If it’s Ukraine and there’s a press conference going on these days, you can pretty much count on there being a spurious claim of a Russian invasion, which NATO and Western media will quickly parrot, but which none of them has any real proof for.
Today’s “Russian invasion,” one of several in the past week alone, involves over 1,000 Russian ground troops, at least two columns of tanks, and as is so often the case, not a single credible photograph.
NATO piled on, as they are wont to do, and tweeted out an extremely blurry satellite photo which they claimed showed some sort of Russian vehicles on a road that could conceivably be in Eastern Ukraine.
Media outlets reporting the invasion as absolute fact didn’t let their lack of photographic evidence get in the way, and rather recycled stock photos of Ukrainian military vehicles for the sake of making the article look like there’s a lot of vehicles involved.
Russia was quick to deny the invasion, sparking a lot of cable news speculation of Russian deception, though the startling array of Ukrainian claims of “vanishing” tank columns and massive numbers of killed Russians that are never substantiated suggest that anything coming out of Kiev has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Ukraine is fighting both thugs and Russian troops supplied by Putin. This is not a "claim" any more than it was a claim that Russian troops invaded Crimea, or are you so ignorant of the facts to deny that as well? FREEZE all Russian assets in the West and revoke all Visas and we can avoid more bloodshed. Jason Ditz is another putin apologist without a clue. Do you still deny Hitler invaded the Sudetenland too? Get a Clue.
russians are there all right, my friend's friend's brothers son heard it in a bar by a guy named alex
If you clickpath through the tweet, you find the page
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/photos_112112…
which has photos with more details. NATO stupidly does not provide Google maps coordinates but one can verify that the terrain matches the Ukrainian-Russian border area, for example Russian arty in picture 5 is positioned here:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir//47.7960919,39.04…
Nice countryside btw,
So…
Definitely seems unlikely taht rebels are able to maintain their current level of defense and even go on the offense without out-of-country support. Additionally, there are rumors of paratroopers buried in Pskov and rumors of military personnel thought to be on military exercises turning up in a St. Petersburg hospital looking mangled.
I guess Russia provides more support than it will ever publically admit to. Clearly its red line is in evidence.
What is the game matrix like now?
If the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) would stop being coy and show the world some real photos and videos in color,with pictures of uniforms and what the troops are having for breakfast, there would be some believers. We spend billions for those satellites and it's time to show off some of that stuff. The 60 year old type really cheesy NATO photos had the Russians laughing because they know it's part of the US cover up that we can't really do anything.
And the campaign of lies is getting more intense. This alleged invasion is being printed in headlines all over, including the most moronic millennial web sites, sites dedicated to minorities and then picked up by news hubs. It's bizarre. Good thing is no matter how hard they try, few are buying the propaganda.
NATO found probably additional evidence about chemical weapons that Sadam Hussein personally brought to Russian border.
Now seriously : there are thre things which are dangerous :
-we lost toally contol of the pentagon guys who are more lying than russians
-the press is controlled and not objective; more over they totally lack of serious analysts
-we see the total incompetence of USA (master) and Europ (servants) in solving the conflict.They totaly ignore the ethnic groups forming the present ukraine, they ignore their ways of thinking,they do not understand that the guys in Kiev are with north mentality (Galicia) and they hate the ethnic russians.
The next step is more dangerous : Poroshenko has dissolved the present parlement.Elections will be in october,The south will not be represented at all.Today there are still some voices against bombing civilians,After the elections the party of war will dominate. and It will be Gernica.
The nazi Ukrainian junta, the neoconservative Obama regime and the ministry of Propaganda should remember the story of the boy who cried wolf. Not that they have any credibility among people with an IQ higher than room temperature anyway.
Barack Hussein Obama claims that his mot war president, look at Libya, Syria, Iraq, ISIS and Ukraine, one after another are the creation of his state department high valued politicians employed by him. He could always claim that he is not the war president, he have employes following the AIPAC/Saudis/UAE plan and doing it for, is just that the checks (5billion dollars to Neo fascism in Kiev) are signed by treasury department.
This is one of the locations of the sat images: https://www.google.com/maps/@48.3676065,39.711365…
Assuming the photo was unaltered it only tells us that once upon a time there were 2 small convoys driving through Sukhodil's'k, Ukraine. (~12 km from the Russian border)
When did it happen?
