On April 25 2014 16:29 JudicatorHammurabi wrote: Also, I like how Kerry believes the debunked theory posted by the NYT about the guys in different places being the same guy. I guess he hasn't been keeping up with the times. The fact he's also saying how Russia is behind everything and coordinating everything when said separatists are literally whining about how they get no help from Russia and don't even have arms is a bit out of tune.
I still can't figure if those politicians are clueless or are lying intentionally. Idk what is the scariest thing lol.
"bombs are flying people are dying politians are lying too..." (c) SP
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
The TL;DR of this speech is essentially: "US opposes armed insurgents if they go against US interests, or in particular, act in favor of Russian interests. Also, fuck Russia."
Also, I like how Kerry believes the (now debunked) theory posted by the NYT about the guys in different places being the same guy. I guess he hasn't been keeping up with the times. The fact he's also saying how Russia is behind everything and coordinating everything when said separatists are literally whining about how they get no help from Russia and don't even have arms is a bit out of tune. Also obviously the Illuminati are taking over the world.
Blah, this is just typical political bs like from Putin. Little value in it. Come on Kerry, I know being a politician requires black and white rhetoric and bullshitting, but this was just sad to read. Maybe I'm expecting too much from him, I don't know. I'm just glad I don't know Russian or Ukrainian so I'm not very exposed to all the silliness from Moscow and Kiev.
PS: After reading 100s of conference/journal research papers in the last 6 months, I am king of reading TL;DRs. Keep 'em coming
*sigh* King of TLDR you are not... The most interesting message in the speech is what Kerry mentioned first and foremost, i.e., that Ukraine has made four concessions to comply with the Geneva agreement (cleaning up Maidan, suspended the anti-terror organization, promised federalization and promised a special status for the Russian language) and Russia has made zero concessions, nor have the Russian-controlled `separatists'. The second interesting message is the repeat of economic sanctions, with information regarding the state of the Russian economy.
So, please Judicator, if you can't do a proper TLDR, don't do it.
***
***
Several people injured in what looks like a grenade attack against a pro-Ukraine checkpoint
***
*** A piece on RT.com from The Guardian of all sources (this is remarkable because the Guardian is ultra strong on freedom of the press (Snowden), and also has many openly pro-Russia authors)
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
The TL;DR of this speech is essentially: "US opposes armed insurgents if they go against US interests, or in particular, act in favor of Russian interests. Also, fuck Russia."
Also, I like how Kerry believes the (now debunked) theory posted by the NYT about the guys in different places being the same guy. I guess he hasn't been keeping up with the times. The fact he's also saying how Russia is behind everything and coordinating everything when said separatists are literally whining about how they get no help from Russia and don't even have arms is a bit out of tune. Also obviously the Illuminati are taking over the world.
Blah, this is just typical political bs like from Putin. Little value in it. Come on Kerry, I know being a politician requires black and white rhetoric and bullshitting, but this was just sad to read. Maybe I'm expecting too much from him, I don't know. I'm just glad I don't know Russian or Ukrainian so I'm not very exposed to all the silliness from Moscow and Kiev.
PS: After reading 100s of conference/journal research papers in the last 6 months, I am king of reading TL;DRs. Keep 'em coming
*sigh* King of TLDR you are not... The most interesting message in the speech is what Kerry mentioned first and foremost, i.e., that Ukraine has made four concessions to comply with the Geneva agreement (cleaning up Maidan, suspended the anti-terror organization, promised federalization and promised a special status for the Russian language) and Russia has made zero concessions, nor have the Russian-controlled `separatists'. The second interesting message is the repeat of economic sanctions, with information regarding the state of the Russian economy.
So, please Judicator, if you can't do a proper TLDR, don't do it.
*** A piece on RT.com from The Guardian of all sources (this is remarkable because the Guardian is ultra strong on freedom of the press (Snowden), and also has many openly pro-Russia authors)
If your TL;DR doesn't align with my views, it is bad. I don't really care about the inaccuracies you pointed out with evidence, but here are two pieces of commonly repeated rhetoric I find to be most interesting, oh, let's throw an assumption in there for good measure.
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
The TL;DR of this speech is essentially: "US opposes armed insurgents if they go against US interests, or in particular, act in favor of Russian interests. Also, fuck Russia."
Also, I like how Kerry believes the (now debunked) theory posted by the NYT about the guys in different places being the same guy. I guess he hasn't been keeping up with the times. The fact he's also saying how Russia is behind everything and coordinating everything when said separatists are literally whining about how they get no help from Russia and don't even have arms is a bit out of tune. Also obviously the Illuminati are taking over the world.
Blah, this is just typical political bs like from Putin. Little value in it. Come on Kerry, I know being a politician requires black and white rhetoric and bullshitting, but this was just sad to read. Maybe I'm expecting too much from him, I don't know. I'm just glad I don't know Russian or Ukrainian so I'm not very exposed to all the silliness from Moscow and Kiev.
PS: After reading 100s of conference/journal research papers in the last 6 months, I am king of reading TL;DRs. Keep 'em coming
*sigh* King of TLDR you are not... The most interesting message in the speech is what Kerry mentioned first and foremost, i.e., that Ukraine has made four concessions to comply with the Geneva agreement (cleaning up Maidan, suspended the anti-terror organization, promised federalization and promised a special status for the Russian language) and Russia has made zero concessions, nor have the Russian-controlled `separatists'. The second interesting message is the repeat of economic sanctions, with information regarding the state of the Russian economy.
So, please Judicator, if you can't do a proper TLDR, don't do it.
*** A piece on RT.com from The Guardian of all sources (this is remarkable because the Guardian is ultra strong on freedom of the press (Snowden), and also has many openly pro-Russia authors)
That point about concessions fit in the "Also, fuck Russia" part of the TL;DR (which I'll get into in a bit), so I think I'll keep the title for now. I realize that three word sentence was a bit general. lol. First off, let it be known I am well-aware Moscow wouldn't stamp out the insurgency even if they were [unrealistically] allowed entry to Ukraine to do so, considering shunning and ignoring pleas for aid isn't sending a message to the insurgents. I'll get into this too.
