Ukraine Separatists Grant Putin's Appeal for Safety Corridor
Source: The Moscow Times / Reuters
Reuters, Aug. 29 2014 10:17
A leader of separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, Alexander Zakharchenko, said on Friday he had agreed to open a humanitarian corridor for encircled Ukraine troops, answering a request from President Vladimir Putin.
"We are ready to open up a humanitarian corridor," Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, told Rossiya 24 TV, adding that troops would have to leave behind their heavy armored vehicles and ammunition.
In a statement published on the Kremlin website in the early hours of Friday, Putin — who congratulated the separatists with their "significant success" — called for a safety corridor to let Kiev government forces leave the region.
"I call on the militia forces to open a humanitarian corridor for encircled Ukraine servicemen in order to avoid pointless victims, to allow them to leave the fighting area without impediment, join their families..., to provide urgent medical aid to those wounded as a result of the military operation," he said. ...
Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/ukraine-sepratists-grant-putin-s-appeal-for-safety-corridor/506097.html
Associated Press By NATALIYA VASILYEVA
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on pro-Russian separatists to release Ukrainian soldiers who have been surrounded by the rebels in eastern Ukraine.
https://news.yahoo.com/russias-putin-calls-release-ukrainian-pows-052936462.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Dien Bien Phu. The brave defenders of the Ukrainian Air Force will keep the valiant forces of the Ukrainian Army resupplied by air.
That's a term fondly used by Russian ultra-nationalists, the sort of people who'd be called fascists if they lived in any other country in Europe.
They're going to Odessa. That's the goal. The problem with this is that once they cross from Donetsk to the rest of Ukraine, they no longer even have the fig leaf of a "referendum" to justify the action. Of course by now it's pretty obvious what this is, so I guess that really doesn't matter anymore.
Between Transnistria, which they are looking to hook up to, and Georgia and their little "republics", it's pretty obvious his long term goal is the reimposition of Russian rule over as much of the old USSR as he can get away with. Some student asked him about the allegedly rough treatment Russians got in Kazakhstan today, so I guess they should start watching their borders a little more closely too.
The word for this is "revanchism". See below:
is a term used since the 1870s to describe a political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country, often following a war or social movement. Revanchism draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought and is often motivated by economic or geo-political factors. Extreme revanchist ideologues often represent a hawkish stance, suggesting that desired objectives can be achieved through the positive outcome of another war.
Revanchism is linked with irredentism, the conception that a part of the cultural and ethnic nation remains "unredeemed" outside the borders of its appropriate nation-state. Revanchist politics often rely on the identification of a nation with a nation-state, often mobilizing deep-rooted sentiments of ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside of the state where members of the ethnic group live, while using heavy-handed nationalism to mobilize support for these aims. Revanchist justifications are often presented as based on ancient or even autochthonous occupation of a territory since "time immemorial", an assertion that is usually inextricably involved in revanchism and irredentism, justifying them in the eyes of their proponents.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revanchism
What Putin is doing exactly follows that definition.
I've read a lot of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others, and I don't recall the above being a part of what they were advocating. I might be mistaken on that, of course, but I don't think so.
As you are remiss to point out every third or so post to me, I covered an event in Libya, which went on for half a year. I covered this event daily. I spent my entire free time covering this event. Every single day I saw absurd reports very similar to the claims in that video. Very similar. Interestingly, the poster you claim posted the video would make similar, absurd, completely unrealistic, completely bizarre claims like that.
I have read many many reports. One was that there are 30,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers, a completely unsupported and asinine comment, but it was posted quite frequently on pro-Russia feeds. A common rule of thumb in war is that for every 1 man killed 3 are injured. That means you would have something around 120,000 casualties, with 90,000 soldiers in hospitals. Mothers, fathers, wives, they would all be missing these people. We're talking a huge chunk of the population. There's no way that is covered up.
Most of the losses are happening to disparate militias. Those in the anti-Russian blogosphere are concerned about this because those guys are volunteers, and it is felt that this is hurting the ATO efforts (the militas are probably Right Sector, Sovoboda types). Also, most information comes out from these guys, guys flying in from other areas of Ukraine or even other EU countries to "play war." So as these militas get wiped out by the rebels, there's less and less information to be gained about ATO ops.
As far as UA losses they tend to be low, they surrender when they can, the rebels take what they can, and the UA regroups. When the UA advances, the rebels are taken aback because the UA isn't aggressive that much. The UA takes back stuff, and the cycle repeats. It is a basic land war between two different groups, and the government in Kiev isn't supporting the militas because they're not technically sanctioned to be funded (no doubt at this point the US just doesn't want any groups outside of command and control to have any kinds of weapons or material support).
As far as captured equipment, the UA captured their first T72-B3 just a few hours ago which indicates that UA are advancing today on Donetsk. Now, of course, you will hear today that the rebels are making massive advances, that the Russians allowed UA forces to be freed and that may well be true. It is a smart gambit to send the less hardened fighters to the border, let them get shelled, and then have them surrender. Then Russia gets a PR stunt, some of them stay in Russia, others return to fight because they recognized that Russia was the one shelling them after all. So it's not a big deal, but it will be bigger news than the Donetsk surge today, if it happens.
The fog of war is very real, and you perpetuate it by posting such an unsupportable claim. There is still a gap in Novyi Svit and if they feel that they are surrounded they can bug out pretty easily. It was actually quite clever of the UA forces to cut a wedge there and take over the bridge and towns there. The most important thing will be encircling Donetsk because it will be a good morale boost and the rebels will likely flee like they did Slovyansk.
White doves painted with the words "No War" near Mariupol. The gambit to take Mariupol won't succeed, if it was even real or just a ploy...