RT News & Global Research – 2014-06-17 01:28:15
http://rt.com/news/165808-ukrainian-refugees-horror-bombings/
‘Bombardment Never Stops’:
E. Ukrainian Refugees Share Horrors of Kiev Military Op
RT News
(June 13, 2014) — Kiev does not care about civilians in eastern Ukraine, and people have to flee their homes amid daily bombings, Ukrainian refugees told RT at a temporary camp in Russia’s Rostov. It comes amid Kiev’s “lies” about humanitarian corridors, they said.
Thousands of eastern Ukrainians are flowing into Russia amid the ongoing Kiev military operation, in which the cities occupied by anti-government activists are being shelled and bombarded with heavy artillery and incendiary bombs. Even in large regional centers like Lugansk, people no longer feel safe, as cases of Ukrainian jets launching missiles at central city buildings in broad daylight have been reported.
While many men and elderly people of eastern Ukraine are unwilling to leave their native land, women with children are flocking to Russia’s cities and regions to stay with relatives or friends. Those who have neither are heading for refugee camps in Rostov.
“According to the Federal Migration Service, more than 40,000 Ukrainian citizens have crossed into Rostov Region. As of today, about 4,000 Ukrainians have been housed in temporary accommodation centers,” a local Russian Emergencies Ministry official, Aleksandr Naumov, told RT.
Reporting from the Russian-Ukrainian border, RT’s Paul Scott interviewed several women, who said they left their husbands and relatives behind to get the children away from shooting, bombing, and air raids. 


“We left because we are scared. The streets are empty — we are afraid to let our children go outside. They too got scared and nervous with the constant sound of gunfire and jets,” a woman said.
Another female refugee, who fled the embattled city of Slavyansk with two small children, shared the story of their desperate escape. 


“First we fled to Nikolayevka when the bombardment got intense. They then started bombing Nikolayevka too and we fled to Artyomovsk. In Artyomovsk, almost every night there were shootings, explosions, we heard how Grad [multiple rocket launchers] were fired at some places nearby…I can’t bear those sounds anymore,” the woman said while crying.
People from other regions of eastern Ukraine “are in fact fleeing because they know the story of Slavyansk,” another woman, who crossed to Russia with her two sons and cats, told RT. 


“The [Ukrainian] National Guard is simply bombarding the people, killing children. We fear for our children above all, we want them to be alive and well,” she explained.
One of her sons has been having nightmares because he heard a shooting close by at night, the woman said. 


According to the woman, her Ukrainian-speaking neighbors do not understand her family and support Kiev’s military operation. Moreover, the Ukrainian authorities and media are outright “lying” about civilian corridors being organized for refugees, she said.

