Even in an era of moral decline of the autochthonous population, the rulers of the Roman Empire relied on mercenaries when military service turned from prestigious to onerous for their own citizens. The Persians also relied during the crisis of their empire on Greek mercenaries, who represented the most combat-ready troops of Darius III in his war with Alexander the Great. France actively used the Senegalese during World War I, Britain used the Gurkhas, and the latter were also part of the British occupation forces in Serbia. There are many similar examples of mercenary activities in world history.

A similar situation is happening today in the Western world, when the invasive policies of the current establishment of the Old and New World do not get a “surge of emotional support” from its own population, resulting in the fact that Washington and its NATO vassals have to turn to mercenary militias, that have long been transformed into the Western PMCs, “assisting units”. This tactic was used by the West in the war in Yugoslavia, because no one in the North Atlantic Alliance was willing to throw their soldiers into the Balkan meat grinder to enforce the geopolitical interests of Washington. Therefore, it is not surprising that the PMCs and Turkey were chosen by Brussels as the “main striking force” (or rather “the main cannon fodder”) in the Yugoslavia events, as it was not the precious blood of European masters to spill!

Therefore, the military and political strategy of today’s Anglo-Saxons began to actively use advanced weapons and PMCs, allowing them to destroy the enemy at a safe distance, while minimizing direct combat contact with them and their own losses. This was the case in Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. There is nothing surprising here, because the PMCs usually employ former fighters, including those of special forces. Having combat experience, they take part in the most complex and dangerous operations. Accordingly, public opinion, both in the US and other Western European countries, is less sensitive to casualties among them. And their insurance and social security payments are considerably lower.

Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that former combatants living in the US or other Western countries, with their PTSDs and other mental traumas, become a significant burden not only on the social services of those countries. They deal considerable damage on the Western propaganda machine, periodically telling the media of their sorrows, hardships and the moral and physical damage inflicted on them by the authorities who sent them to war. The authorities of Western countries are therefore openly interested in getting rid of such persons on their territories by promoting calls to join mercenary forces in certain areas of armed conflict, which, incidentally, are unleashed and supported precisely by Washington.

This is what is happening in Ukraine today. In early March, the first 200 Croatian mercenaries arrived in Ukraine under the obvious influence of a Russophobic propaganda campaign unleashed by the United States, although the President of Croatia, Zoran Milanović, had earlier stated that no Croatian soldiers would take part in the escalation of the situation in Ukraine. However, it should not be forgotten that it is in Croatia that thousands of people still consider the Ustashas, who responded to the calls of their ideological friends, the Banderites, to be their heroes.

Multiple reports then appeared in various media that Syrian pro-Turkish fighters and former members of terrorist organizations were being sent to Ukraine. Allegedly, the US has purposely released prisoners in Syrian Kurdistan, and is moving them into the area of fighting.

Washington has “tasked” Ukrainian embassies with recruiting volunteers in many countries. Dmytro Kuleba had already announced in early March that “20,000 foreign fighters were ready to go to the front.” The cost of a professional mercenary is up to $2,000 a day.  Given that Ukraine has long been a bankrupt country, it is quite understandable that the “fees” of the mercenaries will be paid by the US and its NATO allies. Again, professional mercenaries with real military experience are recruited mainly through foreign PMCs, mostly American, such as Academi, Cubic and DenCorp.

Most of the mercenaries enter Ukraine via Poland, with its large logistics centers operated by NATO military specialists and CIA agents, in particular in Lublin and Wroclaw Strachowice. They form military convoys travelling to the area of combat operations. Up to 17 NATO military transport aircraft with “military aid” arrive in Poland every day.

In general, the US is following a well-trodden “path,” tested back during the two Chechen wars in the North Caucasus when it employed mercenaries from dozens of foreign countries and almost all regions of the world. At the time, mercenaries with Canadian, Georgian, German, British, Danish, French, Italian, Swedish, Swiss, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and other passports left their trail of blood in Chechnya. According to media reports, more than 100 foreign firms (including banking groups) were involved in providing material, financial and other assistance to terrorists in the North Caucasus, most of which had offices in the United States and Europe.

According to Ukrainian Minister Kuleba, citizens of 16 countries have already arrived in Ukraine. As noted by representatives of the Russian military department, now not only employees of PMCs, but also fighters of special operations forces of NATO countries can be sent under the guise of “volunteers” to conduct combat operations against Russian troops. These are people who want to engage in terror, to kill and have total indulgence for it.

Last week, 200 mercenaries from Croatia arrived in the country via Poland and joined a national battalion in southeastern Ukraine, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said. In any case, all Western mercenaries arriving in Ukraine will have no rights to POW status, Konashenkov said, making their fate unenviable. All of them, as well as the military equipment and weapons coming to Ukraine from “external sponsors,” will be immediately destroyed.

This was confirmed, in particular, by the Russian army’s missile strike on March 13 on the centers of the Ukrainian armed forces in Starichi and the Yavorivsky military training ground, which resulted in the liquidation of up to 180 mercenary fighters and a large shipment of weapons from the West. This mercenary unit was planned to reach 2,500-3,000 men in the near future and throw it into the front line. Most of them had arrived in Ukraine hours before the Russian strike. There were also US fighters there, as evidenced, in particular, by US media reports. A few hours later, however, the few survivors made an emergency escape to Poland, telling their relatives on social media that they would no longer come to fight in Ukraine because it was not an easy walk.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

More recently, the topic of Turkey and its use of fighters with Syrian war experience in a number of armed conflict zones has been discussed at length in the pages of NEO. However, the topic of foreign fighters in the current events in Ukraine, as well as the involvement of a number of NATO countries in sending them there, compels us to revisit this topic.

First, regarding foreign fighters “with Syrian experience”, the deputy head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides (CROS) in Syria, Rear Admiral Oleg Zhuravlev, said on March 5 that fighters of Albanian and Caucasian origin were heading to Europe from the US-controlled Syrian province of Idlib. They plan to further “take part in combat operations on the territory of Ukraine”.

On March 1, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Bashar Jaafari said that the USA might transfer terrorists of DAESH (a terrorist group banned in Russia) or members of other radical groups to Ukraine. According to the politician, this is being organized by the US special services. He also stressed that the use of mercenaries is a common practice in the US. “They moved terrorists from El-Hol camp (in northeastern Syria) to Al-Tanf area (territory seized by the US army) and from there sent them to Afghanistan and Burkina Faso,” Jaafari stressed.

