V.V. Putin (http://premier.gov.ru/events/news/10315/)
Officially. Every European knows that 30,ooo are less than the number of mail-order brides who accept to marry any European sight unseen just to get out of Russia, let alone the unhappy teens sold by your mafia to ours (yes, we do have a mafia). And to trust numbers delivered by Putler in an official speech means to be ready to buy any bridge you are offered.
Mr. Barbieri,
I don now about Italy but Poland is still infested by the Russian illegals -part of them were deported to Russia but the majority is still illegally in Poland. They are mostly involved in Russian mafia, trafficing the stolen goods etc. Some of those illegals do ‘regular’ jobs like cleaning houses, streets etc. Polish people still want them out of Poland as soon as possible.
I wish you find yourself under Grad rocket attack just once – it’s just what happened to Russian peacekeepers and the population of Tskhinval on the morning of 08.08.08.
Yevgeni: probably some fellow-soldier who had been looting the famous Georgian vineyards’ cellars too soon in the day.
And what about the population of Grozny who endured this (and much more) for weeks and even months during three separate sieges (the worst one: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/554405.stm ), instead of “just once”?
I’d really to hear an answer from some Russian crocodile-tears crybaby like you.
I can answer instead. By the time Russian army came to Grozny, formerly a predominantly Russian city, in late 1994, most of the city population has fled to other regions of Russia. Because of the Chechen-led ethnic cleansing campain.
Please read this book about that cleansing: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2000/04/white/part04.htm – it features only documents, not journalists’ opinions.
Just to make sure my point is clear. Look at the ethnic Chechen, and non-Chechen (Russians, Armenians, Jews and other) population numbers of Chechnya in 1989 and 2010. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya#Demographics.
Then ask yourself: where did those 300 000 of non-Chechens gone? And how comes that after 20 years of war with “Russian killers” there are 1 031 600 Chechens living in Chechnya in 2010, instead of 734 501 in 1989?
Yevheni, and who? just who, do you really think runs fascist ruSSia?
For your information it’s not puppet Medvedev.
No, Bohdan, it is the FSB-former-KGB and personally Putin, of course. But at least we can dream of living like free nations of Ukraine or Georgia some day:D
Was Gallipoli ever a part of Australia or New Zealand?
The Krimea has been Russian for less than two and a half centuries, and its original Tartar and Greek inhabitants may have their own view as to your claim on it, Yevgeni my dear fellow. Russians reached Alaska before they reached the Krimea. At any rate, we Italians are used to this kind of reasoning; it was often heard whenever that guy with the jutting jaw claimed for Italy this or that piece of real estate to prevent Italians wondering what good his tyranny was doing for them anyway.
Italy exists as a country for a century and a half.
So you supposed to respect that ‘two and a half centuries’.
Italy has been a state for 150 years, but a nation with its own language and culture since Dante at the very least. As a matter of fact, medieval writers of the time of Otto III (1000 AD) divided the Empire into four parts: Gaul, Germany, the Slav lands (“Sclavinia”) and Italy. Italy has been recognized as a nation when Russia was a Variag (Swedish) colony. Incidentally, there also were Italians in Krimea before there were Russians – the Genoese had a colony there until the Turks destroyed it after the fall of Constantinople.
[…but a nation with its own language and culture…]
“We have created Italy; now we have to create Italians.” – do you remember who and when said that?
Listen, Russky, if I wanted to waste my time trying to give you a lecture about my country’s history, I would bother. As it is, it is evident that you are only interested in trying to assert absurdities, so kindly don’t pretend that you have any understanding of who Massimo d’Azeglio was, what he meant, and why the region he had just visited represented a problem. (Hint: it became the heart of Communism in Italy.) If you did, you would not rip a few facts out of context as you do, in the pathetic hope of scoring a few points – not against me, because you must be aware that I understand not only my own country’s history but yours better than you do, but against anyone who should stray on this blog and, not being sufficiently instructed, think there might be something to say for your views. You are looking for the approval of the ignorant and the easily led, and that condemns more harshly than any individual thing you say.
Fabio, just wonder, do you have something personal with commies? And, just to make a thought experiment, would you enlist in Duce’s army to fight in East Europe, if you had a chance?
Dmitry, you FAscist scum, now you have proved yourself incapable of reading. Go back to school. The insulting reference to “the guy with the jutting jaw” was to Mussolini, being compared with you and your owner, and it was intended as an insult. My people pumped Mussolini full of bullets and hanged his corpse upsed down for the people he had betrayed to kick and spit on. Taht is the proper treatment for tyrants and fascists.
And, yes, Fabio, the main thing in all this is for you to study well:)
Dima: what do you know about study? Indoctrination, perhaps.
Fab Fabio wrote: “Dmitry, you FAscist scum. My people pumped Mussolini full of bullets and hanged his corpse upsed down. ”
Dmitry, you FAscist scum, what Fabio is telling you is that he is a Communist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussolini#Death
The next day, Mussolini and his mistress were both summarily executed. The shootings were conducted by “Colonnello Valerio, the communist partisan commander
See: Fabio’s people are Communists.
The Partisan army was not Communist, although the Communists workded hard after the war to spread that lie. The Communists among them spent as much of the war murdering fellow partisans (like PP Pasolini’s father) as killing Germans. Some of the most famous and effective Partisans, such as Commander Edgardo Sogno, were dedicated anti-Communists. There were Royalist, Republican and CAtholic Brigades, as well as Saragat’s anti-Communist Socialists. You should read the rage of a genuine, proven ex-Partisan such as the late Oriana Fallaci, at Communist lies, to get the proper dimension of Voice of Treason/Unreason’s eager and willing acceptance of post-war Communist lies. If a Commie says it, Voice of Unreason believes it – right, comrade?
Oh, PS: Mussolini had been condemned to death in absentia for high treason by an Italian Army military court. Any partisan who captured the scum, whatever his or her political colour, had a sentence to carry out. It was carried out. End of story.
Fabio, Fabio, don’t try to tell us that leftists weren’t the main force that fought Mussolini’s fascists. The truth is that the vast majority of Italian partisans were either Communists, Socialists or Anarchists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_resistance_movement
The formations were eventually divided between three main groups, the communist Garibaldi Brigades, Giustizia e Libertà Brigades (related to Partito d’Azione (liberal socialists)), and socialist Matteotti Brigades.
Voice of Wikipedia.
Partito d’Azione were anti-Communist – its leader was La Malfa, who spent the next thirty or forty years in government in alliance with the Christian Democrats. So were about half of the Socialists, the Saragat half. There were no Anarchist formations – where the Hell do you get that? On the other hand there were strong Catholic and Royalist units. Your pathetic attempt to teach me the history of my country is barely worth countering, except that I owe it to those who fought for its freedom and who are now dead and cannot reply to Communist lies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_resistance_movement
Smaller groups included … some anarchist formations.
Voice of Unreason: I have studied the Partisan war in my country since I was 14. I have never heard of any anarchist groupings. If there were any, they were insignificant. The leadership of the Partisans was the CLN, made up of six parties: Liberals, Republicans, Christian Democrats, Azione, Socialists, Communists. The only important grouping that stayed out of the CLN were the royalists. Othe than that, anyone who had a coherent armed formation on the ground joined in, and indeed anyone who knows anything about Italian history knows that these parties – except for Azione, which never achieved any significant electoral success and soon broke up – dominated Italian history for the next fifty years. No anarchists anywhere, none. No anarchist since. There was an anarchist movement in Italy for a brief period at the turn of the twentieth century, but it was dead long before 1945.
Well, Fabio, the fact that you studied the Partisan war in Italy since you were 14 is very impressive. ll I can rely on is Google. And here is what Google gave me:
http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/7h44z2
Resistance to Mussolini
* de Agostini, Mauro. Milan’s Anarchists in the Fight for Liberation.
* de Agostini, Mauro, Pietro de Piero, Italino Rossi, Marco Rossi and Giorgio Sacchetti. Prisoners and Partisans: Italian anarchists in the struggle against fascism.
* The ancestry of anarchist antifascism in and around Ragusa.
* Cucurnia , Mauro (Maurin). Giuseppe Petacchi (1907-1961).
* Di Luisi, G. and Giovanni Domaschi. Giovanni Domaschi: “an incorrigible antifascist”.
* Failla, Alfonso. Alfonso Failla’s Memories of Internment [Italian antifascists on the Island of Tremiti under Mussolini].
* Aguzzi, Aldo and Andrea Ferrari. Pages from Italian Anarchist History”(The Anarchism of the Cervi Brothers by Andrea Ferrari, and Italian Anarchist Volunteers in Barcelona and the Events of May 1937 by Aldo Aguzzi)”.
* Finzi, Paolo. Emilio Canzi : an Anarchist partisan in Italy and Spain.
* Finzi, Paolo. Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Pinelli (1928-1969): the 17th victim of the Piazza Fontana bombing.
* Piero, Pietro de. Gino Lucetti and the attempt on Mussolini’s life.
* Taddei, Dino. Alberto Moroni, the Gentle Anarchist.
* Taddei, Dino. The Bruzzi-Malatesta Brigades in the Resistance in Lombardy: Libertarian Organisation in Practice.
* Téllez Solà, Antonio. Goliardo Fiaschi.
http://libcom.org/history/articles/italian-resistance-anarchist-partisans-1943
1943-1945: Anarchist partisans in the Italian Resistance
………………………………..
Also, you list the 6 parties in CLN, in this order: Liberals, Republicans, Christian Democrats, Azione, Socialists, Communists. This is clearly not alphabetical order. Is this the order of increasing importance, from lowest to highest? :-)
Zero meno meno. Somaro. (Z minus minus. Donkey.)
To answer your dumbest question first, the parties mentioned are from right to left, the Liberals being right-wingers and the Communists being Commies. That was the universal habit in Italy from 1943 to 1994 (and if you ask why 1994 you get another minus).
Now let us go through your Googled list:
Finzi, Paolo. Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Pinelli (1928-1969): the 17th victim of the Piazza Fontana bombing.
This is about the massacre of Piazza Fontana in 1969 and has nothing to do with the Resistance, which ended with total victory on May 2, 1945
* The ancestry of anarchist antifascism in and around Ragusa.
* Cucurnia , Mauro (Maurin). Giuseppe Petacchi (1907-1961).
This is either about Ragusa, Sicily, which was taken by the Americans before the Resistance started, or Ragusa-Dubrovnik, Croatia, which never was in Italy. Learn some geography
* Piero, Pietro de. Gino Lucetti and the attempt on Mussolini’s life.
Gino Lucetti’s attempted assassination of Mussolini took place in 1926 and has nothing to do with the Resistance. It was also a wholly individual effort.
* Taddei, Dino. Alberto Moroni, the Gentle Anarchist.
* Cucurnia , Mauro (Maurin). Giuseppe Petacchi (1907-1961).
* Di Luisi, G. and Giovanni Domaschi. Giovanni Domaschi: “an incorrigible antifascist”.
* Failla, Alfonso. Alfonso Failla’s Memories of Internment [Italian antifascists on the Island of Tremiti under Mussolini].
These are all about individuals and prove nothing about the existence of organized anarchists after 1943.
* Aguzzi, Aldo and Andrea Ferrari. Pages from Italian Anarchist History”(The Anarchism of the Cervi Brothers by Andrea Ferrari, and Italian Anarchist Volunteers in Barcelona and the Events of May 1937 by Aldo Aguzzi)”.
* Finzi, Paolo. Emilio Canzi : an Anarchist partisan in Italy and Spain.
These are about the Spanish Civil War, where, as everyone knows, anarchist formations were numerous and important – till the Commies murdered them.
* de Agostini, Mauro. Milan’s Anarchists in the Fight for Liberation.
* de Agostini, Mauro, Pietro de Piero, Italino Rossi, Marco Rossi and Giorgio Sacchetti. Prisoners and Partisans: Italian anarchists in the struggle against fascism.
* Taddei, Dino. The Bruzzi-Malatesta Brigades in the Resistance in Lombardy: Libertarian Organisation in Practice.
