Donetsk shelled as Kiev 'orders massive fire' on militia-held E. Ukraine

The Putilovsky Bridge, which is located near the Donetsk airport, has also been destroyed in the shelling, RT’s Roman Kosarev reported from the scene.

Ukrainian troops have launched a massive assault on militia-held areas Sunday morning after an order from Kiev, a presidential aide said. The self-proclaimed Donetsk republic’s leader accused Kiev of trying to restart the war.

The order to launch the offensive was issued early approximately at 6:00 am, according to Yury Biryukov, an aide to President Petro Poroshenko.

“Today we will show HOW good we are at jabbing in the teeth,” he wrote on his Facebook page, a mode of conveying information favored by many Ukrainian officials.

In a later post he said: “They are now striking a dot. Uuu…” in a reference to Tochka-U (‘tochka’ means ‘dot’ in Russian), a tactical ballistic missile, one of the most powerful weapons Ukraine so far deployed against rebel forces.

“That wasn’t a dot but ellipsis. Strong booms,” he added.

Reports from the ground confirmed a sharp escalation of clashes across the front line, with particularly heavy artillery fire reported at Gorlovka.

“Locals in Donetsk said they haven’t heard such intensive shelling since summer,” Valentin Motuzenko, a military official in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, told Interfax news agency.

“The Ukrainian military are using all kinds of weapons, Grad multiple rocket launchers, mortars…”Motuzenko said.

A source at the site told RT that a group of OSCE monitors have demanded that the Ukrainian military stop the shelling. The source added that there is a danger that the group may itself come under artillery fire.

Aleksandr Zakharchenko, who was elected in November the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, has accused Kiev of using the ceasefire to regroup their troops and boost their armaments, and now of trying to restart the all-out war.

“It’s clear that Kiev is making an attempt to take revenge for the serious military defeat it took from the militia last year,” he added. “Kiev always ignored our numerous suggestions to pull back heavy weapons from the disengagement line.”

“At the moment, we are aware of five civilians killed,” the Donetsk administration said, adding that the shelling of the city by Ukrainian forces is still under way.

Several residential buildings, a shop and a bus station have been seriously damaged by artillery fire in the city, RIA Novosti reported.

There were also reports of attacks on the town of Makeevka and several nearby villages.

The militia added that at least one shell hit a residential area in central Donetsk rather than the outskirts of the city.

Two people have died and 16 other received injureies after a Ukrainian shell exploded at bus station in city of Gorlovka, the press service of the People’s Republic of Donetsk said.

Several buildings in the city also suffered direct hits during the bombardment, including four schools and a kindergarten, the press service added.

Witnesses said that Kiev used aviation in the assault, with Sukhoi Su-24 warplanes jets seen in the air above Gorlovka.

The ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of Donetsk (DPR) has called upon the international community to address the worsening of the situation in southeast Ukraine and “make every effort to stop unpunished mass murder in the heart of Europe."

“The People’s Republic of Donetsk again suffered a treacherous and large-scale attack from Ukraine,”which is aimed at the destruction of the republic’s population and infrastructure, Aleksandr Kofman, DPR foreign minister, said in a statement.

The actions of the Kiev forces in Donetsk Region “bear all characteristics of serious war crimes,” Kofman said.

Moscow is seriously concerned by the by the renewal of shelling of residential areas of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk by Kiev forces, the Russian president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said.

The actions of the Ukrainian military in no way promote the settlement of the conflict between Kiev and the eastern regions, he said.

"Of course, the stance of the Russian side will be expressed. Of course, it involves serious concerns over the resumption of full scale warfare in Donetsk, including shelling of populated residential areas. And, of course, such a state of affairs doesn’t promote the fulfillment of the Minsk agreements [from September 5] and the further search for a peaceful solution,” Peskov told Govorit Moskva radio station.

The escalation comes after several days of violent clashes at the ruins of the Donetsk International Airport, a scene of constant fighting over the months of shaky ceasefire between Kiev’s troops and local militia forces.

The militia, who have accused the Ukrainian military of launching constant attacks on Donetsk from their positions at the airport, reported taking over the location this week. Kiev denied this report.

The Ukrainian Security and Defense Council confirmed the resumption of hostilities and that Kiev's objective was to recapture the airport.

