Ukraine’s military has begun what it is euphemistically calling an “anti-terror” operation against eastern Ukrainian provinces, vowing to crush the protesters who have taken over many government buildings in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Reports emerging from Kramatorsk, at the northern tip of the Donetsk Oblast have the first fighting taking place at an airfield, with shots fired on both sides and at least four of the protesters have been killed.
The details of what is happening in Kramatorsk remain unclear amid the chaos of a military offensive against a city of 200,000 people, but the Ukrainian military claims to have captured the airfield, and is looking to press those gains elsewhere in the city and in neighboring Slovyansk, which protesters have also seized.
Roads leading into Slovyansk are being guarded by checkpoints run by a militia loyal to the protesters, who have spent the past week preparing for the eventuality of a military offensive.
Ukraine’s military not only used ground troops, but also warplanes in the Kramatorsk Airfield battle. As-yet-unconfirmed reports claim that one of the Ukrainian planes, a SU-27, was shot down over the airfield.
Since it's fairly clear that Putin intends to grab the 6 provinces west of the Kharkov – Sebastopol railway line and is just waiting for the European Parliament election to be over, the Ukrainians have really nothing left to lose. If they're lucky, the US will be forced to help them. If they're not, then, like the Polish cavalry charging Hitler's tanks in 1939, they will at least go down with their heads high. And 6 years after invading Poland, Hitler was dead, his ideas utterly discredited and his country in ruins and divided.
Michael dutifully fulfilling this month's Hitler-production quotas on behalf of our alternating neoconservative and liberal internationalist iron fists of democracy. Michael, by my count, you and your fellow neocons have declared six "new Hitlers" in the past 20 years. Milosevic, Ahmedinejad, Saddam, Gaddafi. Assad and Putin. Have I missed any Hitlers? Are Hitlers by definition either Slavic or Muslim?
Paraphrase of Huey Long: you could have terrorism in this country but you'd have to call it 'anti-terrorism.'
So when the current illegitimate government had used violent means in over throwing the prior elected government of Ukraine last January and February and with assistance from the U.S. (thank you Victoria Nuland), did they consider themselves terrorists and was the then elected government only conducting an anti-terror operation?
questions like this are really embarrassing
It just occurred to me that Putin could just establish a Libyan style "no fly zone". Dominate the air, provide overwhelmingly effective close air support, and win "freedom" for the Eastern provinces, probably without ever putting boot one (uniformed regular army) on the ground.