The Propaganda War

[Photo Guy]

Billy- No. If there's a full invasion, many Ukrainians will shift to a continuous guerilla war. Putin has created enemies, enemies who once felt like brothers. Tragic...and for what?

[Muzh]

Billy- No. If there's a full invasion, many Ukrainians will shift to a continuous guerilla war. Putin has created enemies, enemies who once felt like brothers. Tragic...and for what?

Partisan war. The Ukrainians will start a partisan war.

[jone]

Interesting quote today by Lavrov:

SOCHI, August 11 (RIA Novosti) – The Kiev government’s military operation in eastern Ukraine seems to be aimed at “razing the southeast to the ground” and forcing the Russian-speaking population to flee, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.

“So far, it seems that the purpose of the so-called anti-terrorist operation is to raze the southeast [of Ukraine] to the ground and make all Russians leave it. Apparently, with a purpose to later populate it with those who have a different view of our history, culture, friendship and centuries-long ties between our peoples,” Lavrov told reporters during his visit to Sochi.

*****************************************************************

Yup.  They want to get rid of all of the Russian speakers in Ukraine.  Let's see.  That's three quarters of the population!

Here's the article:

http://en.ria.ru/politics/20140811/191918317/Kiev-Seeks-to-Raze-Southeast-to-the-Ground-Expel-Russian.html

Does this constitute propaganda and fit in the "The Proaganda War" thread?

[Photo Guy]

Right! The Ukrainians I know, prefer the Russian language, and they think Putin is mad. Lavrov speaks pure propaganda.

[Photo Guy]

I found this great story over at Euromaidan Press. Is it propaganda?
A man with cerebral palsy rescues people in Donbas:

excerpt:
'...When I was taking people out of Snizhne, thirteen people have managed to fit inside my car. I couldn’t even fathom it’s possible. There were only eleven of them to begin with, but they told me that there were two more people in Shahtarsk who needed to be picked up. I asked them: “How?”As I approached Shahtarsk, two elderly men were waiting there. They said that they would be able to fit in. I told them: “Where?! You can’t! It’s impossible.” They started crying as I drove away. I came back for them and they got into the car! I don’t know how...'

full article:
http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/08/11/an-incredible-story-a-disabled-donetsk-man-daily-evacuates-elderly-and-children/

[Photo Guy]

All of the comments at Poroshenko's facebook are against Putin's Russia. They ask- How can Ukraine now cooperate with the 'aggressor', in the new humanitarian project in Lugansk?  Are all of these individuals CIA operatives, or just regular Ukrainians? Propaganda?
http://www.facebook.com/petroporoshenko/photos/a.474415552692842.1073741828.474409562693441/488600947940969/?type=1

[Muzh]

Oooo, more propaganda.

[Muzh]

Translation please.

[lordtiberius]

Press accreditation for the phony republics

[GQBlues]

DAILY UKRAINE FIELD REPORT BY OSCE

...A group of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Pervomais'k (76km west of Luhansk city) spoke to the SMM at Svatovo IDP transit camp (150km northwest of Luhansk city). They said that only 10,000 of Pervomais'k’s 80,000 inhabitants remained in the town. The town, they said, was being shelled by both Ukrainian military forces and irregular armed forces. The result, they said, was that almost all apartment blocks in the town had sustained damage, and only 30% of detached houses were intact. They said that 200 people had been killed in the town, and more than 400 wounded, since the shelling allegedly started on 22 July, with the dead being buried in courtyards. The town’s mayor, contacted later by the SMM over the phone, corroborated the figures supplied by the IDPs....

OSCE Report August 12, 2014

...Police in the Luhansk region accuse a volunteer military battalion of illegal detentions.

Municipal officials in Pervomaiskii (90 km southwest of Kharkiv city) told the SMM that public sentiment in the Pervomaiskii district is pro-Russian, with 80% of the population being ethnic Russian and a third of the district’s men working in the Russian Federation. People do not support the Kyiv government, they said. The officials stressed, however, that there was no appetite for separatism amongst the population – the maintenance of peace was more important.