Was Ukraine fighting against dissidents part of the agreement or no? (I honestly forget)
Also, what's the concessions Russia is expected to make? I will note the most significant one: The reasoning from Kerry is that the concession Russia is expected to make (defusing the insurgency in eastern Ukraine), works specifically under Kerry's assumption that Russia is in full control of the situation. This is not a true assumption. Considering the insurgents are bitching that Russian doesn't even help them, it's debatable how much control Russia has over these ragtag groups of angry guys from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, etc. It certainly isn't anywhere near the degree that US/Ukrainian press/politicians claim. Do they really have the control Kerry seems to be implying? How Kerry makes it sound, these guys may as well be Russian military forces with how much control he's implying Moscow has over them.
Short of stepping in and telling them to shut up (assuming they wanted to), I don't think there's a whole lot Russia can do about this situation. But then, Russia can't step in without this being an invasion lol.
I think Russia is sending a very clear message to the insurgents by not helping them that Russia is not supporting the insurgency in Ukraine. Is Putin even cheerleading for these guys in the first place? Meanwhile, the insurgents are hopelessly idealistic, in a variety of articles stating that they hope Russia will give them stuff or Russia will come in. However, you can't "defuse" a situation you don't control. I think the fact that the Russians aren't following our style and arming these insurgents to the teeth is doing a lot more than I or anyone expected of them. Short of crushing the insurgents themselves, they're doing what they can on their end of the bargain, unless we are to believe the myth that this is a whole Russian conspiracy, along with conspiracies that these guys are actually Russian soldiers, etc.
Can Russia do more? Maybe. But I think they're happy with the way things are progressing without raising a finger one way or the other. Meanwhile, Kerry is making assertions based on false assumptions. His assertions would be real if the assumptions of direct Russian control over these guys were real. Unfortunately, that's not the case, and what Kerry is basically saying is, "Put out the fire you're not allowed to get near or we will punish you." Ok.
BUT LET IT BE CLEAR: Even if Russia had the ability to crush the insurgency (by that I mean the legal ability to enter Ukraine in some form or another), I don't think they'd want to do that anyways. Still, they can't be blamed for the fact that some assholes can't seem to understand that Moscow doesn't really care to support them.
Now this is where things get interesting. While Russia appears to be pretty meh about wanting to support the insurgents, they are hoping that the insurgents can promote violence in order to justify Russian "peacekeeping". Russia has political interests. The insurgents are a Russian political interest for the sole purpose of provoking Ukrainian military violence, which they are doing just by occupying buildings/towns, even without Russia's involvement. Otherwise, I doubt Russia gives a fuck about them nor controls them as if they were a standard regiment in the Russian military as Kerry seems so hellbent on insisting. Russia doesn't even need to be involved for the current events to be happening. Ex-Soviet ex-military guys and dudebros with too much time and too little brains are doing that on their own.
You see? It's a trap. If the insurgents decide to stop being assholes tomorrow, okay, whatever. The Russian threat is mostly over since then Russia wouldn't have any leverage, which these insurgents provide. If the status quo continues, these guys keep believing that some day Russia will give them infinite weapons and supplies whilst they wage their holy jihad in eastern Ukraine. That has not happened and I doubt it will happen. Nothing changes for Russia, and Ukraine is the loser since it has a room full of spiders that will be difficult to clear out.
But if Ukrainian forces fight these guys as they are starting to, then Russia suddenly gives a care about the insurgents and uses the violence as justification for invasion. See what's going on? Political trap from Moscow. Yatsenyuk should not fall into a trap similar to others in history.
EDIT: Now there is terrorism way far away in Odessa. I don't think Russia has any control over insurgents there. I'd like to see how Kerry slaps this one on Russia too.
On April 25 2014 18:45 zeo wrote: You forgot to add 'here is a wall of pointless twitter spam of opinions passed off as news'
Anyway aren't Swedes a bit worried that Carl Bidlt spends so much time on twitter? Shouldn't he be like working or something?
I guess he travels a lot, not much else too do then. Besides writing a twitter message doesn't take that much time. It is clear that he's a thorn in the side of Pro-Russians (Serbs?)
On April 25 2014 18:45 zeo wrote: You forgot to add 'here is a wall of pointless twitter spam of opinions passed off as news'
Anyway aren't Swedes a bit worried that Carl Bidlt spends so much time on twitter? Shouldn't he be like working or something?
I guess he travels a lot, not much else too do then. Besides writing a twitter message doesn't take that much time. It is clear that he's a thorn in the side of Pro-Russians (Serbs?)
Nope, I actually think he is quite sad. If any politician in Serbia started having a God complex and used his government post to peddle off his personal views for cheap political points, he wouldn't have a job for that long. As happened to Vuk Jeremić when the title of Presedent of the World got to his head.
On April 25 2014 18:45 zeo wrote: You forgot to add 'here is a wall of pointless twitter spam of opinions passed off as news'
Anyway aren't Swedes a bit worried that Carl Bidlt spends so much time on twitter? Shouldn't he be like working or something?
I guess he travels a lot, not much else too do then. Besides writing a twitter message doesn't take that much time. It is clear that he's a thorn in the side of Pro-Russians (Serbs?)
Nope, I actually think he is quite sad. If any politician in Serbia started having a God complex and used his government post to peddle off his personal views for cheap political points, he wouldn't have a job for that long. As happened to Vuk Jeremić when the title of Presedent of the World got to his head.
Isn't peddling personal views for cheap political points what most people do? I guess the overlords need its subjects and collusions need its common ground policy. When that is said Carl Bildt was pretty much spouting consensus informations. It is not like Lavrov has a leg to stand on when invoking a treaty his government refused to sign.
I think de-escalation is a major point that Russia is ignoring and the biggest one. Even if Russia isnt supporting the separatists to the extent that Kerry believes, its still a huge boost to them that there are 50 0000 russian troops on the border. And it would be a big and important signal to the separatists if Russia would with draw alot of those troops.
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
that's actually a very good statement. The facts he is talking about are all true. How Russia is supposed to deescalate I don't know. But russian coordinators kept their work all week long, which SBU has shown on a number of occasions. And as Kerry said, NONE of russian politicians called for separatists to put down arms and release captured buildings.
Angry local to the presenter: "Hey let me fucking tell them. Those who just left the checkpoint [Ukrainian army], they were like jackals. They robbed us, ransacked everything, took all our food and medicine. Turchinov, you fucking feed them, your troops are too hungry".
