Ukraine SMO: Sitrep Operation Z / Open Thread

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


by the Saker Staff for the Saker Blog

Wow, too much information out there in addition to the world developments.  Today and tomorrow we have the G7 in Germany, and NATO on June 29-30 in Madrid.  Various threats will surface from these two meetings as well as childish foot-stomping and brave statements on steroids.  Mr. Lavrov’s short statement has relevance: ‘We have few illusions that EU’s Russophobic policies will change’ – FM Lavrov

We leave you with one image:


And on the battlefront, the news is coming in so fast that it is almost impossible to keep track of.  Of main importance on the front line and from the Russian MoD report:

  • On June 25, the cities of Severodonetsk and Borovskoye, the settlements of Voronovo and Sirotino passed under the control of the Lugansk People’s Republic. The localities liberated from the Kiev regime are inhabited by about 108,000 people. The total area of the liberated territory is about 145 square kilometers.
  • The success of the Russian army and the people militia units of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics considerably diminish the moral and psychological condition of the Ukrainian army personnel.
  • In the 30th Mechanised Brigade deployed near Artyomovsk, there are mass cases of alcohol abuse, drug use and unauthorised abandonment of combat positions.

If you take a look at that MoD Report it is becoming so clear that the attrition rate now is counted in brigades.

Attacks have resulted in neutralising the 65th, 66th mechanised brigades and 46th Airmobile Brigade from AFU strategic reserves that were finishing their preparation at those training grounds.

Take a look at Larry Johnson’s latest:


“Some die hard neo-cons continue to manifest their ignorance of military affairs by pointing to Russia’s slow progress in taking Severodonetsk as evidence of Russia’s incompetent, weak army. What they fail to understand is that Russia was trying to avoid killing the civilians still inside Severodonetsk, who were being used as human shields by the Ukrainians. Putin and the Russian commanders are placing a higher value on saving civilians rather than unleashing their full military might in order to show the world what they can really do. This is a remarkably mature military strategy.”  https://sonar21.com/even-the-uks-sky-news-is-reporting-on-the-ukrainian-debacle-in-the-donbas/

  • Also of note is the strikes on Kiev from the Caspian Sea & from the airspace of Belarus. The Russian Federation used Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers. They launched X-101 missiles, which can fly up to 5500 km. At the same time, Russian warships fired up to 50 missiles at targets all over Ukraine — targeting Ukrop bases, manufacturing sites of air to air missiles in Kiev disguised as “residential buildings” & other military targets.

We leave this for you as an open thread for reporting updates.

Map:  The Readovka Map is up to date.  Click on the map itself, for a bigger and better quality version.


The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.


 

 

Did you sign up yet for our FREE bulletin?

 


[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读




• SPECIAL! The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: Revelations from Trials and Investigation

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.



Ivan Katchanovski, Ph.D.

School of Political Studies &


Conflict Studies and Human Rights Program
University of Ottawa

Ottawa, ON


K1N 6N5, Canada


The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: Revelations from Trials and Investigation



Abstract
This study examines evidence revealed by the ongoing trial and government investigations
concerning the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. The massacre of the protesters and the police
during the “Euromaidan” mass protests in February 2014 contributed to the overthrow of the
Ukrainian government and ultimately to a start of the civil war in Donbas, Russian military
interventions in Crimea and Donbas, the Russian annexation of Crimea and an international
conflict between the West and Russia. The research question is as follows: What does evidence
made public by the Maidan massacre trials and Ukrainian government investigations reveal
about which of the parties of the conflict was involved in this mass killing? This paper analyzes
several hundred hours of video recordings of the Maidan massacre trials and information
concerning investigations of this massacre in over 2,500 court decisions from the official court
decisions database in Ukraine. It examines trial and investigation testimonies of wounded
protesters, relatives of the killed protesters, prosecution and defense witnesses, and top officials
of the Yanukovych government. The study also analyzes results of forensic ballistic and medical
examinations and investigative experiments, and videos and photos of the Maidan massacre
made public during the trial. It includes several online video appendixes. They contain
testimonies of wounded protesters and witnesses concerning snipers in Maidan-controlled
locations and content analyses of synchronized segments of American, Belgian, Belarusian,
British, Finnish, French, Dutch, German, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian TV videos,
recordings of live online broadcasts, and social media videos of this crucial massacre.