Kiev launched it's retaliation days after President Poroshenko ordered a new wave of mobilization into the country’s armed forces. The government plans to hold at least three conscription campaigns over 2015 to sustain its military operations in the east.

http://rt.com/news/223791-ukraine-massive-shelling-donetsk/

New victims of "truce" in Donbass

Ten people died and 13 more were injured as a bus was shelled in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said. Denis Pushilin, Donetsk People’s Republic representative at Minsk talks, said the attack may have been staged by Kiev.

The incident took place near a Ukrainian military checkpoint near the town of Volnovakha on Tuesday, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry in the Donetsk region, Vyacheslav Ambroskin, said. He posted the information on his Facebook page.

Meanwhile, the regional administration reported that 18 people had been injured.

Ambroskin said the checkpoint was shelled from the direction of the town of Dokuchaevsk, which is under the control of local militia forces. The town of Volnovakha is under Kiev’s control.

RT is reaching out to its sources to verify the incident and get the details.

The Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic denied that local militia forces were involved in the attack.

There is a Ukrainian checkpoint near the town of Volhovanka but it is “out of range of the Donetsk militia’s artillery,” a representative of the Defense Ministry of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) told Interfax.

Denis Pushilin also told RT that the shelling occurred near Volnovakha at a Ukrainian army checkpoint that is "out of the operational range of the artillery of our militia."

“I don’t rule out the possibility that [the attack] could be the Ukrainian army’s provocation, to attempt to put the blame for what has happened on local militia,” Pushilin said.

Pushilin earlier Tuesday warned that the Ukrainian army could launch an offensive “any second” as troops have been massing near the border of the self-proclaimed republics.

He added that the National Guard battalion Sich, stationed in a Donetsk suburb, has been “provoking us with fire,” while the commander of the battalion said he refused to follow Kiev’s orders.

Following several weeks of calm there was hope that peace talks between Kiev and the eastern self-proclaimed republics were bearing fruit. However, after the winter holidays the conflict between local militia and Ukraine’s army stationed in the east has reignited, Donetsk officials say.

About 7,500 people were affected after a shell hit a gas pipeline in the Kievsky district of Donetsk on Monday.

http://rt.com/news/222207-bus-blast-donetsk-ukraine/

Russia in photos

Chukotka. Part two.

Russia in photos

Chukotka part one.

Chukotka is far and close. There is the furthest part of Russia on the north-easternmost part of Eurasia. There are no roads towards there. There are no railways. The plane is the single opportunity to overcome 6400 kilometers from Moscow to Anadyr. Such remoteness of Chukotka makes its people stand side-by-side in order to hold out against the difficulties and freaks of nature. That’s why people are much more closer to each other here. Having met only once in Chukotka we became good friends. And it is Chukotka which is always in the centre of the people’s talks who has ever been here.

Chukotka is severe and beautiful. People say about relentless frost and storms from the Arctic and the Pacific Oceans in winter with the same emotions like about its majestic and monumental beauty. It is really cold and splendid here. But if one has a chance to sea the Northern Lights and, we are sure, he says that there is no more magnificent place on the Earth than here. You can spend some winter time in Chukotka Arctic and then realize all the beauty of our spring summer. And the most picturesque bays and fiords of Chukchii Peninsular make of you the real discoverer.

Chukotka is warm and distinctive. Indigenous people are the real treasure of this land. They are hospitable and open. Chukchii, Eskimo, Evens are always glad to new and new comers. And they are ready to suggest you all their things. People of Chukotka live in accordance with the main Law of the Arctic – whatever you are they will help and support any stranger. Indigenous people have their own way of life where everything is interrelated in the world – people, spirits, nature.

Chukotka is real.

http://www.visitchukotka.com/

It's not an advertizing, it's just the best description of Chukotka I have found in in the Web.)

Je suis Donbass

Cartoon "Winter in Prostokvashino"

Happy New Year!)

A Russophobic Rant From Congress by Patrick J. Buchanan

A Russophobic Rant From Congress by Patrick J. Buchanan -- Antiwar.com

Hopefully, Russians realize that our House of Representatives often passes thunderous resolutions to pander to special interests, which have no bearing on the thinking or actions of the U.S. government.

Last week, the House passed such a resolution 411-10.

