2014 Ukrainian Maidan Revolt: News, Views, Photos & Videos

Kurt said:

The whole Charlemagne prize issue was not reported in the media, but rather statements about a neater EU association of Ukraine that would give them a status similar to Turkey. I believe this is one way to kindle the flames.
I believe we are fed a wrong story about Ukraine in Russian and European media. None seems to have much interest in reporting about the structural problems that turn a former prime industrial region and breadbasket of Europe with a non-bad education system into one of Europe's poorest nations. These structural problems are what Ukrainians really struggle with and neither Russia nor the EU has a solution on offer.
I'm no Euro-sceptic, but I consider the EU memberships of South-Eastern Europe a difficult issue. The community must exercise much more pressure and oversight to rid these countries of the rampant corruption. Hungarian nationalists make this no easier. Ukraine is a basket of troubles in comparison to the South-East already in the Union. Even Turkey would be much less trouble than Ukraine. The current calls for more integration of the Ukraine are really about setting up a defensible eastern boundary against Russia. From a military perspective, this is possible, but from an economic perspective it's a nightmare, least you forget the civil rights issue Europe is pursuing in the Union that does already suffer heavily in our South Eastern regions.
The Ukrainian national guard with its seeming domination by right wing extremists equipped with heavy armour does make the EU black sheep of Hungarian Fidesz militants look like nice guys. I expect them to cause a lot of headlines in future times, because all sides seem to have settled on keeping this issue boiling for quite some time.

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Jura said:

RT is often quoted in this thread, isn't it?

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SampanViking said:

I read the article, not quite sure exactly what they are trying to prove?
All I think it does prove is that for the first time, the Western Propaganda machine has gone up against an opponent that has a reply and it has not come off well from the encounter.

I would posit that the strength of the opposing arguments have a lot to do with it, but there is also a huge trust deficit, certainly in the UK, built up by twenty years of being somewhat "economical with the truth".

On top of that, so much of the Propaganda that is put out over here is so poor, that to be asked to swallow it, is a grade A insult to the Intelligence and Insulting somebodies intelligence; repeatedly, is not the way to win hearts and minds.

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Daily Telegraph UK - The self-declared “prime minister” of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” has vowed to expel Ukraine’s army from his new domain and “repulse” any bid to recapture the city.

Alexander Borodai, a Russian citizen from Moscow, emerged last week as the new leader of the separatist rebellion in Donetsk region. He took power at a critical moment when Ukraine’s army had won its first significant victory by retaking Donetsk airport - only five miles from Mr Borodai’s headquarters in the regional administration building in the city centre.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Borodai said there was an “extremely great” danger of an offensive by Ukraine’s army and its controlling “oligarchs” to recapture the city of 1 million people. “But I can’t answer this question exactly, since I can’t get into the heads of the Ukrainian generals and the other oligarchic rulers,” he said.

In the face of this threat, Mr Borodai described how he was reorganising the separatist defence of Donetsk. The barricades made from old tyres which once surrounded the regional administration building have been swept away, replaced by a new chain of defences on the city’s perimeter.

“This building is of no importance in terms of defence,” explained Mr Borodai. “These barricades had such an importance a very long time ago - and presently they are only of symbolic significance. Now the defence of the city is being built on a more serious level. And serious and well-organised checkpoints and strongpoints and knots of defence - all these will be ready to repulse the enemy’s attack.”

“They are organised in such a way so as to reduce the amount of losses among peaceful citizens,” he added.
The rebel fighters themselves are visibly better equipped than they were only two weeks ago. Once, the men on the barricades often possessed nothing more formidable than old shotguns and hunting rifles. Instead of having a military bearing, they tended to wear shoddy jeans and black balaclavas.

Today, by contrast, rebels on the perimeter defences have gleaming AK-47 assault rifles and modern sniper rifles with telescopic sights. They wear proper camouflage and some have been photographed with shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.

Mr Borodai denied that Russia was supplying the weapons, claiming instead that all the new equipment had come from old Soviet arms dumps.

“We buy our uniforms, which are in sufficient amount in Ukraine,” he said. “And you know, there is even more weaponry now in Ukraine. I remind you that there are quite a large number of ammunition depots in the territory of Kiev military district. The Soviet Union was preparing for the war with the West - that’s why there is such a large amount of weaponry amassed.”

Mr Borodai jokingly claiming that some of his men were doing their best with vintage weaponry. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “this fact adds a pinch of exoticism to our units, since, for example, the carbines which we come across very often were taken away from the Soviet army about thirty or forty years ago. But they are operating now. There are some machine guns from the Second World War - and mortars from the period prior to the War, from the 1930s. These weapons are almost 100 years old.”

Mr Borodai makes no secret of being a Muscovite. How he suddenly emerged at the helm of a pro-Russian rebellion in Ukraine is unclear. Improbable though it may sound, he has passed from being a consultant to a Russian investment fund to “prime minister” of a “People’s Republic”.

But the known facts of his biography make this transformation less mysterious. Mr Borodai was one of a circle of ardent Russian nationalists who worked for the far-right “Zavtra” newspaper in the 1990s. He took part in the rebellion in Moldova which carved out the enclave of Transdniestria for the country’s Russian minority.

Earlier this year, he was in Crimea as an adviser to Sergei Aksyonov, the separatist prime minister who oversaw the territory’s annexation by Russia. So Mr Borodai has long experience of carving out secure enclaves for Russians who found themselves becalmed in former Soviet republics after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

By his account, he came to Ukraine at the invitation of Igor Strelkov, another Russian citizen now believed to be commanding rebel forces in the town of Slavyansk, 70 miles north of Donetsk. Mr Strelkov appears on a European Union sanctions list, where he is described as being on the “staff” of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.
Some have interpreted Mr Borodai’s arrival as a further sign of Russia strengthening its control over the Donetsk rebellion. But the “prime minister” says that he is nothing more than a volunteer, no different from many other volunteers who have come from Russia and elsewhere to fight Ukraine’s “neo-fascist” regime.

Asked whether he could build enough military strength to expel Ukrainian forces from Donetsk region, Mr Borodai replied: “Yes, I guess, we will.” Then he added: “I think we’ll not just have enough strength to withstand their attack - we will win.”

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A.Man said:

Was Soviet Union better than a giant Lebanon like Ukraine?

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