These actually do seem to be about real partisan organizations in the actual Resistance. Now let me tell you, matey, that three books out of the ocean of publications and memories about the Resistance ain’t much. The Fascists themselves have written and published a lot more. Their very number is sufficient proof that these Malatesta people, whoever they were, did not amount to much. If you want to find anarchists raising partisan armies, go to Spain – and make sure it is before Stalin has them butchered.
You people didn’t read the agreement properly.
The price for that base is $100 mln annually. The gas discount is some $3bln this year indeed. But it was agreed only till 2019 while base will stay until 2047.
And the base wasn’t the only item on the table.
Funny enough, bydlos even made a site anticipating the fleet to leave.
http://flot2017.com/
For some reason they are ashamed to use their skotoyaz there, used Russian instead.
For analysts familiar with the people who have accompanied Yanukovych into the corridors of power, however, there is an unmistakeable feeling of deja vous harking back to the days of former Urkainian President Leonid Kuchma when those around him benefited the most from a very non-transparent gas trade and other business activities.
“We could be seeing a throwback to the Kuchma era where the current government seeks to cut deals with all neighbors in an effort to keep everyone happy while its members continue to enrich themselves at the expense of the nation’s welfare”, said Soukup.
Ouch, we do. Surprisingly, this time I’m agree with the analyst: we should have not payed a dice to Ukraine, or any other CIS state during the last 20 years. We are wasting too much to support these corrupt, failing states in Middle Asia, in Ukraine, in Belarus. We need all our money for ourselves. That’s true. I really hope that Timoshenko could find this million of OUN-UPA idiots and block these agreements.
Total E&P, an affiliate of the French petroleum company Total S.A. (the fourth largest extracting company behind Shell, BP and ExxonMobil), signed a contract with the Canadian EuroGas Inc. for the assessment of the deposits of shale gas in Western Ukraine.
PHОТО: UNIAN
Professor Yuriy Koltun of Ukraine heads geological exploration for EuroGas in Eastern Europe. The gas-bearing basin in the so-called Lviv-Lublin hollow is today considered one of the most promising in the world.
ExxonMobil and Chevron have plans to develop the Polish part of the basin, while EuroGas Polska owns the rights to develop the Ukrainian part of the deposits in the Lviv-Volyn Basin.
If the exploration confirms the prospects of the reserves of shale gas in Western Ukraine by the end of 2010, Total intends to buy out the rights for its extraction from EuroGas and in 2011 will begin industrial drilling, said MP Mykhailo Volynets.
According to expert assessments, the volumes of extraction of shale gas in Western Ukraine could reach 15-20 bn cu. m. a year. This is more than half the volume that Ukraine will purchase from Russia this year. Seeing as the market price of shale gas is currently half the usual price, cheap gas could catapult the profit margins of many energy-bearing sectors of Ukrainian industry.
Shale gas extraction pollutes groundwater and causes landsides, but who cares? It is a land of untermenschen called Ukraine, not sacred Europe!
But if Russia had it, it would be the eighth wonder of the world and proof positive that you were born to be the masters of the universe. What was that about a fox and a bunch of grapes?
Russia has enough good old natural gas to bother with that sham.
The problem now is that everyone is overproducing. There’s not a shortage of goods yet; there’s overproduction in virtually every industry with a couple of exceptions, notably oil due to shipping and the global energy situation. And that’s also important as the emerging markets begin demand energy. But I don’t think we’ll see a shooting war anytime soon. We’ve got a 200 year supply of natural gas in the U.S. If you look at the last two years you actually see a significant drop in energy production in the United States. During a long wave winter you’re demanding less energy. If I’m correct, the short-term cycle, or business cycle, is going to peak in 2010 and then decline into 2012. It will remove the pressure from the energy markets and to answer your question specifically, I believe energy demand will be slack going into 2012. Electricity production will be declining and the demand for oil to produce that energy will be declining. Once we get through this short term phase of inflation I still see serious deflation going on into 2012. The danger for the next couple of years is a trade war due to overproduction and due to currency
manipulation, not a shooting war.
Energy reserves become scarce. Taking into account former 2nd world would buy more, it would become even more scarce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_gas
Fabio,
Why would it be the case that shale gas is abundant in USA, Ukraine, Poland and all other countries on Earth, except Russia? Isn’t the premise here that (just as cold fusion, tooth fairies and Big Foot), shale gas is available in unlimited amounts all over the Earth surface, waiting for the taking?
If it is abundant everywhere, then it should be abundant in Russia, right?
If it is, let’s hear about it. Hic Rhodus, hic salta. At any rate, there is a much more basic point to be made: Russia’s dependency on oil exports is evidence of its failure in other areas. Here La Russophobe is exactly right. Two of the world’s eight leading economies, Japan and Italy, have no energy or other mineral goods of any kind, and their prosperity is due entirely to their industrial and business activity; and the two largest, China and the USA, have some. but not nearly enough for their needs. What makes a country prosperous is industry and business, and minerals are only any good so long as they support a successful industrial sector. In this Russia has comprehensively failed.
BTW, Fabio, is it ok to have a blog on a Russian-owned website? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveJournal ?:)
So some Russians invensted in an American asset – on which I had been blogging long before they realized it existed. The question is, could they find nothing at home worth investing in? Back in the seventies, this was called flight of capitals and was taken to be a bad sign, but I dare say that you Putinists regard it as evidence of the greatness of Putinism.
Fabio wrote: “If it is, let’s hear about it.”
About the existence of shale gas in China, Poland and Ukraine? Well, they haven’t found any yet, but just in case they find some in the future, russohobes, in their wet dreams, have already declared that China, Poland and Ukraine must have huge amounts. Why? Because the russophobes wish it to be so. However, they don’t want Russia not to have any, so they say it doesn’t. It is all in the wishful thinking.
They also wish that shale gas is cheap, contrary to science:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shale_gas.
Although shale gas has been produced for more than 100 years in the Appalachian Basin and the Illinois Basin of the United States, the wells were often economically marginal. Higher natural gas prices in recent years and advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal completions have made shale gas wells more profitable. Shale gas tends to cost more to produce than gas from conventional wells, because of the expense of massive hydraulic fracturing treatments required to produce shale gas, and of horizontal drilling.
……………………………………..
“Over the past 13 years we have done a considerable amount of geological and technical research and have compiled an extensive database of old wells drilled in Western Ukraine,” said Wolfgang Rauball, chairman and CEO of EuroGas. “Our research indicates that the thickness of the shale gas formations under EuroGas’ area in the Western Ukrainian portion of the Lublin trough is substantially thicker than those found in the successful shale gas fields in the US.”
@the Russian “navy” is a mere figment of the Kremlin’s imagination, in reality nothing more than rusty, creaking bucket of bolts.
But don’t forget the new vessels they just bought from France.
Those “rusty buckets of bolts” gave short shrift to the Georgian navy in 2009, didn’t they? Besides, unlike the only Ukrainian submarine “Zaporizhya” they don’t have to be welded to the piers so that they wouldn’t sink.
Dear God in Heaven…. so you brag about the Russian “navy” beating whatever it was that tiny, impoverished Georgia had that was still afloat? Is that what you Russians regard as a victory?
Do you know what the size of the “tiny, impoverished Georgia”‘s defense budget was since the Necktie Chewer had come to power?
Yevgeni, you really are a wonder. You threaten a tiny neighbour, and then innocently wonder at the increase in its defence budget. And don’t be ridiculous: the proportions are still such that a Russian victory of sorts is guaranteed. One of the most shameful episodes in history was the Russo-Finnish war – and the Russians “won” that one.
The “huge defense budget” “Georgian navy” (coast guard) : 2 missile boats, 17 patrol boats and the total of less than 600 personnel of all kinds. Tremendous foe!
Now, about the “heroic naval victory by the invincible Russian navy over these horders of bloody Georgian genociders”:
The Russians themselves said there was only combat encounter, in which they allegedly “sunk” one of the missile boats, Tbilisi (both Tbilisi and the other boat were actually sunk only after the Russians sized the port of Poti during the systematic pillage following the “ceasefire”). And still yet there were reports the Georgians still managed to damage the cruiser Moskva (the flag ship of Black Sea Navy).
Quite on topic:
Next comes heroic triumph. The Soviets had the great victory over Hitler’s Germany in World War II, which left Russia one of the world’s two superpowers. Putin’s supposedly heroic victory came in the war with Georgia of 2008, followed by the subsequent virtual annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Putin’s parody of Soviet decline
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2010/04/02/2003469511
Come now, Fabio; let’s keep it real, as American youth is fond of saying. Your penance is to Google “Italian victory”, and tell me how many of the top ten hits reflect Italian military triumphs.
Vittorio Veneto. Which ended World War One. On November 4, the annihilated Austro-Hungarian army surrendered to Ita;y; on November 11, the Germans surrendered. You know why? Because 59 Italian divisions now had an open highway to Bavaria and beyond, and Germany simply did not have the resources to face them. They could have resisted the Western Allies for at least another year, perhaps longer; but the doom of their only important ally, the Austrian Empire, spelled the end for them as well.
It is not mentioned in polite English circles (and to judge by your signature you either are English or like to pretend you are), because you lot like to pretend that all the wars you have been in have been about you. Most of the time, in fact, you freeloaded to victory on a tide of your allies’ blood – Dutch and Germans against Louis XIV, Prussians in the Seven Years’ war, Russians and Germans and Spaniards against Napoleon, Russians and Americans against Hitler, and, yes, French and Italians and Russians against Wilhelm II. The British military reputation is the most inflated thing on the face of the planet Earth: the only time you ever had to fight an enemy alone without the armies of others to do the bleeding and the dying for you, you had your tails handed to you by your own rebellious American colonists, plus 5000 French professionals.
PS: the European technology which won you your colonial campaigns while other European powers were otherwise engaged was largely developed in France, Germany and the USA. British military innovation is a very small chapter in the history of the world’s military. Your bayonets could not have gutted unfortunate Indian or African fighters, nor your machine guns wiped them out as they came at you with spears and shields, had not the French invented the bayonet and the bayonet charge and the Americans the revolver and the machine gun. The British Empire was a by-product of European, not British, military supremacy.
Fabio, there were a large number of British troops in Italy in 1918, they were required to shore up the Italian army after the disaster at Caporetto.
I am sure you are also familiar with the results of British Italian cooperation during Garibaldi’s campaigns of unification.
I am sure you are also familiar with the results of the British/Italian face-off in North Africa and East Africa.
The French did not invent the bayonet charge, they invented the bayonet to give musketeers a defence against cavalry, it was the British who turned it into an offensive weapon.
I addition, the majority of African armies of the 19th century were very well equipped with european weapons, the Abyssinians routed the Italian army as I recall, the Mahdists in the Sudan had Krupp breach loading artillery and remington rifles, and even boasted armoured steam gunboats.
Andrew, the victors at Vittorio Veneto were 59 Italian divisions, 6 French, 5 British, one Czecho-Slovak, and an American regiment, under overall Italian command. In your mind, obviously, every British squaddie is a mutant superman who counts for more than a hundred ordinary human soldiers. Grow up.
In addition, the German commanders such as Ludendorf described the British assault at Amiens on the 8th of August as “the black day of the German army”
In the last 100 days of the war, the British Imperial forces killed almost as many Germans, captured as much ground, prisoners, and artillery etc, as the armies of France, the USA, and Italy combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Days_Offensive
Andrew: Austria surrendred on November 2. On November 4, the German navy, ordered itno battle, mutinied. November 11 – Germany surrendered. Germany had indeed been forced to the defensive, especially by the increasing allied prevalence in tanks and other heavy industrial products, but was by no means defeated, and all the allied plans were based on the forecast of having to fight into 1919 and invade the GErman mainland. The sudden collapse of Germany in 4-11 November was expected by nobody, it was a purely popular movement, and happened as soon as the news of the doom of Austria had had time to spread through Germany. You work it out, you and your little brain: German civilians read on their papers that Austria has ceased to exist – German civilians in their hundred of thousands come out in the streets of every town in Germany and demand peace and an immediate ceasefire. Does this sequence mean anything to you, or is your brain too fogged by ignorant arrogance?
