Escalation in Ukraine

January 23, 2014 | Various

[annalex]

Escalation in Ukraine

Digest by Annalex

Two significant recent developments are:

1. First fatalities, apparently from live ammunition, among the demonstrators.

Injuries, including serious injuries are in the hundreds if not in the thousands. The rubber bullet can gouge an eye and therefore, at a right angle can be itself fatal. The sun grenades reportedly rip through flesh if the explosion is next to it. Ironically, neither of the two confirmed fatalities are Ukrainian: one is an Armenian from Eastern Ukraine; the other is a Belorussian resident of Ukraine.

One fatality (linked content here and below is rather graphic);

I suspect injuries among the military police. Watch, for example, how stoically they take Molotov cocktails; this has to leave marks.

Molotov cocktails

This is a long series of photos showing the combat technology.

Different bullets


The blogger describes this as “traumatic and strike ball” weaponry


Stun grenade


“Rumor has it, Bertkut (militarized police) tape bolts and nuts to stun and gas grenades”



Molotov cocktails. These are, someone explains, not properly done: straight kerosene or gasoline, rather than something more gooey; they invariably hurt the thrower as well.


Catapult 1 (it broke, they built another, of simple construction)


Archer


People got much better building the barricades.


Priests and monks often stand separating the combatants.

Much more on this topic, and in full resolution available, is in Zyalt’s blog

This Israeli blogger believes the fatalities were on order form the Kremlin. Yanukovich was ready to compromise with the protesters, so Putin made sure that, with mass shedding of blood, Yanukovich has no game left but toe the Kremlin’s line.

2. Other regions, naturally, in the West, are rising as well.

The country is divided, fuzzily, in two parts: ethnically Ukrainian West and mixed Russian-Ukrainian East. This blogger, Basmanov, writes in Russian and for Russians:

If you are a TV watcher, and think that the Russian Federation is your state and that the power structure of Putin pederasts [common swear in Russian] is for you, or if you are simply a fool, quit reading now. This is the material for them who understand that the Russians are an oppressed nation in the RF, its land is long since occupied and it is still to be re-conquered in the future. There is no other road for us: against the background of the Russians dying off, the mass foreign colonization policy conducted by the RF government is death to our people. So the question is stark: either the Russians throw out the power that be or the power that be slowly destroys out people. It is not important if you support Yanukovich or not. The technology is important. Learn carefully. When it is time to give a fight to the anti-Russian regime that seized power in RF and is oppressing our nation, you will approximately know what to do.

The map of provincial governments taken (red) or blocked (pink)

A news roundup follows with links:

• Citizens of Sumi took to the streets
  Video
• City Council and District parliament of Khmelnitzky recognized the power of People’s Rada (People’s Council, or Parliament, a rebel organization)
  Link
• It is confirmed that Ternopol administration is taken
  Link
• Rovno Militia (police) resigned
  Link
• In Zhitomir the demonstrators blocked the central street and demand resignation of the mayor and the governor
  Link
• Ternopol district administration is taken by the protesters
  Link
• In Khmelnitzky the Maidan forces began action
  Link
• In Cherkassy the demonstrators storm the district Administration – militia barricaded themselves inside
  Video
• In Cherkassy the protesters storm the district administration
  Link
• March on Rovno administration. They chant: Rise, Rovno!
  Link
• The assault on Lvov administration
  Video
• In Khmelnitzky near the administration barricades were erected
  Link
• How they seized the Administration in Rovno
  Video
• Protestaers took over the administration in Lvov and in Rovno
  Link

We live in interesting times, folks.

[dfwgator]

Remember the lesson from the October Revolution.

Most Russians wanted to get rid of the Tsar, but the vast majority didn’t ask for what replaced it.

[annalex]

[annalex]

Most Russians wanted to get rid of the Tsar, but the vast majority didn’t ask for what replaced it.

Hardly anyone wanted to "get rid of the Tsar". His Majesty was universally loved by the Russian people and his resignation stunned the nation. City intelligentsia, perhaps, wanted a democratic republic. Nearly everyone wanted an end to the Great War. The comparison between the organized criminal group that runs Ukraine (or Russia) and the last legitimate government in Russia is preposterous.

This said, of course in any revolution it is important that the national spirit is strong. In Russia, it wasn't, and it isn't now. It is important to note that all countries of East Europe used the period after the breakup of the Soviet Union wisely, building up their national consciousness. All countries that is except the Russian Federation, that lost its Russianness instead of losing its sovietness. Too bad, -- but I am happy for Ukraine already, no matter what emerges next.

Russia will be free again with the prayers of her saints.

[No One Special]

Hard to know what to make of a revolution where the people, if I’m right, don’t have guns that shoot bullets.

[Hacksaw]

I’ve been reading that nationalist groups have been taking over some of the protests (Ukrainians for the Ukraine, not Russia or EU). If it is true, we won’t hear much more about getting behind “the people” from the media anymore.

