"Russian Plot against Kiev Discovered" Topic

Apparently, it appears Russian Spetznatz, or other forces, were attempting to arm/aid a plot against Kiev, and Ukraine's leadership:

link

Apparently, they aren't satisfied with just Crimea, and causing unrest in Eastern Ukraine, so are planning a more concerted effort to strike at Ukraine's leadership.

I read it on t'Internet. It must be true.

Unfortunately all these unsubstantiated rumours and accusations don't do much to uphold the integrity of the current government.

Nor does widespread corruption.

They have had that for the last 23 years… come to think of it, they have had it pretty much since 1917 ;-)

They've probably always had it. Corruption is as old as humanity.

Given recent events in the region/other areas, and Putin's/Russia's involvement in them, I'm far more inclined to believe Kiev than Moscow, or skeptics.

Kiev did accuse Moscow of using nuclear weapons though.

I don't believe either side. I think they're just as bad as each other.

And the Poles are getting ridiculous too – the accusation by a former Polish Foreign Minister that Putin had offered to carve up Ukraine with Poland and all the evidence being against.

I think it's a Slavic thing – badly conceived and outrageous lies seems to be the first response (indeed we had lots of it in Croatia).

True, though I also seem to recall that there was no Russian troops in Crimea, either, despite lots of evidence to the contrary in the media.

Given Vlad is ex-KGB (are KGB personnel ever really ex?), and is used to lies, deception, and assassinations on foreign soil, just for fun and for Mother Russia, I suspect that claims he is not involved in this story in some way to be rather unlikely.

True, though I also seem to recall that there was no Russian troops in Crimea, either, despite lots of evidence to the contrary in the media.

Well there was always plenty of Russian troops in Crimea – they did have a naval base there. :P

Given Vlad is ex-KGB (are KGB personnel ever really ex?), and is used to lies, deception, and assassinations on foreign soil, just for fun and for Mother Russia, I suspect that claims he is not involved in this story in some way to be rather unlikely.

Most likely he has his finger in any nasty pie .

I find the Ukranian leadership to be amateurish though. They contradict themselves and come up with outlandish claims. It wasn't much different even before Yanukovych They've obviously not run the country well at all.

Even old Lukashenko from Belarus is more effective and he's just a Moscow stooge. Actually he did quite well given he retained a lot of Soviet era economic practices.

Liberal democracy doesn't automatically work everywhere and it appears Slavic culture is one area where it doesn't. The Czechs are an exception. Even in Poland, there has been regression in some areas such as gender equality and social openness under liberal democracy – basically without authoritarian communism, there's a regression back to more outdated schools of thought. And Poland and Czech Republic are Slavic high points when it comes to economic success and reasonable success of democracy.

And it seems the further East or South you go, the less likely it is for democracy to work effectively.

"Kiev did accuse Moscow of using nuclear weapons though."

Not really, the only place I heard or read about that was on RT (Russia Today, Moscow's version of Comedy Central). So it was Moscow accusing Kiev of accusing Moscow…

Well, they are masters (jokesters) of misinformation…….

Kiev has indeed accused russia of pretty much everything- their former defence minister, who was talking about nuclear weapons, tanks hidden in kamaz lorries and hundreds of thousands of russian troops in ukraine became such a laugh in his own country that poroshenko finally ruled out that loyalty is not an excuse of stupidity and removed him from the post. The fact that you don't see a lot of things in western press is not always because it never happened…just check this very board. More than half of scary posts like russia is this and that happens to be a misinformation. The most recent example is breaking ceasefire topic.zacharchenko confirmed the same!
day that everything remains the same on the eastern front – is it a real ceasefire is another question. With parliament elections this weekend we might still see lots of sensations – like scype videos of kolomoyskiy that were made some time ago, but published only now. If the stuff is not fabricated, ukrainian politics is even more interesting that I've thought…

The nucleur weapons thing seems to have stemmed from a large exlosion at a chemical factory which produced a mushroom-like cloud.