Were they Russian, Ukrainian or Novorossiyan?
Is that really the best route for a covert Russian operation?
Shouldn't NATO have a sequence of sat images showing where the convoy came from?
multiply the resolution about 50 times and you will be able to see everything. The Defense Intelligence Agency has that ability, but a decision has been made not to show it.
Who ever heard of an "invasion" that was not evident in tons of indisputable photos and eyewitness reports?
Here we have the faintest slivers of highly disputed evidence. It smacks of the Maine, the Tonkin Gulf incident and the falsified proof of WMD, In fact Michael Gordon was co-author with Judith Miller on the crucial article on WMD. He was never fired and now he is back writing all this stuff for the NYT on Ukraine.
See: http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/08/03/beware-the-new…
And it only takes 1,000 Russian troops to invade East Ukraine…..what a joke.
If the Russians had actually invaded, the war would have been over in about a week.
This could all be yet another scam by the rebels to try to stampede the Ukrainians into doing something that would force Putin to invade. It certainly is odd that within a few days of four the arrest of Russian paratroopers in Ukraine, we suddenly hear about paratroopers killed in Ukraine being buried in Pskov and now, Russian forces in the south. Without a Russian invasion, the rebels are condemned to lose and, as I mentioned yesterday, the capture of Novoazovsk provides a convenient escape route into Russia. Putin has truly made a monumental fool of himself. No Soviet leader ever got themselves into such an intractable mess!
Please say something new!
jeez Mike, the rebels don't need to stampede Kiev into doing something crazy, Kiev is doing it all by themselves. Putin is not going to invade cos if he does he owns the part he invades. Putin's plan is stick DC gang with the ruins of Ukraine and while Putin presumably isn't happy about Nato camped close by, any advantage is negated by having to pump billions into it.
But Obama is using the Ukrainian "fact" as justification for more sanctions during his nationally covered speach yesterday. And Jen Psaki was practically foaming at the mouth in her zeal to paint the Russians as invaders…as opposed to the US invaders in 2003.
I dunno why Jason killed my earlier post, but you have to clickthrough through the tweet to go to nato's page, then find the somewhat-higher resolution photos on that site, and then you can go to the Google Maps "satellite" photo of Ukraine to ascertain that these photos are indeed about Ukraine.
I guess the Russians will just run the "plausibly deniable boots on the ground" as long as diplomatically reasonable. Which means the West should stop trying to push its luck.
Jason didn't kill your earlier post.
For one thing, he's not the one who moderates comments (I am).
For another, it wasn't killed (it's right there up above, see?).
Ukraine's government seems equally lacking in truthtelling, judgment, and competence. It's claims are worthless for understanding anything but what Ukraine wants others to believe.
Still, as this war goes on, like all wars it runs through resources at a fantastically wasteful rate. It may have started with captured material and old stockpiles in Ukraine, but it cannot be run long term on just that. No war could be.
Likewise human resources. There may have been some useful reservists at the beginning. The influx of people using complex weapons requires a training organization. Russia has it, and the rebels don't.
Still, this would have the Russians doing no more than the Western allies do in Syria against the government that Russia supports there. It is not an "invasion."
Between reading this story by Ditz concerning "little evidence" and the NATO/US un-response of "incursion" versus "invasion", I don't know which one makes me sicker…
Neither the US or the EU has been "pushing for war", at least in the media, in this case…. why can't at least Antiwar.com call it for what it is. I have to wonder if Ditz is among the voices of the interwebz who would blame Ukraine for being invaded, as we know he is a voice that seems to parrot the intentions of the Kremlin concerning their stand that there are no Russian troops there and that they are not feeding the fire.
Ditz, call a spade a spade, don't doubt that maybe it's a rake when everybody sees it digging. If this article is representative of the editorial staff at antiwar.com, I have to now question the validity and viewpoints put forth here.
If you want useful information on the conflict, visit the Vineyard of the Saker Web site and the English version of the Colonel Cassad site – Google for the links.
There is no doubt that Russia has been aiding the Donesk People's Republic with some funding, some "volunteers", and some limited weapons. All this is "under the table", which is how it's done. The Cassad site had an article about it the other day.
But this is a far cry from armored columns of "hundreds of tanks" which is complete nonsense. As the head of the DPR military said in a press conference recently, if Russia were aiding them to that degree, they would talking about the battle of Kiev, not the battle of some small town in the DPR.