No Fabio, but the simple fact of the matter is that Haig predicted the German collapse as early as January 1918, he predicted that the Germans would use troops freed from the eastern front by the surrender of Russia to try one more offensive in the decisive front of the war, France.
He also predicted if this offensive failed, that the German army would be ruined.
This is exactly what happened.
I am sorry to inform you, but the entire Italian front was a sideshow, of about as much importance as Palestine, or Salonika.
The German army was defeated in the field, by the British, French, and Americans.
It was this collapse which caused the German leaders to sue for peace.
You also seem to misunderstand the relationship between Imperial Germany and it’s ally Austria.
Germany was propping up Austria, not the other way around, and the Austrians (like the Italians in WW2) were in many respects unwilling participants.
The collapse in Morale of the German army began in April and May with the failure and massive losses incurred during the kaisershlact or Michel offensives in France.
The German army was gutted by the successful allied offensives in France, 100 days of unbroken (and mainly British Empire) victories.
I have already mentioned Amiens 8th of August 1918, described by Ludendorf as “the black day of the German army in the war”, a battle that dwarfed Vittorio Venito.
The German high command had already told the Kaiser that the war was unable to be won before Vittorio Venito, which was in the scale of WW1 a minor battle and a sideshow.
Unfortunately you seem to have been suckered by the “stab in the back” philosophy expounded by Hitler and Mussolini.
Andrew: Haig – that famously competent commander, loathed by everyone who served under him, immortalized by Sassoon and Owen in all their pictures of brainless, heartless mass-murdering British generals, and so confident of victory that in April 1914 he told his own troops that they had their backs to the wall – did, in one of his clearer moments, predict a final German defeat. He did not predict it for autumn 1918 and he did not expect it to come from a revolt of the German public. What the German high command – who wanted to suppress the popular insurrection by force of arms – told or did not tell the Kaiser MATTERS LESS THAN NOTHING. It was not they who put an end to the war. Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Groener and the rest were all hell-bent on fighting all the way to Berlin. IT WAS THE GERMAN PUBLIC WHO PUT AN END TO THE WAR, and they did so after readding their newspapers on November 4, 1918. Someone with a brain would understand what that means, but as your pathetic crack about the collapse of Austria being a “a side-show” proves, you have no brain – only a storage facility for misunderstood facts.
Actually Fabio, Haig was greatly respected by the majority of his soldiers.
He was also greatly respected by the majority of his fellow commanders, both allied and German.
Foch, for example, made no bones about his contribution; in his introduction to Haig’s Despatches, he inscribed this formidable list:
Battle of Amiens, Aug. 8-13, in which the Fourth Army took 22,000 prisoners and more than 400 guns.
Battle of Bapaume, Aug.21-Sept.1, Third Army and left wing of Fourth Army; 34,000 prisoners and 270 guns.
Battle of the Scarpe, Aug.26-Sept.3, First Army; 16,000 prsioners, 200 guns.
Battle of Havrincourt and Epehy, Sept.12-18, Fourth and Third Armies; 12,000 prisoners, 100 guns.
Battle of Cambrai and the Hindenburg line, Sept.27-Oct.5, Fourth , Third, and First Armies, which ended in the breaking of the Hindenburg line and in the capture of 35,000 prisoners and 380 guns.
Battle of Flanders, Sept.28-Oct.14, Second Army.
Battle of Le Cateau, Oct.6-12, Fourth, Third, and First Armies.
Battle of the Selle, Oct.17-25, Fourth and Third Armies, 20,000 prisoners, 475 guns.
Battle of the Sambre, Nov.1-11, Fourth, Third, and First Armies, 19,000 prisoners, 450 guns.
Never at any time in history has the British Army achieved greater results in the attack than in this unbroken offensive.
The victory was indeed complete, thanks to the excellence of the Commanders of Armies, Corps, and Divisions, thanks above all to the wise, loyal, and energetic policy of their Commander-in-Chief (HAIG), who made easy a great combination, and sanctioned a prolonged and gigantic effort”
Your lack of understanding of the course of WW1 is apparent in this gem and so confident of victory that in April 1914 he told his own troops that they had their backs to the wall
That was in fact during the massive German offensives of 1918, when things were looking very grim.
What really caused the collapse of German was:
In July, Foch initiated an offensive against the Marne salient produced during the German attacks, eliminating the salient by August. A second major offensive was launched two days after the first, ending at Amiens to the north. This attack included Franco-British forces, and was spearheaded by Australian and Canadian troops,[75] along with 600 tanks and supported by 800 aircraft. The assault proved highly successful, leading Hindenburg to name 8 August as the “Black Day of the German Army”.[76]
The German army’s manpower had been severely depleted after four years of war, and its economy and society were under great internal strain. The Entente now fielded a total of 216 divisions against 197 understrength German divisions.[77] The Hundred Days Offensive beginning in August proved the final straw, and following this string of military defeats, German troops began to surrender in large numbers. As the Allied forces broke the German lines, Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed as Chancellor of Germany in October in order to negotiate an armistice. Because of his opposition to the peace feelers, Ludendorff was forced to step aside and he fled to Sweden.[78] Fighting was still continuing, but the German armies were in retreat when the German Revolution put a new government in power. An armistice was quickly signed, that stopped all fighting on the Western Front on Armistice Day (11 November 1918).[79] The German Imperial Monarchy collapsed as Ludendorff’s successor General Groener agreed, for fear of a revolution like that in Russia the previous year, to support the moderate Social Democratic Government under Friedrich Ebert rather than sustain the Hohenzollern Monarchy.[80]
…….
Among the German populace, the myth arose—openly cultivated by the Army Chief of Staff Hindenburg—that the defeat was not the fault of the ‘good core’ of the army but due to certain left-wing groups within Germany; this would later be exploited by Nazi party propaganda to partly justify the overthrow of the Weimar Republic
Haig was immensely popular with the men who served under him, particularly the best judge of a good General, the rank and file.
His efforts to secure the best chances for his men, in equipment, training, and after the war in care from the government, ensured that he was well loved by all ranks.
After the war, Haig was created 1st Earl Haig (with a subsidiary viscountcy and a subsidiary barony) and received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. Haig was Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces in Great Britain. After ceasing active service, he devoted the rest of his life to the welfare of ex-servicemen, travelling throughout the British Empire to promote their interests. He was instrumental in setting up the Haig Fund for the financial assistance of ex-servicemen and the Haig Homes charity to ensure they were properly housed; both continue to provide help many years after they were created. An avid golf enthusiast, Haig was captain of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, St. Andrews 1920-21. He was involved in the creation of the Royal British Legion, which he was president of until his death and was chairman of the United Services Fund from 1921 until his death.
Hundreds of thousands turned of veterans turned out for his funeral.
He was however hated by vermin such as Lloyd George, who was far more responsible for the losses of WW1, and as for the other ranks opinions on whiners such as Sassoon, or Owen, I suggest you read a book titled “With Machine Gun to Cambrai” by George Coppard, where he lambastes the “great Poets” and tells what the rank and file really thought.
The simple fact of the matter was (as you would know if you had any real understanding of WW1), that between two resonably well matched forces of high morale, in a fight to the finish, large casualties are unavoidable.
The percentage losses of the battles on the western front in WW1 match well those of the napoleonic period, the difference was simply one of scale and duration.
Andrew, you have just proved my contention that you have no brain. You just quote textbooks word by word, as though that proved anything. Quite apart that the same narrative I threw at you (without need to go out and bother Wikipedia for it, since I have more history in my little finger than you in your pretended brain) can easily be read in the factoids you quote, and that you have therefore completely failed to contradict me as you wished, that is simply not how history is debated. One book by one historian is easily refuted by another book by another historian. What you have to do is master the facts and be able to interpret them independently of your textbooks. If your interpretation agrees with theirs, well and good; if not, you just may have proved yourself an independent mind – or a crackpot. Either way, literal quotation of textbooks in this uncomprehending way would get you a D minus minus from any competent teacher.
Fabio wrote: “Vittorio Veneto. Which ended World War One. On November 4, the annihilated Austro-Hungarian army surrendered to Ita;y; on November 11, the Germans surrendered.”
Poor Germans. They simply didn’t expect that their “best friends” are in reality cowardly low-scum hyenas:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/italy_and_world_war_one.htm
In the years that led up to World War One, Italy had sided with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the Triple Alliance. In theory, Italy should have joined in the sides of these two nations when war broke out in August 1914. She did not. Italy’s experience in World War One was disastrous.
What Italy did was wait and see how the war progressed. On April 26th 1915, she came into the war on the side of the Triple Entente – Britain, France and Russia.
Why did the government want to go to war?
In 1915, Italy had signed the secret Treaty of London. In this treaty Britain had offered Italy large sections of territory in the Adriatic Sea region – Tyrol, Dalmatia and Istria. Such an offer was too tempting for Italy to refuse.
Between 1915 and 1917, Italian troops only got 10 miles inside Austrian territory. But in October 1917 came the disaster of Caporetto. In this battle, in fact a series of battles, the Italians had to fight the whole Austrian Army and 7 divisions of German troops. The Italian Army lost 300,000 men. Though the Italians had a victory at Vittorio Veneto in 1918, the psychological impact of Caporetto was huge. The retreat brought shame and humiliation to Italy.
I had an answer to this, but for some reason the computer ate it. It was a comparison of wars fought by Italians and Russians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it ended with the conclusion that even disregarding Voice of Unreason’s distortions, the simple truth is that the most disgraceful of Italian defeats is ten times more honourable than the most glorious of Russian victories. We never had to place SMERSH battalions at the back of our own troops to murder anyone who looked as if they were retreating. We never abducted allies and threw them into gulags – indeed, we never had death camps. WE never buried enemy prisoners alive. And while I admit the shameful massacres carried out by Italian troops in Ethiopia and Yugoslavia – would even a Russian dare to compare those episodes with what any Russian army, historically, has always and everywhere done? The behaviour of Russians in 1944 and 1945 achieved the impossible: make Nazi GErmans an object of pity.
At any rate, I should never have started this. “Fighting the base with base weapons” does not make one feel any better, even if he is in the right. I am getting sick and tired of responding to a creature whose only motive to believe anything, assert anything, take anythign as true, is not that it actually is true, but that it serves the cause of his owners. You are a slave mind, Voice; Fascism, which with us was a twenty-year disease that we cured with fire and sword, is to you a second nature, beyond cure or treatment. And dealing with you runs the risk of reducing me to something like your vile level. So reast in the peace of slavery and ignorance.
In the next five years, the Black Sea Fleet will get two new corvettes and three new submarines at the very least.
http://www.arms-expo.ru/site.xp/049051124049053050052050.html
Do they plan to buy/license new Mistrals for Sevastopol?
Perhaps.
That should make the russophobes here even happier.
We are all Russophobes these days:D Since the 08.08.08 it has become not lady-like to like Russkies… Vive la democratie a la Georgie, so to say:)
Nobody who ever served aboard a warship wanted to fight those rusty, creaking buckets of bolts. Who do you suppose was the enemy while the USA was justifying their huge naval budgets to build the world’s largest fleet of aircraft carriers? They certainly exaggerated the threat posed by the Russian navy, but there still isn’t a navy on the planet who’d want to fight them.
There’s such a thing as being too sophisticated, as well. Russian designs are usually simple and rugged, built to be operated by conscripts who rarely make the navy a career. During Operation Desert Storm, USS PRINCETON hit a relatively crude moored mine; it put her out of commission for a couple of years. USS COLE was the victim of a suicide boat attack in Yemen; it took 14 months to get her back to sea.
You might be able to find a few senior naval officers who would agree with your assessment of the Russian fleet, but I bet you couldn’t find one eager to take them on.
Nobody except a sicko likes war, and war at sea is even more loathsome than war by land. Nonetheless, I am old enough to remember those “fearsome” Soviet fleets of old – and the astonished reaction of one of our officers when he found out that their machines were activated by sticking a lit match in a burner, like an old-fashioned domestic boiler! There’s high technology for you.
@Nobody who ever served aboard a warship wanted to fight those rusty, creaking buckets of bolts.
Let me to fix it to you:
Nobody who ever served aboard a warship wanted to fight ABOARD those rusty, creaking buckets of bolts.