“It is scary in this situation that the Ukrainian authorities, the Ukrainian media are lying about humanitarian corridors being organized — there is no such thing in reality. They are not letting the people leave, and the bombardments never stop. They don’t give a damn about us, the people of Donbas, Lugansk, they just need the territory,” the woman said.
OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier on Thursday visited Rostov to meet with eastern Ukrainian refugees and hear their accounts of Kiev’s military operation — a move which was welcomed by Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that talking to witnesses about the events in eastern Ukraine is crucial for anyone wishing to get a “full, clear and impartial picture” of what is happening there.
However, Zannier outraged the refugees after saying that newly elected Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “wants prosperity for Ukraine and is ready to use every effort for that.” The witnesses of Kiev’s military operation responded by shouting: “No! This is not our president, we did not elect him,” RIA Novosti reported. Meanwhile, ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich on Friday recorded a video address, in which he urged Kiev to stop the military operation.
Yanukovich, who was born in Donetsk Region, said people there are “shocked that instead of peace and stability [they got] a bloody massacre” right at the start of Poroshenko’s term.
“It is unbearable to see those deaths, this hatred incited in the not-so-long-ago peaceful country,” the ousted Ukrainian leader said. Yanukovich wondered why European leaders kept reminding him of the “unacceptability” of the use of force against civilians in the wake of mayhem in Kiev, but are now supporting the use of heavy artillery and jets against the population of eastern Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Minister on Friday held a phone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrey Deshchitsa, in which he reminded Kiev of its responsibility for handling the humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine.
“Lavrov particularly stressed the importance of providing humanitarian aid to the residents of southeastern Ukraine, the creation of appropriate conditions for a safe passage of refugees to the territory of the Russian Federation,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Ukrainian FM Chants ‘Putin — F**ker’
At Vandalized Russian Embassy in Kiev
RT News
(June 15, 2014) — In an incident that may be a first in diplomatic history, Kiev’s top diplomat publicly ‘effed’ the head of another state. Foreign Minister Andrey Deshchitsa chanted “Putin’s a f**ker” with a cheering crowd that earlier vandalized the Russian embassy.
Deshchitsa arrived at the scene of the heated protest — which involved overturning cars belonging to embassy staff, the desecration of a Russian flag and pelting the building with firecrackers and paint — in an apparent attempt to defuse the crowd.
He confronted some of the protesters — or rather sided with them. Footage of the encounter shows the minister saying he is all for the protest and its goals.
“I would stand up here with you can say, Russia, get out of Ukraine,” he said. “Putin’s a f**ker, right!”
This treasure of Kiev-style diplomatic language was met with a joyous cheer among the crowd, which erupted in a concerted chant. The profane phrase comes from a chant of Ukrainian radical football fans and is very popular among anti-Russian-minded Ukrainians at the moment.
The minister looks a bit astounded by the overwhelmingly welcoming response and even sings a bit along with the protesters.
Later on Sunday, the minister turned very elusive, when grilled about the scandalous episode. He justified his actions with a need to protect the Russian embassy.
“People were very angry and we had to stop those people, not to let them go further, not to allow an attack and siege of the embassy,” he told Echo of Moscow radio. “They wanted to burn the embassy down.”
Deshchitsa didn’t explain why he thought that profane chants were better at providing security than a police guard, which Kiev was obliged, but failed, to provide.
The Ukrainian government did not immediately comment on the spectacular work Deshchitsa demonstrated in building diplomatic bridges between Kiev and Moscow in front of the Russian embassy.
No comments followed from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which will probably not be able to find a proper response to such language in its guidebooks.
Cursing at Russian President Vladimir Putin however is not unheard of from the Ukrainian politicians. Oleg Lyashko, a Ukrainian MP who scored the third-best result in last month’s presidential election, chanted the same profane song at a rally amid the election campaign.
Deshchitsa was not the only Ukrainian politician to make controversial moves at the Russian embassy on Saturday to appease the crowd. MP Nikolay Rudkovsky was also at the scene and was practically forced to hurl a stone at the embassy by the protesters, video footage showed.
However, this didn’t convince everybody of the parliamentarian’s patriotism and loyalty to the people of Ukraine. As he was preparing to leave, a masked protester accused him of being a moneybag driving around in a posh car and sprayed his face with green paint, the same that was used on the walls of the embassy.
NATO Allegations of Russian Tanks in Ukraine
Based on Fake Evidence
Alexander Flint / Global Research
(June 16, 2014) — NATO is finally getting closer to their pretext for placing Ukraine under the West’s thumb. The Alliance’s Secretary General declared on Sunday that three tanks were shipped from Russia into Eastern Ukraine to abet the popular revolt against the West’s puppet regime in Kiev.
The accusation rests on a set of satellite images gathered from a commercial vendor based in Colorado and undated, anonymous YouTube videos that supposedly show tanks originating from a staging area in Southwest Russia rolling through the streets of Donetsk. The US State Department was quick to confirm the reports, and condemned the alleged actions as a grave escalation of the conflict.
However, although NATO has been waiting for months for an excuse to intervene in Ukraine and reignite the Cold War tensions that sustained the American military industrial complex for decades, the evidence of Moscow’s involvement is almost non-existent.
The first piece of evidence is a set of satellite images of a staging site in Russia from May 30and June 11. The site is largely inactive, but NATO officials claim that tanks moved into the area last Wednesday, before three were loaded onto a truck and left the area. By itself, this piece leaves independent observers begging for more.
First, the Russian army has been pulling back troops and supplies for weeks, so activity at a staging area is far from surprising. Second, NATO has a history of passing off old photographs as new evidence of Russian activity — look no further than the alliance’s attempt to pass off images from August 2013 as evidence that Putin was building up troops to invade East Ukraine last month.
The second piece is even more laughable. There, officials scoured the Internet to find images of Russian tanks in city streets in a sorry attempt to make it seem as though the vehicles that left the staging site ended up in Ukraine. The unattributed YouTube videos and stills could easily have been doctored or filmed outside of Ukraine.
Indeed, the world went crazy in April when the New York Times posted a photo of Russian soldiers who later appeared in Ukraine, only to retract it once the photographer admitted that the photo was taken in Russia.
At every step, the evidence is wanting.
Much more likely, the tanks came from rebel raids of Ukrainian military arms depots in the East, like most of the weaponry used during the conflict. Alternately, Chechen militants have access to tanks, so they might have transported them from Chechnya along with the troves of fighters that have spilled into Ukraine to support the self-determination of the people in the East. These most recent accusations hearken back to the reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. NATO needs to stop searching for excuses to flex its military might.
Alexander Flint is an energy security expert who has advised the US Congress on nuclear security issues.
Ukraine Neo-Nazis
Trained by NATO to Commit Atrocities:
NATO’s ‘Gladio’ Army in Ukraine
RT News & Global Research
(June 15, 2014) — The openly Nazi core of Kiev’s new army; WikiLeaked cables set Ukraine ‘nationalists’ in NATO ‘dirty wars’ abroad; and the ‘psychopaths’ who run CIA special operations.
Seek truth from facts with the world’s leading scholar on NATO’s Operation Gladio, Dr. Daniele Ganser; Editor of new book, Flashpoint in Ukraine, Dr. Stephen Lendman; Intelligence specialist William Engdahl; and victims of the Butcher of Lyon.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