[annalex]

The idea is no wear down the government and paralyze it; not to kill anyone. It is important that the protesters stay loud but largely non-violent. Otherwise thing might develop not in their favor, because Putin might have an excuse to invade, ostensible protecting the ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and NATO would not have the guts to intervene (and good for them, and for us).

The purpose is to keep the putins and the mccains out of it.

Truce is observed today

[annalex]

we won’t hear much more about getting behind “the people” from the media anymore.

Ha, exactly. Nationalism is the only effective political force today, and the globalists know it, and fear it. A nation that knows its national interest is not going to play their little games in UN, EU, USSR, the Soros Fund, etc. We should all learn from Kiev.

"My land"

[REDWOOD99]

BFL

[cunning_fish]

>>The idea is no wear down the government and paralyze it; not to kill anyone. It is important that the protesters stay loud but largely non-violent<<

LOL. Molotovs, handguns....I think it is an ‘oppressive’ government forces who are super lenient.

[annalex]

[No One Special]

They are take care not to frighten the bourgeoisie too much. Wouldn’t be prudent. ;-)

[No One Special]

Yes, that makes sense. It’s the long haul that matters.

[annalex]

And the government hoses them from water cannons in freezing weather. So far, no government troops fatalities and 5 protester fatalities from stun grenades and live ammunition.

My point was not that there is no violence at all, but that the level of violence is moderated deliberately by both sides. It is Intifada-style, not Syria civil war-style. And good for them; that shows a level of national maturity.

"Kievans! We are for your freedom and ours" [with a sketch of the Ukrainian Coat of Arms]

[annalex]

Ukraine, rise! Freedom or Death! [the national trident, Ukrainian Insurgent Army flag]

[cunning_fish]

>>>Remember the lesson from the October Revolution.<<<

Bingo. Nationalist Ukrainians aren’t seems capable to run a nation. They had their chance from 1990 into mid-2000s and once a jewel of Imperial Russia and USSR is yet to grow to a Mexican level in either economy, political stability and a lack of corruption ever since.
Nationalist Ukrainians tends to politicize everything and they are stuffing their pockets with any resources they can put their hands on while in office.
What are their input into national legacy? A studies condemning Germany, Russia, Poland and Jews (depending on a direction of political flows at the time) for everything that went wrong in their country? Or maybe a hordes of ‘Russian’ prostitutes selling themselves for dime worldwide, including in Mexico, India and Africa?

[annalex]

They had their chance from 1990 into mid-2000s

That is true, so long as "they" is referring to the old KGB gang that, in Ukraine as in Russia, came to power and took on whatever mimicry the popular mood demanded.

The difference is that in the 20 years a Ukrainian nation has been apparently built and it is ready to broom all the old Soviet governing apparatus. How they themselves are going to govern we don't know, but here's something we do know about them: They are young and uninfected by the Soviet bacteria.

[cunning_fish]

>>That is true, so long as “they” is referring to the old KGB gang that, in Ukraine as in Russia, came to power and took on whatever mimicry the popular mood demanded<<<

LOL. Kuchma’s government are KGB gang?:) The entire fact of these people’s survival through communism is an evidence that KGB was as famous but incompetent as FBI is.

Maybe Yeltsinist ultra liberals in Russia were KGB gang too? I mean a government that forced a head of Soviet KGB (an ethnic Lithuanian) to suicide, dismembered KGB and Soviet Union itself in 1991, shelled a communist majority Congress and gunned down a thousand communist protesters in Moscow two years later?

Neither Kuchma in Ukraine nor Yeltsin in Russia were parts or KGB gangs but people like them are reason why at least Russians elected a former KGB officer less than a decade later.

[annalex]

They are all the Soviet cadre, with varying levels of KGB ties, equally incompetent of governing a free economy. Yeltsin had his better moments (opening the archives for example and banning the Communist Party) but he, too was a thoroughly Soviet man. It is a generational thing: the Soviet-era managerial trash is dying off and national development becomes possible.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

bkmk

[annalex]

Makeshift shrine to Sergei Nigoyan, killed allegedly by police.

Larger sign is in Russian except the Ukrainian top line:

Help(?) for the Maidan
For each patriot beaten up: ten enemies of Ukraine beaten up.
For each patriot killed: ten enemies of Ukraine killed.

The smaller signs are one in Ukrainian

Sergei Nigoyan
1/24/2014
Killed
[the rest is illegible]

... the other in Russian.

Seryozha, I will always remember you
Sleep in peace, you are a pure and noble man.
God [?} takes so [illegible] the most worthy.

The two bumper sticker shaped say "People of Ukraine" and "Don't make the Maidan angry!". There is also a request for something warm and for cigarettes.

Nigoyan was ethnically Armenian.