@Who do you suppose was the enemy while the USA was justifying their huge naval budgets to build the world’s largest fleet of aircraft carriers?
The Empire of Japan.
@They certainly exaggerated the threat posed by the Russian navy, but there still isn’t a navy on the planet who’d want to fight them.
There isn’t any “threat posed by the Russian navy” except for their own sailors (like in the sunk submarines) and to environment.
OK, let’s see the aircraft carriers. So, how many aircraft carriers Russia has in use? Um, yes, only one.
But in the early 1980s there were four. One of them were scrapped in the early-mid 1990s, two sold to China. In the post-Soviet Russia a new one was built (actually just finished construction), then too sold to China. Still one more has been simply cancelled when it was already half-built. And so only one remains in service.
But, in a way you’re right. This is truly amazing!
The tempestuous development of shale gas in the United States has led to a sharp drop in the country’s needs for imported gas. Gazprom, which earlier counted on conquering 20 percent of the US market by 2020, admitted at the beginning of the year that it had been forced to send LNG meant for the US to other countries in the Asia-Pacific region .
So far, Gazprom has agreed on small supplies – two tankers, or about 300 million cubic meters. Furthermore, the company’s news release notes that this is the maximum volume. This means the monopoly has not burdened itself with large obligations, but at the same time has not left the market altogether; it is ready to return at any moment to increase its presence.
Meanwhile, pricing trends are currently positive for the company, Nesterov notes. Last year, the average price of LNG in America’s Henry Hub was $142 per 1,000 cubic meters
I totally agree with everybody here: Ukraine suckers Russia, but Good!
This new agreement will allow Ukraine to prosper at the expense of Russia to the tune of $3 billion per year.
This is a very important and timely article, LR, because in order to become irrevocable law, this new agreement has to be approved by the Ukrainian Parliament next week. Currently, the Orange opposition thinks that this is a bad deal for Ukraine and threatened to vote against it. Yuschenko went so far as to call for impeachment of Yanukovych over this.
Hopefully, your article, LR, will explain to some Ukrainian opposition supporters that this agreement allows Ukraine to sucker Russia (and Good!), and convince them to vote for this agreement.
If the Uke Parliament approves this deal and it becomes law, extending Russian Sevastopol lease by 25 years, you will be able to take part of the credit, LR.
The disturbing haste with which the legally questionable Black Sea Fleet agreement is imposed may force the unruly Ukrainian opposition to close ranks and successfully challenge Yanukovych, who was elected this year with a slim majority and accused of vote rigging. The legitimacy of the Yanukovych government is being challenged in the constitutional court and snap parliamentary elections are possible that could turn the political tables in Kyiv and bring the opposition back into government. The 1997 agreement that gave Russia a 20 year lease of Sevastopol was recognized as legitimate by all Ukrainian political forces. Now it has been replaced with a controversial document that may polarize the nation, facilitate civil strife, and eventually disrupt Russian-Ukrainian relations. Yet, Putin and Medvedev are pressing ahead. Maybe a split Ukraine could be seen from Moscow as not a bad solution –like Georgia, that was dismembered in August 2008. If Ukraine is unmanageable from Moscow, maybe the Crimea and other Russian-speaking parts could split off to form a dependency that may sign agreements to keep Russian bases 50 or 100 years like Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
“ may polarize the nation, facilitate civil strife, and eventually disrupt Russian-Ukrainian relations. ”
That is exactly what was said about the President’s decisions to turn Holodomor investigations into a national hysteria and to award Hero of Ukraine honors to Shukhevych and Bandera under Yushchenko’s rule. But Yushchenko replied that since he was the democratically elected President, he had both the right and the obligation to act according to what he believed was best for Ukraine.
Well, now the democratically elected President is Yanukovych, and now he too has both the right and the obligation to act according to what he believes was best for Ukraine. Thus, Yuschenko’s complaints sound like double standard and sour grapes.
“Maybe a split Ukraine could be seen from Moscow as not a bad solution”
Why should there be a split?! For half-a-decade Ukraine was ruled by the Orange politicians. Their policies and decisions were very unpopular and even created anger among the Blue-White supporters. But because of their respect for democracy, peace and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Blue-White allowed to Orange government to enact their proposals.
Now that the presidency in the hands of Blue-White (because the Ukrainian voters didn’t like what Yuschehnko had done to their country), the Orange opposition should also respect the will of the Ukrainian voters and respect Yanukovych’s right to be the President.
If Orange forces refuse to act within law and constitution and try to split the country – then they are enemies of democracy and enemies of Ukraine, who willfully sacrificed Ukraine’s integrity and survival for their petty and selfish political aspirations.
Take a peek at the numbers. I asked Ed Chow, whom O&G readers will recall as a former Chevron negotiator in Russia, and who is now a senior fellow over at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for a rundown of current gas pricing in Europe. Chow said that European customers under contracts are paying about $240 per thousand cubic meters for their gas. Meanwhile, spot gas prices — meaning what users are paying for Qatari liquid natural gas that’s flooding the market — are about $150 per thousand cubic meters. By these measures, Ukraine got no bargain — it is paying right around the market price, and in fact 60% higher than the spot price. Chow wrote a piece on the deal for the Kyiv Post.
Boris,
If you can talk to Ed Chow, also ask him as to how long this 30% “break” (regardless if it’s a break or not) last? For a year? Two? Or will Russia be committed to give Ukraine a 30% break from the “market prices” for the entire 25 year period?
BTW, how are the Qataris flooding the European market? Do they have a gas pipeline to Europe? Or are they shipping liquefied gas?
In any case, you will be glad to know that the Qataris have no intent to sell their gas too cheap. Instead, they are teaming with Russians to bring the gas prices in line with oil prices:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=123741§ionid=3510213
Qatar says gas prices are unfair
Mon, 19 Apr 2010
Qatar says gas prices should be more closely connected to that of crude oil, refusing however to cut natural gas output to help boost prices.
“Current prices aren’t fair. They should be linked to oil prices,” Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah told reporters Sunday in Algerian city of Oran, where the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) ministerial meeting is to kick off.
He added that during the meeting his country intends to “discuss mechanisms to stabilize (gas) prices.”
Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, attending the meeting, said world gas producers should cooperate to limit the impact of spot sales on their long-term deals. In late March, Algeria proposed countries participating in the forum to reduce gas exports to restore balance in the global gas market. Algerian energy minister Chakib Khelil has said that current gas prices were too low and should be raised. He has said the ideal price for gas should account for one sixth of the price of a barrel of oil.
Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela are members of the GECF.
The GECF headquarters is situated in Qatar’s capital Doha. In December 2009, the GECF elected Russian Leonid Bokhanovsky as its secretary general.
————
So, hopefully, Ukraine’s price of $240 will soon look like a great bargain, as the rest of Europe may soon pay much higher gas prices.
“The Black Sea is close to the Caucasus and the Russian oil-rich regions of Tatarstan and Bashkorostan. It offers any Russian enemy a direct route to two Russian energy lifelines. The Black Sea thus has special strategic significance for Russia as well; the area would become a major point of conflict in case there is a military confrontation between the US and Russia.”
http://www.infowars.com/us-russia-standoff-takes-to-the-black-sea/
I had no idea you were a military strategist, along with all your other accomplishments. Control of the Black Sea and its approaches is vital to power projection in the region. A potential invasion of Georgia would be greatly facilitated by control of the Black Sea ; didn’t you just do a hyperbole-laden piece on that a couple of weeks ago, using someone’s blog as a reference? Not to mention the screeching over Russia’s purchase of MISTRAL class assault ships from France. Which is it? The Russians are going to carry out a military assault on Georgia, or the Russians are boneheads for paying out to keep a base they don’t need? You can’t have it both ways.
“The Black Sea is close to the Caucasus and the Russian oil-rich regions of Tatarstan and Bashkorostan.”
Isn’t the Black Sea much closer to, say, Italy, France and maybe even Spain, than to Bashkorostan (Ufa)?
Not, of course, if you take, say, Italian embassy in Washington. It’s definitely much more far from the Black Sea, than Ufa.
It’s true that the Russian government is technically making up the difference by forgoing 30% of its export tariffs. But Gazprom is an arm of the Kremlin, after all, so in one door, out the other.
Some critics have focused on the NATO angle — that the deal terminates the notion of Ukraine joining the western military alliance. This is a red herring: Events long ago eclipsed the possibility of Ukraine — or Georgia, for that matter — joining NATO, which has just about reached the extent of its expansion.
Instead, the bottom line is that, for no surrender of market prices, Medvedev has ended a long, tense standoff between the two countries over the base, and gotten Ukraine to acknowledge Russia’s position in the regional driver’s seat. Analysts suspect there are hidden commercial advantages for Russia, too.
http://oilandglory.com/2010/04/russias-concession-to-ukraine-market.html
As dealmakers say, timing is everything.
LR is right – Putler/Medvedev screwed their own people in order to get this deal.
But, in the best tradition of sovok brain-dead, soulless russified zombies who have no conscience – Banditkovych screwed Ukrainians.
And, in the best sovok propaganda tradition, they both hailed it as the Deal of the Century.
For 19 years, just as in many other post-sovok countries, Poland being a notable exception now, oligarchs (read former sovok commie nomenklatura) have been vampires, sucking and robbing their countries dry by crooked “privatization”, by corporate raids done with the help of crooked courts, and worse.
In Ukraine, Yanuconvict is one of those – hooked in with the Party of Regions (really the Party of sovok Russia), and the Donbass Mafia, which is tied in with the likes of Firtash, of RosUkrEnergo “fame,” with Simeon Mogilevych, now hiding out in roosha, with Igor Bakai, hiding out in Roosha, Akhmetov, the richest one, who is now pretending to clean up his act, with Kuchma, the brutal former Ukrainian president/dictator, and his son-in-law Victor Pinchuk, who bought a $100 million mansion in Londongrad, right down the street from Luzhkov, the mayor of Maskva, and Kolomoisky, who has a mansion on the lake in Switzerland (and switches party affiliations at his convenience).
During the Tymoshenko government, the Party of Regions blocked the Parliament, and blocked everything that the Tymoshenko government tried to do.
So the Tymoshenko government went to the world markets, and incurred a whole bunch of debt through the sale of government bonds, at a whopping 20% interest rate.
So, when Yanuconvict took office and the Party of Roosha quickly got an illegitimate Coalition of Carcasses together in Parliament, all sealed by the Chimps in Robes knows as the Ukrainian Prostitutional Court, Yanuconvict had a problem 0f his own causing and that of his Party of Russian’s causing —
There was nothing left to steal via privatization.
And – the IMF said nyet as to any further loans, because Ukraine had not implemented reforms.
Naturally, Yanuconvict is not going to give up Mezhihirya, the 400-acre mansion estate that he stole – with the help of Yushchenko – and naturally, all the other thug oligarchs were not going to give up their offshore accounts in Cyprus and Switzerland and elsewhere.
Sooooo – here comes Putler/Medvedev.
Gazprom, owned by the Russian government by 51%, cuts the export fees that it is supposed to pay to the Russian government – those are 30%.
Voila – Russia’s budget deficit INCREASES as a result.
Banditkovych gives up Ukraine in Crimea for the Black Sea Fleet.
PLUS – there are assorted other purchases to be made by rooshan oligarchs, as outlined above – that we know of so far.
There is an excellent analysis of this by Pavel Felgenhauer at the Eurasia Daily Monitor:
http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=36294&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=27&cHash=32c6ea6111
The Black Sea Fleet was used in the invasion against Georgia, the one which caused the fat, toothless rooskie sovok babushkas to jump for joy – as depicted in the picture previously posted by LR.
Slight problem – Georgia managed to inflict some severe damage on the BSF, so that the ships had to come limping back to Crimea, and then were kept under wraps so that noone could see the extent of the damage inflicted by Georgia.
The new barter agreement (gas discounts for Crimean BSF base) benefits only Ukrainian oligarchs like – Dmytro Firtash – and other in the Donbass Mafia, because their industries, such as fertilizer production and chemicals, are heavy industrial users of gas.
Rooshan oligarchs are joined at the hip with the Donbass Mafia, and vice versa.