On April 25 2014 19:54 Fjodorov wrote: @JudicatorHammurabi
I think de-escalation is a major point that Russia is ignoring and the biggest one. Even if Russia isnt supporting the separatists to the extent that Kerry believes, its still a huge boost to them that there are 50 0000 russian troops on the border. And it would be a big and important signal to the separatists if Russia would with draw alot of those troops.
Just like how all the foreign diplomats and ambassadors coming to Maidan was the trigger that gave the hooligans and extremists free reign for the violence that followed.
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
that's actually a very good statement. The facts he is talking about are all true. How Russia is supposed to deescalate I don't know. But russian coordinators kept their work all week long, which SBU has shown on a number of occasions. And as Kerry said, NONE of russian politicians called for separatists to put down arms and release captured buildings.
Actually most of what Kerry said was garbage tier propaganda and has been refuted many times even before, he even used old disinformation, anyway watch this video. Must be hard to get news about Russian politicians when your government banned anti-Maidan media:
On April 25 2014 19:54 Fjodorov wrote: @JudicatorHammurabi
I think de-escalation is a major point that Russia is ignoring and the biggest one. Even if Russia isnt supporting the separatists to the extent that Kerry believes, its still a huge boost to them that there are 50 0000 russian troops on the border. And it would be a big and important signal to the separatists if Russia would with draw alot of those troops.
These separatists certainly are not the intelligent kind, that's for sure. Premises: Russia is not supporting separatists. Russia has soldiers on Ukrainian border.
If I'm Mr. Insurgent, all this is saying to me is that Russia's only interest in me is that Ukrainian forces fight me so Russia has an excuse to run on in. The fact that I'm already not being supported is a slap in the face, but this is a real buzzkiller.
Removing soldiers from the border may not necessarily change things. You don't need guys right on the border to take drastic action. Just makes things somewhat faster if the time comes. In addition, considering these guys and most of the disorder in Ukraine for the past 6 months are motivated by a shitton of issues in Ukraine itself that mostly aren't concerned with imagining Russia as Savior nor being Russian stooges, such a removal may not have as strong an impact as one would imagine. And considering how intelligent these insurgents are regarding the situation, I doubt they'd understand what Russia means by removing forces from the border anyways.
However, Kerry's point isn't primarily based on this. Kerry seems to be assuming these guys are under Russian control like a standard Russian military unit, which is an absurd assumption, and that Putin can say "Stop lol" and they will stop. If the lack of support isn't as clear as the message can get, then I don't know what is. Actions speak louder than words, after all. If I beg you for money to buy a car, the worst thing you can do to my plans is refuse me that money. Telling me not to buy the car doesn't even have a fraction of the effect.
How these insurgents don't feel betrayed by the Kremlin is beyond my understanding, but at this point, their whole "Russia will hopefully help us" thing (when they're not bitching about how Russia refuses to help them) seems to be more for morale for their own goals in their insurrection than anything else. These guys do have their own goals after all. They're not Russian-controlled shills or Russian soldiers.
But Cheerio said it himself, he doesn't know HOW Russia can de-escalate the situation. They don't really have that ability without direct intervention. But not only are they allowed to directly intervene, it isn't their interest either. Regardless, by not supporting the insurgency, Russia is taking the most prominent action it can short of stepping in and taking care of business.
But of course Russia is ignoring that point , even assuming it was within their power to stop the insurgency. A trap set itself up and Russia is deciding to seize the day and take advantage of the trap when the opportunity presents itself.
On April 25 2014 19:54 Fjodorov wrote: @JudicatorHammurabi
I think de-escalation is a major point that Russia is ignoring and the biggest one. Even if Russia isnt supporting the separatists to the extent that Kerry believes, its still a huge boost to them that there are 50 0000 russian troops on the border. And it would be a big and important signal to the separatists if Russia would with draw alot of those troops.
Just like how all the foreign diplomats and ambassadors coming to Maidan was the trigger that gave the hooligans and extremists free reign for the violence that followed.
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
that's actually a very good statement. The facts he is talking about are all true. How Russia is supposed to deescalate I don't know. But russian coordinators kept their work all week long, which SBU has shown on a number of occasions. And as Kerry said, NONE of russian politicians called for separatists to put down arms and release captured buildings.
Actually most of what Kerry said was garbage tier propaganda:
Diplomats and ambassadors equal a 50 000 man army? Dont know why you even try to make a comparison like that since we are talking about the Geneve agreement.
On April 25 2014 19:54 Fjodorov wrote: @JudicatorHammurabi
I think de-escalation is a major point that Russia is ignoring and the biggest one. Even if Russia isnt supporting the separatists to the extent that Kerry believes, its still a huge boost to them that there are 50 0000 russian troops on the border. And it would be a big and important signal to the separatists if Russia would with draw alot of those troops.
Just like how all the foreign diplomats and ambassadors coming to Maidan was the trigger that gave the hooligans and extremists free reign for the violence that followed.
On April 25 2014 19:57 Cheerio wrote:
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
that's actually a very good statement. The facts he is talking about are all true. How Russia is supposed to deescalate I don't know. But russian coordinators kept their work all week long, which SBU has shown on a number of occasions. And as Kerry said, NONE of russian politicians called for separatists to put down arms and release captured buildings.
Actually most of what Kerry said was garbage tier propaganda:
Diplomats and ambassadors equal a 50 000 man army? Dont know why you even try to make a comparison like that since we are talking about the Geneve agreement.
There was an agreement about a peaceful resolution to Maidan that wouldn't alienate half the country and would guarantee a stable society until elections, I'm sure without the backing of certain superpowers the people on the street with handguns would not have said 'lol, we'll just take over the country and send tanks against anyone who says anything'
On April 25 2014 19:54 Fjodorov wrote: @JudicatorHammurabi
I think de-escalation is a major point that Russia is ignoring and the biggest one. Even if Russia isnt supporting the separatists to the extent that Kerry believes, its still a huge boost to them that there are 50 0000 russian troops on the border. And it would be a big and important signal to the separatists if Russia would with draw alot of those troops.
Just like how all the foreign diplomats and ambassadors coming to Maidan was the trigger that gave the hooligans and extremists free reign for the violence that followed.
On April 25 2014 19:57 Cheerio wrote:
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
that's actually a very good statement. The facts he is talking about are all true. How Russia is supposed to deescalate I don't know. But russian coordinators kept their work all week long, which SBU has shown on a number of occasions. And as Kerry said, NONE of russian politicians called for separatists to put down arms and release captured buildings.