In this connection, attention was also drawn to information that appeared in a number of media outlets that officers of the Ukrainian Security Service, together with officers of Turkey’s national intelligence organization, had recently visited northern Syria (including the settlements of Afrin and Azaz). In particular, a military diplomatic source told RIA Novosti that they visited the base of armed groups banned in Russia, in particular “Harakat Saurin” (part of the “Syrian National Army”), where they met with commanders of several pro-Turkish formations (“Firkyat Sultan Murad”, “Liwa Al-Muattasim”) as well as camps of the illegal armed groups. There, the possibility of recruiting fighters for Ukraine’s territorial defense was discussed with pro-Turkish formations and an agreement was reached to organize a series of secret meetings with “interested parties”.

Detection of a Turkish flag in one of the workshops for manufacturing homemade drone shells near Mariupol in the village of Sopino by the DPR military on 5 March is definite confirmation of the involvement of pro-Turkish militants in the current events in Ukraine on the side of Kiev-controlled military formations. Troops found large quantities of explosive devices and electronic components for drones there.

Moreover, according to Kosovo media reports, veterans of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia and Serbia, intend to fight on the Ukrainian side. As the Balkanist portal notes, the Croatian nationalists who expelled the Serbs living there in 1995 from Croatia had previously volunteered to participate in Kiev’s military operations.

Internationalization of the Ukrainian war by Kiev has been acknowledged by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on the US TV channel CNN, who said, among other things, that more than 20,000 mercenaries from 16 countries were being sent to Ukraine. On February 27, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the creation of a combat unit, into which he has invited citizens of foreign countries to join, and which has already been dubbed Kiev’s “foreign legion”. The Norwegian conflictologist Thomas Hegghammer has already pointed out in an interview with Der Spiegel that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a blatant political mistake in urging foreigners to fight in his country against Russia. Volunteers are also more difficult to control, he says, since they are less pragmatic and less willing to compromise than the local population. They are of little military use, but are often the ones who commit atrocities and violate ceasefires.

Nevertheless, militants from various countries have already started making their way into Ukraine in response to Kiev’s call. A large number of military personnel are now reportedly on Polish territory and are involved in smuggling weapons and fighters into Ukraine.

A number of Western countries have previously officially allowed their citizens to go to Ukraine and join the “foreign legion”. In particular, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Croatia, Poland and Latvia have endorsed the sending of mercenaries at national level. Meanwhile it is already known that the backbone of this “army of mercenaries” will be nationalists and far-rightists of all stripes from Europe and America.

A certain proportion of these mercenaries are Western private military companies, which were present in Ukraine even before the special operation by Russian troops began. They are led by the US, and consist mainly of Eastern European nations, with Poles in particular tending to be the majority. These PMCs were used by Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq, in overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi. PMC services are very expensive, so they will certainly be paid for by “Western sponsors”, as “Zelenskyy’s state” is now bankrupt. It is therefore naive to suggest that Zelenskyy’s call for a “foreign legion” was made by himself. This is clearly Washington’s tactical line to escalate the Ukrainian conflict. The “US leadership” in deepening the armed conflict in Ukraine is also evidenced by a report in the possession of The Washington Post showing that the Pentagon had significantly increased its military aid deliveries to Kiev long before the Russian special operation began. Moreover, according to the declassified document, the US Department of Defense “was equipping Ukrainian fighters with arms and equipment useful for fighting in urban areas.”

Another category of “foreign helpers of Kiev” will be outright Nazis who hate Russia and Orthodoxy fiercely. The most prominent of these are the Croats, about 200 of whose representatives are now based in besieged Mariupol and holding tens of thousands of people hostage. Representatives of such groups are very aggressive and they are not part of the European right-conservative political community, which is largely sympathetic to Russia because of its strong defense of traditional values.

It is frankly surprising that there are Israelis in the ranks of such ultranationalists and Nazis. It would seem that they cannot stand idly by as monuments are being erected in Ukraine to those who were exterminating Jews by the tens of thousands, burning, stabbing, shooting and burying them alive in mass graves. The names of these executioners, whose hands are up to their elbows in Jewish blood, are called streets and schools in the cities. Because of the policies pursued by the Kiev authorities, these murderers are now heroes for Ukraine.  But nevertheless, Israeli mercenaries chose to betray the memory of the Jewish people who suffered under fascism, at the behest of the White House to stand up for the Nazi authorities in Kiev.

The Israeli media reported that Israelis, in particular former fighters of the Golani brigade, are already fighting in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Territorial Defense Forces. This was reported on the telegraph channel Israeli Working Life, which even published a video showing one of these fighters being interviewed in Hebrew. The Ukrainian newspaper Donpress also reported that the first Israeli special forces veterans had already arrived in Ukraine, quoting Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Honcharenko. Moreover, several Ukrainian media outlets quoted the Israeli portal Ynet as saying that trainees from the Israeli army’s elite units are taking part in the war with Russia on Ukraine’s side.  All this raises a lot of questions for the official current authorities in Israel!

On March 2, Japanese newspapers reported that Tokyo was ready to send 70 Japanese “volunteers” to the Ukrainian front. The Japanese Mainichi Shimbun reported that about 50 of them were former members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces.

Groups of young Danish citizens have already left for Ukraine, Danish news agency Nyheder.TV2 reported on March 1, specifying that the young Danes have only three months of military service as their only military experience. So the likelihood of any of them returning from the Ukrainian battlefield alive is small…

The US publication Vice published on March 2 an interview with a former British military officer who is already in Ukraine. Britain’s retired Royal Marines have already arrived in Ukraine to fight the Russians, said Fox News journalist Lucas Tomlinson. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss gave permission for Britons to fight on the side of Kiev’s neo-Nazis, but on March 6 she was opposed by the head of the Royal Armed Forces’ General Staff, Admiral Tony Radakin, who said that it was “illegal and useless” for Britons to fight against Russia in Ukraine.

A short while ago, the Senegalese Foreign Ministry summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to protest over the recruitment of its nationals to take part in military operations. The communiqué said it was about a Facebook post by the Ukrainian embassy in Dakar that called for Senegalese volunteers to take part in the armed conflict in Ukraine.

About 60 mercenaries are known to have left Georgia for Ukraine. According to unofficial data, 15 of them have already died…

The mercenaries sent by Western countries to help Kiev will not be entitled to POW status, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov has said. Their fate is therefore unenviable.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On December 3, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Russian President Vladimir Putin. The heads of the two states spoke about Libya, Ukraine, and what is happening in Transcaucasia.

While discussing the Ukrainian conflict, the Russian President stressed the importance of full and strict compliance with the Implementation of the 2015 Minsk Package of Measures and other agreements, including in the Normandy format, according to the Presidential Executive Office website. The Russian leader said that any attempts by Kyiv to use force in Donbas and to continue its destructive line aimed at disrupting the Minsk agreements were unacceptable. In particular, this is evidenced by the provocative activity of the Ukrainian armed forces in the conflict zone, including the use of Turkish Bayraktar unmanned combat aerial vehicles.