In 2014, who stood to gain from regime change in Ukraine?


The Maidan massacre trials and investigations have revealed various evidence that four killed
and several dozen wounded policemen and at least the absolute majority of 49 killed and 157
wounded Maidan protesters were massacred on February 20, 2014 by snipers in Maidan-
controlled buildings and areas. Such evidence includes testimonies of the absolute majority of
wounded protesters, several dozens of prosecution witnesses, dozens of defense witnesses, and
14 self-admitted members of Maidan snipers groups. Videos presented at the trial showed that
times of shooting of the absolute majority of protesters did not coincide with times of shooting
by the Berkut policemen, who were charged with their massacre. Forensic medical examinations
determined that the overwhelming majority of the protesters were shot from steep directions
from the sides or the back. Initial ballistic examinations did not match bullets extracted from the
bodies of killed and wounded protesters to the Berkut Kalashnikovs. Forensic examinations of
the bullet holes by the government experts for the Maidan massacre trial suggested that Berkut
policemen were shooting in the Hotel Ukraina snipers above the Maidan protesters and in trees
and poles. The analysis shows cover-up and stonewalling of the investigations and trials by the
Maidan governments and the far right. The prosecution denied that there were any snipers in the
Maidan-controlled buildings. Not a single person is convicted or under arrest for the massacre of
the protesters and the police almost 8 years after one of the most documented mass killings in
history.



The Research Question
The massacre of the protesters and the police during the “Euromaidan” mass protests
on February 18-20, 2014 in Ukraine resulted in the overthrow of the semi-democratic, corrupt,
and relatively pro-Russian Yanukovych government. (See Katchanovski, 2015a, 2016a, 2020a).
This mass killing was a tipping point of the conflict in Ukraine and led to government overthrow.
It also ultimately led or contributed to a civil war in Donbas, Russian military interventions in
Crimea and Donbas, and the secession and annexation of Crimea by Russia and international
conflicts between Ukraine and Russia and the West and Russia. (Katchanovski, 2015b, 2016b;
Kudelia, 2016; Hahn, 2018). This conflict over Ukraine escalated into the most serious
international crisis since the end of the Cold War because it involves largest nuclear powers, and
This paper examines the following research question: What does evidence made public
by the Maidan massacre trials and Ukrainian government investigations reveal about which of
the parties of the conflict was involved in this mass killing? Maidan massacre trials and
Ukrainian government investigations made public for the first time a large volume of various
evidence, such as results of forensic medical and ballistic examinations and testimonies of
wounded protesters concerning this politically crucial case of mass killing. This study reviews
main findings of previous academic studies and divergent narratives by the Western, Ukrainian,
and Russian governments and the media concerning the Maidan massacre, and analyzes trial and
investigation testimonies, results of forensic examinations for the prosecution and the Maidan
victims lawyers for the trial, videos and photos presented at the trial, and cover-up and
stonewalling of the investigation and the trial.

READ THE WHOLE PAPER HERE  


The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.


 

 

Did you sign up yet for our FREE bulletin?

 


[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读




History is Being Written Before our Eyes

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


By Batiushka for The Saker Blog

 

The Moving Finger writes and, having writ,
Moves on: And neither Devotion, nor Wit
Shall make it cancel a Half-Line of it,
Nor Tears shall wash away a Word or Whit.

Omar Khayyam

Introduction: The Distant Past

In 1945 the US and the UK betrayed and turned on their ally, the Soviet Union, which was far too victorious against Nazi Germany for their taste (1). For the war-crime bombings of Dresden, ordered by the half-American Churchill, and of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ordered by the full-American Truman, were warnings – issued not to the already crushed Germany and Japan, but to the USSR. Then, from 1945 on, a series of covert and not so covert operations were carried out by Western spies and terrorists in order to undermine further the Soviet Union, notably in the Baltics and above all in the Western Ukraine (right up until 1958). Many so-called ‘former’ Nazis were employed by the Western Powers to do this dirty work for them. (2).