Actually most of what Kerry said was garbage tier propaganda:
Diplomats and ambassadors equal a 50 000 man army? Dont know why you even try to make a comparison like that since we are talking about the Geneve agreement.
There was an agreement about a peaceful resolution to Maidan that wouldn't alienate half the country and would guarantee a stable society until elections, I'm sure without the backing of certain superpowers the people on the street with handguns would not have said 'lol, we'll just take over the country and send tanks against anyone who says anything'
Then guys with snipers decided to make it a non-peaceful resolution, so that agreement did not stand from the previous (Yanukovich's) administration's side.
On April 25 2014 19:54 Fjodorov wrote: @JudicatorHammurabi
I think de-escalation is a major point that Russia is ignoring and the biggest one. Even if Russia isnt supporting the separatists to the extent that Kerry believes, its still a huge boost to them that there are 50 0000 russian troops on the border. And it would be a big and important signal to the separatists if Russia would with draw alot of those troops.
Just like how all the foreign diplomats and ambassadors coming to Maidan was the trigger that gave the hooligans and extremists free reign for the violence that followed.
On April 25 2014 19:57 Cheerio wrote:
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
that's actually a very good statement. The facts he is talking about are all true. How Russia is supposed to deescalate I don't know. But russian coordinators kept their work all week long, which SBU has shown on a number of occasions. And as Kerry said, NONE of russian politicians called for separatists to put down arms and release captured buildings.
Actually most of what Kerry said was garbage tier propaganda:
Diplomats and ambassadors equal a 50 000 man army? Dont know why you even try to make a comparison like that since we are talking about the Geneve agreement.
There was an agreement about a peaceful resolution to Maidan that wouldn't alienate half the country and would guarantee a stable society until elections, I'm sure without the backing of certain superpowers the people on the street with handguns would not have said 'lol, we'll just take over the country and send tanks against anyone who says anything'
Then guys with snipers decided to make it a non-peaceful resolution, so that agreement did not stand from the previous (Yanukovich's) administration's side.
What? What snipers after the agreement was reached between Yanukovych and the opposition? o.O
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
The TL;DR of this speech is essentially: "US opposes armed insurgents if they go against US interests, or in particular, act in favor of Russian interests. Also, fuck Russia."
Also, I like how Kerry believes the (now debunked) theory posted by the NYT about the guys in different places being the same guy. I guess he hasn't been keeping up with the times. The fact he's also saying how Russia is behind everything and coordinating everything when said separatists are literally whining about how they get no help from Russia and don't even have arms is a bit out of tune. Also obviously the Illuminati are taking over the world.
Blah, this is just typical political bs like from Putin. Little value in it. Come on Kerry, I know being a politician requires black and white rhetoric and bullshitting, but this was just sad to read. Maybe I'm expecting too much from him, I don't know. I'm just glad I don't know Russian or Ukrainian so I'm not very exposed to all the silliness from Moscow and Kiev.
PS: After reading 100s of conference/journal research papers in the last 6 months, I am king of reading TL;DRs. Keep 'em coming
*sigh* King of TLDR you are not... The most interesting message in the speech is what Kerry mentioned first and foremost, i.e., that Ukraine has made four concessions to comply with the Geneva agreement (cleaning up Maidan, suspended the anti-terror organization, promised federalization and promised a special status for the Russian language) and Russia has made zero concessions, nor have the Russian-controlled `separatists'. The second interesting message is the repeat of economic sanctions, with information regarding the state of the Russian economy.
So, please Judicator, if you can't do a proper TLDR, don't do it.
*** A piece on RT.com from The Guardian of all sources (this is remarkable because the Guardian is ultra strong on freedom of the press (Snowden), and also has many openly pro-Russia authors)
That point about concessions fit in the "Also, fuck Russia" part of the TL;DR (which I'll get into in a bit), so I think I'll keep the title for now. I realize that three word sentence was a bit general. lol. First off, let it be known I am well-aware Moscow wouldn't stamp out the insurgency even if they were [unrealistically] allowed entry to Ukraine to do so, considering shunning and ignoring pleas for aid isn't sending a message to the insurgents. I'll get into this too.
Was Ukraine fighting against dissidents part of the agreement or no? (I honestly forget)
Also, what's the concessions Russia is expected to make? I will note the most significant one: The reasoning from Kerry is that the concession Russia is expected to make (defusing the insurgency in eastern Ukraine), works specifically under Kerry's assumption that Russia is in full control of the situation. This is not a true assumption. Considering the insurgents are bitching that Russian doesn't even help them, it's debatable how much control Russia has over these ragtag groups of angry guys from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, etc. It certainly isn't anywhere near the degree that US/Ukrainian press/politicians claim. Do they really have the control Kerry seems to be implying? How Kerry makes it sound, these guys may as well be Russian military forces with how much control he's implying Moscow has over them.
Short of stepping in and telling them to shut up (assuming they wanted to), I don't think there's a whole lot Russia can do about this situation. But then, Russia can't step in without this being an invasion lol.
I think Russia is sending a very clear message to the insurgents by not helping them that Russia is not supporting the insurgency in Ukraine. Is Putin even cheerleading for these guys in the first place? Meanwhile, the insurgents are hopelessly idealistic, in a variety of articles stating that they hope Russia will give them stuff or Russia will come in. However, you can't "defuse" a situation you don't control. I think the fact that the Russians aren't following our style and arming these insurgents to the teeth is doing a lot more than I or anyone expected of them. Short of crushing the insurgents themselves, they're doing what they can on their end of the bargain, unless we are to believe the myth that this is a whole Russian conspiracy, along with conspiracies that these guys are actually Russian soldiers, etc.
Can Russia do more? Maybe. But I think they're happy with the way things are progressing without raising a finger one way or the other. Meanwhile, Kerry is making assertions based on false assumptions. His assertions would be real if the assumptions of direct Russian control over these guys were real. Unfortunately, that's not the case, and what Kerry is basically saying is, "Put out the fire you're not allowed to get near or we will punish you." Ok.
BUT LET IT BE CLEAR: Even if Russia had the ability to crush the insurgency (by that I mean the legal ability to enter Ukraine in some form or another), I don't think they'd want to do that anyways. Still, they can't be blamed for the fact that some assholes can't seem to understand that Moscow doesn't really care to support them.
