Ukraine civil war update - 08/30/2014

August 30th 21:43 UTC/Zulu Ukraine SITREP

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/august-30th-2143-utczulu-ukraine-sitrep.html

Self-delusion and panic in the West

It is actually quite amusing to observe the reaction of Ukrainian and European leaders these days.  After feeding us fairy tales about how the Ukrainians were "winning" the civil war, they suddenly made a 180 degree turn and are now in the full panic mode.  I might shock many of you, but I sincerely believe that, at least in part, the following is happening.

The western elites have declared that the Ukie junta are the "good guys" and that the Novorussians are rebels, insurgents, separatists, Russian agents, Spetsnaz forces, paratroopers, Russian occupants or even FSB/GRU officers.  In other words, lying bastards.  Having accepted this premise, it makes perfectly good sense to get your information from the "good guys" and not from the "lying bastards".  Well, the "good guys" were actively feeding all sorts of utter nonsense to their western counterparts who, by and large, bought it out of sheer incompetence, ignorance, laziness and arrogant stupidity.  Here is a fantastic and absolutely hilarious example of what this produces.  Check out this BBC map and notice its source: the "Ukrainian National Security & Defence Council".

After having completely denied that an successful Novorussian operation was taking place, the Ukies had to finally admit that the Novorussian Armed Forces (NAF) had reached Novozavodsk.  But remember that the successful operation which got them there in the first place never happened.  So they end up publishing a map with an almost completely surrounded Novorussia and a tiny isolated speck around Novozavodsk.

This begs the question: how did the NAF even get there?  By air?  Unlikely.  By flying carpet or teleporters?  Maybe not.  And then the answer is obvious: through Russia of course!  That is the politically correct interpretation.  Nevermind that in reality the entire border between Novorussia and Russia is firmly in Novorussian hands, nevermind that the entire strech of land north of Novozavodsk is also in Novorussian hands, and nevermind that even Mariupol is already fully surrounded (since this morning), the Ukies and the BBC will show "hallucinogenic maps" like the one shown here.

There is a good US expression: when your head is in the sand, your ass is in the air.  This is exactly what happened now to Ukie and EU elites.  They got suddenly painfully bitten in their exposed butt by the news of a comprehensive collapse of the Junta repression forces (JRF) and they are now in a panic mode, just like a sleepwalker who is suddenly shaken awake.

art by Josetxo Ezcurra

The Ukies speak of a Russian invasion, so does NATO, so does the EU and US. Now we suddenly hear of "point of no return", of even more sanctions against Russia (can you hear the giggles in the Kremlin when that sentence is spoken), Obama courageously promises to defend Poland and the Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite says Russia is "practically in a war against Europe".  These hysterics are a surefire sign that in reality nobody has any idea as to what to do - do in reality, in actions - to prevent a complete collapse of the Nazi experiment in the Ukraine. 

The Secretary of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, menacingly puff up his tiny chest and promises to scare Russia with the creation of a 10'000 men strong rapid reaction force destined to counter any Russia attack.  I am sure the Russian generals are shaking in abject terror when they hear that.  Good thing Obama officially declared that there is no military option to rescue the junta.  Besides, it is unclear who the main threat is to Poroshenko's rule: the NAF or the "Kolomoiskistan" in the south, or the Right Sector crazies everywhere.  NATO clearly has no stomach to get involved here.  Good.

Yet another brilliant chess move in the East

It all began with Ukrainian women demanding that their man be saved from the cauldrons in which 7'000+ of them are surrounded.  These woman have organized protests in front of the Ukie Presidency and General Staff and, of course, they were ignored.  Except for Putin who apparently heard them and who officially requested that the Novorussians provide the Ukies with humanitarian corridors to leave.  The only Novorussian demand was that they leave behind their heavy weapons and ammo, but they were allowed to keep their unit banners (to avoid humiliating them).  The junta first disagreed, but some local Ukie commanders took up the offer and apparently certain units have already left this way.  Now think of the irony: the Ukrainian woman protest and demand that their men be spared and its the Russian President to hears their plea and makes it happen!

This way to combine the morally right and tactically ingenious is one of the key characteristics of Putin's method: he wins, but never by doing the ugly thing, instead he wins by doing the right thing.  Brilliant!