So, for the benefit of a few oligarchs, Putler/Medvedev (the “karlyk”) and Yanuconvict, the brain-dead sovok illiterate country bumpkin, screwed Russia – and Ukraine.
They have no idea what good government is, and they don’t care.
Elmer, you sound so well-bred with all those non-POVed expressions:D Me admires!
PS Reread the last sentence of this comment.
The ever-shortening hot summer nights meant that the greatest holiday of the Latvian people, St. John’s Day, was not that far off. But in the summer of 1940 the festive mood was marred by terror…
It was only a year since deceitful Bolshevik Russia had turned on its reluctant Baltic allies, cowardly breaking trust and abusing the treaty, which allowed the Reds the use of a few designated military bases in the Baltic States. It was from these bases that the coups d’etat were successfully launched against the legitimate democratic governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
http://www.lietuvos.net/istorija/communism/
You are right, LR – Putler/Medvedev screwed his own people – the deal will increase Russia’s budget deficit, as noted by Pavel Felgenhauer in the article I linked to.
And Russian oligarchs get their own little deals on the side – as do Ukrainian ones.
No question, as noted in one of the comments above, that this is once again a political energy deal -Russia trying to use its oil and gas to rule the world.
But think again – why is this deal causing such enormous consternation in Ukraine?
Well, if you look at it, Banditkovych and his Donbass Mafia – the Party of Regions – have been in office only 50 days – yet, they have already moved incredibly quickly, with the help of the chimps in robes – the Prostitutional Court of Ukraine – to take over Parliament.
And to take steps to be “friendly” (in sovok terminology – дружня страна) with Russia, and to make deals.
The speed with which this was done tells us that this was all pre-planned.
And that it won’t stop.
Banditkovych says that he wants Ukraine to join the European Union.
But Banditkovych is an illiterate sovok liar.
And he is selling Ukraine – to Russia.
The difficulty is that the former sovok republics, including Ukraine, are still filled with russified sovok zombies.
It is hard for free people to imagine just how brutally and pervasively the sovok brainwashing still permeates the russified sovok zombies that still inhabit Ukraine – and Russia.
But it is true.
That’s why Putler is able to get away with his crimes against Russia.
That is why the Donbass Mafia, including Kuchma and Yanuconvict, and Azarov and that whole coterie of sovok thugs, are able to get away with killing people in the streets with their Bentleys and Mercedes and Porsche Cayennes.
It is obviously worth it for Putler to sell his own country short in order to try to take over Ukraine, in Putler’s estimation.
He is trying to re-create the sovok union.
And even if Russia has to suck eggs to do it – hey, when you’re a KGB agent running Gazprom and putting money in your own pocket – what difference does it make to Putler?
Everything that Russia touches turns to sh*t.
And as long as the Russian sovok zombies continue to let Putler put Russia in the toilet – that will continue to happen.
SOVOK brand rules the mind:)
Last night’s Savik Shuster Show, the 3-hour Friday night one, was devoted exactly to this topic.
See if you can guess who the sovoks are.
Savik Shuster is the one, as noted previously by LR, who left Russia for Ukraine – and freedom of speech.
http://shuster.kanalukraina.tv/video/5037_skol_ko_stoit_nezavisimost_/
Russians a celebrating the ‘victory’ – Russian fleet stays in the Black Sea’ – WHAT RUSSIAN FLEET – it is non existant. Let me see there is ‘piotr velykyi’, ‘kursk’ whoops no longer with us!!! Any others?? Perhaps our russian expert will clarify this???
Err, let’s look at the NY skyline: so, here’s the ESB, the NYT, the Chrysler, the WTC – whoops no longer with us!!!
Or, let’s say, let’s see the notorious Saakashvili tie-party friends: Vaclav Havel, Madeleine Korbel Albright, Lech Kaczyтski – – whoops no longer with us!!!, Victor Yuschenko – – whoops no longer with us!!!
Do you like me doing things your way? Immanuel Kant wouldn’t say you’re good…
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[…] englischensprachigen, nicht gerade russlandfreundlichen, Russslandblogs der Meinung ist, das der Deal gut für Ukraine und schlecht für Russland […]
Can anyone translate this obscenity in ‘plat deutsch????
…according to an English-language blog about Russia, not by any means pro-Russian, the deal is good for Ukraine and bad for Russia…
If you beleive, of course, that anything could be good for Ukraine at this stage.
@Just to make sure my point is clear. Look at the ethnic Chechen, and non-Chechen (Russians, Armenians, Jews and other) population numbers of Chechnya in 1989 and 2010. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya#Demographics.
Aaaand whatever to do any of this has with Russian citiziens 9of all nationalities) being fired on with Grads for months? And damn, you cry so much about the old and ineffective Grads. But Grozny was shelled with not just Grads, but also Uragans, Buratinos, etc. Not to mention scores of BALLISTIC MISSILES (about 130 Tochkas, many Scuds). It was like what, hundreds of thousands of rockets, shells, bombs? Or maybe rather millions? Because Russia actually depleted there their ammunition the Sobiet Union prepared for WWII:
The Russian troops in Chechnya have made extensive use of heavy artillery fire to suppress the rebels and this has severely depleted munitions stockpiles, as there has been no serial production of heavy shells in Russia for a decade. In the 1994-1996 Chechen war officers complained that they were using shells produced in the 1980s. In the present conflict shells produced in the 1970s and 1960s were supplied to the front. In December 1999 the Russian government reportedly released 8 billion rubles ($285 million) to buy new heavy shells. But the Russian defense industry has not managed to resume serial production of such munitions. Reports from Chechnya say that Russian troops are running out of ammunition for their most used heavy gun – the 122mm D-30 howitzer. One of the remedies being considered in the General Staff in Moscow is to bring out of strategic storage the pre-Second World War M-30 122mm howitzer for which there are millions of rounds, kept since the 1940s.
http://www.crimesofwar.org/chechnya-mag/chech-felgenhauer.html
@Then ask yourself: where did those 300 000 of non-Chechens gone?
Mostly to Russia. The Russians also killed most of these who remained (too poor or too old to move) while obliterating central Grozny (because they were too old or to poor to move again, and with no families in the countryside). The result: http://www.magnumphotos.com/Archive/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox_VPage&VBID=2K1HZOMIJJ11V&IT=ZoomImage01_VForm&IID=2S5RYDYXPNM1&PN=1&CT=Search Look, here the mystery solved.
So how do you like it now? I heard (from Putin, Medvedev) killing of few dozen “Russian citizien” civs is “total genocide” (Kokity even made a “genocide musuem” about this). So, how about killing thousands of them? “Hyper super-duper genocide”? Because more died only from just one ballistic missile (the Tochka fired on the “safe zone” town of Shali in January 2010):
In the full course of this war, large numbers of civilians are killed in an attempt to kill those who are referred to as terrorists by the Russian government. We are not able to say how many innocent people have died, but we know there have been thousands. T h o u s a n d s. Russian authorities called the strike against Shamil Basayev’s house an accurate strike. There was a tremendous amount of similar strikes throughout Grozny and, as you know, Grozny has virtually been wiped off the face of the earth. Here is another example from a later period of the conflict which shows that both parties pay absolutely no attention to the interests of the civilian population. Shali, a large town-like village, was taken without fighting by the Russian federal forces at the end of 1999. The federal command called that zone a safe zone. This is another interesting term – a “safe zone”. Russian authorities encouraged refugees to return and many people indeed started doing so. Life in the safe zone was not easy: People were abused by those who were asked to protect them, namely by the police troops sent to Chechnya from various parts of Russia. We have at least one documented case of rape and murder of a woman in Shali during that period. Another example: authorities started distributing pensions to people who hadn¥t received them for a long time. Pensions were distributed for the first time on February 8 and on February 9 a big crowd of people gathered at the Shali central square in order to receive additional payments, make lists etc. No one knew that a small group of Chechen fighters entered Shali at that moment. The group came to the local military HQ and surrounded it. The people had no idea about it – they were simply surprised to see different armed people close to them. At that very moment, a Russian tactical missile exploded above their heads. It was a response of the Russian command to the report that a group of fighters entered Shali. The tactical missile is estimated to have killed, roughly speaking, some 150 civilians. Then there came an attack by combat helicopters, which also caused civilian casualties. The group of fighters left Shali, with quite small losses, amounting to several men. Thus, we see that in order to kill several men, Russian forces kill hundreds of peaceful citizens
http://www.crimesofwar.org/expert/chech-oleg.html
Btw, the Abkhaz and the Ossetians actually conducted a real ethnic cleansing campaign in Georgia (including in 2008). And in the case of Abkhazia, they even expelled the MAJORITY of residents. So I guess it makes this small Grad attack fine now, right? And you and the others of your kind will stop crying (or pretending to cry) about this already?
And about this “accurate strike” of Tochkas on Basayev’s house, also from Orlov:
I’ll give you just a few examples from different periods of the conflict. At the beginning of the conflict, on October 27, Russian media announced that Shamil Basayev’s house of had been hit by a rocket strike. They announced that the house had been destroyed and that Shamil Basayev himself had survived, though some people around him, namely his bodyguards, had died. It was presented as a successful Russian military operation. They did not mention, however, that the rocket strike and bombardment destroyed the entire neighborhood. At least five twelve-flat houses were destroyed, one five-storied house, many one-storied houses, a market, a taxi stand including cars, passengers, and drivers. At the moment, we do not know how many innocent people died so that several fighters and supporters of Shamil Basayev could be killed. And we will never find out.
And from Felgenhauer also on the subject:
Instead of attacking with infantry and tanks, the Russian army, in an attempt to reduce its own casualties, used heavy equipment and firepower to lay waste to the Chechen capital Grozny and many other towns and villages. The loss of life, mostly civilian, and the damage to property was terrific — today most towns are still in ruin. In many instances Russian troops committed appalling war crimes, deliberately attacking the civilian population in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. There is credible evidence of use of the so-called Heavy Flamethrowing System (TOS-1) – a fuel bomb land-based multiple launch delivery system, also known as “Buratino” among the Russian rank and file – against Chechen towns and villages during the winter campaign of 2000. The third protocol of the 1980 Geneva Convention strictly forbids the use of such “air-delivered incendiary weapons” in populated areas, even against military targets.
(…)
This strategy of victory by bombardment has inevitably lead to massive war crimes. In attacks on Chechen towns and villages Russian forces have not only extensively used TOS-1 (Buratino), napalm and fuel air bombs, but also “Tochka” and “Tochka-U” ballistic missiles that can fly up to 120 km and cover up to 7 hectares with cluster shrapnel on impact. The use of such mass-destruction weapons as aerosol (fuel) munitions and ballistic missiles against civilian targets was undoubtedly authorized by Moscow and may implicate the President Putin personally, as well as his top military chiefs, in war crimes.
Ay, Robert, too long a text really. I’m not really going to discuss and probe every Orlov and Felghengauer opus you can copy here. I’m not that good at biology as these two.
I’d just say you didn’t answer a word to my question: who cleansed 300 000 of Russians from Chechnya, and why there are now twice more Chechens than before the war.
@I’d just say you didn’t answer a word to my question: who cleansed 300 000 of Russians from Chechnya and why there are now twice more Chechens than before the war.
1.Post-colonial changes (“why so few whites in Africa now?”), economics, and the Russian army.
2. The enormous population growth was because the Russians lie on the figures, but anyway, you see, the Chechens actually have children (unlike the Russians). Even as so many newborn children died early “after” the war, and 100,000 Chechens being now in Europe, and the casualties of course, yes, they do have population growth alright (just like many others in North Caucasus).
And now I’d just say you why Russia didn’t bring the “300 000 of Russians” back to Chechnya, once it was liberated” 10 years ago, or even since it is “peaceful” and then “rebuilt” for several years too.
And now I’d just say you didn’t think how it to be under the fire of Grads not for a few hours, but actually for weeks and months. And hardly just the old junk the Grads are, but some real death dealers like the Tochkas and the Buratino launchers. And actually most of the civilians in central Grozny were even literally Russians.
And now I’d just say you didn’t think how according to your own propaganda all people in Chechnya, “even” Chechens, were as much of “Russian citiziens” as the Ossetians in Georgia (the Russian battalion was also made mostly of the North Ossetians).