Now this is where things get interesting. While Russia appears to be pretty meh about wanting to support the insurgents, they are hoping that the insurgents can promote violence in order to justify Russian "peacekeeping". Russia has political interests. The insurgents are a Russian political interest for the sole purpose of provoking Ukrainian military violence, which they are doing just by occupying buildings/towns, even without Russia's involvement. Otherwise, I doubt Russia gives a fuck about them nor controls them as if they were a standard regiment in the Russian military as Kerry seems so hellbent on insisting. Russia doesn't even need to be involved for the current events to be happening. Ex-Soviet ex-military guys and dudebros with too much time and too little brains are doing that on their own.
You see? It's a trap. If the insurgents decide to stop being assholes tomorrow, okay, whatever. The Russian threat is mostly over since then Russia wouldn't have any leverage, which these insurgents provide. If the status quo continues, these guys keep believing that some day Russia will give them infinite weapons and supplies whilst they wage their holy jihad in eastern Ukraine. That has not happened and I doubt it will happen. Nothing changes for Russia, and Ukraine is the loser since it has a room full of spiders that will be difficult to clear out.
But if Ukrainian forces fight these guys as they are starting to, then Russia suddenly gives a care about the insurgents and uses the violence as justification for invasion. See what's going on? Political trap from Moscow. Yatsenyuk should not fall into a trap similar to others in history.
EDIT: Now there is terrorism way far away in Odessa. I don't think Russia has any control over insurgents there. I'd like to see how Kerry slaps this one on Russia too.
lol. So you think that Russia by telling the world, that if Ukraine moves into quell the unrest that Russia will intervene is not supporting the protestors? Especially, given that there is a huge troop build up since *March 13th* on the Ukrainian border? A major reason why these protests are going on so long is that Russia is explicitly supporting them by telling the protesters they can do what they want: occupy the buildings, and if Ukraine moves in, we will too.
Maybe Russia could do the following things to deescalate: 1.) Tell the occupiers to abandon the buildings and seek a political solution. 2.) Remove the troops from the border. 3.) Say that Russia will not invade Ukraine, "to restore order" or whatever. ^Putin should say these things to make them more legitimate, but actually NO ONE from Russian government has said anything to deescalate the situation.
Don't you think this *could* help defuse the situation? Clearly it could. But Russia hasn't done this because Russia clearly wants the situation to be unstable. If Russia is trying to make the situation unstable via troop buildups and threats of invasion, one could come to believe they are supporting the rebels in more direct ways. We have no proof of this, but given that Russia has so much influence in Ukraine (given it has Russian supporters, it's easy to go 'under-cover', FSB-SBU ties), it'd be very surprising if Russia was *only* keeping it's troops on the border and making threats. It's probably helping the situation more directly but we don't have any solid proof.
Ghanburighan is taking this claim even farther and stating it as fact- it's Russian military, Russian armed protestors, coordinated by Russia,etc. He is taking an approach that jumps to conclusions (some of them near certain, some improbable). You disagree with him, I disagree with some of his points also. A middle of the road approach would be to say "Russia is clearly interested in the unrest and supporting it indirectly via threats/troop-buildups and possibly more directly".
What you are claiming is a ridiculous RussiaTimes view on the situation, that Russia has nothing to do with this and is just ideally sitting around while this unrest happens.....
edit: And you think the protestors asking Russia for food/arms/invasion exonerates Russia? WTF? First off that implies that Russia has given the protestors the impression that they are on 'their' side. I wonder why... Second off, this fits in perfectly with what Russia wants to do. Russia isn't going to give arms overtly, Russia isn't going to support them overtly. If arms are passed, it will be through secret channels. If attacks are coordinated, it will also be done with leaving as little evidence as possible. It will create the illusion of full support but when the shit hits the fan, neither the pro-Russian protestors, nor Ukrainians, nor the West, nor Russians know what Putin will do. He might invade, he might not and only him and possibly his inner clique w/ some former KGBs will know what will happen. A confused unclear situation, with all sides unsure and blaming the other is what Putin wants. And as evidenced by this thread, that is what he got.
On April 25 2014 16:13 Ghanburighan wrote: Kerry's statement in full:
SECRETARY KERRY: It has now been a week since the United States, the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine met in Geneva. We did so after a phone call between President Putin and President Obama, in which both leaders expressed a desire to avoid further escalation in Ukraine. We met in Geneva with a clear mission: to improve security conditions and find political solutions to the conflict threatening the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine. And right there in Geneva, EU High Representative Ashton and I made clear that both Russia and Ukraine had to demonstrate more than good faith. They needed to take concrete actions in order to meet their commitments.
The simple reality is you can’t resolve a crisis when only one side is willing to do what is necessary to avoid a confrontation. Every day since we left Geneva – every day, even up to today, when Russia sent armored battalions right up the Luhansk Oblast border – the world has witnessed a tale of two countries, two countries with vastly different understandings of what it means to uphold an international agreement.
One week later, it is clear that only one side, one country, is keeping its word. And for anyone who wants to create gray areas out of black, or find in the fine print crude ways to justify crude actions, let’s get real – the Geneva agreement is not open to interpretation. It is not vague. It is not subjective. It is not optional. What we agreed to in Geneva is as simple as it is specific.
We agreed that all sides would refrain from violence, intimidation, and taking provocative actions. We agreed that illegal groups would lay down their arms and that, in exchange for amnesty, they would hand over the public buildings and spaces that they occupied. We agreed that to implement these objectives – and this is important, to implement this – monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have unfettered access to parts of Ukraine where they were needed most. And we agreed that all parties would work to create that access and to provide help to the OSCE in order to do this. We agreed that the OSCE would report from the ground whether the rights, security, and dignity of Ukrainian citizens was being protected.
From day one, the Government of Ukraine started making good on its commitments – from day one. From day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has kept his word. He immediately agreed to help vacate buildings. He suspended Ukraine’s counterterrorism initiative over Easter, choosing de-escalation, despite Ukraine’s legitimate, fundamental right to defend its own territory and its own people. From day one, the Ukrainian Government sent senior officials to work with the OSCE, in keeping with the agreement, to send them to work in regions where Russia had voiced its most urgent concerns about the security of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And on day one, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk went on live television and committed his government publicly to all of the people of Ukraine that – and these are his words – committed them to undertake comprehensive constitutional reform that will strengthen the powers of the regions. He directly addressed the concerns expressed by the Russians, and he did so on day one.
