In some ways, this post includes similar info as Sinera made in the first post. The difference is that I found so many observations of the events eerily similar to things I'm seeing in my country. Obviously, the same hands are at work.
Reading the
not mainstream news about Ukraine, I felt muddled. Although I understood what they were saying, I was missing context. I found quite a few other people were in the same boat. So, I started looking for more info. The long history of this area is incredibly interesting, but I’ll have to set it aside and look at the last few years for now.
First there is the history from the time Ukraine separated in 1991 from the Soviet Republic after it’s collapse. My apologies in advance as I’m writing in the most basic manner. I know my friends on the other side of the Atlantic have no need for this part, but some of us do. Be kind, please. While there are more details to this part of the Ukraine history, the part I think we need to look at now is how the Maidan protest/revolution was handled because it is playing out again right now. (Also, people in other countries will see an uncomfortable comparison to leaders with socialist agendas, as well as Antifa tactics and riots.)
In 2012, Yanukovych was president and working toward a trade agreement with the EU, while at the same time maintaining trade with Russia. He delayed the agreement with the EU in 2013, which lead to Maidan protests/revolution. (Maidan is a public square in the middle of Kiev.) The protests then spread to the Donbass region (Donetsk and Luhansk) and Crimea. Yanukovych handled the protests poorly and many lives were lost. He was charged with mass murder and removed from office, and an interim government was set in place.
During this time, the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Donetsk and Luhansk attempted the same but were unsuccessful for several reasons.
Ukrainian billionaire, Poroshenko, won the 2015 presidential election by a landslide. Fighting continued in the Donbass region with great loss of life. This also was the time Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down in the Donetsk region. In September, representatives of Ukraine and Russia met with separatists leaders in Minsk, Balarus and agreed to a cease-fire. However, hostilities continued. In late 2015 another peace agreement was brokered and heavy weapons were pulled back from each side of the Ukraine and Russian border.
In 2019, Poroshenko lost the presidential election to the actor, Zelensky, who portrayed the Ukrainian president in a comedy series. (Does this remind anyone of a New York bartender who became a US congresswoman?) One of the reasons Poroshenko lost was because of official corruption. (Remember the Clintons and Bidens were good friends and business associates with many wealthy Ukrainians during this time. Also, Soros has been active with his NGOs in the Ukraine since 1990.
OK, now I've got some context and timelines in my head, and I can go forward.
First off - hat tip to Maryann for the recommendation of the video from which the following notes are taken. Why is this video important? It shows the insights and experiences of three journalists who actually were in the Donbass region during the Maidan protests. All agree on a very important point - it was ethnic cleansing of people of Russian descent. Does that put Putin’s actions then and now in a different light? Also, it shows how well this type of cleansing can be achieved. (In the US, we see the same thing happening with the middle-class population. Economically, this group of people are being removed.)
The video is about an hour long and has English subtitles. I pulled out the main points for anyone who wants to read and not watch. However, watching the video is a good idea because it includes many shots of the actual events, as well as interviews with people from those areas.
The following excerpts from the 2016 YouTube interview explain the horrendous nature of those putting down the Maidan protests.
Nicolai Lilin interview
Madness of nationalism and reinventing history over the past 20 years.
Manipulation of history is dangerous for those who read it and who live with other ethnicities in the same country.
Political adventurers arrived and started demolishing the country, selling parts to anyone who would buy.
Various wars and different historical operations have created this country, and many different populations are in it - Jews, Moldovans, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Russians, Poles, Belarusians - all together in a huge melting pot of cultures.
Those “in charge” played fast and loose with the identity of the Ukrainians.
Politicians arrived and said some will not be allowed to speak their languages and the children will have to study the official language.
So, as Ukrainians began asserting their independence, they also began attacking the those of other cultures - like Nazi’s in Germany in WW 2.
This ideology has been going on for 20 years in the Ukraine, and now is unfolding in dramatic events.
The Maidan revolutions should have seemed a strange event because only an uneducated and ignorant person can believe an entire population of a whole country can go into a public square armed with crowbars and firearms and make such a change. There were militants from Polish Neo-Nazi groups participating, and many who were not even Ukrainian and did not speak the language - many young people from neighboring republics of the former Soviet Union - Lithuania, Estonia, and there were Poles, Germans.
At first the Maidan protest was brutally suppressed with terrible beatings. Young men were given the power to carry this out, and they were cheerful about it - even filming themselves with their phones.
In Maidan there was not a spontaneous and popular rebellion against a bad and corrupt president. There was no group embracing its national idea and ridding itself from an evil tyrant. It went very differently. Conditions and situations were put into place by Western intervention - many Western NGOs connected to people like Soros who lives hidden behind the idea of universal democracy, and under this cover, he does the usual dirty tricks. He needs areas that are not protected by laws. So times of war and protests are perfect because you can do and propose everything.
With a revolution, there is a back hole and the absence of law and Constitution.
The opposition could have invested less money and created a change in leadership through voting, but they chose revolution to create the idea of illegality.
Two things escaped their control -
First, they thought it would be quicker, but it was not maybe because the CIA has forgotten how to plan revolutions because they are used to direct wars and subsidizing terrorism, as they did in Afghanistan and Syria. The Ukrainian revolution went out of control and against the goals of the CIA.