And now I’d just say you didn’t think how the majority of people who once lived in Abkhazia DO want to return (their houses were not destroyed by Russians like most of the houses in Chechnya), and yet a foreign (Russian) army is barring them from this.
And now I’d just say you watch what happens when the 58th Army explodes some Tochkas over a marketplace full of Russian citiziens:
Robert, with all your pathos, you’re quite a naive guy, frankly. Can’t you yourself answer why those Russians, Armenians, Jews, who managed to escape this cleansing do not want to get back to Chechnya, where they were shot at, raped, murdered?
BTW, ask yourself would many of those Georgians be so eager to return to Abkhazia, if they were the victims.
I wrote you another comment, but mistakingly posted it several comments lower. You may read it, starts from the words “The question still stands unanswered: “
The Georgians want to return to their ancestral lands.
They were the victims of internationally recognised war crimes committed by the separatists, such as the Gagra massacre, the Sukhumi massacre, the Omchamchire massacre, in all of which Russian troops were involved.
However, they love their ancestral homeland.
You really are ignorant Dimitry.
@Can’t you yourself answer why those Russians, Armenians, Jews, who managed to escape this cleansing do not want to get back to Chechnya, where they were shot at, raped, murdered?
Oh yeah. I know about some Russian refugees who now say they are Chechens. They have some serious reasons. One is a small boy in the documentary 3 Rooms of Melancholia. His parents were killed in the war and he was gang-raped by the Russian soldiers and left for dead. Now he says he’s a Chechen. Another is a (formerly) Russian painter who makes pictures of Grozny and war. Many other refugees were mistreated as “Chechens” by the Russian “patriots”, and the Russian survivors of the war still living in the “liberated” Grozny were opressed by the soldiers as “traitors” (as they were told they are). There were also even ethnic Russian soldiers who have joined the militants because of what they witnessed and endured there, and one of them (Pavel Kosolapov) is actually the guy who allegedly made the bombs used in the recent terrorist attacks in the Russian heartland (another former ethnic Russian soldier was on the very first suicide bombers in the conflict, and so on). Good job.
A story of one of the Russians still in Grozny (10 years ago): http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/grozny/ruins.html
(Actually 9 years ago, it was in 2001.)
Oh, and also:
If this was their homeland, and not just colony, they would return there no matter what happened there to them. Like the Chechen survivors of Stalinist genocide returned there from Kazakhstan. Or like those who had fled to Ingushetia (hundreds of thousands in 1999-2000, almost doubling the population of Ingushetia) mostly returned once the worst of war ended. But it’s just not the Russian land.
Or like Kosovo Serbs? You’re living in a fancy world, dude.
Oh? And in your “fancy world” Kosovo is for the last 10 years under the rule of Serbia, so you compare it with Chechnya?
Dmitry,
Robert wants you to believe that human population doubles every 5 years, like fruit flies.
Sad, but with the ones like Robert we in Europe may all feel one day what it means to live under Sharia law. I hope it never happens to any region of my country again.
@I hope it never happens to any region of my country again.
“Again”? It’s happening right now in Chechnya.
All women must to wear headscarves in schools and public buildings (or they won’t enter), alcohol and gambling are banned (or else), “honor killings” are allowed and even encouraged (by the Hero of Russia himself), alleged prostitutes are covertly executed (but their bodies dumped in public, with no investigation), and women accused of adultery are publicily beaten and the videos of his distributed using smart phones.
Oh, and if this is an alleged adultery with Christian, one may also get a GREEN CROSS (so symbolic) painted into their shaved heads by the Russian policemen:
@Robert wants you to believe that human population doubles every 5 years, like fruit flies.
RTR, are you just trying here very hard to say something most random and retarded you could think of, before you are blocked for ban-evading? Or are you just actually retarded?
Robert,
People, who are unhappy, don’t have too many children. If near-by Georgia and Armenia have low birth rates, and even Turkey is not in the top 100 countries, why would Chechnya’s birth rate be so high that the population triples every 10 years? Good living conditions?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate
Not true.
Look at the massive population growth of African states, and those that are currently involved in civil wars, from Africa to Asia
Niger, Mali, Aghanistan.
Did you actually look at your link before posting?
The question still stands unanswered:
Why exactly 300 000 non-Chechens left Chechnya which did not even start to fight for independence yet?
Who did force them to leave the region? WHO EXACTLY WERE these “post-colonial changes”?
The second question is: HOW MANY Chechens and Russians (I mean ethnicity in every word) died as a result of the war?
For this, I can give you a clue: read the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Chechen_War and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War.
You, people, need to get rid of those myths that have been beaten up your heads by neocon press. You need to face the real world, where there are multiple POVs, not the one admired by your military lobby.
Yes very helpful:
On February 4, 2000, in an attempt to stop the Chechen retreat, Russian forces bombed the village of Katyr-Yurt and then a civilian convoy under white flags, killing at least 170 civilians in the action later proven in the court to be a war crime
and from a link on those pages:
Civilian casualties
The Chechen separatist sources in 2003 cited figures of some 250,000 civilians, and up to 50,000 Russian servicemen, killed during the 1994-2003 period. The rebel side also acknowledged about 5,000 separatist combatants killed as of 1999-2004, mostly in the initial phases of the war.
In November 2004, the chairman of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow State Council, Taus Djabrailov, said over 200,000 people have been killed in the Chechen Republic since 1994, including over 20,000 children.[30] In August 2005, Djabrailov gave a conflicting figure of 160,000 killed, mostly Russians.[31]
In June 2005, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, a deputy prime minister in the Kremlin-controlled Chechen administration, said about 300,000 people have been killed during two wars in Chechnya over the past decade; he also said that more than 200,000 people have gone missing. Every resident of Chechnya has scores of relatives who have been killed or gone missing, he said.[32]
In September 2006, Anatoly Kulikov, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma committee on security said that In the 12 years of our Russian antiterrorist war in the Chechen Republic, aggregate losses among the federal forces, illegal armed groups and civilians are estimated at about 45,000 people.[33]
In November 2006, self-exiled separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev said that “Putin has already killed more than 250,000 innocent Chechens”.[34]
[edit]Independent estimates
In 2000, the Russian weekly Nezavisimoye Voennoye Obozreniye (Independent Military Review) compiled an incomplete list of 1,176 military servicemen fallen in Chechnya during the first year of conflict. If available the list included name, year and place of birth, rank and military unit, place, date and cause of death.[35]
For the period from 1994 to 2003, estimates ranged from 50,000 to 250,000 civilians and 10,000 to 50,000 Russian servicemen killed. Given that almost certainly both sides have tended to exaggerate enemy military casualties while minimizing their own and grossly underestimating its responsibility for civilian losses, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society set the conservative estimate of death toll in this time period at about 150,000 – 200,000 civilians, 20,000 to 40,000 Russian soldiers, and possibly the same amount of Chechen rebels.[36]
In February 2003, the Union of the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, estimated that some 11,000 servicemen have been killed, with another 25,000 wounded, since 1999. It also estimated the civilian death toll at about 20,000 people.[37] Their estimate for the earlier Chechen war was 14,000 dead troops as compared with the official figure of 5,500.
According to 2003 Military Balance, the annual report International Institute for Strategic Studies, the British-based think-tank, Russian forces suffered 4,749 dead in Chechnya between August 2002 and August 2003.[38]
In 2004, the British strategic-research centre Jane’s Information Group estimated that the federal forces in Chechnya suffered some 9,000 to 11,000 combat deaths during the second war’s most intense phase, from its beginning in late summer 1999 to early 2002. In 2003, they lost roughly 3,000 dead.[39]
In 2004, the human rights group Memorial estimated the amount of civilian casualties of both wars at “more than 200,000” and the amount of Russian soldiers killed at 20,000 to 40,000 [40]
In 2006, Alexander Cherkasov of the human rights group Memorial pointed out that the Russian government did not make any attempt to count civilian casualties in the war of 1994-96, nor after 1999. Many figures have been quoted, some greatly exaggerated; a figure of 250,000 [civilian] dead in the two wars is sometimes repeated, but without there being adequate substantiation of such a number, Cherkasov said, and concluded: The total number of peaceful residents of the Chechen Republic who perished during the two wars may have reached 70,000. (…) [In the second war] the total number of civilians killed, including those who disappeared, adds up to between 14,800 to 24,100. However, he admitted that the accuracy of his estimates was not high.
In 2007, Memorial estimated about 15,000 Russian soldiers have died in total, while others estimated up to 40,000.[41]
According to Amnesty International in 2007 the second war has killed up to 25,000 civilians since 1999 (many in the first months of the conflict), while up to another 5,000 people are missing. “Many thousands” of people are believed to be buried in unmarked graves.[42][43]
The Society for Threatened Peoples estimated the civilians casualties of the first war at 80,000 and the second war at 50,000, but it’s unsure when this report was made.[44]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Second_Chechen_War
Regardless, Russians have killed huge numbers of innocent civilians in Chechnya while crushing an independence movement, and of course at the same time Russia hypocritically supports, arms, and aids separatist movements in neighboring states such as Moldova and Georgia, and commits ethnic cleansing against the population of those states.
@The question still stands unanswered: Why exactly 300 000 non-Chechens left Chechnya which did not even start to fight for independence yet?
Wrong, I already answered. But let me repeat myself:
Post-colonial changes (“why so few whites in Africa now?”), economics, and the Russian army.
For similar reason they have left Ingushetia (even before the current insurgency), which never declared independence and was always under the federal control. But there is 70-80% or so unemployment. So now wonder there was no “second Kuwait” as promised by Dudayev in this part of the split Checheno-Ingushetia, and even Russia’s own economic disaster of the early 1990s looked better than this especially for the formerly priviladged Russian colonists who suddenly lost their Ubermenschen status.
Then add a HUGE war in which the Russian army completely destroyed just everything. Including the Orthodox church in Grozny (there was only one in the Soviet times) and scores of multi-story apartment blocks full of ethnic Russians, mostly pensioners. (You know, when you see the videos and pictures from the fighting for Grozny, and whenever you see some bewildered elderly people among the ruins of central Grozny, it’s a very good chance it’s the ethnic Russians. Their Chechen neighbours mostly left the city for their families in the villages and to their kin in Ingushetia.)
Oh, and I kind of smiled at this “exactly 300 000”. Is this what you actually believe?
@WHO EXACTLY WERE these “post-colonial changes”?
It’s a thing, not a person. Just absolutely typical developments. When a country loses a colony, the colonists mostly return to the metropoly. Check out the end of the western colonialism in Africa and Asia after WWII. And not even when forced by the Soviet-supported communist “national liberation movements” (from Vietnam to Angola).
@The second question is: HOW MANY Chechens and Russians (I mean ethnicity in every word) died as a result of the war?
Nobody know, but at least tens of thousands for both nations (and by Russian nation I mean all non-Chechens here). But I believe more Russian civs were killed by the Russians than Chechens by Chechens despite all the infighting. Good job. Now continue to cry about a few Grad rockets. Because you are now the world’s biggest crybabies, next to the Palestinians, and the #1 biggest hypocrites. Btw, Grad rockets were even fired at the hostages seized by Raduyev in 1996, with such accuracy one salvo even landed on an FSB detachment and almost killed Alex Litvinenko. In Moscow the hostages were gassed to death, and in Beslan the Ossetians were burned alive with portable rocket flamethrowers. Good job.
post-colonial changes – that might be your perception of the situation in Abkhazia, perhaps?
and for how many – the numbers are there in the links, you just try to see them not, just too keep your illusions.
Well, considering that Georgians lived in Abkhazia long before your state of Russia even existed.
See Strabo and his “geography” for details.
Dioscuras (Sukhumi) was a Svanetian city (Georgian) at the time of the Roman empire.
Then there is a the simple fact that every archeological dig, and all the cultural and historical monuments of Abkhazia, from Churches to fortresses dating back to Roman times all bear Georgian inscriptions.
Interstingly Apsu speak a north caucasian dialect not a south caucasian one.
Regardless, both Georgians and Apsu have lived in Abkhazia for thousands of years.
