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Kiev
govt used cluster munitions in populated zones in E. Ukraine – HRW
21
October, 2014
The
forces of the Kiev government used cluster munitions in populated
areas in the city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, says Human Rights
Watch. It adds that the use of this forbidden weaponry violates the
laws of war.
Human
Rights Watch (HRW) was documenting the “widespread use of cluster
munitions” in fighting between government troops and self-defense
forces, according to investigation carried by the watchdog
“While
it was not possible to conclusively determine responsibility for many
of the attacks, the evidence points to Ukrainian government forces’
responsibility for several cluster munition attacks on Donetsk
[Donetsk Region, Eastern Ukraine],” says the report.
The
UN is “concerned” by the report, a spokesman for Secretary
General Stephane Dujarric said at a briefing, adding that Ban Ki-moon
is calling for a “political solution.”
Kiev
however denied the use of cluster munitions by the Ukrainian military
in the operation in eastern Ukraine.
"Ukrainian
military did not use weapons forbidden by international legal law.
This also applies to cluster munitions," Andrey Lysenko,
spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, said at a briefing
on Tuesday.
He
also said that the observers could have been given "provocative
information" from DPR militia, as he proposed to increase the
number of international observers in eastern Ukraine.
"When
it comes to the use of cluster munitions on civilian quarters of
Donetsk, then I must say that the Ukrainian military did not use
weapons on the peaceful quarter of the city."
Donetsk,
which before the launch of the Kiev military operation in April had a
population of about 1 million people, is now literally in ruins.
Heavy shelling claimed hundreds of civilians in the city.
On
Monday a huge blast rocked a chemical factory in Donetsk in eastern
Ukraine, the city council says on its website. The blast wave
reportedly shattered windows in houses in a radius of several
kilometers.
An
investigation says that at least six civilians were killed and dozens
injured in these attacks. But the real casualty number is probably
higher, says HRW, as the watchdog hasn’t yet probed all the
allegations of the cluster munition use in the conflict zone.
“It
is shocking to see a weapon that most countries have banned used so
extensively in eastern Ukraine,” said
Mark Hiznay, senior arms researcher at HRW. “Ukrainian
authorities should make an immediate commitment not to use cluster
munitions and join the treaty to ban them.”
The
danger of cluster munitions is that each of them contains hundreds of
smaller submunitions. After the bomb explodes the container opens
up “dispersing the
submunitions, which are designed to explode when they hit the
ground,” says
the investigation.
“The
submunitions are spread indiscriminately over a wide area, often the
size of a football field, putting anyone in the area at the time of
attack, whether combatants or civilians, at risk of death or
injury.”
The
Convention on Cluster Munitions signed in 2009 includes 114 countries
so far. However Ukraine has yet to join the treaty.
“There
is particularly strong evidence that Ukrainian government forces were
responsible for several cluster munition attacks on central Donetsk
in early October,” HRW
said.
The
watchdog identified cluster munitions by the distinctive craters,
remnants of the submunitions found at the impact sites, and remnants
of the rockets found in the vicinity.
“Ukrainian
forces should immediately make a commitment to not use cluster
munitions and to investigate and hold accountable any personnel
responsible for firing cluster munitions into populated areas.
Ukraine should accede to the treaty banning their use,” HRW
said.
Ukraine’s
authorities neither confirmed nor denied the allegations, says the
group, adding that Kiev didn’t respond to a letter sent by the
Cluster Munition Coalition in July or a letter sent by HRW on October
13.
“Firing
cluster munitions into populated areas is utterly irresponsible and
those who ordered such attacks should be held to account,” Hiznay
said. “The best way for the Ukrainian authorities to demonstrate a
commitment to protect civilians would be an immediate promise to stop
using cluster munitions.”
Why
Are Swastikas Hot In West Ukraine?
Ceasefires
don’t erase history: The hatreds left by Nazi and Soviet
occupations 70 and 80 years ago continue to play out on Ukraine’s
streets and battlefields.
17
October, 2014
LVIV,
Ukraine — Ostap Stakhiv, the leader of a political organization of
Ukrainian nationalists, The Idea of the Nation, had been looking for
popular support for many years without much success. Then the
delicate-seeming 28-year-old started thinking that maybe there was
something wrong with the insignia—a lion climbing up a steep
hillside—printed on the group’s tracts and fliers. So Stakhiv
chose another: the swastika, slightly modified, that Hitler adopted
as the emblem of the Nazi Party in 1920 and that millions of
Europeans, including millions of Ukrainians, associate with death.
