Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces are Defending their Future from Ukrainian Shelling

Republished 24 Nov 22 Eva Bartlett in Gaza

Published Nov 19, 2022, Covert Action [See the comments section, some apologists for the West’s war on Syria have resurfaced…]

Smeared, stigmatized, and lied about in Western media propaganda, the mostly Russian-speaking people of the Donbass region were being slaughtered by the thousands in a brutal war of “ethnic cleansing” launched against them by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, which the U.S. installed after the CIA overthrew Ukraine’s legally elected president in a 2014 coup.

Although the Donbass people had been pleading for Russian military aid to defend them against the increasingly murderous military assaults by the Ukraine government forces, which killed more than 14,000 of their people, Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to intervene. Instead, he tried to broker a peace agreement between the warring parties.

But the U.S. and Britain secretly colluded to sabotage peace negotiations, persuading president Zelenksy to ignore the Minsk III peace agreement that the Ukraine government had previously signed, and which had been countersigned by Russia, France and Germany.

Realizing that the U.S. and its NATO allies would never permit peace negotiations to succeed, Putin finally sent troops into Ukraine on February 24. Russian troops went in to support and reinforce the outnumbered and outgunned Donbass Forces who had been defending their land against attacks by the Kyiv government for nearly eight years.

Voices From the Frontlines of Former Eastern Ukraine Republics

In the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in October, I went to a frontline outpost 70 meters from Ukrainian forces in Avdeevka (north and west of Donetsk), according to the Donbas commanders I spoke with there. [Watch our interview here]

To reach that position, I went with two other journalists to a meeting point with two commanders of Pyatnashka—volunteer fighters, including Abkhazi, Slovak, Russian, Ossetian and other nationalities, including locals from Donbas.

From there, they drove us to a point as far as they could drive before walking the rest of the way, several minutes through brush and trenches, eventually coming to their sandbagged wood and cement fortified outpost.

It has changed hands over the years, Ukrainian forces sometimes occupying it, Donbas forces now controlling it.

One soldier, a unit commander who goes by the call sign “Vydra” (Otter), was formerly a miner from the DPR who had been living in Russia with his family. In 2014, he returned to the Donbas to defend his mother and relatives still there. He spoke of the outpost.

“We dug and built this with our hands. Several times over the years, the Ukrainians have taken these positions. We pushed them back, they stormed us…Well, we have been fighting each other for eight years.”

There, artillery fire is the biggest danger they face. “You can hide from a sniper, but not from artillery, and they’re using large caliber.”

………………………………………………… Perhaps surprising to some, when Vydra was asked whether he hates Ukrainians, he replied emphatically no, he has friends and relatives in Ukraine.

“We have no hatred for Ukraine. We hate those nationalists who came to power. But ordinary Ukrainians? Why? Many of us speak Ukrainian. We understand them, they understand us. Many of them speak Russian.

I’ve been involved in sports a lot of time, wrestling. So, I’ve got a lot of friends in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Kirovograd, Odessa, Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Transcarpathia.

I have relatives in western Ukraine, and we still communicate. Yes, they say one thing on the street, but when we talk to each other, they say, ‘Well, you have to, because the SBU is listening.’

Ukraine shouts about democracy, then puts people in handcuffs for no reason. My aunt got in trouble because they found my photo on her Skype.

And I’m on the Myrotvorets [kill list] website.” [As is the author, see this article.]

He spoke of Ukraine’s shelling from 2014, when the people of the Donbass were unarmed and not expecting to be bombed by their own country.

“When the artillery hit the city of Yenakievo, east of Gorlovka, we were defenseless. We went with hunting rifles and torches to fight them. Most of the weapons we had later were captured from them. We had to go to the battlefield without weapons in order to get the weapons.”

When asked if he was concerned that Ukrainian forces might take Donetsk he replied no, of course not, they didn’t succeed in 2014, they won’t now……………….

I asked how he felt to be treated and described as sub-human, to be called dehumanizing names, a part of the Ukrainian nationalists’ brainwashing propaganda. As I wrote previously:

“Ukrainian nationalists openly declare they view Russians as sub-human. School books teach this warped ideology. Videos show the extent of this mentality: Teaching children not only to also hate Russians and see them as not humans, but also brainwashing them to believe killing Donbas residents is acceptable. The Ukrainian government itself funds neo-Nazi-run indoctrination camps for youths.”

“It’s offensive,” Vydra said, “We are saddened: There are sick people. We need to heal them, slowly.”

I asked whether he thought friendship between Ukrainians and Russians would be possible.

“It will take years for any friendship. Take Chechnya, one region of Russia, it was at war. But slowly, slowly…We must all live together. We are one people.” Indeed, now Chechen fighters are one of the most effective forces fighting alongside Donbas and Russian soldiers to liberate Donbas areas from Ukrainian forces…………………………………..