According to Voice of Treason (RTR), the best living conditions in the world are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where everyone is happy.
(Apparently much better than in Russia, where the ethnic Russians are so unhappy thay have so few children the country as a whole faces a total demographic disaster.)
About the Democratic Republic of the Congo:
The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC – formerly called Zaire under President Mobutu Sese Seko) is the widest interstate war in modern African history. The DRC has become an environment in which numerous foreign players have become involved, some within the immediate sub-region, and some from much further afield. That only serves to complicate the situation and to make peaceful resolution of the conflict that much more complex. The war, centered mainly in eastern Congo, has involved nine African nations and directly affected the lives of 50 million Congolese.
The International Rescue Committee says that between August 1998 and April 2004 (when the bulk of the fighting occurred) 3.8 million people died in the DRC. Most of these deaths were due to starvation or disease that resulted from the war, not from actual fighting. Millions more have become internally displaced or have sought asylum in neighboring countries.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/congo.htm
Sunshine, you are unstoppable. I wonder if you plan moving to Kosovo one day, as they advised to RTR to refusehis american citizenship. Or, maybe, go srtaight to Chechnen mountaineers – they adore Jews, let me tell you. http://www.google.ru/search?hl=ru&lr=&newwindow=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:ru:official&q=chechnya+jew&start=0&sa=N
Felgengauer? Isn’t that the “expert” who has told us at least 20 times in the past year that he knew for sure that Russia was going to invade Georgia in the next month, and the next month, and the month after that? Whom shall we believe next? The boy who cried wolf twenty times?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop (210 in Perry’s numbering system.[1]) The protagonist of the fable is a bored shepherd boy who entertained himself by tricking nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock of sheep. When they came to his rescue, they found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock (and in some versions the boy). The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:
Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.
Both F and Oleg Orlov are soviet biologists, then “professional fighters with the regime”. Both worked in the US-funded institutions. Both seriously considered Chechnya an normal independent state. How comes I trust lawyers and sociologists and my own eyes and Wikipedia more in questions of Chechen war?
@Both seriously considered Chechnya an normal independent state.
And I just love how you lie.
Oh do I?
What if I give quotes, would you admit you lie?
Олег Орлов:
Объясню. Поскольку мы попали, силою обстоятельств, сразу на другую сторону, нам нужно было представиться. Как должен вести себя депутат Думы и Уполномоченный по правам человека официально? Он должен официально заявить о себе властям. В Моздоке он заявил бы о себе генералам, в Грозном – руководству Ичкерии. Мы же не шпионы…
Oleg Orlov [my translation, feel free to check]:
I’ll explain. Because we got, by misfortune, to the other side right away, we had to introduce ourselves. So how should a Duma deputee and Human rights comissioneer behave? He should introduce himself to authorities. In Mozdok he would introduce himself to the generals, in Grozny – to the authorities of Ichkeria.
[Now, dear, there’s no region of Ichkeria in Russia. Go google to know what were the authorities of Ichkeria. Quote following.]
Дудаев нас принял через три дня. До него мы еще имели встречи с официальными лицами. Не могу сказать, чтобы эти чиновники производили благоприятное впечатление, но что есть, то есть.
Dudaev [go google] accepted us in three days. Before meeting him, we had other meetings with official persons. I can’t say these officials made a good impression, but we have what we have.
[Quote ends].
That was in 1994-1995. Not even in 1996, when Russians withdrawn their forces.
So, darling, do you need a quote about Ichkeria’s “officials and authorities” from Felghenhauer, or would you just shut up at this stage?
@Now, dear, there’s no region of Ichkeria in Russia.
Ichkeria is in central Chechnya. If you say it was actually not in Russia, dear, I won’t argue with you about this, because you’re actually right, after the peaceful split of Checheno-Ingushetia Chechnya declared independence and never joined the Russian Federation until the bogus “referendum” of 2003.
Robert, you’re a liar?
Nope.
You see, the newly-created Ingushetia joined the (also newly-founded) Russian Federayion in 1992. But Chechnya did not, and on the other hand it actually declared full sovereignity and independence. Russia de-facto recognised it, as exactly all of Russian administration, army, and police were withdrawn from the republic in 1991-1992.
There was a Russian invasion in 1994, and they withdrew again in 1996. And in 1997 Yeltsin even officially congratulated Maskhadov upon his election to the post of the President of ChRI, and met him at the Kremlin to sign a formal peace treaty between the RF and the Republic of Ichkeria:
”We have signed a peace deal of historic dimensions, putting a full stop to 400 years of history,” Mr. Yeltsin said in the Kremlin as his Chechen counterpart, Aslan Maskhadov, listened solemnly at his side. Mr. Yeltsin pledged ”never to use force or threaten to use it in relations between the Russian federation and the Republic of Ichkeria.”
Robert, you called me liar when I was talking abt. А and Orlov. I proved you I was not lying and gave you quotes.
Again: did you lie?
Dmitry,
“Now, dear, there’s no region of Ichkeria in Russia. Go google to know what were [not?] the authorities of Ichkeria. ”
Did you want to say this to Boris Yelstin, president of the Russian Federation? Even he has eventually disagreed with you apparently. Are you trying to be more papal then the pope now?
Also telling me to “go google” Dudayev was really stupid. Yeah, you know, because I just never heard about him. Really. Honestly, I’m totally ignorant on the subject, all stuff I told you already I’ve been learning about on a fly. “Going googling”.
Good job Dima. As always. Now cry me a river about how just one artillery attack is “total genocide” (© Putin) when it’s not fired by the Russian forces. “08.08.08” you say. Let’s see “01.01.95”, when not just dozens, but actually thousands of “Russian citiziens” died:
Again: did you lie? Just give us all a fair answer to this simple question this time.
Dmitry,
Robert is a Goebbels-like demagogue. He twists everything in a very skilled way. Like when he lied to us that Stalin “pissed and shat” in his pants and died on the floor, while Beria, Khrischev, Malenkov and others watched and refused to help him.
And when Lukashenko decided to spit in Medvedev’s face by giving asylum to Bakiyev, Robert made it look like Lukashenko did so on orders from Kremlin. Here is how he phrased it in a clever way: “Meanwhile the former president of Kyrgyzstan received asylum in the so-called “Union of Russia and Belarus”. Clever, eh?
And speaking of that, here is an interesting article:
http://www.rosbalt.ru/2010/04/22/730821.html
Lukashenko is trying to provoke “a revolution”
President Alexander Lukashenko in his annual address to the nation and the parliament of Belarus has once again attacked Russia and on the same day, gave asylum to the ousted Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Moscow saw this as an unfriendly step and openly derided “Batka” for “giving permanent residence to people who lost their jobs.”
Given the fact that Moscow supported the interim government of Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, publicly declaring their support for the deposed president, intervened in the Central Asian policy of Russia. The next day, the Belarusian leader said that elections, which are being prepared in Kyrgyzstan, cannot take place without the deposed president. Bakiyev himself, feeling support from Lukashenko, contrary to his own agreement with Russia, USA, Kazakhstan and China, declared that he continues to consider himself a head of state.
After signing in Kharkov a number of strategic agreements with his counterpart from the other “fraternal” state Victor Yanukovich, Medvedev, speaking of the neighboring countries, and putting Ukraine as a positive example, questioned realtions with Lukashenka: “The question arises – partnership in the name of what and for what? It is one thing – perfect partnership, and another thing – empty declarations of intent; one thing – serious work, and another thing – decisions to admit to permanent residence people who lost their jobs”
@Robert is a Goebbels-like demagogue. He twists everything in a very skilled way. Like when he lied to us that Stalin “pissed and shat” in his pants and died on the floor, while Beria, Khrischev, Malenkov and others watched and refused to help him.
You’re right, Beria, Khrischev, Malenkov and others shat on him, actually. It was Soviet bukkake-party, much better than the regular communist party:
@And when Lukashenko decided to spit in Medvedev’s face by giving asylum to Bakiyev, Robert made it look like Lukashenko did so on orders from Kremlin. Here is how he phrased it in a clever way: “Meanwhile the former president of Kyrgyzstan received asylum in the so-called “Union of Russia and Belarus”. Clever, eh?
RTR, please get a much-needed proper psychiatric treatment. Schizophrenia is a b*itch.
Nope, Dima.
Oleg Orlov did not “seriously considered Chechnya an normal independent state” any more than Boris Yeltsin.
And Felgenhauer wrote this in 1996:
“After a full or partial withdrawal of troops — while maintaining control over several regions of northern Chechnya — the majority of the republic’s territory will be under separatist control. But Chechnya will not receive full independence, since the Russian constitution forbids the separation of any part of the federation. And neither Lebed, nor President Boris Yeltsin nor the parliament in Moscow can legally grant the Chechens independence, even if they wanted to.”
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/a-chechnya-turning-point/319698.html
Of course this was just his opinion and not mine. And he’s actuallly wrong here, because they didn’t need to “separate” at all, and were not “separatists”. For the reason they simply did not join the Russian Federation.
Ok, Robert (Bob?), have it the way you want. I am in no way interested in continuing this discussion with you.
Oy vey!
Another american maven? What I don’t know I make up?
Yes, Dima-RTS-Photophobe. I’m an American-Turkish Jew-Albanian living in Saudi Arabia. Keep guessing!
Man, I’m such a communist internationale.
But speaking of Jews, and the Jews of Chechnya, the surname of this guy rings the bell?
Published: April 25, 2010
VIENNA — Umar S. Israilov, a whistleblower living in hiding after accusing Chechnya’s president of personally participating in torture, kidnapping and murder, was gunned down here last year as he stepped from a grocery store with yogurt, eggs and bags of M&M’s and Gummi Bears for his three young children.
The president of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, who has suppressed a separatist insurgency with harsh methods and unwavering Kremlin backing, vigorously denied any knowledge of Mr. Israilov, one of his former bodyguards, or of his death.
But a 15-month Austrian investigation into the crime has uncovered links between the suspected killers and one of Mr. Kadyrov’s close advisers, a one-legged former rebel who has been described, in unrelated allegations in Russia, as an organizer of Mr. Kadyrov’s dirty work.
It has also shown how the brutal rules of a place like Chechnya can reach from the Caucasus into Western Europe, where Mr. Israilov found refuge. Federal counterterrorism investigators here unraveled a plot with bungling, panicky Chechen hit men frantically talking on their cellphones — including placing a call to Mr. Kadyrov’s adviser in Russia, Shaa Turlayev, while trying to escape. Before the killing, two of these men also met in Austria with Mr. Turlayev, a copy of whose passport was found in the getaway car.
The new evidence raises questions about Mr. Kadyrov’s denial and whether Chechnya’s president or government played a direct role in the killing, one of a string of contract-style slayings — in Chechnya, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Moscow, Europe and the Middle East — that have silenced the Chechen president’s critics or rivals. These killings have left the impression that Mr. Kadyrov, whose rise and hold on power has been nurtured by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, stands above any government’s law.
[What “government’s law”? There is now law in Russia. Some more such naive remarks in the rest of the article, too.]
The one who calls Israilov a Jew is rather a shlemazl than a maven:)
Let me tell you one thing, young shlemazl: you ethnicity is nothing, even if you are a half-Jew. You religion defines your mind much better.
Israil is a muslim name, just like John or Peter is Christian. All the three are of Jewish origin, but you should not mistake every Peters or Johnson for Jew. Same with Israilov – he’s ethnich chechen.
Jews were as well cleansed from Chechnya during tghe early 90ies, Chechens were just a little more brutal with them, compared to Russians. Because Chechens found themselves aryans under your beloved Dudayev:
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/11468/islamic-rebellion-in-dagestan-puts-jews-there-on-alert/
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/12079/jewish-agency-aids-orphans-in-chechnya/
http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2002-3/CIS.htm
@Let me tell you one thing, young shlemazl: you ethnicity is nothing, even if you are a half-Jew. You religion defines your mind much better.
My atheism sometimes leaning towards Buddhism? Maybe. If you say so.
@Israil is a muslim name, just like John or Peter is Christian. All the three are of Jewish origin, but you should not mistake every Peters or Johnson for Jew. Same with Israilov – he’s ethnich chechen.