The Russian side made these comments because the additional ceasefire monitoring measures agreed by the participants in the Contact Group for the settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine have been in force in the territory of Donbas since July 27, 2020. As a result, there is a ban on offensive and commando-type reconnaissance activities, aircraft use, and other actions. The armed conflict in the southeast of Ukraine began in 2014 between the citizens of Ukraine, when the residents of Donbas refused to recognize Kyiv’s new government after the coup d’état in February 2014. In 2015, the Normandy Quartet leaders agreed on measures to implement the Minsk agreements of September 19, 2014. Ukraine passed a law on the special status of Donbas in 2014, but it never came into force.

Reacting to the claims made by Moscow, the Turkish press again made a rather clumsy attempt to shift responsibility to Kyiv. It claimed that Turkey could not be responsible for using drones because they became Ukrainian, not Turkish, after being sold. In this regard, Ankara began to strenuously stress that the Turkish side allegedly did not violate anything in this sale, as there were no bans on its arms supplies. Ankara is blatantly disingenuous, forgetting the International Code of Conduct for Arms Transfers, including those to armed conflict zones, which was approved by a majority vote (154 out of 193 UN member states) at the UN General Assembly on April 2, 2013, for which Turkey voted.

It should be reminded that on October 26, it became known that the Ukrainian army used the Bayraktar TB2, a Turkish unmanned combat aerial vehicle for military purposes in Donbas. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed this, which was reported on Facebook by the General Staff Press Service. According to the statement, Lieutenant-General Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, gave the corresponding order. For the first time in the area of the United Forces operation, the Bayraktar reconnaissance drone system was used in combat. According to the press center, a Bayraktar with a guided bomb destroyed one cannon of the military near the settlement of Hranitne in Donbas.

Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba confirmed the military use of the Turkish Bayraktar UAV by the Ukrainian army.

It is well known that the Bayraktar UAV contract was signed between Ukraine and Turkey in 2018. At the same time, the contract included only six drones and three control stations. The contract amounted to $69 million. The Bayraktar TB2 is a Turkish unmanned combat aerial vehicle with a range of 150 km and a cruising speed of 130 km/h.

Amid Vladimir Putin’s telephone conversation with Recep Tayyip Erdogan on December 3, there was a discussion between the two leaders on ways to resolve the armed conflict in Donbas. The American publication Bloomberg, referring to sources in government agencies in Ankara, reported that Turkey had sold Ukraine many more Bayraktar TB2 drones than previously stated. New supplies are also possible in the future. According to them, Kyiv has purchased “dozens” of drones, missiles, and control stations from the Turkish side since 2019. According to newspaper sources, Ukraine has ordered several dozen more drones from Ankara, which are now under development and are being delivered.

In turn, representatives of the defense company and the Turkish government officials refused to comment on the number of Bayraktar TB2 UAVs sold to Ukraine. At the same time, according to reports by several media, including the Swedish Nordic Monitor website, Turkey is actively training Ukrainian soldiers, including in the use of Bayraktar UAVs, which, in particular, takes place near the frontline in Donbas. Initially, such training was provided only for Ukrainian special forces personnel, but now training is also offered to members of other troops.

In early November, Serhiy Shaptala, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, also said on the Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel that Kyiv would increase the number of Bayraktar drones in the Ukrainian army in cooperation with Ankara. At the same time the Ukrainian media stresses that military cooperation between the two countries has been increasing significantly in recent years, not only in the field of drones. It is pointed out that during the last 4-5 years, the number of agreements and contracts between Ukraine and Turkey has multiplied, $1 billion being defense contracts signed over the previous 3-4 years.

At the same time, sensing Ankara’s readiness to actively stand up to Kyiv in the resolution of the conflict in Donbas, including by deepening the military cooperation between Ukraine and Turkey, the Kyiv political elite has already emphasized on public calls to transfer the Minsk format to Istanbul or Ankara.

The above clearly demonstrates the frankly duplicitous behavior of Erdoğan, who expresses his readiness to participate in settlement of the conflict in Donbas in a personal conversation with the Russian President, while on the other hand, continuing to strengthen the armed confrontation between Ukrainians, secretly pumping Ukraine with his Trojan horses, which are various military weapons and drones.

However, another Erdogan Trojan horse for Ukraine is the Turkish Stream, which has recently been actively developing, causing more and more competitive damage to Kyiv. Turkish Stream has become a substitute for gas supplies to the Balkans and Turkey via Ukraine. Thus, 23.2 billion cubic meters of gas was pumped through the Turkish Stream during the first 11 months of 2021 alone, for which Ukraine could have received $736 million. But this did not happen. The reduction of gas pumping through Ukraine will continue in 2022, so Ukraine will lose more than $ 1 billion next year only because of the Turkish Stream.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is well known for his resounding appeals built on the political doctrine of Pan-Ottomanism, which emerged in Turkey in the 1970s, according to which all subjects of the Ottoman Empire are members of a single nation, the Ottomans. However, such verbal passage has been recently increasingly followed by actual actions, which, without a doubt, can be regarded as an attack on the territorial integrity of other states.

To understand the reasons behind Erdogan’s behavior, it is worth recalling that the current Turkish President was born in Istanbul in 1954 in the family of a coast guard worker, Adjarian Lazs, who migrated to Istanbul from the Caucasus province of Rize in the northeast of Turkey. As his family was poor, he had to earn his keep since high school by selling lemonade and buns in the lower streets of Greater Istanbul. The same street has fostered many qualities in Erdogan.

As a child, he got into religion. For his religiosity at school, he was called ‘hoca’. At the age of 19, in 1973, he graduated from the Istanbul Imam-Hatip Madrasa, becoming imam and hatib (head of the collective prayers, which is responsible for prayers in Islam). Subsequently, this religion was transferred to politics, which he got involved in during his University days, joining the National Student Association at the age of 20. Three years later, he headed the district youth cell in the Islamist National Salvation Party and, after that, all of Istanbul.

The 1980 military coup led by Ahmet Kenan Evren deprived Erdogan of his party and his job. In 2014, the Erdogan government convicted Evren Kenan for life for crimes against the state. Remarkably, Kenan Evren’s reign was accompanied by massive political repression (178,000 people arrested, 64,000 sent to prison, 30,000 stripped of their citizenship, 450 died under torture, 50 executed, and thousands missing), something the rule of Erdoğan has become increasingly similar to, who has already imprisoned many people accused of complicity in the coup attempt in 2016 in the last five years alone, not counting punitive military operations against the Kurds, both in Turkey and neighboring Syria and Iraq.

Another fact worth mentioning is that in 1998 Erdogan was sentenced to 10 months in prison by a Turkish military court for reciting an Islamist poem at a rally. But in 2011, Erdogan’s Turkish justice would send the then Chief of the Turkish General Staff, Ismail Hakki Karadayi, to the dock, clearly recalling his involvement in the fate of current Turkey’s President in 1998.

Nevertheless, at 45, Erdogan returned to politics and started with a clean slate: He headed the reformist wing of the new Fazilet (Virtue Party), which in its short history, from 1997 to 2001, became the third party in Parliament in 1999. When it was abolished for its “jihad sympathies” and attempts to impose sharia law in the country, Erdogan united young politicians into his party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Over the years, Erdogan’s imperial ambitions have only grown stronger. Erdogan pays special attention to the Islamic factor in his expansionist policy, capturing the general trend of increasing the role and significance of Islam in the world and the emerging process of Islamization of the planet. During his rule, Turkey visibly “turned green,” away from a Kemalist, secular republic into a Muslim regional power. Erdoğan is seriously claiming the role of the leader of the Sunni Muslim branch of Mohammedanism. He is trying to use this factor in his national and foreign policies with the support of “his loyal Turkish army,” whose capacity and loyalty to the current government he has always attached great importance to.

Therefore, Erdogan has emphasized using the Islamic factor in his expansionist policy with the support of the military. And this is evident, particularly in Erdogan’s desire to replace Assad’s pro-Iranian regime in Syria with a pro-Turkish one under the auspices of moderate Islamists from the country’s Arab Sunni majority and Turkomans.  Hence the active reinforcement of the Turkish leader’s grouping of troops in this direction, the increase of his stationary observation posts, the provision of opposition fighters and groups of radical Islamists with a new shipment of weapons and ammunition, including ATGM and MANPADS.

The Turkish leadership does not reduce its interest in neighboring Iraq, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean and does not hide its plans to conquer the pearl of the former Ottoman Empire, Egypt. All the more reason to march victoriously across the Maghreb, across North Africa, to the borders of Morocco, as well as to actively seek to implement its expansionist plans in the Transcaucasus and Central Asian countries.

It is clearly demonstrated by the Turkic Council Summit that took place on November 12 in Istanbul (with participation of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and, of course, Turkey, while Turkmenistan and Hungary have the status of observers), which Erdogan wants to present as an absolute triumph: the participants decided to rename the Turkic Council into the Organization of Turkic States. This wording suggests a higher level of “cooperation” under the direct auspices of Ankara, which is also documented: the summit adopted a Turkic World Vision 2040. Also noteworthy is the decision taken at this summit to “form a common alphabet.” Given that Turkey uses the Latin alphabet and some Turkic countries like Kyrgyzstan use the Cyrillic alphabet, the motion vector is clear – strengthening the separation of post-Soviet states from Russia, including through the abolition of the Cyrillic alphabet adopted in Russia.

Thus, the coordinating body evolved into something more politically significant. Erdogan has previously stated that his dream is the emergence of six states and one nation.

This consolidation by Turkey of the post-Soviet republics, which are allies of Russia in the EAEU and the CSTO, is taking place with Ankara’s increasing military cooperation with these states. This is particularly evident in Turkey’s military aid to Kyrgyzstan after the conflict with Tajikistan, and Turkey’s military involvement in the recent events in Karabakh, where the Shusha Declaration, signed by the victorious countries, laid the foundations for Turkey’s future expansion.

One cannot remain silent about Erdogan’s openly hostile stance on Crimea, Prime Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu participation in the Crimean Platform summit in Kyiv, and Ankara’s declaration of Ukrainian ownership of the peninsula, with the explicit aim of Turkification of the peninsula.

And the cherry on top for Russia was Erdogan’s recently demonstrated map of the “new Turkic world,” which includes a large part of Russia, including Siberia. In particular, several Russian regions, from Dagestan and the Orenburg region to Altai and Yakutia, could be identified. Ankara’s “new world” includes Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the Balkans, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, part of the territories of Mongolia and Iran, Europe.

Time will tell how far Erdogan will go in realizing his ambitions to recreate the Ottoman Empire in modern terms and conquer Europe and other countries. However, in any case, the mentioned expansionist policy of Erdogan can hardly be regarded otherwise than as an attack on territorial integrity. And the states on the map of “Erdoğan’s new world” will undoubtedly demonstrate their official assessment of such actions to him.

Valery Kulikov, political expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Did you read recently that Russia is currently engaged in a hybrid war against the western world? Were you aware that Vladimir Putin’s only mission in life is to restore the Soviet Empire? If not, read the world’s top newspapers or the deep discussions held by western think tanks. For those of you interested in unedited history and geopolitical truth, an unbelievable reboot, sponsored by NATO, is taking place in Ukraine politics.

The Atlantic Council, the Washington based entity former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the “pre-eminent think tank,” is now calling for a new push to retake eastern Ukraine. In a report by Solomiia Bobrovska, the author writes a creative history of Ukraine and the Soviet Union, followed by a call to the western alliance to use the coronavirus pandemic to seize the initiative, and to exact even harsher economic pain on the Russian people.

Of course, Solomiia Bobrovska is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament with the Holos party, and since the Atlantic Council is part of the western NATO enforced hegemony machinery, she naturally gets a voice there. Some may remember her as the head of the Odessa Regional State Administration after the disgraced Georgian madman Mikheil Saakashvili resigned from the position. Today, Bobrovska is painted as a reformer in a time when Odessa and Ukraine needed reforming most. She’s on the move politically, her ambition a dark reflection of her continued association with Saakashvili. Her resurgence coincides with the surreal re-emergence of the Georgian psychopath’s rise to Deputy PM of Ukraine.

There’s a big lever being pulled to get President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to insinuate this killer into the lives of already battered Ukrainians. And get this, the man banished from Georgia will now be in charge of “reforms” in Ukraine. The lever, an €8 billion tranche of funding from the IMF to save Ukraine from coronavirus pandemic economic collapse, shows us the money behind the Russophobia of the last decade. The western banking elite, the same people who wiggle US President Trump’s strings, they are still hell-bent on running Russia out of business. But, this is no news.

Why are Solomiia Bobrovska and her boss Mikheil Saakashvili being pulled out of mothballs? To derail the peace agreements reached between Zelenskyy and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, end of the story. One expert on the ousted Georgian president says “Saakashvili will bring in the ‘anti-Russian virus’ in the Ukrainian government.”

Figuring out who stands behind all this new trouble on the Russian frontier is easy. Just read the positivity with which the US State Department’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty addresses the Saakashvili situation. According to the American lever pullers:

“Mikheil Saakashvili is well-known in the international arena and has already demonstrated the experience of successful implementation of reforms. President Zelenskiy believes that Mr. Saakashvili has the potential to support the Government of Ukraine and invited him to share his views and developments with the Government and Parliament of Ukraine.”

There’s no mention of Saakashvili being a NATO boogieman or his being personally responsible for destroying relations between Russia and Georgia to satisfy his western handlers. Saakashvili, and his collaborators in Georgia, were up to their necks in corruption and selling off the public trust of the people of Georgia. The privatizations that were personally run by Saakashvili’s co-conspirator and PM Zurab Zhvania surely put billions in the pockets of private concerns. Zhvania died mysteriously in 2005, in what was deemed by some to be an assassination.

An interesting side note here is the fact that in 2005 Zhvania took over complete control of Georgia’s privatization. He also seemed to be shifting the cards on previous Georgian investment companies who wanted to snap up two big deals. One was Georgian Ocean Shipping Company, and the other involved Chiaturmanganumi, a manganese mining factory, along with the Vartsikhe hydropower plant. The two entities which seem to have been jilted by Saakashvili and Zhvania were Greenoak Group and Austria’s DCM.

Run by ousted Russian oligarchs like the now-deceased Kakha Bendukidze, the US State Department, the democracy spreading NGOs, Dutch and English pirates, and the full spectrum of scavengers were hovering over Georgia at the time, Ukraine is just another domino in the game of carving up eastern Europe for profit. As is the case in Ukraine and these other eastern European satellites, Russia is the ultimate target. I mention this to shine a brighter spotlight on the nefarious dealings of Saakashvili, and the templating of revolution and takeover still in motion.

The maze of curious Georgia dealings is too circuitous to get into here. A book entitled “Who Owned Georgia” by Paul Remple (PDF form) offers a lot more insight. As for the Atlantic Council and the liberal world order versus Russia, “containing Russia” and taking advantage of a world pandemic to install NATO in Ukraine, rate higher than any humanitarian purpose. Dig in any hole of west-east conflict you can find, and old Nazis pop up alongside trained oligarch pirates, doing the bidding of a world elite that’s always hated and envied Russia. Sorry to inform you, but the Great Game continues unabated.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

Not long ago, the author wrote an article about the White House’s “royal gift”, in the form of new US Ambassador Julie Fisher, to Belarus, and pointed out that her appointment was very much in line with Washington’s recent policy to “strengthen” the leadership in its diplomatic missions with individuals with considerable experience in the military-strategic sphere and in staging coups.

And finally, Ukraine’s turn has come. After all, the nation has repeatedly asked US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (also during his visit to Kyiv in February) to send it a “good” Ambassador, who, in the end, will most likely be beneficial for the White House rather than Ukraine.

It is probably not worth pointing out that for Washington, Ukraine has long become an “enfant terrible”, as a result the White House’s treatment of it has come to resemble that of a “father towards a naughty child”. Washington has been open about its involvement in this nation’s affairs for some time now. In an interview with CNN on February 1, 2015, the US President at the time, Barack Obama, talked about “putting more pressure on Russia and bolstering Ukraine”. It is also worth reminding our readers about the fact that on December 2, 2014, the Parliament of Ukraine voted to appoint US citizen of Ukrainian descent Natalie Jaresko as the nation’s Minister of Finance. To this day, the decision has had a negative impact on Ukraine’s financial state. At the time, there were persistent rumors concerning the possibility that if Arseniy Yatsenyuk (who disappointed Washington by failing to implement IMF-approved reforms) were to leave his post, Natalie Jaresko could replace him as Prime Minister of Ukraine.

It is also important to remember that there was a succession of Ukrainian Presidents, such as Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, whose priorities directly depended on USA’s “fatherly concerns”. After all, Washington willingly took it upon itself to “bring order” to Ukraine after Maidan (civil unrest). For instance, the United States has been giving money to the Ukrainian government via various financial institutions; essentially, setting out policies for the leadership in Kyiv to follow, and lobbying to ensure the right people get appointed. The overly servile behavior exhibited by the Ukrainian establishment towards its US “advisors” is not surprising, as Washington is seemingly in charge of just about everything: from providing financial aid and giving direct orders to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to hiring personnel for intelligence services and appointing Defense Ministers, cabinet members and presidential staff.

Media outlets have also reported about USA’s influence on decision-making processes in Kyiv on more than one occasion. One only has to recall articles about the boastful statements made by former US Vice President Joe Biden about him strong-arming Petro Poroshenko to remove Ukrainian Prosecutor General from office. Previously, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland said that the US had invested more than $5 billion to promote democracy in Ukraine since 1991. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (organizations suspected of having ties to the CIA) were some of the largest investors. They financed dozens of initiatives aimed at “supporting” Ukrainian political activists, non-profit organizations (NGOs) and media outlets.

As a result, individuals who seemingly look to the United States for advice have been in Ukraine for quite some time now. Finally, the time to appoint a new US Ambassador to Ukraine has come. And according to Donald Trump, retired Lieutenant General in the US Army Keith Dayton could soon take on this role.  He was born on March 7, 1949. In 1970, he graduated from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Keith Dayton also has an MA in History from Cambridge University and a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California. He speaks Russian and a bit of German.

Keith Dayton specialized in Russian/Soviet studies at the US Army Russian Institute (USARI) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He was also one the co-authors of a book about the future of NATO: “The Future of NATO: Facing an Unreliable Enemy in an Uncertain Environment”, published in 1991.

During his almost 40 years of service in the US Army, General Keith Dayton was the Director for Human Intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington D.C., and the Director of the Iraqi Survey Group for Operation Iraqi Freedom, which resulted in the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime. He also headed the Strategic Plans and Policy Division at the Department of the Army (within the Department of Defense).

Keith Dayton served as the US Defense Attaché in Russia.

In December 2010, he retired.

At present, he is the Director of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies (a bi-national United States Department of Defense and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Defense institute). In November 2018, the US Secretary of Defense at the time, James N. Mattis, appointed Keith Dayton to serve as the Senior US Defense Advisor to Ukraine.

Hence, the White House chose Keith Dayton as a potential candidate for a reason as the United States continues with its approach to appoint to the post-Soviet space US Ambassadors who have substantial experience in the military-strategic sphere, and who are capable of ensuring that desirable for Washington leadership comes to power in this region.

It appears that, at present, Ukraine is of particular interest to the United States, which explains why retired Lieutenant General was chosen as a potential US Ambassador to this nation. After all, Washington hopes that this former member of the US armed forces will be able to bring military-style order to Ukraine with his “skillful hands”. In fact, in the short-term, the United States plans to establish advanced military facilities in Ukraine, including training centers; install digital security surveillance systems in this nation; promote the work of 15 US partner biolabs there, and return Crimea to Ukraine in order to convert this peninsula into a future US military base. Preparations are almost complete to begin work on an important military transportation hub, which will be used to transfer technology, equipment and specialists to Ukraine, in an airfield in the city of Uzyn (in Kiev Oblast). A gated residential community is being built on the outskirts of the capital. However, considering the overall fall of the housing market in Kyiv, such a project seems less than timely. Yet, the construction of the residential complex should not come as a surprise. After all, US military personnel are accustomed to living in comfortable and safe areas devoid of locals. And they are planning on living in Ukraine for a long time since “promoting” democracy is not a fast process. For instance, in Vietnam it lasted dozens of years, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, the process is still ongoing.

However, the purported interference by the United States in Ukraine’s domestic politics, starting with Maidan, is viewed increasingly negatively among some of the inhabitants of this nation. Incomprehension about why two ‘Island’ class ships, which the United States offered to give Ukraine free of charge, have not been delivered as yet, and about why the country needs to purchase fairly expensive coal is growing among some Ukrainians. It appears the nation is being put at a disadvantage. The USA actively encouraged the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kiev Patriarchate to gain independence, which led to a schism within the church. Still, the patriarchate has been unable to gain prominence in Ukrainian society. In addition, an anti-Russian stance, actively promoted by Washington in Ukraine, cannot but have a negative effect on Kyiv’s much-needed economic ties with Russia. Hence, at times, Ukraine does not appear to be the United States’ ally, instead, it is a tool to be used in USA’s geopolitical interests.

Nevertheless, Washington hopes to put an end to all of these problems in the near future by appointing retired Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, with his substantial experience in the sphere of military strategy, as US Ambassador to Ukraine.

And only time and the population of Ukraine, which has not lost its resolve despite attempts to enslave it in the past centuries, will tell whether these plans will actually come to fruition.

Vladimir Platov, Middle East expert, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

On 17 July 2014 a Malaysian Airlines flight was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over Ukrainian territory with the loss of all passengers and crew. The majority of the passengers were Dutch citizens, although there were significant other nationals represented, including in particular Australian citizens and residents.

The Ukrainian territory over which the tragedy occurred was the centre of fighting between its largely Russian speaking inhabitants and Kiev government forces, acting on the instructions of the Kiev government that had earlier that year seized power in an American financed coup.

An international group of countries set up an investigation into the crash. An early indicator that the investigation was likely to be less than objective came from its membership: the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium and Ukraine. As the countries suffering the largest casualties, the presence of The Netherlands and Australia was understandable.

There was no obvious reason for including Belgium, although that countries position as NATO headquarters provides at least one clue. Why Ukraine was included was also a puzzle. On the then known facts, or at least what was thought to be the facts, Ukraine was at the very least a prime suspect in the shooting down. The exclusion of Malaysia, the plane’s owner and operator, who also lost citizens, was at the time inexplicable. The reasons only became known much later. Malaysia refused to be a party to an extraordinary agreement between the other four nations that gave an effective veto to the Ukrainians against any adverse findings.

Contrary to basic principles of investigation, the quartet of countries immediately blamed Russia, alleging that a Russian missile has been fired at the plane, causing its destruction and the death of all on board. Not then and never since has any remotely plausible argument been advanced as to what possible motive Russia could have for shooting down the civilian airliner of a friendly country.

In the now more thanfive- and one-half years since the tragedy, the original blame game has not ceased. A new report has recently been released however, that has shed considerable light on what really happened. This report follows earlier revelations from the Malaysians that they had sent a team to the Ukraine to recover the plane’s black boxes, managing to do so with the assistance of local rebels fighting the Ukrainian government forces.

Had the Malaysians not been successful, establishing the truth of what happened would have been much more difficult. Thanks also to the efforts of an independent Dutch group, a great deal more information has become available, none of which casts the original quartet of countries in a favourable light.

The conduct of the inquiry, the evidence that was established and then suppressed by the original investigators, the allegations repeated without question in the western media, and the manifestly false allegations have now been revealed in a major study by an independent Dutch group led by the investigative journalist Max van der Werff. Their results can be read on the website.

That this report, with its devastating revelations, has not been reported in the western mainstream media confirms that rather than being an inquiry into the truth about a tragedy, the investigation always had as a primary objective, to blame Russia.

It will be recalled that the allegations against Russia hinge on the alleged presence of a Russian missile system in the crash location on the relevant date. This allegation was actively promoted by the notorious mouthpiece of the United Kingdom security services who publishes under the nom de plume Bellingcat.

Bellingcat was a major promoter of the version of events that a Russian missile crew had crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine, and then fired its missile with the devastating consequences of destroying the aircraft and killing all its passengers and crew, and then returning across the border back into Russia.

Bellingcat published some photographs of the Russian missile system, and the western mainstream media duly reported the allegations that the photographs were of the offending missile system, without the least bit of fact checking, either with local citizens who would have witnessed the alleged movements of such a conspicuous weapon system, or any verifiable military records. It is now known that local eye witnesses were interviewed by the Dutch investigators.

Those eye witnesses referred to seeing Ukrainian fighter jets operating in the sky at the relevant time.  This directly contradicted the Ukrainian government claim that none of their fighter jets were operational on that day. Such an obvious and easily disproven lie raises questions about what else the Ukrainians may be lying about.

As might be expected, the Dutch Military Intelligence Service carried out its investigation into the circumstances surrounding the crash. Their investigation produced a report that has been leaked to the van der Werff investigation team. That data shows quite clearly that at the material time the flight path of MH 17 was outside the operational range of both Ukrainian and Russian missile systems.

The report of the Dutch military investigation team (MIVD) quoted by van der Werff confirms that there were no Russian BUK missiles or radar systems in Ukraine on or about 17 July 2014.  The Dutch report further confirmed that no BUK missiles were detected as having been fired on that day.  Nor had anything been fired from the Russian side of the border.

This information was consistent with data obtained by two Australian investigators, Shaun Ellis and Timothy Johns, conducting an inquiry under the code name “Operation Arkanella”. None of these findings, which clearly contradict the allegations of Russian responsibility, have ever been published in the western mainstream media.  It raises the obvious question of why the lie of Russian complicity in the tragedy has been raised and maintained ever since, when it is clearly contradicted by the evidence the Dutch-Australian investigations discovered.

The known Russian missile systems were in proximity to substantial population centres. There were no reports in any format of any missiles being fired on the relevant day. This conclusion is clearly reported in the official report of the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service. Their report clearly states: “it becomes apparent that flight MH 17 was flying beyond the range of all identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37m1Buk M1 Systems were deployed.” Again, it raises the obvious question: how is this information reconciled with the propaganda attack on Russia, then and ever since?

This report was published on 21 September 2016, i.e. more than three years ago. Not a word of it has been published by the western media who persist in their “blame Russia” version despite having no verifiable evidence let alone motive, to sustain such an allegation.

If we are able to exclude a missile as the cause of MH 17’s demise, that inevitably leaves only either an accident (which may be emphatically excluded) or intervention by fighter aircraft. Even the Ukrainians and their Western allies have never alleged that a Russian fighter jet was involved.

Rather, the Ukrainian government has always maintained that none of its military aircraft were flying at the time. This claim has long been disputed by civilians living in the area who have given repeated accounts of the activity of Ukrainian fighter jets in the area at the relevant time.

The area where the shooting down of MH17 occurred was an active war zone. It is known that both United States and Russian satellites were in stationary orbit over the region at the relevant time.  It raises the obvious question as to why these data have not been released.  One can understand the US reluctance as the data would disclose the complicity of their ally Ukraine in the tragedy. It is less clear why the Russian authorities have not released their data. The evidence after all is in their favour.

What the satellite data would show is exactly what was established by the Dutch and Australian investigators at the time.  That is, MH17 was shot down by Ukrainian fighter jets.

Van der Werff’s report includes the transcript of an interview with one such keywitness,a Brigadier of the Dutch Police. That witness gave detailed evidence as to the activities of Ukrainian fighter jets in the area at the relevant time on the day of the tragedy. Again, this clearly refutes the Ukrainian claims.

When one adds together the known facts revealed in the Dutch documents as well as other sources, certain irresistible inferences can be drawn. The most obvious is that MH 17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet. That single fact, from which so much else followed, has never been reported in the mainstream media despite it being the irresistible inference drawn by Dutch investigators more than three years ago.

That the suppression of the truth has been a major factor in the anti-Russian campaign waged by the Netherlands, Australia and Ukraine is obvious. That the lies, obfuscations and misinformation should be perpetrated by the mainstream media is a sad commentary on the deplorable state of affairs that media has now sunk to.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Normandy Four talks, held in Paris,on December 11, between Russia, Germany, France and the Kiev regime of Ukraine produced not much except more of the same: vague commitments to seek peace, agreements on prisoner exchange and gas supplies, but little else.

 Russia remains committed to the Minsk Agreements of 2015 and the road to a peaceful resolution of the conflict set out in those agreements  but faces weak support from Germany and France; which as parts of NATO have a deep interest in keeping the conflict boiling, to harass Russia and give NATO  pretext for moving troops there. There is even weaker support from the new Kiev leader, Zelensky, whose commitment to peace is doubtful in the first place and who, in the second place, faces difficulties in the face of strong opposition in Kiev and from the US whose officials met with him the day before; no doubt warning him not to agree to anything substantive the US does not like.

Instead of explaining at the meeting why Kiev has not fulfilled its commitments under the Minsk Agreements, he insisted that nothing could be resolved until security in the Donbass had been achieved. But, since it is the Kiev regime that has besieged the Donbass republics since 2014, shelled its towns and villages and assassinated its leaders, his words ring very hollow. The former comic claimed he would bring a fresh approach to Ukraine if elected but all he has brought is more of the same duplicity and ill intentions as his predecessor, Poroshenko.

President Putin, in response, warned of the dangers to the people of the Donbass republics that exist from the the fascists in the Kiev government and in the armed militias that are tolerated by it, existing outside the regular army structure.

Putin warned that if Kiev seized control of the Donbass region, massacres of the population by fascist proxy forces of Kiev and NATO were a potential scenario that Russia could not allow to happen. He used an unfortunate reference to the NATO propaganda claims of a massacre at Srebrenica to emphasise his statement, seemingly unaware that no credible evidence of a massacre by Republic of Srpska forces has ever been presented by NATO either in the media or at the Hague Tribunal, unaware that Dutch marines, who had been there, stated that to me that it never happened, and unaware of the video of the meeting between General Mladic and NATO officers at the Fontana Hotel to resolve the stand-off at Srebrenica which proves no such massacre took place.

But Putin was correct to warn the world of the real potential for massacres to be committed against the people in the Donbass.  Indeed, we have seen the massacre that took place in the Maidan events in 2014 when right wing, NATO connected, snipers shot people down in order to put the blame on the government forces, as part of a NATO backed coup, and the subsequent massacre of people resisting the coup by right wing elements at Odessa. The Kiev regime is very capable of committing such atrocities and NATO covering them up.

Evidence of this potentially surfaced in November when the Danilov Letter, not mentioned in the western media, was leaked to Ukrainian social media. On 12 November, a Telegram channel called “Joker DNR” sent a PDF document containing a photocopy of a letter allegedly written by the Secretary of the National Security Council of Ukraine, Aleksey Danilov proposing a plan to deport the Donbass inhabitants once Ukraine has recovered control of the border with Russian federation.

The letter states,

“After the transfer of State border control to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Border Service, it is necessary to immediately begin the process of reintegration and re-Ukrainianization of the population of the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and their reconciliation with the other citizens of Ukraine.

Given that the population of the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts has been influenced by Russian propaganda and deprived of access to the Ukrainian media in recent years, the political position of the overwhelming majority of residents of the occupied territories is not pro-Ukrainian.

In this respect, it is necessary to give residents of the occupied territories the possibility to leave the territory of Ukraine and travel to the Russian Federation to establish their permanent residence there within one month.

The following measures should be taken with regard to residents of the occupied territories, who will not want to take the opportunity to leave Ukraine after this period, in particular to determine their degree of complicity in the activities of illegal armed groups and occupation administrations.

It is also necessary to establish a list of persons who worked in companies registered with the occupation administration and who paid “taxes” to the budget of the occupation administration and those who were under the control of the occupation authorities, industrial companies, public organizations and other institutions.

Depending on the degree of complicity, apply criminal, administrative or educational measures to them. In order to rehabilitate the inhabitants of the occupied territories, resettle them in the central or western regions of Ukraine.

At the same time, temporarily displaced persons who, in 2014-2015, left the occupied territories and settled in the regions of Ukraine, without wishing to submit to the occupation authorities, should be granted all the necessary conditions to return to the places of their former residence.

It is these people, patriots of Ukraine, who can and will continue to restore the Donbass. They should receive all the necessary material and moral support.”

So those several million people not willing to leave their homes within one month would be forcibly transferred to the west or forced into Russia and those forcibly moved to the west would face criminal charges.

Forced deportation or transfer of a civilian population constitutes a crime against humanity under international law and under Article 7 of the Rome Statute will result in criminal liability. But the International Criminal Court has not added the Danilov Letter to its list of concerns.