Second, they did not consider the existence of an important group of Ukrainian people - the ones who recognize themselves as Russian. When they saw their country being destroyed, divided in two parts, and the loss of Crimea, they were in shock. According to American projects, Crimea was to become a US Military base from which to organize actions against Russia and the Middle East.
But the people of Crimea wanted to return to Russia and were not easily conquerable. They started to defend themselves, but we only know about it through the efforts independent journalists and bloggers.
In Odessa there was a massacre of people who tried to demonstrate against the outcome of the Maidan revolution. They did not want a revolution, but rather a legal change through voting. About 70 people were barricaded in a building and burned alive. Those who tried to escape were beaten and executed.
The young people who call themselves Neo-nazis are not nazis at all. They are demons who like violence and invented the idea of national socialism to cover their actions. They will leave an important mark on the future of this century because the truth of what happened in shrouded in fog and the lies of western journalists.
Eliseo Bertolasi - journalist
Maidan - I saw a lot of demonstrators in camouflage uniforms marching in the streets, armed with shields, clubs and with covered faces. I heard a lot of people praising the EU without actually knowing what the EU is and how much it is damaging European people.
I saw frantic people who, while extolling democracy, were throwing Molotovs at the police.
In essence, the square was a large military camp. But mostly, I perceived in the square a very high level of violence and strong anti-russian sentiment. It was a coup in the Ukraine.
It was the west that supported and supports the current Ukrainian government. The very west that, as a foundation of its so-called democracy requires free elections that determine a country’s political leaders, who supported this protest, which effectively ousted the legitimate leader.
I remind you that President Yanukovych was duly elected and won elections that were described as regular by international observers.
In my opinion this is an ethnic conflict.
Ukraine is a young country born of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It inherited a multi-ethnic situation from the Soviet Union - two souls - a Russian and a Ukrainian soul. After the arrival of the new anti-russian Kiev government, the balance has been shattered.
Regarding the Donbass war - sum it up in two words - total destruction. Whole villages reduced to rubble, the airport completely destroyed, social and civil infrastructure completely destroyed.
The feeling is that the Kiev government wanted total destruction and continues to talk about anti-terrirism operation against the Donbass population. They say it is to get rid of Russian terrorists, but I’ve never seen one. I have seen much terror in the eyes of civilians and in the eyes of children who live in the basements. Men and woman of all ages and backgrounds decided to take up arms to defend their values, such as being free to speak their own language and live according to their own traditions.
Many Russian volunteers came from several regions in order to the defend the land and the people.
Sergeij Rulev
Began reporting because the only news from the Kiev side and nothing from the Donbass pro-russian side.
Conspiracy of silence, which covers up a crime and war is always a crime in and of itself.
Then there are wars that derive from criminal conduct.
So not talking about it, not looking for the responsibility, not verifying with your own eyes, is to me a conspiracy of silence and just lack of information.
I could tell you in just two words, but terrifying words: ethnic cleansing.
By the complicity of the junta in power in Kiev, and ethnic cleaning is taking place.
hospital, every school, every factory,
When all structures, civil structures, every hospital, every school, every factory, including factories for shoes and other things, all the aqueducts and power plants were hit. It simply and bluntly means that they want to eliminate a population from its own lands, by chasing away or killing them.
What I saw in Donbass was the outright killing of civilians. I was also on the front lines Pervomajsk, where I spoke with pro-Russian fighters and they themselves denounced the fact that as militiamen, as armed soldiers, they were attacked much less than the civilian population, because artillery fire and air raids passed by the military lines and hit civilian targets.
It is tragic when a hospital is hit during a war, but when all the hospitals, aqueducts, and power plants are hit, it is an intent to destroy the civilian population.
This also is a racist war because militias like the Azov, the Aidar, or the Dnepr battalions explicitly show their connection to Nazi ideology with swastikas.
The national army is in disarray because young people know they may be facing off against friends and family. Also, the Ukrainian regime is one of the most corrupt in the world and a payment of six to eight hundred euros will ensure the person enlisting will not spend any time on the front lines. In some families the son agreed to allow his parents to break a leg to avoid induction into the military.
There are some battalions of volunteers who are paid by oligarchs, who are linked to the most facists movements of the new Ukraine. Pravi Sektor, for example, carried out the most lethal military activity.
If the Kiev junta had proof of the direct involvement of the Russian army, it would have come out. The government is supported by the CIA, which is the best intelligence gathering organization in the world, so surely if there was evidence, it would have been supplied.
Then the fact that there is Russian aid to the population and perhaps even military, that I cannot quantify, but it certainly is not huge for the people in Donbass. Also it seems to me legitimate because it is a Russian population that is under an ethnic attack.
Ukrainians be they Russian speakers or not have had the means to experience over these years the so called freedom of the free market, the western ways, and I do not think that this model was good for everyone.
With the attacks on the people of Donbass, the people are finding new ways to live. They are creating consortiums and cooperatives for the reconstruction. They are putting together elements for a supportive society that is not based only on the power of money.
So, now that we’ve heard the other side of the story, how are we viewing Putin? He certainly picked his time well for an invasion. With so many western countries dependent on Russian oil and gas (including the US), any sanctions are just shouts into the wind. Could these maneuvers finally crash the Petro-dollar and set the stage for a new currency?
I have no answers to these questions, but when Sean Penn and one of the Rothchilds tell me I must think and act a certain way, I’ve got my head up and looking around because something stinks somewhere.
Following are a map of Ukraine with arrows on the areas mentioned and a link to the YouTube video.
