Ukraine civil war - update - 10/11/2014

Ukraine SITREP October 11th, 13:05 UTC/Zulu: no Novorussian "sellout" after all

Vineyard of the Saker,

11 October, 2014

A few short items about the situation in the Ukraine.

First, here is the latest map of the combat situation: (for high res click here)

Second, Colonel Cassad is confirming that the Russians are finishing the pipeline which will bring Russian gas to some areas of Novorussia over the course of the upcoming winter.

Third, Cassad also confirms that while the voentorg (Russian covert military aid) is currently closed, the Novorussians command have received ironclad guarantees that in case of Ukie attack the voentorg would be fully reopened.  This agreement between Russia and Novorussia was finalized yesterday.

Lastly, as you have probably read elsewhere, the Novorussians and the Ukies, which have been negotiating under the watchful eyes of officially invited Russian General Staff officers, have agreed to a demarcation line although Kiev has immediately denied that.  What Kiev says really does not matter at all - they always spew nonsense - but it appears that the deal was made or is very close to being finalized.

Conclusion: all the panic about Russia "selling out" Novorussia now turns out to be utter nonsense.

The Saker

PS - important correction:

In my last SITREP I wrote:

The infighting of Novorussian political leaders and field commanders continues. At best, some of them simply ignore everybody else (Khodakovski or Cossack leaders) at worst, they openly fight each other (Bezler and Zakharchenko). In fact, Zakharchenko apparently resigned, then this resignation was pulled back.

This is incorrect. An anonymous reader correctly corrected (is this English?) me and wrote:

Saker, I am sorry but you appear to be misinformed: Bezler and Zakharchenko don't openly fight each other, or in fact anybody else. Whatever Bezler is doing, it's behind the scenes, and there is no reason to believe he is involved in the struggle to undermine Zakharchenko. The only field commander doing it seems to be Mozgovoi, with the full support and even encouragement from Strelkov.Strelkov and Mozgovoi are doing their best to undermine Zakharchenko, nobody else does. Strelkov seems to have fallen out with all the other senior Novorossian commanders, except for Mozgovoi.

Novorussian field commander Givi talks about the Donetsk airport situation

Dear friends,

Tonight I want to share two videos with you. The first one is of a young but very talented Novorussian commander known has "Givi" who is one of the two commanders tasked with securing the Dontesk Airport (the other one being "Motorola"). In this video Givi explains what that problem is:

But, while I am at it, I wanted to share another short video showing Givi being interviewed at the moment when the Ukies fire a volley from their "Grad" MLRS. The rockets land very close to Givi and yet while everybody runs for cover, Givi remains absolutely impassible. His cool is most impressive and says a lot about the kind of man Givi is.

Enjoy,

The Saker

A very moving video

The following video has deeply moved me. In a way, it is emblematic of the entire conflict in the (now ex-) Ukraine. It shows the profound simplicity and humanity of one of those combatants whom the AngloZionists and the Nazis in Kiev call "terrorists" and the equally profound in-humanity of those Junta Repression Forces whom we can hear in the background using heavy artillery to indiscriminately murder Novorussian civilians (Novorussian Armed Forces are not harmed in any way by such random city shelling). See for yourself.

The Saker

This represents the known position of Vladimir Suchan and his followers. The opinions are not necessarily my own.

Warrior or Trader; the Sovereignty of Putin

Воин или Торговец? Суверенитет Путина

"El Murid's interview:

1. The first thing Zakharchenko did as Prime Minister after Strelkov was forced to leave his post was taking all heavy weapons from Strelkov's brigade. This significantly undermined the combat capability of Strelkov's men.

2. In the last several weeks, Zakharchenko was arresting some of Strelkov's comrades in an effort of turning these people or their "testimonies" against Strelkov.

3. These Zakharchenko's actions have been taken upon directives from Moscow.

4. The Minsk Accords were supposed to be only a beginning of a plan calculated to deconstruct Novorossiya gradually step by step and not merely through a military defeat, but through an utter moral, morally devastating self-effacement, which would break the Russian spirit for years to come. That's the master plan.

5. Zakharchenko has just been forced to sign a deal which most likely presupposes redeployment of Ukrainian troops on the border between Novorossiya and Russia. Currently, in Donetsk, there is no other leader who would be willing to do that. In this also lies Zakharchenko's meaning and utility.

6. Zakharchenko is controlling cigarette and vodka business in Donetsk. However, he is "not allowed" to share the revenue even with the soldiers from his own OPlot brigade.

7. Putin is currently trying to strike a big bargain with Poroshenko over Crimea.

8. The real overall toll of the war in Donbass for both sides is already around 40,000 dead."

Vladimir Suchan

THE DEBT NOVOROSSIA OWES STRELKOV

Alexander Mercoulis

Via Facebook

I am going to have to be increasingly critical of Strelkov in future since I feel that both his current campaign against the Novorossian leadership and the way it is being conducted are unwise and wrong. However before I do so I think it is necessary to remind everyone of what Novorossia owes him.

Briefly, if Strelkov had not successfully held the Ukrainian military at bay for as long as he did in Slavyansk, Novorossia today would not exist. The junta's military would have simply rolled down the road from Slavyansk and Kramatorsk to Donetsk crushing all resistance in its wake.

