A new statement from Ukraine’s far-right Right Sector party today demands an end to the Minsk ceasefire deal, negotiated between Ukraine and eastern rebels with the help of Russia, Germany, and France. The ceasefire was reached back in February, and has mostly held since.
The Right Sector was critical of the negotiations in the first place, saying the ceasefire was illegal under Ukrainian law. They have called for a resumption of the civil war against the autonomous east, and have claimed the military has the right to unilaterally resume the war, irrespective of the government’s negotiated deal.
The new statement called for a resumption of military operations to “liberate” the east from the easterners. The Right Sector’s popularity is overwhelmingly centered around the far west of Ukraine, and the city of Lviv. They are openly hostile to the ethnic Russians who live in the east.
The Minsk ceasefire has intermittently been under pressure from local fighting between rebels and military forces, but has overwhelmingly held. The Poroshenko government has tried to placate the pro-war factions in the national parliament by predicting an imminent collapse, but the longer it lasts the more the Right Sector and others will agitate for “reforms” leading to a new round of fighting.
They must have a death wish.
Perhaps also timed to match the visit by MadMcCain, moronCotton, and some other nobody senator to Ukraine for the "We are Crimea [???], We are Ukraine" conference. Check out the pathetic pic:
https://news.yahoo.com/photos/u-senator-john-mcca…
Bring it on then.
Often such proposal to initiate or propagate another war is nothing but the desire to escape the consequences of the last round. In this case I do start to wonder how many members of Right Sector are uneasy about any further inquiry into what happened during the run-up and perhaps on the battle field. It's already becoming clear that the Ukrainian military was not as unified in their command structure as portrayed before, leaving open lots of possibilities when it comes to the "who-dun-what" cases.
Of course this could as well be simply about the health of a political group as conflict and hate are their life blood, without it the movement will whitter away. This might be also still limited as political statement to please their restless membership. Somehow I think that won't work: too many have tasted the mental and physical violence of war and will desire all sorts of revenge.
and guess who has just made a visit to Kiev/Ukraine
"Tony Blair attends Russian economic forum, days after receiving Ukrainian job offer"
i think John McCain was also in the vicinity recently.
"Autonmous" east? That´s a huge climbdown! The party line used be that Sausagestan had procaimed it independence, Kosovo-style. Sounds like Putin is getting ready to sell the Sausagites out!
If by "the party line," you mean Antiwar.com's coverage, you have it exactly backward.
Antiwar.com's "party line" has always been that there's a "civil war" with "rebels" in "eastern Ukraine."
Believe you me, I've complained about it, and held that the coverage should treat the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in exactly the same way as it treats the regime in Kiev and that regime's invading forces in the DPR/LPR — that is, not necessarily commenting on either group's legitimacy, but calling them what they call themselves.
But nobody here seems to listen to me on stuff like that. Matter of fact, I think they think I'm damn near as disconnected from reality as you are. Not quite, of course, but close.
They're bored. They signed up to bust some skulls and the Candyman promised they'd be able to do so. The USG even came around and guaranteed they'd even get some new lethal toys courtesy of the American taxpayer. But, stuff happens, I guess. So, they're bored. Poroshenko should be careful…they may just shift their angst a little closer to home. Poro would be better off disarming them altogether and outlawing the neoNazi brand of nationalism.
Even worse than the problem of nomenclature, Thomas, is this problem of substance: the shelling of Gorlovka and Donetsk cities has never actually ceased during this 'truce'. It kills on average some 20 to 40 people a month. Property damage is incalculable, as whole areas of each city are abandoned. And these are not the only cities. Shelling from the Kiev side continues all along the de-facto border. It just isn't reported internationally. Jason typically falls into the false equivalence of "The Minsk ceasefire has intermittently been under pressure from local fighting between rebels and military forces, but has overwhelmingly held." The reality is that Kiev forces shell the cities, the population centres, which are static, non-moving targets. The rebels, however, having no wish to shell what they regard as their own, temporarily-occupied cities, have the much harder task of hitting Kiev's highly mobile firing positions before they move on. The rebels are forbidden by Moscow from simply advancing to take the Kiev firing positions, since Moscow is concerned that they not win outright. That's what Moscow mean when they say they support Minsk: they mean they don't want the rebels either to win, or to lose outright and get subjected to nazi occupation. However, maybe, these are the only two alternatives.