Ukraine Fighting Surges as Russian-Backed Forces Gain

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

By Ilya Arkhipov, Volodymyr Verbyany and Angela Greiling Keane Aug 29, 2014 9:02 AM ET

Separatists in eastern Ukraine are battling government forces on two fronts near the Sea of Azov and south of Donetsk as NATO reports a surge of Russian troops and advanced equipment into the war-zone.

The U.S. and the European Union are threatening Russian President Vladimir Putin with further sanctions, even as the EU began talks in Moscow today aimed at a temporary deal with Ukraine to allow natural gas flows to resume. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed satellite photos that NATO said show Russian troop movements as fakes.

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Soldiers Ambushed

Ukrainian troops, retreating after reinforcements failed to arrive, were ambushed and involved in a serious firefight, Semen Semenchenko, a Ukrainian military commander in Ilovaysk, said in a Facebook posting today. Two Ukrainian officers blew themselves up after they were surrounded by 12 Russian paratroopers in close quarters, the Defense Ministry in Kiev said in a statement on its website.

Ukrainian soldiers are battling Russian-backed forces near Donetsk, Luhansk, Alchevsk and other towns in the area, military spokesman Leonid Matyukhin said. Government forces took over the town of Komsomolsk in Donetsk region and troops moved into Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, to reinforce the city, the National Guard said in a statement on its website.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-28/ukraine-seeks-to-counter-rebel-surge-as-incursion-seen.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. Ukraine needs to send as many Russians home in body bags as possible.

They can't win a military confrontation, but what they CAN do is impose a high cost.

[ballyhoo]

2. Little late to be reinforcing Mariupol. Those Ukrainains better

get away from the Sea of Azov because the road next to it will be closed soon. That's if any of this is true.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Russia holds the high ground

or at they did last last in night

[ballyhoo]

4. I know. This appears to be a time of

hysterical grabbing of anything to give the appearance of doing something. It's all a little too late to protect areas that were stupidly abandoned after the Crimea adventure. However, DD, one thing that is becoming problematic here is that despite your Herculean effort to provide links, of which I read all of them, many of the stories posted on these links seem contrived from the get-go. Are you seeing this yourself? I have never seen anything like it. I take your links, beMildred's links, and one or two others, then go looking for confirmations from other sources that usually try for authenticity. I wish I could find Spock and his Tricorder. Well, it's about to get interesting as the West has to decide if they are going to tackle IS or Russia. Thanks for all your work.

[cosmicone]

6. It has been a war where world support is sought

by the West to paint Russia bad and by Russia to play a victim coyly.

Unfortunately for the West, most of the media stories were debunked and now people are giving a deaf ear to all the "wolf" stories from Ukraine -- especially ones in Kyiv post.

Thus, world opinion remains in Russia's corner except for the usual Western suspects who have been guilty of brutal colonialism/imperialism and want to keep the world under their clutches.

Russia is suffering from the sanctions but along with other members of BRICS, is quietly creating a parallel currency system. When established and successful, it will end the dollar hegemony once and for all, never to return.

The simple fact is, the future of the world is in the East where a majority of the wealth will be created in the next 100 years.

[LanternWaste]

7. Good thing to know their annexation of the Crimea, its military incursion into Ukraine

"Unfortunately for the West, most of the media stories were debunked..."

Good thing to know their annexation of the Crimea, its military incursion into Ukraine and Moscow's repeated use of "Novorossiya" have been debunked. And even if not debunked, it's simply the "West painting Russia bad" through no fault of its own military expansionism.

[bemildred]

5. Russian-backed separatists take high point east of Donetsk

Russian-backed separatists have taken the strategic high point of Savur-Mohyla in eastern Ukraine, which looks out over wide areas of the region, a Ukrainian military source said on Thursday.

Asked by Reuters if the rebels had captured Savur-Mohyla, east of Donetsk, the source replied: "Yes. We have such information".

http://www.todayszaman.com/world_russian-backed-separatists-take-high-point-east-of-donetsk_356961.html

[samsingh]

8. it sounds like Russia has declared war

[cosmicone]

9. Perfect timing too

Europe is going to be timid with the winter approaching and Ukraine could freeze without Russian gas. Energy is something Europe cannot give Ukraine ... so they will have to crawl and beg for it from Russia.

The US is occupied with ISIL, Iraq and Syria ...

Bad move by the CIA. The status quo was much better for Ukrainians. Victoria Nuland thought the UN would "glue it" but so far, the whole operation is in splinters and no amount of glue is going to fix it.

Russia is not a tiny defenseless country like Granada/Panama/Iraq/Afghanistan which the US forces are experts in conquering.

[Igel]

10. That's precisely what it hasn't done.

And those entirely caught up in words and form are hamstrung. Without Russia saying what it's doing, all they have are two competing claims. Even the claims are funny. "Russian OSCE representative says" often gets reported as "OSCE says." It's a small shift in words, so it's okay; but it replaces an international organization with a single Russian appointee.

For months we've had reports of things happening that were "impossible." Grad fire from the wrong direction. A border post taken over by 50-100 armed insurgents, after heavy artillery shelling ... with no insurgent artillery within 20 miles. Then, 8 hours after the border post is taken over, surrounded by Ukrainian forces, it is stocked with tanks, APCs, and Grad units. They don't get from point A to point B, they suddenly materialize 100 yards inside the Russian border.

Savur-Mohila is a case in point. It's southern side was shelled extensively when the rebels had no artillery units south of the hill. But radio chatter from rebels giving coordinates and elevations and asking the Russians to shell areas were noted. Until they started capturing satellite communications equipment, some still with paperwork showing what Russian base they were inventoried at.

There have been lots of cases--literally--of humanitarian aid captured that contained night vision goggles, uniforms, munitions, vests. Numerous instances of explosives, equipment, vehicles, comm equipment, still containing documentation showing when it was issued to a Russian base and showing that the stuff was still in Russian inventory a month or less before the time it was found or taken from the rebels.

We see a video of Ukrainian troops beaten, bloodied, paraded in front of cameras in their undies saying how bad they were, and many say, "Yes ... Honest confessions." We see Ukrainians and self-admitted Russians still in uniform or fully dressed, no sign of violence, saying what they did and how they were recruited and paid, and you get, "Torture! And how dare they videotape a POW!" It's all self-serving. No need to think that the DUers and media wonks taking this POV are paid operatives. They're mostly chickenshit scared of being asked to take a strong moral stance that might prove difficult--either they can't think in any terms of absolute black/white and both sides in this conflict are imperfect, dare I say "human"?; or they may be called to do something more than sit on their butts and talk, even if that means sending arms that may hurt somebody.

Every time there was a "big claim" and those caught up with words listened and said, "Yes, there's impossible violence, but we haven't actually seen it ourselves so it's all just words," people died and that became the new baseline. At some point it was difficult for word-based "reality" to adjust to facts as they became known. "The Ukrainians have said this for month and we've overlooked it ... Now we have to either continue accepting Russian denials or admit our reality was wrong and we liked it to be wrong."