He also made a personal appeal to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, pledging to support – and again, these are his words – a special status to the Russian language and the protection of the language. And in keeping with his Geneva commitments, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk has publicly announced amnesty legislation – once more, in his words – for all those who surrender arms, come out of the premises and will begin with the Ukrainian people to build a sovereign and independent Ukraine. That is a promise made by the interim government to the people of Ukraine.
And by complying with actions requested by Russia, like removing the barricades in the Maidan and cleaning up the square and ensuring that all ongoing demonstrations in Kyiv are actually government-approved and peaceful, Ukraine is thereby taking tangible, concrete steps to move beyond the division of the last months. That is how a government defines keeping your word. That is leadership that upholds both the spirit and the letter of a Geneva agreement.
The world has rightly judged that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and the Government of Ukraine are working in good faith. And the world, sadly, has rightly judged that Russia has put its faith in distraction, deception, and destabilization. For seven days, Russia has refused to take a single concrete step in the right direction. Not a single Russian official, not one, has publicly gone on television in Ukraine and called on the separatists to support the Geneva agreement, to support the stand-down, to give up their weapons, and get out of the Ukrainian buildings. They have not called on them to engage in that activity.
In fact, the propaganda bullhorn that is the state-sponsored Russia Today program, has been deployed to promote – actually, Russia Today network – has deployed to promote President Putin’s fantasy about what is playing out on the ground. They almost spend full time devoted to this effort to propagandize and to distort what is happening or not happening in Ukraine. Instead, in plain sight, Russia continues to fund, coordinate, and fuel a heavily armed separatist movement in Donetsk.
Meanwhile, Russian leaders are making increasingly outrageous claims to justify their action – that the CIA invented the internet in order to control the world or that the forces occupying buildings, armed to the teeth, wearing brand new matching uniforms and moving in disciplined military formation, are merely local activists seeking to exercise their legitimate rights. That is absurd, and there is no other word to describe it.
But in the 21st century, where every citizen can broadcast messages, images, and video from the palm of their hand, no amount of propaganda is capable of hiding such actions. No amount of propaganda will hide the truth, and the truth is there in the social media and across the pages of newspapers and in the video of televisions for all of the world to see. No amount of propaganda can withstand that kind of scrutiny today.
The world knows that peaceful protesters don’t come armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons, the latest issue from the Russian arsenal, hiding the insignias on their brand new matching military uniforms, and speaking in dialects that every local knows comes from thousands of miles away. The world knows that the Russian intelligence operatives arrested in Ukraine didn’t just take a wrong turn on the highway. In fact, we have seen soldiers wearing uniforms identical to the ones Russian soldiers wore in Crimea last month.
As international observers on the ground have borne witness, prior to Russia’s escalation, there was no violence. There was no broad-scale assault on the rights of people in the east. Ukraine was largely stable and peaceful, including in the south and the east. Even as we were preparing to meet in Geneva, we know that the Russian intelligence services were involved in organizing local pro-Russian militias. And during the week leading up to the Geneva meetings, separatists seized at least 29 buildings. This is one more example of how Russia is stoking the very instability that they say they want to quell.
And in the weeks since this agreement, we have seen even more violence visited upon Ukrainians. Right after we left Geneva, separatists seized TV and radio stations that broadcast in the Ukrainian language. The mayor of Slovyansk was kidnapped the very day after the parties committed to end the violence and intimidations. Two days ago, one journalist was kidnapped and another went missing, bringing the total number of kidnapped journalists into the double digits. That same day, two dead bodies were found near Slovyansk. One of them was a city councilmember who had been knocked unconscious and thrown in a river with a weighted backpack strapped to him.
The Government of Ukraine has reported the arrest of Russian intelligence agents, including one yesterday who it says was responsible for establishing secure communications allowing Russia to coordinate destabilizing activities in Ukraine. And then, just this morning, separatist forces tried to overrun another arms depot.
Having failed to postpone Ukraine’s elections, having failed to halt a legitimate political process, Russia has instead chosen an illegitimate course of armed violence to try and achieve with the barrel of a gun and the force of a mob what couldn’t be achieved any other way. They’ve tried to create enough chaos in the east to delay or delegitimize the elections, or to force Ukraine to accept a federalism that gives Russia control over its domestic and foreign policies, or even force Ukraine to overreact and create an excuse for military intervention. This is a full-throated effort to actively sabotage the democratic process through gross external intimidation that has brought inside Ukraine, and it is worse even.
We have seen this movie before. We saw it most recently in Crimea, where similar subterfuge and sabotage by Russia was followed by a full invasion – an invasion, by the way, for which President Putin recently decorated Russian special forces at the Kremlin.
Now Russia claims that all of this is exaggerated, or even orchestrated, that Ukrainians can’t possibly be calling for a government free of corruption and coercion. Russia is actually mystified to see Ukraine’s neighbors and likeminded free people all over the world united with Ukrainians who want to build a better life and choose their leaders for themselves, by themselves.
Nobody should doubt Russia’s hand in this. As NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe wrote this week, “What is happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.” Our intelligence community tells me that Russia’s intelligence and military intelligence services and special operators are playing an active role in destabilizing eastern Ukraine with personnel, weapons, money, operational planning, and coordination. The Ukrainians have intercepted and publicized command-and-control conversations from known Russian agents with their separatist clients in Ukraine. Some of the individual special operations personnel, who were active on Russia’s behalf in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea have been photographed in Slovyansk, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Some are even bragging about it by themselves on their Russian social media sites. And we’ve seen weapons and gear on the separatists that matches those worn and used by Russian special forces.
So following today’s threatening movement of Russian troops right up to Ukraine’s border, let me be clear: If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake. Already the international response to the choices made by Russia’s leaders is taking its toll on Russia’s economy. Prime Minister Medvedev has alluded to the cost Russia is already paying. Even President Putin has acknowledged it.
As investors’ confidence dwindles, some $70 billion in capital has fled the Russian financial system in the first quarter of 2014, more than all of last year. Growth estimates for 2014 have been revised downward by two to three percentage points. And this follows a year in which GDP growth was already the lowest since 2009. Meanwhile, the Russian Central Bank has had to spend more than $20 billion to defend the ruble, eroding Russia’s buffers against external shocks. Make no mistake that what I’ve just described is really just a snapshot and is also, regrettably, a preview of how the free world will respond if Russia continues to escalate what they had promised to de-escalate.