Strelkov's stand in Slavyansk gave the NAF in Donetsk and Lugansk the critical weeks it needed to establish itself so that it could hold off the junta's military in July and August until the NAF became ready to take the offensive at the end of August. To see the difference those weeks made, contrast the way the Azov Brigade was able to roll through Mariupol in June with the determined resistance the Ukrainian military encountered when it tried to do the same thing in Donetsk and Lugansk in July.

Strelkov is clearly a complex and difficult man. That is why he was able to do what he did in Slavyansk and kept on doing it for weeks even as he felt that Russia had abandoned him.

It is also unfortunately why he is now an unsuitable leader for Novorossia.

Let it however be said clearly and never be forgotten: the seeds of the Ukrainian disaster in the Donbas were laid in the long weeks of May and June when Strelkov was carrying out his lonely stand in Slavyansk

CIS Leaders Lambast Poroshenko Following Snub at Summit

Dmitri Babich

RIA Novosti ,

10 October, 2014

MOSCOW, October 10 (RIA Novosti) – The summit in Minsk of the presidents of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose cluster of 11 former Soviet constituent republics, was doomed to attract attention; 

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was conspicuously absent. The head of the Commonwealth’s second-most populous member state preferred to visit the Italian city of Milan instead.

The presidents, quite predictably, saw Poroshenko’s move as a snub; two of them, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, personally scolded Poroshenko for failing to respect his neighbors and for his heavy-handed approach to the war on his own territory. The fact that Poroshenko was criticized not by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but by two of Russia’s NEIGHBORS, calls into question the main narrative of the Western press regarding the war in Ukraine and the way it is viewed by other post-Soviet states. During the past six months or more, the Western newspapers have been full of reports about other post-Soviet countries, especially ones with sizable Russian minorities, being all jittery because of the possibility of Russian “aggression” under the pretext of protecting these minorities.

The problem of possible new Russian “aggression,” however, was nowhere to be seen at the summit in Minsk. Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, whose country also has a Russian minority, lashed out not at Putin, but at Poroshenko. “If Mr. Poroshenko had not missed the opportunity to meet us and had provided his vision of the events [in Ukraine], this would make the situation a lot more clear to us,” Karimov said at the plenary session of the CIS summit. “Who among us have had the opportunity to see Mr. Poroshenko face to face recently? Very few. But he found time to visit Brussels in Belgium several times, as well as several other countries, which I would not like to name,” Karimov said, clearly referring to Poroshenko’s meetings with the anti-Russian leaders of several EU countries, as well as the US and Canada.

President Alexander Lukashenko, the host of the summit in the Belarusian capital Minsk, was almost equally caustic. “If the problems of Ukraine – economic ones, political ones, etc. - can better be resolved in Milan or Berlin, why do you [Mr. Poroshenko] need to ask for our help? Obviously, you need to solve these problems in Milan and Berlin,” Lukashenko said, clearly referring to Poroshenko’s recent suggestion that the CIS countries “participate” in the reconstruction of war-torn Donbass.

In fact, the clearly pro-Russian (and anti-Maidan) leanings of the CIS summit in Minsk shows where the leaders see the real (and not imagined) dangers for their countries. These dangers do not include Russian “aggression”, but rather internal destabilization, poverty and the possibility of violent Western-sponsored “regime changes.” If anyone is “isolated” (the most frequently used word in the Western discourse on Russia), it is not Russia, but rather Poroshenko’s regime – at least, inside the Commonwealth of Independent States (of which Ukraine formally remains a member).

Here are the facts which The Washington Post and other Western media, who love to talk about Russia’s “isolation,” simply do not notice. At the recent Caspian summit in Astrakhan, Russia agreed with its three CIS partners (Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan) on the future legal status of the Caspian Sea – a thorny issue the four countries hadn’t been able to resolve for 20 years. Before the end of the year, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan will all ratify the agreement on the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union, a document signed in Astana last May which will create a joint economic space linking Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and in the near future – also Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.

Economically and technologically, members of the Eurasian Economic Union are doing better than the pro-EU Ukraine.

This year Kazakhstan is going to show 4 percent economic growth (the European Bank for the Reconstruction and Development expected Kazakhstan to post 5.5 percent growth, but the forecast was downgraded in May because of the EU’s sanctions against Russia, which also adversely affected Kazakhstan). Russia’s economy is expected to grow 1.3 percent.

“This is not much, but this is the same result as Poland, and no one is assessing the Polish situation with economic growth as tragic,” commented Ben Aris, the head of Business New Europe – a center for the intellectual analysis of economic developments among the former members of the Soviet bloc. “And certainly, this is a better result than in Ukraine.”

A recent Global Forum on e-government held in Astana confirmed Kazakhstan’s rating as the 28th country in the world in terms of Internet services for the population. For some people, this result is a much greater reason for joy than the “revolution” on Maidan, with its corpses, charred buildings and ruined relations with Russia.

Our response to NATO

George Galloway: EU is locked in a crazy policy of aggression against Russia - RT

When it comes to economic sanctions there are no winners... A reality that's becoming increasingly clear in Europe, where several member states are taking a financial hit from trade restrictions against Russia. This week we heard from German, French and Czech officials - saying they'd prefer the sanctions to be scrapped. For more on this, let's go live to the British MP George Galloway.