Benik Israilov, the former member of the local Jewish community
http://www.fjc.ru/news/newsArticle.asp?AID=147132
[Danny] Israilov, who is Jewish
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_492706.html
Good job Dima.
@Because Chechens found themselves aryans under your beloved Dudayev: http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/11468/islamic-rebellion-in-dagestan-puts-jews-there-on-alert/
Wow. An article about Dagestan in 1999, when Dudayev was dead for years, not even mentioning him once (but containing lots of false information). Good job. As always.
@http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/12079/jewish-agency-aids-orphans-in-chechnya/
The Jewish Agency for Israel is trying to help children isolated by the war in Chechnya between Russia and Muslim insu, After a news report last week about the plight of orphans of different nationalities, including some Jews, who had fled Chechnya
(…)
“The kids sleep together in their clothes to warm each other, there are no heaters and no hot water. But still more important is that the kids are living to the accompaniment of bombs and shell explosions, and nobody knows how long they have to live here,” she said. “They badly need warm clothing and medicine.”
Yeah, so we return here to the joys of living under the Russian shelling & bombing for the people of Chechnya “of different nationalities, including some Jews”. Right?
And you still didn’t tell me if it was a bad thing, or was it worse than yours “08.08.08 total genocide” bawww-thing (and how much). So now you may elaborate.
Exactly nothing about Dudayev, too.
@http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2002-3/CIS.htm
Nothing about Dudayev. And also, while
“For example, there is an unlikely political alliance between the Russian branch of the Islamic Council, led by Geidar Jemal, who lives in Moscow, Movladi Udugov, ideologue of the rebel Chechens, and extreme nationalist Russians such as Aleksandr Prokhanov, Aleksandr Dugin, and Viktor Iliukhin, based on a political platform of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”
is true,
“At the end of March 2002 Aslan Maskhadov, head of the Chechen rebels, published a proclamation accusing the Israeli Mossad of cooperating with the Russians in the hostilities in northern Caucasus. The proclamation called for war against worldwide Zionism and announced the dispatch of volunteers to help the Palestinian Authority.”
is simply a lie. The whole paragraph is totally false.
And it sounds like something Basayev would say (in the 1990s he travelled to PA and met Arafat etc.), except he didn’t.
And wen when his men kidnapped a Jew, he ordered him to be released AND apologized to him (both personally and in public). And the Russians, who always lie and just can’t stop, then invented an usual fairy tale about how they “liberated him”:
Doctors without Borders began working in the Northern Caucasus in late 90s, even as the second war broke out in the region. In 1999 the mission provided aid to Chechen refugees in Ingushetia, and in 2000 opened its office in Chechnya. A team headed by Kenneth Gluck was helping to rebuild and support clinics and hospitals in Chechnya.
On January 9, 2001 Kenneth Gluck was abducted by armed men while traveling in an unarmed humanitarian convoy near the village of Starye Atagi. Gluck was forced into a car and driven away, but abductors allowed him to take his medicine with him (Gluck suffered from asthma). He spent almost a month in a cellar, while aid agencies and relief organizations urged all sides in the conflict to set him free. 26 days later he was released unharmed and brought to the house of a doctor who lived in Starye Atagi.
Federal command then triumphantly reported on a successful operation behind Gluck’s liberation. However, the doctor’s story was quite different. Upon returning to the Moscow office of MSF he recounted that the notorious rebel leader Shamil Basyaev personally apologized to him for the trouble. At approximately the same time the web site of Chechen separatists posted a letter written by Basayev, where the warlord explained that he had mistaken the doctor for a spy.
Oh, and continued from the same link (from 2002, with Dudayev being quite not alive for 6 years already):
“While not yet translated into local violence against the Jews, the potential threat is feared. There were, however, many incidents in the northern Caucasus whereby Jews who planned to leave for Israel were robbed and even killed in the process. Although the motive was criminal, sometimes antisemitic slogans were left in order to mislead the police as to the real identity of the criminals. ”
Dima reads this and thinks: “Damn you accursed Turkish-American Jew-Albanian living in Saudi Arabia (allegedly)! Now THIS will prove you how the Chechens found themselves aryans under your beloved Dudayev!”
Good job Dima. Carry on.
Yes, Chechens like Jews. As well as all other non-Muslims.
You are abolutely right, as always.
I am sorry for not continuing this very interesting discussion anymore, I just don’t have enough time to.
:)
So anyway, just tell me how did you react to the news of any Grad (Uragan, Smerch, whatever) attack on any Chechnya city, town or a village full of Russian citiziens (and in the case of Grozny in August 1996, actually also full of Russian troops). Tell me how much it left you traumatised, and what kind of “total genocide” you think was this.
You ask me to be serious that’s no fun.
But, well, if you ask:
First of all, “genocide” is not a kind of a word any sane person would throw so lightly. Especially with any Jewish ancestry, even if you also have Albanian blood (which is a lie, of course:).
Second, I feel deeply saddened, and said that from the very beginning, that the war in Chechnya started at all.
Third, I think the way the First war was fought amounted to high treason in some cases, and the way the city was lost to Chechens in August 1996 also does.
That is definitely why I support Putin, young shlemazl. But damn I doubt you would understand.
@First of all, “genocide” is not a kind of a word any sane person would throw so lightly.
First of all, I’m not talking about genocide.I’m talking about “total genocide”, which was a joke by Mr Putin (an insane person):
“Mr Putin heard from refugees descriptions of the atrocities committed by Georgian soldiers. �t� total genocide� Mr Putin said. �his is nothing but madness. Civilised people do not behave like this� he said.”
http://www.russianembassy.org.za/special/text/ossetia.html
@Especially with any Jewish ancestry, even if you also have Albanian blood (which is a lie, of course:).
Which is also a joke, of course, this time by me. OK, I’ll explain, since you appaear to be new here: There was a guy of multiple nicknames here, most commonly known as Photophobe, who told me I’m an Albanian and then he told me I’m from Saudi Arabia. He either actually believed or said this as an supposed insult, but as you see I actually liked it and embraced my Albanian-Saudi background. Later RTR also told me I’m from Turkey. And now you tell me I’m an American half-Jew. Okay!
@Third, I think the way the First war was fought amounted to high treason in some cases, and the way the city was lost to Chechens in August 1996 also does.
Guess it had less to do with any kind of treason than to alcoholism. Citing the same article by Felgenhauer:
In 1995-1996 the Russian Defense Ministry also formed a “permanent deployment” brigade in Chechnya – the 205th Motor-Rifle based in Hankala. Throughout the NCMD the 205th brigade was known as “always drunk” 205th. In the battle for Grozny in August 1996 the 205th brigade was defeated and decimated by the Chechen rebels. Its remnants were withdrawn later to Budenovsk in the Stavropol region where the unruly kontraktniki of the 205th created havoc, assaulting the local Russian population.
Dmitry,
Trust Robert that Chechen rebels love Jews as much as he does. Just visit Kavkaz Center and read:
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2010/02/18/11443.shtml
Jewish assassins set up Britons. London is not happy – Kavkazcenter.com
SCANDAL. Afri Synergy accuses Jews of human organ-jacking – Kavkazcenter.com
Jewish kidnapped 7600 Palestinian children – Kavkazcenter.com
The Radical Homosexual Movement Is Run By Jews – Kavkazcenter.com
Mixture of ignorance and Jewish propaganda – Kavkazcenter.com
Jewish Ruling over Hollywood – Kavkazcenter.com
Netanyahu says 9/11 was a good thing…for Israel – Kavkazcenter.com
‘Holocaust victims’ turned out to be victims of Gulag – Kavkazcenter.com
Another Ritual Murder Case Suspected in Russia – Kavkazcenter.com
Russian Christians accused local jews for kidnapping and killing these Christian and Muslim children in Krasnoyarsk
KavkazCenter – «They won’t dare do it…»
Jewish Communists were mercilessly exterminating the Russian people
Paradise does not belong to the faithless Jews who sold the Christ
Estonians Consider “Russian Liberators” To Be Jewish Lackeys
Etc, etc
La Russophobe wrote: “ the event was trumpted by Kavkaz Center, the voice of the Chechen rebels.”
Robert defended Kavkaz Center: “Trumpeted”? Geez, did you even read it? and then provided links and quotes from Kavkaz Center to prove that it is a reliable source of information
Also see: https://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/march-31-2010-contents/
Just don’t show that to that young shlemazl – this may upset him.
Gosh, RTR, I already said:
And also, while “For example, there is an unlikely political alliance between the Russian branch of the Islamic Council, led by Geidar Jemal, who lives in Moscow, Movladi Udugov, ideologue of the rebel Chechens, and extreme nationalist Russians such as Aleksandr Prokhanov, Aleksandr Dugin, and Viktor Iliukhin, based on a political platform of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.” is true
Like in: Yes, Udugov is an antisemite, just like these 3 Russians, news at 11. Geez, I SURELY was never aware of this!
Like in: Dmitry, don’t be a retard (one ReTaRd is enough here), and read what I write.
@Robert defended Kavkaz Center: “Trumpeted”? Geez, did you even read it? and then provided links and quotes from Kavkaz Center to prove that it is a reliable source of information
More like:
“Trumpeted”? Geez, did you even read it? and then provided links and quotes from Kavkaz Center to prove they did not “trumpet”.
And this is what I actually wrote (to LR):
I know you’re really desperate for “Chechen connection” and how coming to Sochi “is a suicide” (and I think it’s a quite odd obsession, just like this one about Russian tennis players and their “bloodbath”), but please. You are “trumpeting” it much more right now, should I believe you’re really behind this bombing? :)
“The identity of the two was as shocking as their venal deeds — they were not angry Chechen infiltrators, but rather a local policeman and a TV cameraman.”
Why “shocking”? KavkazCenter keeps accusing (“trumpeting”?) “the law enforcers” of staging terrorist attacks and the Russian TV of colluding with them. For example, here in 2007:
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2007/09/03/52723.shtml
К этой расправе можно было бы относиться как к банальному криминалу, если бы не такая раскрутка данного события, с привлечением центральных кафирских телеканалов. Явно постановочный взрыв в самом центре операторской камеры, неизвестно откуда взявшаяся журналистка, первый и единственный раз показавшаяся на телеэкранах, свидетельствует о том, что данное событие было подготовлено и осуществлено русистскими чекистами, которые, как известно, часто используют подобные методы.
And the whole “trumpeting” was this:
An explosive device was set off in the center of Lazarev District in the city of Sochi on Victory Street (Ulitsa Pobedy). Russian sources reported that one person is dead.
“It was an explosion of an unidentified small-size explosive device, from which a local resident died,” as representative of the local police gang said. He mentioned that the victim sustained traumas, from which he died. No other details have been reported by the Russian Kuffar (infidels/invaders).
A short story/joke about what happened in Ukraine this year:
While walking down the street one day, a US senator is tragically hit by a truck and dies.
His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
‘Welcome to heaven,’ says St. Peter. ‘Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we’re not sure what to do with you.’
‘No problem, just let me in,’ says the man.
‘Well, I’d like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we’ll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity.’
‘Really, I’ve made up my mind. I want to be in heaven,’ says the senator.
‘I’m sorry, but we have our rules.’
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.
Everyone is very happy and in evening Dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.
They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and champagne.
Also present is the devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it is time to go.
Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises.
The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.
‘Now it’s time to visit heaven.’
So, 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.
‘Well, then, you’ve spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now choose your eternity.’
The senator reflects for a minute, then he answers: ‘Well, I would never have said it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in hell.’
So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.
Now the doors of the elevator open and he’s in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.
He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.
The devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder. ‘I don’t understand,’ stammers the senator. ‘Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now there’s just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?’
The devil looks at him, smiles and says, ‘Yesterday we were campaigning. Today you voted.’
Bala notes that 17 of Ukraine’s 25 regions voted against Mr. Yanukovych, which should give him pause about antagonizing widespread concerns that a Russian military and economic presence in Ukraine could be accompanied by unwanted cultural influence.
Several Russian lawmakers exacerbated those concerns Tuesday during discussion of the fleet agreement in Moscow. They said it will help protect Russia’s cultural and linguistic presence in Ukraine.
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/europe/–92439844.html
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