Seven days, two opposite responses, and one truth that cannot be ignored: The world will remain united for Ukraine. So I will say it again. The window to change course is closing. President Putin and Russia face a choice. If Russia chooses the path of de-escalation, the international community – all of us – will welcome it. If Russia does not, the world will make sure that the cost for Russia will only grow. And as President Obama reiterated earlier today, we are ready to act. Source.
The TL;DR of this speech is essentially: "US opposes armed insurgents if they go against US interests, or in particular, act in favor of Russian interests. Also, fuck Russia."
Also, I like how Kerry believes the (now debunked) theory posted by the NYT about the guys in different places being the same guy. I guess he hasn't been keeping up with the times. The fact he's also saying how Russia is behind everything and coordinating everything when said separatists are literally whining about how they get no help from Russia and don't even have arms is a bit out of tune. Also obviously the Illuminati are taking over the world.
Blah, this is just typical political bs like from Putin. Little value in it. Come on Kerry, I know being a politician requires black and white rhetoric and bullshitting, but this was just sad to read. Maybe I'm expecting too much from him, I don't know. I'm just glad I don't know Russian or Ukrainian so I'm not very exposed to all the silliness from Moscow and Kiev.
PS: After reading 100s of conference/journal research papers in the last 6 months, I am king of reading TL;DRs. Keep 'em coming
*sigh* King of TLDR you are not... The most interesting message in the speech is what Kerry mentioned first and foremost, i.e., that Ukraine has made four concessions to comply with the Geneva agreement (cleaning up Maidan, suspended the anti-terror organization, promised federalization and promised a special status for the Russian language) and Russia has made zero concessions, nor have the Russian-controlled `separatists'. The second interesting message is the repeat of economic sanctions, with information regarding the state of the Russian economy.
So, please Judicator, if you can't do a proper TLDR, don't do it.
*** A piece on RT.com from The Guardian of all sources (this is remarkable because the Guardian is ultra strong on freedom of the press (Snowden), and also has many openly pro-Russia authors)
That point about concessions fit in the "Also, fuck Russia" part of the TL;DR (which I'll get into in a bit), so I think I'll keep the title for now. I realize that three word sentence was a bit general. lol. First off, let it be known I am well-aware Moscow wouldn't stamp out the insurgency even if they were [unrealistically] allowed entry to Ukraine to do so, considering shunning and ignoring pleas for aid isn't sending a message to the insurgents. I'll get into this too.
Was Ukraine fighting against dissidents part of the agreement or no? (I honestly forget)
Also, what's the concessions Russia is expected to make? I will note the most significant one: The reasoning from Kerry is that the concession Russia is expected to make (defusing the insurgency in eastern Ukraine), works specifically under Kerry's assumption that Russia is in full control of the situation. This is not a true assumption. Considering the insurgents are bitching that Russian doesn't even help them, it's debatable how much control Russia has over these ragtag groups of angry guys from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, etc. It certainly isn't anywhere near the degree that US/Ukrainian press/politicians claim. Do they really have the control Kerry seems to be implying? How Kerry makes it sound, these guys may as well be Russian military forces with how much control he's implying Moscow has over them.
Short of stepping in and telling them to shut up (assuming they wanted to), I don't think there's a whole lot Russia can do about this situation. But then, Russia can't step in without this being an invasion lol.
I think Russia is sending a very clear message to the insurgents by not helping them that Russia is not supporting the insurgency in Ukraine. Is Putin even cheerleading for these guys in the first place? Meanwhile, the insurgents are hopelessly idealistic, in a variety of articles stating that they hope Russia will give them stuff or Russia will come in. However, you can't "defuse" a situation you don't control. I think the fact that the Russians aren't following our style and arming these insurgents to the teeth is doing a lot more than I or anyone expected of them. Short of crushing the insurgents themselves, they're doing what they can on their end of the bargain, unless we are to believe the myth that this is a whole Russian conspiracy, along with conspiracies that these guys are actually Russian soldiers, etc.
Can Russia do more? Maybe. But I think they're happy with the way things are progressing without raising a finger one way or the other. Meanwhile, Kerry is making assertions based on false assumptions. His assertions would be real if the assumptions of direct Russian control over these guys were real. Unfortunately, that's not the case, and what Kerry is basically saying is, "Put out the fire you're not allowed to get near or we will punish you." Ok.
BUT LET IT BE CLEAR: Even if Russia had the ability to crush the insurgency (by that I mean the legal ability to enter Ukraine in some form or another), I don't think they'd want to do that anyways. Still, they can't be blamed for the fact that some assholes can't seem to understand that Moscow doesn't really care to support them.
Now this is where things get interesting. While Russia appears to be pretty meh about wanting to support the insurgents, they are hoping that the insurgents can promote violence in order to justify Russian "peacekeeping". Russia has political interests. The insurgents are a Russian political interest for the sole purpose of provoking Ukrainian military violence, which they are doing just by occupying buildings/towns, even without Russia's involvement. Otherwise, I doubt Russia gives a fuck about them nor controls them as if they were a standard regiment in the Russian military as Kerry seems so hellbent on insisting. Russia doesn't even need to be involved for the current events to be happening. Ex-Soviet ex-military guys and dudebros with too much time and too little brains are doing that on their own.
You see? It's a trap. If the insurgents decide to stop being assholes tomorrow, okay, whatever. The Russian threat is mostly over since then Russia wouldn't have any leverage, which these insurgents provide. If the status quo continues, these guys keep believing that some day Russia will give them infinite weapons and supplies whilst they wage their holy jihad in eastern Ukraine. That has not happened and I doubt it will happen. Nothing changes for Russia, and Ukraine is the loser since it has a room full of spiders that will be difficult to clear out.
But if Ukrainian forces fight these guys as they are starting to, then Russia suddenly gives a care about the insurgents and uses the violence as justification for invasion. See what's going on? Political trap from Moscow. Yatsenyuk should not fall into a trap similar to others in history.
EDIT: Now there is terrorism way far away in Odessa. I don't think Russia has any control over insurgents there. I'd like to see how Kerry slaps this one on Russia too.
lol. So you think that Russia by telling the world, that if Ukraine moves into quell the unrest that Russia will intervene is not supporting the protestors? Especially, given that there is a huge troop build up since *March 13th* on the Ukrainian border? A major reason why these protests are going on so long is that Russia is explicitly supporting them by telling the protesters they can do what they want: occupy the buildings, and if Ukraine moves in, we will too.