As ex-Rep. Ron Paul writes, House Resolution 758 is so “full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War.”

H. R. 758 is a Russophobic rant full of falsehoods and steeped in superpower hypocrisy.

Among the 43 particulars in the House indictment is this gem:

“The Russian Federation invaded the Republic of Georgia in August 2008.”

Bullhockey. On Aug. 7-8, 2008, Georgia invaded South Ossetia, a tiny province that had won its independence in the 1990s. Georgian artillery killed Russian peacekeepers, and the Georgian army poured in.

Only then did the Russian army enter South Ossetia and chase the Georgians back into their own country.

The aggressor of the Russo-Georgia war was not Vladimir Putin but President Mikheil Saakashvili, brought to power in 2004 in one of those color-coded revolutions we engineered in the Bush II decade.

H.R. 758 condemns the presence of Russian troops in Abkhazia, which also broke from Georgia in the early 1990s, and in Transnistria, which broke from Moldova. But where is the evidence that the peoples of Transnistria, Abkhazia or South Ossetia want to return to Moldova or Georgia?

We seem to support every ethnic group that secedes from Russia, but no ethnic group that secedes from a successor state.

This is rank Russophobia masquerading as democratic principle.

What do the people of Crimea, Transnistria, Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Luhansk or Donetsk want? Do we really know? Do we care?

And what have the Russians done to support secessionist movements to compare with our 78-day bombing of Serbia to rip away her cradle province of Kosovo, which had been Serbian land before we were a nation?

H.R. 758 charges Russia with an “invasion” of Crimea.

But there was no air, land or sea invasion. The Russians were already there by treaty and the reannexation of Crimea, which had belonged to Russia since Catherine the Great, was effected with no loss of life.

Compare how Putin retrieved Crimea, with the way Lincoln retrieved the seceded states of the Confederacy — a four-year war in which 620,000 Americans perished.

Russia is charged with using “trade barriers to apply economic and political pressure” and interfering in Ukraine’s “internal affairs.”

This is almost comical.

The U.S. has imposed trade barriers and sanctions on Russia, Belarus, Iran, Cuba, Burma, Congo, Sudan, and a host of other nations.

Economic sanctions are the first recourse of the American Empire.

And agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy and its subsidiaries, our NGOs and Cold War radios, RFE and Radio Liberty, exist to interfere in the internal affairs of countries whose regimes we dislike, with the end goal of “regime change.”

Was that not the State Department’s Victoria Nuland, along with John McCain, prancing around Kiev, urging insurgents to overthrow the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych?

Was Nuland not caught boasting about how the U.S. had invested $5 billion in the political reorientation of Ukraine, and identifying whom we wanted as prime minister when Yanukovych was overthrown?

H.R. 578 charges Russia with backing Syria’s Assad regime and providing it with weapons to use against “the Syrian people.”

But Assad’s principal enemies are the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate, and ISIS. They are not only his enemies, and Russia’s enemies, but our enemies. And we ourselves have become de facto allies of Assad with our air strikes against ISIS in Syria.

And what is Russia doing for its ally in Damascus, by arming it to resist ISIS secessionists, that we are not doing for our ally in Baghdad, also under attack by the Islamic State?

Have we not supported Kurdistan in its drive for autonomy? Have U.S. leaders not talked of a Kurdistan independent of Iraq?

H.R. 758 calls the President of Russia an “authoritarian” ruler of a corrupt regime that came to power through election fraud and rules by way of repression.

Is this fair, just or wise? After all, Putin has twice the approval rating in Russia as President Obama does here, not to mention the approval rating our Congress.

Damning Russian “aggression,” the House demands that Russia get out of Crimea, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria, calls on Obama to end all military cooperation with Russia, impose “visa bans, targeted asset freezes, sectoral sanctions,” and send “lethal … defense articles” to Ukraine.

This is the sort of ultimatum that led to Pearl Harbor.

Why would a moral nation arm Ukraine to fight a longer and larger war with Russia that Kiev could not win, but that could end up costing the lives of ten of thousands more Ukrainians?

Those who produced this provocative resolution do not belong in charge of U.S. foreign policy, nor of America’s nuclear arsenal.

http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2014/12/08/a-russophobic-rant-from-congress/