Commanders Speak of Geopolitical Reasons for Ukraine’s War

Outside, sitting in front of an Orthodox banner and a collection of collected munitions—including Western ones—two platoon commanders, “Kabar” and “Kamaz,” spoke of the bigger geopolitical picture. [See video]

“America is running the show here,” Kabar said. “It builds foreign policy on the basis of how its domestic policy is built, which is through conflicts with external countries. They are accustomed to proving their power to their people through terrorism around the world, inciting fires in Syria, in the east. They played the card of radical Islam there………………………………………….. more https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/46477/posts/4401278654

November 24, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

NATO’s hair trigger: The Polish missile incident was a close brush with nuclear annihilation

https://www.rt.com/news/566710-polish-missile-incident-nato/ Scott Ritter. 18 Nov 22The fervor with which Poland and others sought to drag NATO into a war with Russia should ring alarm bells for everyone

The world dodged a bullet this week, with some NATO members trying, but failing, to trigger Article 4 as a means of confronting Russia in Ukraine. We may not be so lucky next time.

The recent scandal surrounding what most of the world now agrees was an errant Ukrainian surface-to-air missile landing on Polish soil, killing two Polish citizens in the process, has exposed an ugly reality about the eastern reaches of NATO today:

Despite the more reserved stance of the old NATO establishment (the US, UK, France, and Germany), the new upstarts in eastern Europe seem hell-bent on finding a mechanism that will justify NATO intervention in Ukraine.

This predilection for nuclear annihilation (no one should have any misgivings that a NATO-Russia conflict would end any other way) should send alarm bells ringing in the halls of power throughout NATO and the rest of the world, because left to their own devices, the Russophobic officials that dominate the governments of Poland and the three Baltic republics act like lemmings, running toward the Ukrainian cliff, oblivious to their fate as they chase the fantasy of NATO defeating Russia on a European battlefield.

The rush to judgment that accompanied the arrival of the Ukrainian surface-to-air missile on Polish soil serves as a stark reminder about how the supposedly defensive characteristics of the NATO Charter can be used to promote, rather than deter, conflict. 

Let there be no doubt – NATO was aware that the missile that impacted near the village of Przewodów in Poland, killing two Polish citizens, was a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile the moment it was launched.

 The airspace over Ukraine is one of the most highly-monitored locations in the world. Without revealing sources and methods, suffice it to say there isn’t anything that happens over Ukraine that isn’t registered in real time on a NATO display in headquarters throughout Europe – including Poland.

And yet … Poland saw fit to summon the Russian ambassador and lodge a protest.

Moreover, Poland declared that it would increase its military readiness while contemplating the activation of Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, a mechanism which allows the alliance to discuss security threats to member states with an eye on possibly using NATO military force to rectify the situation. Article 4 is behind every combat deployment of NATO since its inception, from Serbia, to Libya, to Afghanistan. 

On cue, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, whose country borders Poland, tweeted that “every inch of NATO territory must be defended!”

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala likewise turned to Twitter to exclaim: “If Poland confirms that the missiles also hit its territory, this will be a further escalation by Russia. We stand firmly behind our EU and NATO ally.”

For its part, Estonia called the news “most concerning,” with its foreign minister declaring via Twitter, “We are consulting closely with Poland and other allies. Estonia is ready to defend every inch of NATO territory.” 

While all parties concurred that there was no basis for triggering Article 5 of NATO (i.e., the collective security clause), Article 4 was very much in play. Poland was adamant: The missile “attack” against Poland was clearly a crime, one that could not go unpunished. As such, under Article 4, Poland would be pushing “for NATO members and Poland to agree on the provision of additional anti-aircraft defense, including in part of the territory of Ukraine.”

And there you have it: “Including in part of the territory of Ukraine.”

Enter Germany, stage left: “As an immediate reaction to the incident in Poland, we will offer to strengthen air policing with combat air patrols over its airspace with German Eurofighters,” a German Defense Ministry spokesperson declared. 

Cue NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who convened an emergency meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels to discuss the Polish incident. According to the Finnish foreign minister (Finland, although not a NATO member, was invited to the meeting), “Closing the airspace [above Ukraine] will definitely be discussed. Various options of how we can protect Ukraine are on the table.”

While Germany reportedly rejected the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, noting that such an action would pose a threat of direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, one is left pondering how such a discussion came to be in the first place: Ukraine fired a surface-to-air missile, which was tracked by NATO as it impacted on Polish soil. And, as a result, NATO members end up discussing the possibility of invoking Article 4 of the NATO Charter, seeking to extend NATO air defense into Ukrainian air space in concert with the establishment of a no-fly zone enforced by NATO aircraft.

“Even if it was a blue on blue [incident] with a Ukrainian rocket that landed in Poland, I think there is still enough ground for Poland to invoke Article 4,” a former director of policy planning for NATO, Fabrice Pothier, declared.

Just to clarify what Mr. Pothier is saying: Because Ukraine fired a surface-to-air missile that ended up landing on Polish soil, NATO is justified in invoking Article 4, setting the stage for a possible NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine which could lead to global nuclear annihilation.

If there was ever any doubt about the threat NATO posed to the entire world, there is no more.

That this is being promulgated on behalf of a Ukrainian leader who, despite universal consensus that the missile which hit Poland was Ukrainian, denies this possibility, all the while blaming Russia in the hopes that NATO will intervene, only adds to the insanity of this crisis.

While it appears that the world has dodged the potential death sentence triggered by the NATO Article 4 this time, the hair-trigger aspect of NATO’s Pavlovian response mechanism when it comes to seeking causal justification for military intervention in Ukraine should have everyone on high alert.

November 18, 2022 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment