Ukrainian military forces are pounding the eastern city of Luhansk today, and the rebels in control of the city have struck back, shooting down a MiG-29 fighter jet that was involved in the attacks.
It was the second MiG-29 Ukraine has lost in the current war on the east, and while there was no confirmation, it seems likely the shootdown was with a shoulder-fired missile, as is usually the case with planes flying low for attack runs.
Luhansk is the easternmost provincial capital in Ukraine, and one of two, along with Donetsk, that has been held by the rebels for months. The military is pushing into those two cities, fueling a humanitarian crisis.
Over one million civilians have been displaced in the war, mostly fleeing into neighboring Russia, and those who remain have been struggling to find food and water as the shelling grows more intense against populated areas.
The rebels, mostly ethnic Russians, seek increased autonomy, or outright secession, for the eastern portion of the nation, while the Ukrainian military has dubbed them terrorists and vowed to crush the revolt.
The US Air Farce would lose a good number of planes, too, if it were ever to fight an enemy that was better equipped than an irregular light infantry force with nothing more destructive than mortars and RPGs.
One has to wonder what happens when somebody unwraps its stock of Stingers (and its equivalents) and starts taking shots at our planes in the Middle East and elsewhere. All those very portable missiles disappeared from Libyan depots, and they didn't just vanish into thin air; someone has them and I suspect they're waiting for an opportune moment to wreak some havoc on aircraft, civil and military.
To get a handle on what’s really going on, we have to understand that Ukraine is not just another bloody afterthought like Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria, none of which would dramatically impact the US’s role as the world’s only superpower. Ukraine is different. Ukraine is an essential part of Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia. If Washington is unable to achieve its objectives in Ukraine — create a chokepoint for vital resources flowing from Russia to the EU, establish NATO bases in the heart of Eurasia, and drive a wedge between Moscow and Brussels — then the plan to maintain US global hegemony for the next century will fail. And if the plan fails, then China will gradually become the world’s biggest and most powerful economy, economic ties between Moscow and Europe grow stronger, and the US will slide into irreversible decline. Get the picture?
This is the scenario that Washington wants to avoid at all cost. That’s why the anti-Russia hysteria in the media has been so ferocious and unrelenting. That’s why the State Department assisted in the coup d’état that toppled the Ukrainian government and triggered the crisis. And that’s why ruling elites of all stripes have thrown their support behind a policy that recklessly pits one nuclear-armed adversary against another. It’s because the bigshot money-guys who run this country are bound and determined to be the Kingfish for the next hundred years even if it means plunging the world into the abyss of a third world war. That’s just a chance they’re willing to take..
Once again, no one can paint the rebel colonists as honest citizens making a peaceful protest. No sign of any such weaponry among the demonstrators in Ferguson!
I've never heard anyone trying to "paint" them as "honest citizens [of Ukraine] making a peaceful protest." They are militia members of a secessionist republic, fighting a military action against invaders.