A very fluid and unstable situation on the battlefield

Here I urge caution: yes, the NAF has achieved some very real tactical and, to my great surprise, even operational successes.  This is remarkable and is a legitimate reason for cautious optimism.  But when I see the length of the NAF offensive as far to the west as Osipenko, just north of  Berdiansk, with the size of the Ukie force apparently barricaded in Mariupol, I get nervous.  True, the NAF seems to be aware of the risks and they did slow down to secure their positions north of Mariupol.

But make no mistake, the further west the NAF goes, the harder it will be.  For one thing, there appears to be two distinct forces forming to counter the NAF - those under Poroshenko in Kiev and those under Kolomoiski in Odessa. If  Poroshenko is clearly an evil and completely unprincipled person, in comparison with Kolomoiski he looks almost decent.  Kolomoiski is truly the scum of the earth, a Jewish Nazi of the absolutely worst kind, somebody just intelligent and cunning enough to successfully commit just about any evil deed, but also arrogant enough to eventually fail and try to bring down the entire planet with him.  If the case can be made for an assassination - Kolomoiski is my candidate.  As long as that son of Satan is alive anything could happen.  What makes things even more dangerous is that Odessa is truly the last strategically important city for the AngloZionists and their Nazi allies in Kiev.  If they lose Odessa, then then really lost it all.

Many commentators here have mentioned the increasing risk of a false flag and I completely share these concerns.  One such concern is that Kolomoiski's death squads might decide to blow up the Dniepr Hydroelectric Power Station.  Again, I would not put anything past this creature.  I am confident that somebody will kill Kolomoiski sooner or later, but until this happens we need to be aware that literally anything can still happen.

Mixed news about Strelkov

Strelkov and El-Miurid

The good news is that he is alive, in good health and free.  This has been confirmed by the blogger El-Miurid who met with him (see photo).  The bad news according to El-Miurid is that some unnamed individuals/forces in Russia had made the delivery of aid to the NAF contingent on his departure.  I don't like that kind of methods, and I like Strelkov.  I do have to admit that his successor, Zakharchenko, is doing an absolutely superb job.  So while we still don't know the true story of what happened I reserve judgment.  I have to admit here that for a while I did suspect that he had been wounded and that the Novorussians did not want to admit this, but when the entire leadership was changed, I figured out that something much bigger had happened.  Was this a good or bad move?  If we use Christ's method of judging a tree by its fruits, then it was an undeniably good move.  Things *did* get better after the change.  So what was the problem with Strelkov?  I really don't know.  Not competence, for sure.  The guy is a brilliant commander.  Not politics either - his staff included people from all sorts of different political backgrounds from the Far Left to the Far Right (even though these categories make no sense in Russia).  One possibility is that Strelkov really wants to go all the way to Kiev and that the Russians (the Kremlin or the General Staff) oppose this objective.  Let's not speculate and wait for Strelkov to speak for himself when he decides that the moment is right.

So what is the problem with the airports?

Many commentators are wondering why the NAF has not kicked out the JRF out of the Donetsk and Lugansk airports.  The answer is pretty simple:

First, these airports provide a perfect place to barricade yourself: they have big supplies, an advanced infrastructure, lots of underground passages, strong buildings, etc.  You cannot just bomb them into dust (unless you use very powerful munitions) and you have to conquer them the hard way.

Second, the Ukie artillery all around is perfectly placed and ready to strike at any NAF unit trying to breach the Ukie defensive perimeter.  So the Ukie artillery needs to be moved back, out of range, up to 40km or more.

Third, both airports are near residential areas and the NAF don't want to use massive artillery strikes of Fuel-Air Explosives (FAEs).

Fourth, most of the NAF resources are badly needed elsewhere.  This might sound cruel, but all the Ukies do with their artillery in the airports is shoot at residential areas - they are in no way a real threat to the NAF.  There are other, much more dangerous Ukie units which need to be eliminated before the problem of these airports can be addressed.  For example, there is a city just north of Lugansk called Metalist where some really nasty hardcore Nazi units are dug in and who are mercilessly bombing Lugansk every day and night.  They have been completely surrounded and yet they refused to surrender or stop massacring civilians.  For the first time today the latest maps appear to show the city of Metalist in NAF hands.  If so, this is extremely good news for Lugansk.  Not so for the folks who for weeks have been murdering civilians.  There will be no Ukie prisoners from Metalist. You can count on that.

