Posted on 10/13/2022 8:42:18 PM PDT by Cronos
After more than 4 months under Russian control, large parts of the city have been destroyed
..."Are we in Donetsk Oblast already? Or still in Kharkiv Oblast?" "Donetsk Oblast," the guard laughed
One of the soldiers in that SUV, identified only as Ivan, has been stationed about 100 kilometres north, in Kupiansk, and is using several days of leave to visit his home in Lyman for the first time since he enlisted on Feb. 24, the first day of the Russian invasion.
Located in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, Lyman fell to Russian forces in late May and served as a significant rail hub and staging area for a planned drive west. It was liberated late last month when Ukraine's rapid counteroffensive rolled around the city, inflicting heavy losses on the Russian forces stationed there and dealing a particularly acute blow as swaths of the just-annexed regions of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson were wrested back from Russian control.
At the edge of town, Ivan cautiously approached his front gate. His home has stood vacant for nearly eight months and..
Inside, his home had been ransacked. A large-screen television, all his kitchen appliances, hobby drones — virtually everything of value is gone. In the backyard, grapevines, heavy with unpicked clusters, and an apple tree dropped rotting fruit to the ground. What appeared to be an errant artillery strike destroyed his shed and workspace.
...A native of Debaltseve, Ukraine, farther east, Ivan came to Lyman in 2014 to escape the fighting there; this is the second home the Russians have forced him to abandon.
The detritus of Russia's occupation also still lines many of Lyman's streets. In addition to the letter Z, which has become emblematic of the Russian invasion, burnt military vehicles and discarded uniforms were seen on several street corners
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
Generally, no.
The UN is generally useless but its not particularly pro-US or pro-Europe. Its made up of, mostly, a bunch of third-world bureaucrats enjoying a highly paid gig, access to which is mediated by their own governments, though its paid for mostly by the “west”. They have no compunction about biting the hand that feeds them.
The same UN entity who issued so many demands, suggestions, etc. against Israel that if followed, Israel would cease to exist?
The UN is far, far from being a neutral arbiter.
Same for WHO, etc.
But, you will note, their bias is against Israel, which they see as an American client state, or as Euro neo-colonialism.
Of course it isnt a neutral arbiter (ever since the Russians alienated the Swedes there may be no real neutrals left), but in this case its not a given as to where their bias will lie.
Hmm, maybe there are things we can agree upon.
Russia will insist on having all of the ethnically Russian areas. The thinking is that the Kiev regime via its barbarous conduct has forfeited any right they might have ever had to govern Russians.
Did they rocket a pharmaceutical factory?
And they have no compuction about toeing the line for a few bucks behind the scenes either.
Yes Occam razor is a lethal weapon against the kooks
A lying shill would be someone who supports Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
You support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, right? So that would make you, in your own words “a lying shill”, no?
So you say that Putin’s army will retake Lyman latest by the 28th of October, eh? Let’s see
Nope. Putin’s orcs did so in Bucha as well
“Orc”?
You are only the 5th FR person that has come out the neo-Nazi closet. I am sure there will be more given enough time.
Congratulations, at least you came out that closet finally.
Baker assured Gorbachev NATO would not “go one inch further east” after East Germany
That’s false
Gorbachev and the documents show ZERO promise not to enlarge
What the Germans, Americans, British and French did agree to in 1990 was that there would be no deployment of non-German NATO forces on the territory of the former GDR. I was a deputy director on the State Department’s Soviet desk at the time, and that was certainly the point of Secretary James Baker’s discussions with Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. In 1990, few gave the possibility of a broader NATO enlargement to the east any serious thought.
The agreement on not deploying foreign troops on the territory of the former GDR was incorporated in Article 5 of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, which was signed on September 12, 1990 by the foreign ministers of the two Germanys, the United States, Soviet Union, Britain and France. Article 5 had three provisions:
Until Soviet forces had completed their withdrawal from the former GDR, only German territorial defense units not integrated into NATO would be deployed in that territory.
There would be no increase in the numbers of troops or equipment of U.S., British and French forces stationed in Berlin.
Once Soviet forces had withdrawn, German forces assigned to NATO could be deployed in the former GDR, but foreign forces and nuclear weapons systems would not be deployed there.
When one reads the full text of the Woerner speech cited by Putin, it is clear that the secretary general’s comments referred to NATO forces in eastern Germany, not a broader commitment not to enlarge the Alliance.
Former Soviet President Gorbachev’s View
We now have a very authoritative voice from Moscow confirming this understanding. Russia behind the Headlines has published an interview with Gorbachev, who was Soviet president during the discussions and treaty negotiations concerning German reunification. The interviewer asked why Gorbachev did not “insist that the promises made to you [Gorbachev]—particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East—be legally encoded?” Gorbachev replied: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”
Gorbachev continued that “The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years.” To be sure, the former Soviet president criticized NATO enlargement and called it a violation of the spirit of the assurances given Moscow in 1990, but he made clear there was no promise regarding broader enlargement.
Several years after German reunification, in 1997, NATO said that in the “current and foreseeable security environment” there would be no permanent stationing of substantial combat forces on the territory of new NATO members. Up until the Russian military occupation of Crimea in March, there was virtually no stationing of any NATO combat forces on the territory of new members. Since March, NATO has increased the presence of its military forces in the Baltic region and Central Europe.
Putin is not stupid, and his aides surely have access to the former Soviet records from the time and understand the history of the commitments made by Western leaders and NATO. But the West’s alleged promise not to enlarge the Alliance will undoubtedly remain a standard element of his anti-NATO spin. That is because it fits so well with the picture that the Russian leader seeks to paint of an aggrieved Russia, taken advantage of by others and increasingly isolated—not due to its own actions, but because of the machinations of a deceitful West.
to summarize , it means that Soviet forces would withdraw from East Germany, and that no foreign forces would be stationed there afterwards. In other words, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, only the German military would be allowed to be stationed in the former East Germany.
NOTE — not in the former East Germany.
Absolutely NOTHING about going to Poland, the Baltics etc.
So stop repeating the lie about “promised to not go one inch further east”
A military with dismal recruiting is Russia, because Putin and his oligarchs siphoned off all of Russian wealth
The actual lying shills and propagandists have been you, among a host others here and within FR, along with the Western/UK/US/EU/NATO media. Bet.
You all are a shrinking minority as people slowly wake up to the BS you all have been spewing.
“A Pew Research poll shows that the share of Americans who are extremely or very concerned about a Ukrainian defeat fell from 55 percent in May to 38 percent in September.”
“Biden scrambles to avert cracks in pro-Ukraine coalition”
https://archive.ph/Uckd9#selection-273.0-273.56
“A military with dismal recruiting is Russia, because Putin and his oligarchs siphoned off all of Russian wealth”
That same military which is killing, maiming, etc. that vaunted NATO trained Ukrainian military in the hundreds of thousands with 5:1 kill ratios.......
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