Posted on 09/08/2022 1:32:03 PM PDT by Timber Rattler
Ukraine has launched a new front in the counteroffensive, this time moving east into the Kharkiv region. Yesterday the Guardian reported the town of Balakliia had been encircled by Ukrainian troops.
Today, Balakliia is more than encircled. President Zelensky just published this video of Ukrainian soldiers standing on a Russian flag in the city with the Ukrainian flag flying behind them.
(snip)
And the push east has already moved on to another small town called Volokhiv Yar where the Ukrainian flag has also been raised.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
This is bad juju. One of my dear cousins, while in the U.S.Army, was a shooter in the CIA’s Phoenix program in South Vietnam. He told me that eventually he realized that many of the people killed were not VC or VC sympathizers. They had been identified as such by people who held a grudge against them.
Ukraine and the West started the war? Where are you, Moscow? If not, don’t fall for Russian propaganda.
That is just a bunch of BS, tovarisch.
Thanks for posting that. True liberation. The civilians are enthusiastically greeting the Ukrainian soldiers.
You don’t know anything about this guy, and you’re calling him a Nazi? Freerepublic most have gotten several new members from Russia.
Yeah, Russia started the war. Having trouble keeping up?
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 23rd, starting this stupid war
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The Ukies started this war back in 2015 when they started shelling the eastern ethnic Russian provinces, Donetsk city areas primarily.
The UN acknowledges this ( and their war crimes) thus the unnatural silence from them on this war. In fact, the UN had supported an independent Lughansk and Donetsk, fully autonomous within the borders of Ukraine.
…and there you go, like Paul Harvey used to say, “ tge rest of the story”.
“What is...?”
I don’t know. I recently ran across it from FR post and found the stories and comments fascinating. The first person accounts seem honest but reliability unknown.
So basically, they are genociding ethnic Russians, Einsatzgruppe style.
That’s complete bollocks, straight outta Kremlin.
Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum undertakings when it poisoned Yanukovych’s electoral rival to help him get over tge line (unnecessary as he won the election fair and square).
Russia further violated the agreement, and its undertakings from the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, by using Yanukovych and Azarov to mothball the Europeanisation movement in 2013.
It further violated those undertakings when Putin and Yanukovych did a deal behind closed doors in December 2013 that handed Russia proxy control over Ukraine’s debts - in return for which Yanukovych was expecting to become Ukraine’s equivalent of Belarus’ Lukashenko.
Russia violated it even further by sending in thousands of troops into the Donbass, without insignia - including Nazis, Wagner mercs and regulars “on holiday” - to artificially increase the size of the separatist movement.
The referenda were illegitimate and unconstitutional. Not only did they block thousands of Luhansk and Donestk citizens with a right to vote in it from voting, the Russian proxies who had no right to participate in it, did get to participate. The Ukrainian Constitution forbade that. The UN said the voting seemed fair but also saw big shenanigans, and hence saw through Russia’s backdoor annexation attempt.
The sum of all that’s why the UN both rejected the referenda results and the separatist declarations, but also bollocked Russia.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea violated the UN Charter, the Budapest Memorandum, and the joint declarations at the end of the Soviet Union.
The civil war between 2014 and 2019 was not instigated by the Ukes attacking Russian speakers - it was instigated by Ukraine finally snapping after putting up with YEARS of Russian separatists backed by Russian irregulars repeatedly breaking multiple international and regional agreements in order to drag the Donbas out of Ukraine and into Russia.
If Donetsk and Luhansk truly wanted to be as autonomous as Crimea, given that the Azarov government and Yanukovych were pro Russian they already had a constitutionally sound, peaceful way to do it that would have violated no treaties or foundational principles on Ukrainian sovereignty.
1. “Advisory” referenda on devolution/autonomy.
2. Present results to Rada.
3. Get a >50% majority of Rada to agree to a constitutional amendment moving from unitary statehood to Federal Republic, to make this transition possible for ALL Oblasts.
4. All Ukraine referendum on federalism.
5. Reconstitute Ukraine as a federal republic with every Oblast having the freedoms that Crimea already had.
Putin invaded with 175,000 troops and faced about 196,000 Ukrainians.
Not the 1:3 difference you falsely claim.
Putin declared it a special operation, indicating a few weeks.
The bulk of Putin’s offensive is by Russian troops, not dpr or lpr.
Ukrainians have got the Russians to retreat from north of Kyiv and now from the north east and south of the country.
Russia is weakened due to Putin’s ego
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