The regional chief of police told the SMM in Severodonetsk (97 km northwest of Luhansk city) that the detention of supporters of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic” (“LPR”), carried out by a volunteer Ukrainian battalion at the filtration checkpoint in Schyatya (24 km north of Luhansk city), was illegal.  He likened the battalion’s behaviour to that of the irregular armed forces, adding that he was about to write to the Ministry of Defence, which controls the battalion, to have the battalion removed from the area. He said the mayor of Luhansk city, who had been detained by the battalion at the checkpoint, and whose whereabouts had been unknown since then, was now in “a safe place”, protected by the police, and considered a “crime victim”.  The police chief did, however, say that police at the checkpoint were seeking out suspects of illegal activities. He said they had a list, and when arrests were made suspects were handed over to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)....

OSCE Report Dated August 13, 2014

...The SMM learnt about cases of detention of two villagers in the Luhansk region. The head of Starobilsk police told the SMM that investigations had confirmed that soldiers from the 24th Battalion, a volunteer battalion under the control of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, was responsible for the abduction of the villagers, as well as their detention. In a meeting with the Ukrainian military commander of the security operation, the SMM was told that the military general staff had been visiting the area in order to assess further involvement of the 24th Battalion. The findings had not been revealed so far. The interlocutor said that, in his view, the 24th Battalion ought to be disbanded, reformed and redeployed...

OSCE Report August 14, 2014

[lordtiberius]

For a man who has never served in the military you sure are pretending to expertise.  Tell us again of your indifference to winners and losers.

Where's the win win?

[GQBlues]

OSCE Daily Report, August 15, 2014

...In Kharkiv the regional administration informed the SMM that a convoy of 26 trucks carrying Ukrainian humanitarian aid had left the city for Luhansk city. The convoy was accompanied by traffic police. The SMM met with the regional deputy head of the social protection department who said that the Kharkiv region had not been prepared for a big influx of IDPs coming from the conflict zone hence there was no co-ordinated effort to face the needs of IDPs. Efforts were made at the district level and in an ad hoc manner, the interlocutor said. According to the interlocutor, the Kharkiv region “has exhausted” its capacity to absorb additional IDPs; the lack of a unified IDP database hinders the capacity to properly plan and respond to different categories of IDPs, particularly the most vulnerable categories, such as children with disabilities.


At 13:30 the SMM heard a series of loud explosions consistent with shelling, and subsequently observed what appeared to be two bodies between 300 to 500 metres from the SMM’s initial location in the city centre of Donetsk. People at the scene told the SMM that there had also been a number of people injured. The SMM noted that an apartment on the fourth floor of a residential block had been destroyed and that all windows at the back of a building across the road had been shattered following what appeared to have been a mortar shell impact in the backyard of the building. At a nearby street, several windows and the entrance of a maternity clinic were damaged from what appeared to have been a mortar shell impact in the nearby yard. The SMM observed no military facilities in the vicinity.

 

Actually learned a new word (for me) today, *lustration*.

Lustration (from the Latin verb lustrare, to ceremonially purify) refers to a policy that seeks to cleanse a new regime from the remnants of the past. The process involves screening new officials (elected or appointed) for involvement in the former regime and sets some consequences if they are found to have been involved....

Sobolev, the newly appointed head of Ukraine's Lustration Committee, said:

...the goal of the lustration law will be to ban Yanukovych and his closest allies from politics for life, as well as to screen and remove those who are "agents of foreign secret service, people who have been involved in corruption, and people who have been involved in destruction of democracy."...

The first thought to come to mind then was...