Bottom line is this: everybody in the NAF agrees that these airports are really a major problem, but that only limited resources can be allocated to that problem in the current situation.  I am confident that these airports will be taken in the not too distant future.  But for the time being, we have to wait.

На Киев?  (To Kiev?)

To Kiev!

Frankly, I doubt it.  I don't believe that NAF have the resources for such a strategic assault, and I am not at all sure that the NAF command even has any desire for such a move.  I am quite sure that the Russian primary strategic objective in this war is regime change in Kiev followed by a de-Nazification of the Ukraine, but I don't believe that the Kremlin wants to do that by force.  Rather, it wants to create the situation in which the Ukrainians themselves overthrow the junta and all other forms of Nazi rule in Banderastan.  Fundamentally, and paradoxically, the AngloZionist Empire has succeeded in forcing a civilizational choice on the people of the Ukraine, but not one between the EU (or the "West") and Russia, but one between Nazism and their true, historical, national identity.  The fact that the Ukraine has always been an artificial construct of western imperialists does not mean that the nationalities living in the Ukraine are artificial at all.  The so-called "Ukraine" is an extremely diverse territory in which many different ethnic and cultural groups live and these groups will all pay a terrible price for the AngloZionist attempt to use the Ukraine against Russia, but there will be a "day after" in which the people have to emerge from the rubble and slowly begin to rebuild their land.  But the first and necessary condition for that to happen is to throw out the freaks, the Banderistas, the Nazis, the militant Uniats, the Wahabis, Zionists, Georgian subversives, the CIA "advisors" and Acadadmi "private military company" and all the rest of the international scum which currently occupies the Ukraine.

Finally, Russia also have a strategic mission, a message, she must convey in deeds rather than in words to all the people of the Ukraine: we are not your enemy.  In fact, history shows that we are your only friend and protector.  But if you let yourself be manipulated to try to exterminate us, we will stop you.  For centuries the people of the Ukraine have been propagandized, manipulated, lied to, deceived, zombified and used by western agents: the Papacy, the Masons, the imperialists, the Nazis and now the AngloZionists.  This has to stop one day and the only way to stop it is for Russia to prove by actions that the people of the Ukraine have been lied to.  For a short time, from January to August of 2014, the centuries old "western dream" has become true and a US-controlled russophobic "Banderastan" came into existence.  This is a horrible tragedy, but not for Russia, but for the Ukrainian people themselves who have paid a terrible price for this abomination and who will pay that price for the foreseeable future.  As with any catastrophe, the Ukrainian people need to do a lot of soul-searching and ask themselves why and how this happened.  Just blaming it all on the hordes of "Asian Moskals" is just not going to be enough. Hard questions will have to be asked.

Russian tanks standing in the streets of Kiev are just not the right setting for that kind of soul-searching.  From 1991 onward the general Russian approach to the Ukraine has been "we don't buy your idiotic historiography, but if you want your independence - take it".  And while most Russians today still don't buy the notion that the Ukrainians are a different nation, they do believe that the Ukrainians should have their own country if they want to.  Just not a Nazi one.  It is very characteristic that while the Ukie blogosphere (and media) is chock-full of rabid anti-Russian racism, the RuNet (Russian Internet) is completely empty of such hate.  Quite to the contrary, the prevailing feeling on the RuNet is a mix of dismay at the horrors in the Ukraine and compassion for the Ukrainian people.  But if the NAF pushes too far, many more people will die, more resentment will be built and the inevitable byproduct of any wars - hate - will become even more widespread than today.  So I personally believe that Russia does need to take it all the way to Kiev, but not with tanks, but with a different civilizational choice, one based on spirituality and freedom and not violence, hate and profit.

So, if the current successes of the NAF are not overturned by events, I believe that there will come a point were the NAF will stop, far short of Kiev.  The Russians cannot and should not de-Nazify the Ukraine for the Ukrainians.  The Ukrainians need to do it themselves.  It is not enough to defeat the AngloZionists physically.  They must be defeated spiritually.