Maybe Russia could do the following things to deescalate: 1.) Tell the occupiers to abandon the buildings and seek a political solution. 2.) Remove the troops from the border. 3.) Say that Russia will not invade Ukraine, "to restore order" or whatever. ^Putin should say these things to make them more legitimate, but actually NO ONE from Russian government has said anything to deescalate the situation.
Don't you think this *could* help defuse the situation? Clearly it could. But Russia hasn't done this because Russia clearly wants the situation to be unstable. If Russia is trying to make the situation unstable via troop buildups and threats of invasion, one could come to believe they are supporting the rebels in more direct ways. We have no proof of this, but given that Russia has so much influence in Ukraine (given it has Russian supporters, it's easy to go 'under-cover', FSB-KGB ties), it'd be very surprising if Russia was *only* keeping it's troops on the border and making threats. It's probably helping the situation more directly but we don't have any solid proof.
Ghanburighan is taking this claim even farther and stating it as fact- it's Russian military, Russian armed protestors, coordinated by Russia,etc. He is taking an approach that jumps to conclusions (some of them near certain, some improbable). You disagree with him, I disagree with some of his points also. A middle of the road approach would be to say "Russia is clearly interested in the unrest and supporting it indirectly via threats/troop-buildups and possibly more directly".
What you are claiming is a ridiculous RussiaTimes view on the situation, that Russia has nothing to do with this and is just ideally sitting around while this unrest happens.....
Ah, you may not have read my post carefully. Your opening sentence makes that fact clear.
So you think that Russia by telling the world, that if Ukraine moves into quell the unrest that Russia will intervene is not supporting the protestors?
My last few posts in this thread have PRECISELY stated that Russia is using this as a trap and will intervene off of that.
However, what you say does not at all mean that Russia is supporting the protestors. Russia is supporting their own interests. They couldn't give a rat's ass about these protesters, as they're showing right now.
If my only interest in you is to buy me me tickets to Disneyland since you want me to take you somewhere, it doesn't mean I like you because you bought me a ticket to Disneyland. It just means I wanted to go to Disneyland. (of course I'm not that cruel, but this is the scenario at play here).
To say that Russia using the protestors as an excuse to intervene is akin to supporting the protestors is a big stretch.
Don't you think this *could* help defuse the situation? Clearly it could. But Russia hasn't done this because Russia clearly wants the situation to be unstable.
I've stated a ton of times in each of my preceding posts that Russia has no such interest, but I doubt that your points could accomplish much anyways. Regardless of the situation, Russian's refusal of help is even more significant an action than what you listed. Some words thrown the insurgents' way is minuscule a point in comparison. They're brush it aside as political rhetoric. If they can't even respond to Russian action, as I stated in my previous post, how in the hell do you think they will respond to a few words?
We have no proof of this, but given that Russia has so much influence in Ukraine (given it has Russian supporters, it's easy to go 'under-cover', FSB-KGB ties), it'd be very surprising if Russia was *only* keeping it's troops on the border and making threats. It's probably helping the situation more directly but we don't have any solid proof.
The bolded portion says it all. We can say Russians are masters of espionage, but something on this scale and considering the insurgents are a bunch of buffoons who yell about anything that happens, this would have had a lot of proof by now. It's pretty difficult to hide. But, unfortunately, we have no proof, as you say.
"Russia is clearly interested in the unrest and supporting it indirectly via threats/troop-buildups and possibly more directly".
And this is what I have stated in effect. However, you may be confusing the unrest for the causers of the unrest, whereas I have been making the distinction. Russia has evidenced it gives 0 fucks about the causers of the unrest.
However, obviously, it gives many fucks about the unrest. It is very interested in the unrest.. It plays into Russian interests. It's a trap for the Ukrainians. I have stated this in previous posts.
Ghanburighan is taking this claim even farther and stating it as fact- it's Russian military, Russian armed protestors, coordinated by Russia,etc.
And the greatest anti-terrorist in the Mideast suddenly fell in love with Al Qaeda and magically got nuclear weapons out of his ass, and in some alternate dimension, it was deemed reasonable to attack a guy who supposedly had nuclear weapons. Seems legit. EDIT: Actually, on second thought, Kerry's conspiracies about the situation in Ukraine are more reasonable. But, if this was Russian military, here's how we would know: they would be armed to the teeth like the actual Russian soldiers in Crimea and they would have severed Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkiv provinces from Ukraine by now.
EDIT: Russia is on "their side" as much as the US is on the side of rebels in Syria and formerly in Libya. They see a big power they see could help them because said big power doesn't like the regime in power and calls to them. In Ukraine, this is exaggerated however by the fact that there's lots of nationally Ukrainian but ethnically Russian guys among these insurgents, calling to the country of the exact same ethnicity. Jesus Christ, I wonder who they would ask for help?!? OF COURSE they got that impression, but not for the reasons you're implying. Russia is not exonerated, but the biggest action they can make is sanctioning the insurgents, which is what they're effectively doing. The biggest insult and aggressive action you can give them is refusing their begging to suit them up to take on the world. They're just slow in the head and haven't gotten the message yet. I'm certain that some words from Putin would have much less effect.
However, as stated previously, these insurgents have goals beyond anything involving Russia. They are really fucking pissed with the system in Ukraine and want out. Of course, they need help, or who else are they going to ask? Lol
Rest of your edit is again extremely exaggerating the "ghostliness" of Russian espionage about matters of which, to quote, "We have no proof of this".
Russia's unexpected interest rate hike has failed to assuage rising investor fears over the potential fallout from Moscow's Ukrainian quarrel, with the Russian bond market suffering a rout on Friday.
The government's generic 10-year borrowing costs shot up 29 basis points to 9.65 per cent, near the highest in at least four years, while the rouble – initially steadied by the Russian central bank's surprise decision - quickly lost its footing again to drop 0.7 per cent against the US dollar.
Standard & Poor's downgraded Russia's credit rating to just one step above "junk" today, but the real concern of investors was the widening rift with Ukraine and the west, with the US readying another round of sanctions after last weekend's diplomatic accord unravelled.
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Judicator, perhaps this is up your alley to give comments on:
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Apparently, if true, not deterred by new Russian training exercises (recall that Crimea was invaded under the pretext of a training exercise too, see the ICDS paper above).
EPT