1. (C) During an April 28 meeting with Ambassador, Our Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko emphatically denied he was using his influence with the Prosecutor General to put pressure on Tymoshenko lieutenant Oleksandr Turchynov (refs A and B).  Coalition talks with the Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) were continuing, but there was no progress to report; President Yushchenko still seemed unwilling to accept Tymoshenko as prime minister and was "listening" to influential advocates of cooperation with the Party of Regions.  Poroshenko claimed that he was personally opposed to an "Orange-Blue" pairing. Poroshenko related that he had spoken at length with Tymoshenko on April 27; she had sought, and then spurned, his assistance in forming a BYuT-OU coalition in the Kiev city council.  Poroshenko confided that he had spoken with Tymoshenko during the Orthodox Easter weekend (April 22-23); she had called him to ask "what he wanted" in return for his support for her serving again as PM. 

Poroshenko said he had replied that he wanted her to be more flexible and less high-handed in the coalition talks.  Poroshenko groused that Tymoshenko could not be trusted, stressing that she was not candid and not "principled."  It was very possible, Poroshenko warned, that there could be a crisis scenario in which Tymoshenko and Yushchenko simply could not get a coalition deal done.  End summary.

There's more on the *corrupton* segment for later.

[lordtiberius]

Fair and balanced!

[SANDRO43]

Actually learned a new word (for me) today, *lustration*.

I, too:

Lustration is a recently coined term that refers to the purge of government officials once affiliated with the Communist system in Eastern Europe. Various forms of lustration were employed in post-communist Europe. The concept might resemble de-Nazification in post-World War II Europe, and the de-Ba'athification in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, and therefore resonates with concepts such as possible accountability for past human rights abuses, corruption or injustice. The term is taken from the Roman lustrum purification rituals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustration

We have a derived term in Italian (acqua lustrale, lustral water) that applies to the holy water held in a church stoup or sprinkled in benediction by a priest with an aspersorium:

[fathertime]

Interesting GQ, I'll be curious to read your next installment.

Fathertime!

[lordtiberius]

Finally the win win,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/15/russia-ukraine-fighting_n_5681870.html

The President of Russia gets to send troops and material to his mercenaries in Ukraine and on the way The President of kills the Russian soldiers sent by the President of Russia.  Win Win!

[fathertime]

Finally the win win,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/15/russia-ukraine-fighting_n_5681870.html

The President of Russia gets to send troops and material to his mercenaries in Ukraine and on the way The President of kills the Russian soldiers sent by the President of Russia.  Win Win!

Although it has been obvious that you were motivated by anger, hate, and body counts, it is nice to see you 'out' yourself by celebrating Russian deaths.  Can you tell us more about your great wartime 'heroism' snd how this uniquely qualifies you?

Fathertime!

[lordtiberius]

What do you care?  Ukraine and Russia are just exercising their sovereign rights.  The main thing is that we stay out of it because we are to blame for everything wars, diseases, cankles, everything

[jone]

LT,

I have one for you to hit out of the park:

I was watching the statements coming in from British news services that Ukraine had hit the convoy that Russia tried to send across the border two nights ago.   Poroshenko said that it was 'mostly destroyed'. 

It occurred to me that the soldiers brought forth from Ukraine have gotten much better at fighting as the war goes on.  (Obviously they were in a state of disorganization when the two Oblasts were taken.)  Can you tell me how long it really takes to come up to speed as a gunner on an artillery piece?  And how long it really takes to be able to use the intelligence assets that are available? 

[lordtiberius]

Can you tell me how long it really takes to come up to speed as a gunner on an artillery piece? 

An experienced mortar, tank or 105 mm Howizter team can reload and fire in less than 3 minutes.  MLRS or Multiple Launch Rocket Systems its push button killing.

And how long it really takes to be able to use the intelligence assets that are available?

That is more difficult question.  Intelligence assets as you know could be anything.  It could be receipts it could be Satellite imagery that the US-NATO selectively give to the Ukrainians for political (or propaganda) purposes.  [I guess its not propaganda if its true.]  Manned and unmanned overflights are instantaneous.  The entire world knows that the US has the best signals intelligence.  The NSA is the federal agency but the services themselves have very sophisticated real time assets.  It is a open question how much intelligence sharing the West is providing the Ukrainians.  If you ask our Kremlin friends, its too much.  If you ask me, its not enough.