It
worked. Earlier this week, Stakhiv was busy setting up five tents
around Lviv for this month's election campaign. He’s preparing to
run for the local parliament on October 26th. The organization's
newspaper, with double swastikas on the front page, was being
distributed along with other propaganda materials, and Stakhiv and
his aid, Yulia, marveled at the strength of the symbol. "A
yellow swastika on a black field stands for power and spirit,"
said Stakhiv.
It
also stands for just about everything negative that Russian President
Vladimir Putin preaches about Ukraine being taken over by crypto-,
and not-so-crypto-, Nazis. But young Stakhiv insists that’s wrong.
He says he’s campaigning in opposition to "oligarchs running
the country, the actual enemy of Ukraine" and sees his mission
as opposing the politics of the current president, the billionaire
Petro Poroshenko, who, Stakhiv claims, does not see the real picture.
“A
yellow swastika on a black field stands for power and spirit,” said
Stakhiv.
"The
swastika is a very strong symbol, and as soon as we adopted it, we
immediately grew popular among young people,” said Stakhiv. “Those
who join us know exactly what they want, and they are ready to go to
the very end." Today, Idea of the Nation is represented in 14
regions of Ukraine and counts over 1,000 activists, its leader told
The Daily Beast.
How
to explain the growing popularity of Nazi symbols in Ukraine? They
keep turning up. Ukrainian soldiers have been seen and photographed
wearing helmets with swastikas and the letters SS on their helmets.
A
spokesmen for the volunteer Azov Battalion, where the symbols are
common, eventually denied they are related to Hitler. He insisted
that the battalion insignia reminiscent of the Nazi Wolfsangel,
symbol of, among others, the 2nd SS Panzer Division that fought the
Russians on the Eastern Front, was actually nothing but the crossed
letters "N."
In
fact, most nationalist and ultra-right youth organizations in Ukraine
today use symbols that millions of Ukrainian citizens associate with
the Nazi army that occupied and brutalized Ukraine during World War
II. And one reason, certainly, is that the much longer and very
deadly occupation by the Soviets is also a huge part of the national
consciousness. The 1933-34 famine known as the
Holodomor—“extermination by hunger”—took the lives of some 4
million people.
On
Monday night, a few dozen revolutionary nationalists from another
movement, Autonomous Resistance, marched around the streets of Lviv
with the red and black flags of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UIA.
These were Ukrainian rebels fighting in the woods of western Ukraine,
sometimes in alliance with Nazi forces against Soviet soldiers and
sometimes against the German army occupying Ukraine.
The
activists chanted "Freedom to the people! Glory to Ukraine!"
on the way to the monument in Lviv to Stepan Bandera, the UIA leader.
To millions of ethnic Russians living in eastern Ukraine, Bandera,
who allied himself with Adolf Hitler at times, symbolized ethnic
cleansing in the worst years of the Second World War. But to many
nationalists he is a hero who tried to protect the interests of his
people.
"Just
as our grandfathers demanded freedom for Ukraine from foreign empires
we demand freedom from Russian occupiers today," said one of the
movement's leaders, Yarina Voloshin, wearing a red dress and carrying
a black purse.
On
the same day, thousands of nationalists marched to Ukraine's
parliament in Kiev, led by ultra-right Svoboda party leaders. The
nationalists, who clashed with police, demanded the UIA be recognized
as Ukraine's national heroes. Dozens of people, including 15
policemen, were injured in those melees, and police detained 50
nationalists who tried to break through rows of security to get into
the parliament.
Earlier
this week Putin referred to the UIA as a "pro-fascist
organization" and condemned Ukraine for glorifying it. Putin
also blamed Ukrainian nationalists for attacking the Orthodox Church
of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine. "Regrettably, the vaccine
against the virus of Nazism produced at the Nuremberg tribunal is
losing its original strength in some European countries," Putin
told the Serbian daily Politika.