The Near Past

Even after losing its wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2014 the United States organised and financed a violent, anti-democratic regime-change operation in Kiev, at a cost of $5 billion to the US taxpayer. It had now finally bitten off more than it could chew. As a result, the Russian Federation, a Superpower, though mocked and despised at the time by the arrogant Obama as a political and economic ‘regional’ minnow, had to take back the Crimea after its 60-year loan to the Ukraine. Otherwise, it would have lost its key Black Sea naval base in Sevastopol to the Pentagon, just as it had briefly lost it to the Anglo-French Fascists in 1856 and the German Fascists in 1942. It also had to defend Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine by setting up a buffer zone, so buying itself time to prepare for a possible full-blown campaign of liberation there.

From 2014 on, Russia made eight years of highly meticulous preparations, ideological, political, diplomatic, economic, military, energy and agricultural, implementing a policy of import substitution to increase its independence and sovereignty. For Russia knew that the US would flood the Ukraine with NATO instructors and weapons in order to attack its people there and Russia itself, even if Russia did not launch a campaign to liberate the eastern Ukraine. The US will have a high price to pay for the foolish arrogance of this militarisation, carried out together with its NATO minions. Once the Crimea had voluntarily and democratically returned to Russia after the Western annexation of the Kiev regime territories in 2014, Russia experienced the illegal sanctions imposed on it by the Evil Empire. These would be implemented in even greater numbers, if Russia was forced to take back its ancestral territories of Novorossiya and Malorossiya and again set up a demilitarised and denazified zone in, at the very least, Eastern Europe.

The Present

The names of the neo-feudal elite of this Evil Empire are, like those of the demons, legion: The West/US/UK/EU/NATO/IMF/G7/UN/WTO/WHO/NGOs/ MSM/Anglo-Zionists/Anglo-Saxons/Washington and London/Neocons/New World Order/Globalists/World Bank/Federal Reserve/Banksters/Big Pharma/ Bilderberg/Trilateral/Davos/Soros….The above, who represent not even one billion of the world’s human-beings, are opposed by the Allies, who represent the seven billion human-beings of the Free World, the international community of the True United Nations: Russia, China, India, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, South Africa, Free Europe.

Of the Allies of the True United Nations: the Russian Federation is now the ideological, political, military, energy and agricultural leader; China and India are its manufacturing leaders; Iran, the Middle East, Indonesia and Venezuela are energy leaders; Latin America, Brazil and Mexico, Bolivia and Argentina, Peru and Ecuador, are industrial and resource leaders; Africa, from Egypt to South Africa, is a resource leader; Free Europe is about to be launched, with Serbia and Hungary, and perhaps Slovakia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Cyprus and others to follow, are the human leaders of Free Europe. There will be alternatives to the Evil Empire’s obsolete institutions: A true World Bank, a true United Nations, a true European Union, a true WTO, a true West and a true New World Order.

The Near Future

Since the campaign of liberation of the Ukraine was launched on 24 February, the world has changed. Our Great Reset has begun. True, most, though now no longer all, Western ideologues still refuse to accept that their private fantasy of a tyrannical unipolar world order is dead. Despite their delusions, that fantasy has been destroyed, not by those who opposed it, but by their own over-reaching hubris, that is, by their refusal to consider the rest of the world as of equal worth. For the liberation of Ukraine is just the beginning of the collapse of the ‘West is Best’ ideology. The struggle is also economic, as the West through its anti-Russian sanctions (3) is committing economic suicide. And the struggle is also ideological and political in its second, third and fourth phases.