Difficult to know if he actually stated (or even suggested) it was a tactical nuke, or it was reported that he said so with the usual media hyperbole, i.e. "it looks [as big as] a tactical nuke" becomes "he said it was a…"

tanks hidden in kamaz lorries

Unfortunately there have now been three convoys of white Kamaz trucks (nearly 300 trucks each time) allegedly delivering aid, but they have entered uninspected and on each occasion there has followed a notable increase in separatist military action (and seemingly no sign of now 6000 tons of aid).

Images like these just add to the suspicions that something untoward is going on – you don't drive 300 partially empty trucks all the way from Moscow just for the fun of it:

When images like this then appear:

While it may indeed have been aid, the covert nature by which it is being done does nothing but undermine the credibility of any Kremlin claims, or Putin's denials.

Heletey was not removed. He seems to have tendered his resignation after heavy criticism over Ukrainain forces suddenly losing ground after several weeks of solid gains, particulary the losses at Sloviansk. His resignation was reluctantly accepted. It does seem that some tactical overconfidence led to severe strategic errors, resulting in units becoming cut off and surrounded.

However the Russian defence minister has been equally wild with his accusations, such as stating that Ukrainian fighters shot down MH17 with air-to-air missiles. There was no evidence for this at that time, and nothing indicitive since.

Regarding the ceasefire, "DNR leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko admitted what has been obvious for some time, and tweeted the following after a period of particularly heavy fighting in Donetsk:

После сегодняшнего обстрела ракетами Донецка перемирие даже формальное, надо считать прекращенным

(roughly, 'After today's firing of rockets, the formal Donetsk truce must be considered as terminated')

He confirms that they shelled Ukrainian positions 'after Ukrainian forces shelled the old Donetsk terminal building'… although as far as I can understand it is Ukrainian forces in control of that, so still not sure why they would be sehelling their own positions.

Elsewhere it is reported that there was heavy shelling at a chemical plant located in the Donetsk suburbs near the airport (seemingly the same one that resulted in a lrge mushroom like explosion) and is described as "a strategic point controlled by the Ukrainian army since late May." Again, why they would be shelling their own positions seems unclear.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the whole thing is a continuous case of claiming 'they fired first', but there seems some circumstantial evidence of each side shelling it's own controlled area as a pretext excuse for retalitory action.

Not referring to the immediately preceding post at all, I can scarcely believe the apologists for Russian aggression on this thread.

Having corrupt government (the legacy of Soviet rule, not Tsarist) does not make a country deserving of invasion and piecemeal partition.

And lumping any ethnic group together by negatively judging their abilities to do anything "right" is one facet of racism, and certainly the preliminary mindset.

There's plenty to be cynical about in the world, but knee-jerk cynicism just to sound wise and worldly is as pernicious to serious concern as syphilis is to the brain.

What Putin is doing in Ukraine is virtually identical to what Hitler did to Czechoslovakia, if not Austria, as well as his claims against Poland, and for the same megalomaniacal reasons.

There's no need to agree with me. Just watch what happens next….

TVAG

The problem in Donetsk is that you are dealing with this sort of mentatility…

"The Donetsk People's Republic is an independent and self-sufficient* state which is at war with the state of Ukraine," the head of the DPR's election commission tells me.

"But what about the territorial integrity Kiev talks about?" I ask.

"Territorial integrity of what? Which place?"

"Ukraine."

"Very soon we'll simply wipe Ukraine from the political map of the world," he promises.

"We are fighting for the liberation of all Russian lands and we are ready to march all the way to the Danube," says Alexander Matyushin, a rebel field commander. "We must restore the historic injustice which befell the Russian people in the 20th Century. We need to take land which is ours by right and bring it back into the fold of Holy Russia."

It's a kind of… crusading slavic ISIS…

*self sufficient may be debateable, as they would require either Russian or Ukrainian support.