But for the purposes of your question, presuming I understand, if the West was not helping the Ukrainians who quickly could they get intelligence of the movements and positions of this armored column.  The British set up a system of eyes around the Pacific tracking Japanese ship movements.  These eyes were Merchant Marines, Lighthouse tenders but they also included a Catholic priest and other less obvious human intelligence sources.  You know the roads better than anyone here except maybe JayH.  There are only a few roads that they could have entered on.  Though tracked vehicles can go off road, but the trucks themselves need the hard ball so presumably Air Assets like the Mi-24 Hinds destroyed them:

   

One of the arguments against tanks is that they are highly vulnerable to these attacks.  The Buks weren't there to protect them.  We haven't seen the Battle Damage Assessments from open source reporters to speculate how they were destroyed or even if they were destroyed.

The Ukrainian War Ministry says it has sealed the border.  I don't believe this.  But it is possible that the Russian column met their end in a tank battle or using land based assets (IEDs, anti-tank guns, etc).  But this is IMO doubtful.

I hope this answers your question.  Thank you for asking.

[Photo Guy]

'...For many Russians, for whatever reason, it is difficult to understand one very simple thing: Ukraine is not Russia, and Ukrainians are not Russians...'


http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/08/18/ukraine-is-not-russia-and-ukrainians-are-not-russians/

[lordtiberius]

Well, yes and no, there are a lot of Ukrainians in Russia and they have a common origin.  My Betsy is Ukrainian but I talk to Russians too and Russians of Ukrainian descent and vice versa.  Things are not black and white like they are in Ferguson.

[Photo Guy]

Did you read the article?
It's not black and white, here or there....

The point of the article is that since becoming an independent state in 1991, Ukraine and Russia have moved in very different directions. I know Olga in Kiev. She tells me her ethnicity is "Russian". She tells me she is a citizen of Ukraine and does not want to be a citizen of Russia. So, in terms of nationality, she is pro-Ukrainian. There are people in Ukraine with ancestors in Greece. They are not pro-Greece. They are pro-Ukrainian. The Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine has brought many Ukrainians against Russia, who they see as trying to force parts of Ukraine to become a part of Putin's 'New Russia'. Ethnic Russians who are Ukrainians, remember how Russia turned off the gas a few years ago. It affected them in their flats. The people in Donbas have been neglected for the last 20 years, even under Yanukovych. The government in Kiev is NEW. It has not had a chance to implement reforms because it is so busy fighting a war instigated by Moscow. Ethnic Russians in Ukraine prefer the EU over Russia. Putin can't understand that. When have Russians in Russia determined their own political future? If you ask your typical 18 year old in Ukraine, where they would rather live: Poland? France? Russia? ...Putin does not want Ukraine's citizens to make that choice, on a political level. Ukraine is evolving in a good way. Russia is not.

[lordtiberius]

No.  I didn't read it.  I thought it was one you posted earlier however I read it today.  25% of the Russian language depends on English loanwords like progress and President.  If you listen to the Eurasians who are supporting Putin they want to replace that with Russian words eliminate the machy zak and de-Ukrainize Russia.  The problem is there is a lot of Russia that is Ukrainian and vice versa.  Ripping that element out of Russian society is like us getting rid of all the Spanish people or black or Irish people.

Separatism in Russia is a serious problem not because I think the peoples of the Kuban, Sibera, Kaliningrad, or Karelia have real ethnic differences like Dagestan or Chechnya,  but because Moscow governance is so bad and so corrupt.  The Euromaidan that Berzozsky was planning in 2004 against his old enemy is happening.  He is seeing it from the grave.

[Photo Guy]

Russian speakers?
What is this woman from Donetsk saying about Putin? Does she speak truth or propaganda?