But
in Lviv, which is considered the heart of the country's nationalist
movements, legislators and the local administration insist the Nazi
symbols are not dangerous for the country. "I don't care what
flags or symbols they use for as long as they fight for Ukraine's
freedom," Vice Governor Vladimir Kharchuk told The Daily
Beast.
To people in western Ukraine, where thousands related to victims of
communist repression, the hammer and sickle did not look any less
evil than the swastika, yet several organizations still had that
insignia on their official documents. "I personally prefer the
Ukrainian official flag, and the emblem of Lviv—a kind looking
lion—to a Swastika."
But
as others have discovered in these times of enormous passions, kindly
symbols don’t attract crowds.
Ukraine
Launches White Phosphorus Attack - by Donetsk
By
Ukrainian Positions at Pesky, from where phosphorus is being fired.
Was fired on Novorossiya positions, from Donetsk airport, and
civilian positions, at Oktobersky, before training in on here, by
Pesky.
America
Laughs as EU Is Punished for Ukraine Disaster
Rather
than adding a huge territory (larger than France) to their empire on
the cheap, the Europeans must now pour money into an economic basket
case
Alexander
Mercouris
With friends like these, who needs enemies?
22
October, 2014
Despite
declarations from politicians about agreement over ‘parameters’,
there is no real solution for the gas crisis in Ukraine.
Meanwhile
in Moscow, the first snow has fallen. Perhaps in a week or so,
Ukraine will follow.
A
summary of the state of affairs: the Russians since June have
insisted on a gas price of $485/1000 m3, but will offer a discount of
$100, provided Ukraine first pays the outstanding gas bills. And from
now on, considering the behavior of the Ukrainians in the past, the
Russians will only deliver new gas on a pre-paid basis. The
Ukrainians reject this and demand that the “just price” should be
$269 (past and present), as negotiated by ousted president
Yanukovitch in December.
But
that price was from a time when Ukraine was still in Russian orbit
and Russia’s friend. Currently it is a western colony and now
market prices prevail. Under pressure from the Europeans, they've
offered to pay the outstanding debt on a temporary $320 basis, until
a final agreement can be reached. The Ukrainians however insist that
this kind of money paid would be for gas delivered, not payments on
outstanding debt. The Russians declined and went home.
So
what’s next? Temperatures will fall and Ukraine is going to suffer.
It's not difficult to predict what the Ukrainian government will do
next: illegally tap, just like they did in 2009, forcing the Russians
to shut off deliveries intended for Europe as they pass through
Ukraine. And since the Europeans, on orders from Washington,
have halted the construction of South-Stream, (after all, we don’t
want to be too dependent on Russia, do we?), Europe is now dependent
on pipelines in Ukraine.
Guess
what’s going to happen next? Europe is forced to foot the Ukrainian
bill. And isn’t that fair? Let's not forget that the EU politicians
who showed up at Euro-Maidan as water-carriers for the US global
empire proclaimed their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Well
then, pay! And at the expense of European taxpayers, no less.
Rather
than adding a huge territory (larger than France) to their EU empire
on the cheap, the Europeans must pour money into an economic basket
case, with a population four times that of Greece, and in far worse
economic condition. Good luck with that. (And on top of all that, the
EU has ruined relations with Russia, one of its largest consumer
markets.)
Their
American masters can't stop laughing.
Russia
Expands Western Food Import Ban
22
October, 2014
Russia's
European food import ban on Tuesday will be expanded to include
animal fat and meat byproduct imports, Russia's food safety watchdog
Rosselkhoznadzor said on Monday, the state-run RIA Novosti news
agency reported.
"On
October 21, 2014, temporary restrictions will be introduced on
imports to Russia from the European Union of a number of products
used for food purposes," the agency's press service told RIA
Novosti.
The
ban applies to "namely, cattle and pig by-products, meat offal,
cattle fat, pork fat (including lard) and bird fat," RIA Novosti
reported.
Russia,
in response to European Union sanctions, placed a temporary ban on
most food imports from nations that had sanctioned Moscow for its
annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and subsequent support for
pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine.
Russia,
the EU's second biggest food market after the United States, decreed
a one-year ban on Aug. 6. on European fruits and vegetables, dairy
products and meat.
Reuters
reported in early September that the ban could cost the EU 5 billion
euros ($6.4 billion) in lost revenue, citing an internal EU document.
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