In the second phase, there must follow the denazification of Eastern Europe, especially of the pro-Fascist Baltic State establishments, and the demilitarisation of Europe, initially of Moldova, Romania, Poland, Finland and Sweden, then gradually further west. Only then can the tiny and spiritually isolated European peninsula be integrated back into the Eurasian heartland. In the third phase, the rest of the world will be affected: China will take back Taiwan – and may also colonise and take control of North-Western Australia and the eastern Pacific, moving out from the South China Sea: Korea will be reunited; Syria and Libya will be rebuilt; the Palestinians will have their own homeland; Latin America must receive justice after a century of the disasters of its US-imposed banana leaders.

Conclusion: The Distant Future

Then will come the fourth phase of our Great Reset: the regime changes in the oligarchic territories of the Evil Empire itself, starting in the USA, founded on the Anglo-Saxon elite’s genocide of its native peoples and then a bloody Civil War. However, we should recall that the history of the USA is merely a repetition of the history of Western Europe. For here too, though long, long ago, the present European establishments were founded on the barbarising and feudalising Frankish, Norman and Teutonic elites’ genocides of its native peoples, of Romanised Celts and Gauls, Old Saxons, Old English, Bretons, Basques, Mozarabs etc. And then those establishments reinforced their positions in internecine Civil Wars, atrocities and artificial famines, which patterned the history of Western Europe, almost continually, from the twelfth century on, through the Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War, the English Civil Wars, the Seven Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Irish Famine, right up to the First and Second European Wars, which became worldwide. Yes: History is being written before our eyes.

Notes:

1. Only eleven months before the end of World War II, the US and the UK finally launched D-Day. Why so late in the War? Simply because the Western Allies had underestimated the fighting power and sacrifices of the Soviet Union. D-Day took place on 6 June 1944 only because without it the Soviet Union would have liberated all of Continental Europe as far as the Channel coast, reaching not just Berlin and Vienna, but also Copenhagen and Brussels, Paris and Madrid. The Anglo-Saxons would not accept that and it was that realisation which finally prompted them to invade north-western Europe.

3. Instead of admitting the truth that it has created the problem, the West blames not its own anti-Russian sanctions for its economic disaster, but instead the Russian liberation of the Ukraine. In the same way it blamed the economic catastrophe of 2020-22 not on its Fascistic lockdowns, but on covid. The West, blinded by the arrogance that comes from its corrupted will and so technical ability to loot and pillage the world, always blames others for its self-imposed predicaments.


The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.


 

 

Did you sign up yet for our FREE bulletin?

 


[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读




Russian Ops in Ukraine – Ukraine Losing M777 Howitzers, Continues Losing Ground in Donbas

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


Brian Berletic
THE NEW ATLAS

Russian Ops in Ukraine - Ukraine Losing M777 Howitzers, Continues Losing Ground in Donbas



21 May 2022

Update for Russian military operations in Ukraine for May 21, 2022:
1. Ukrainian militants in the Azovstal steelworks have unconditionally surrendered numbering between hundreds (current Red Cross count) to thousands according to Russian sources;
2. Mariupol has been secured by Russia since mid to late-April - Ukraine finally admits however that its “combat operations” have fully ended;
3. Russia continues to make progress in the Donbas region - Ukrainian forces are being encircled in Severodonestsk and Lysychansk - the salient around Papasnya is expanding both west and north as part of this major encirclement;
4. Pentagon admits Russia still poses the majority of its combat power - possess a “numerical advantage” over Ukraine - and is making “slow, uneven” progress, but progress nonetheless;
5. Kharkov “offensive” has either stalled or is in the process of being rolled back;
6. US M777 howitzers have been found, tracked, targeted, and destroyed by Russian forces;
7. Additional attempts to send heavy weapons will face similar technical, tactical, strategic, and manpower challenges.


References
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcri...
US Department of Defense - Senior Defense Official Holds a Background Briefing May 19, 2022:
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcri...
TASS - Leader of Azov battalion transferred from Azovstal plant in armored vehicle - top brass:
https://tass.com/defense/1454085
SouthFront - IN VIDEO: RUSSIAN DRONE, ARTILLERY DESTROY UKRAINE’S NEW M777 HOWITZERS:
https://southfront.org/in-video-russi...
Institute for the Study of War - RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 20:
https://understandingwar.org/backgrou...


The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.


 


[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in Deiner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读