The DPR army has been kicking the Ukraine army's butt for weeks now, but it has gotten even better in the last few days. They are on a counteroffensive and have succeeded in taking back several towns they retreated from earlier. The attack on Donetsk has stalled and the attack on Lugansk has failed completely.
People don't understand how the DPR lost a significant amount of territory while not being defeated. The answer is strategic retreat, conserving their forces. The only towns they absolutely have to hold on to are Donesk and Lugansk. In addition, they have concentrated on inflicting casualties on the Ukraine military by repeatedly cutting off and surrounding vastly larger attacking units, then pounding them with artillery. This has resulted in the loss of thousands of Ukraine military and hundreds of armored units. The result is the Ukraine military has fallen short on resources and have now requested a FOURTH mobilization of Ukraine citizens into the military under threat of prison term.
As for the Russian support, note that the Ukraine military reportedly has been supplied tanks and aircraft from Eastern Europe counties such as Poland, under US and NATO pressure. And the entire affair started because the US and NATO overthrew a democratically elected (if corrupt) government and replaced it with neo-Nazis who are now ethnically cleansing eastern Ukraine of Russian-speaking citizens.
Get educated on the war. It's not an "invasion" and Putin has zero interest in "annexing" the Ukraine – unless that's the only way he can keep NATO out of it.
Ukraine is like the boy who cried "wolf." Near daily claims of Russian invasion do not seem to be followed up by credible news accounts/photos/sat corroboration of such invasions.
Yes, it seems quite possible that unacknowledged Russian help is being sent to pro separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine. No one with any sense of history believes Russian statements without corroboration. But you can bet that "NATO" knows the location of every Russian private anywhere near that border. Yet we have seen no evidence other than empty claims by some NATO general of any such invasion.
Does the government of Ukraine have zero border controls? No resistance offered to foreign invaders? What kind of government does that? Instead we only hear of whining about invasions which seem to lack any follow up evidence. Ukraine isn't a member of NATO and if they want someone else to secure their borders they need to offer payment to mercenaries. So far it appears that they just want to provoke "the West" into some rash act.
Does Ukraine have zero border controls? Quite possible. They need every man to try and take back the border beside Donetsk. No resistance? Could be. There may well be nobody there. They're all up where the fighting is.
Mercenaries: well, you need money for mercenaries, and Ukraine is broke. Besides, mercenaries don't work where they face a prospect of fighting Russians. Nobody's health care covers that.
Jason, I'm concerned that you and Scott both are investing way too much in the party you see as the underdog in this. Just because one side is the bad guys doesn't make the other good guys. The Ukrainians along the coast where this latest battle is taking place are retreating- they are retreating from something. What is it that is chasing them? It's cetrtainly not imaginary: it's shooting at them.
Regardless of what you think of the Nazi-connected, self-appointed government of Ukraine, the guys on the other side, Putin and all, are not going to prove to be angels. They have extremely serious interests to protect in Eastern Ukraine, and they would be utter fools if they were not actively opposing the attempt by Europe and the US to steamroll NATO right up to the Russian border.
But they will be ruthless, and they are easily, completely capable of progressively replacing the amateurs with their professionals, inserting advanced equipment, and taking over the war. Why would anyone assume that they would not? Why would anyone assume that they would sit still and lose when they are playing at home and have vast resources at their fingertips to apply?
And they will be ruthless.
You and Scott sound like you are completely committed to the idea that these people are the good guys. They are not. There are no good guys in this. The good guys never last long in this sort of a conflict. They get killed off early.
As representatives of Antiwar, it's your job to oppose not just one side in these conflicts. You're the rare independent voices who are supposed to be equally skeptical of all those who make war. You're against both sides. Remember?
"Just because one side is the bad guys doesn't make the other good guys."
Very true.
But in defense of Jason and Scott, I think they're TRYING to get the facts right and I don't think they're "taking the Russian side" so much as assuming (possibly not correctly, but understandably on the basis of experience) that when the US government says something and someone else says the opposite, the opposite is at least somewhat more likely to be true than the US government's claim.
"Just because" one side is openly worshipful of the SS & Hitler & is actively ethnically cleansing an area through the murder of civilians… I would say that does make them the bad guys.