For some weeks there was no response from the Kiev regime to the leak until finally Danilov posted a statement on the government website claiming it was a fake. Yet it has all the marks of authenticity and, what makes it more likely to be authentic than a fake is the claim made by a US connected website, Stopfake, in tandem with Danilov’s claim, that it was Russian propaganda.  But the plausibility of that being the case disappears when it is known who Stopfake are.

The chief editor of Stopfake is Yevhen Fedchenko, director of the pro-US Mohyla School of Journalism in Kiev which served in 2014 as a headquarters of the fascists that fomented the coup.

His interests include propaganda, weaponisation of information,and coverage of international politics in media. Tellingly, he has contributed to RFE/RL, the BBC, NPR, Public Radio International, Radio Canada International, the CBC, Mashable, andSKY News. In 2006-7 he was co-director of the Ohio University/Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Linkage Program, supported and financed by the US State Department, and in 2010-2011, Yevhen Fedchenko was Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Southern California, Annenberg campus in Los Angeles.

Stopfake states that their main objective is to check facts, verify information and refute incorrect reports and perceived propaganda about events in Crimea covered in the media.

“The reason we are doing this is very simple — aggression against Ukraine is unfolding, and it’s not only military aggression but very powerful information warfare. And Ukraine was losing it,” said Yevehn Fedchenko, director of Mohyla School of Journalism in Kiev to the website Mashable. It is noteworthy that Fedchenko is also listed as a speaker at the Aspen Institute of Kiev and that in turn leads us to its headquarters in Washington.

The Aspen Institute claims to be a forum for the discussion of ideas but in fact it is part of the network of disinformation organsiations set up by the USA over the years. When we check its Board of Trustees we find the likes of Chrystia Freeland, former Canadian Foreign Minister and now deputy Prime Minister, whose connections to the Nazis of the Kiev regime are well known, war criminals Madeleine Albright, Javiar Solana, and Condoleezza Rice,and US ally, Queen Noor of Jordan.

The Current Chairman is James S. Crown, chairman and chief executive officer of Henry Crown and Company, a privately owned company which invests in public and private securities, real estate, and operating companies. He serves as lead director of General Dynamics Corporation and is a director of JPMorgan Chase. Crown is a former member of the US President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, appointed by President Barack Obama.

The Aspen Institute hosts interviews on its website of Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO talking about Russia as a threat, and US government officials such as Susan Rice and others. Its main focus clearly is to create propaganda against Russia and China and support of Stopfake is part of that objective.  People can draw their own conclusions but to me it is clear that Stopfake acted in concert with Danilov and the Kiev regime to try to bury the letter and their considered plans for the Donbass if they seize back control of the region.

However, despite this letter and his recognition of the risks, Putin, ever optimistic stated,“There are different interpretations of the Minsk Agreements but there is no alternative to this package of measures.

“Any agreement is flexible to a certain extent, and some things written in texts may be interpreted differently by the sides,”However, I agree that there is no alternative to the Minsk Agreements, and everything should be done to implement them in full.”

He stated he sense there was a “thaw” in relations between Kiev and Russia, as shown with some recent prisoner transfers, and we have to hope he is right and that the situation develops in a positive direction but, as he himself warned, there can be no ultimate solution outside the Minsk Agreements and that includes taking into account the security of the people of the Donbass, their continued future and their close relationship with Russia.

The only way forward is to resolve the conflict at the political level on the basis of the recognition of the right to self-rule and autonomy for the Donbass republics, the creation of a federal state to assure ethnic stability, and the commitment by Ukraine that it will be a neutral state and not part of any plan to “contain” Russia, a plan that can only lead to world war. But the NATO puppets in charge of Ukraine do not act in the interests of Ukraine, but in the interests of NATO, and, until that changes, peace for the Donbass remains a distant hope.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

BC stands for NEO’s Banned Classic. This article was originally published by our journal on 04.09.18. For some reason, this article is missing from Google search results. Since this article remains pretty relevant to those geopolitical events that are taking place on the geopolitical stage today, we deem it possible to present it to our readers once again. Should it go missing again, you may be confident that you will see it republished by NEO once more, should it still remain relevant by that time.

The cruel assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the Donetsk Republic, in Donetsk on August 31 by elements of the Kiev regime’s forces backed by NATO, and the wounding of many others in the bomb blast that took his life, confirms what I wrote three years ago, that the Minsk 2 agreement signed in February 2015 to try to establish peace in Ukraine was a rotting corpse. Russia, ever more hopeful than I that reason and the desire for peace would prevail stuck to it nevertheless and consistently called for adherence to its terms despite facing obstruction at every turn. The murder of the leader of the Donetsk Republic confirms that not only has the corpse been rotting on the battle fields of the Donbass all this time, it is now picked apart by the carrion birds of prey that want war with the Donbass and with Russia and only its skeleton remains. It’s time to bury it.

Some NATO members such as Germany paid lip service to the Minsk agreement and insisted it be complied with but always complaining that it was Russia that was not pushing the Donbass Republics to bend to NATO’s will. But in fact the Donbass Republics tried as they could to comply with the terms under very difficult circumstances and constants provocations, attacks and assassinations of its leadership.

Poroshenko and his fascist allies instead refused to change the constitution as stipulated to accommodate the concerns of the Donbas republics, have tried to suppress the Communist Party and other parties in opposition, have refused to withdraw heavy weaponry from the line of contact, have maintained increasingly heavy artillery attacks on the civilian populations and areas and cut off routes for essential foodstuffs, medical aid and technical equipment. Rather than enjoying a ceasefire, the peoples of the Donbas are under a constant state of siege.

Poroshenko, the NATO puppet leader of the Kiev government in Ukraine openly calls for a military solution to the crisis and has increased the draft in and recently reorganized the Ukraine armed forces command structures to make them more effective in a coming offensive. The US and Canada and other NATO countries have been pouring in arms and ammunition and “advisers” and “mercenaries” in support of the fascist forces, putting additional pressure on Russia with multiple military exercises from the Baltic to Bulgaria, where more tanks have been recently dispatched to “send Russia a message.”

The reality of the situation was stated on the 18th of August 2015, when President Putin stated, “It was the Donbas militias that suggested withdrawing all military equipment with calibre under 100mm. Unfortunately, the opposite side didn’t do that. On the contrary, according to the available data, it is concentrating its units there, including those reinforced with military hardware. As for the Minsk-2 agreement, I believe there is no alternative for resolving the situation and that peace will prevail in the long run… Our task is to minimize the losses with which we will come to this peace.”

There can be no doubt that the Minsk-2 agreements do provide the framework for a peaceful settlement of the impasse but there is also no doubt that the Kiev and NATO forces have no intention of abiding by its terms and are preparing for another offensive.

Putin also stated, “I hope that it will not come to direct large scale clashes.” Yet, the people of the Donbas would be surprised to be told that the thousands of shells raining down on them from the Kiev junta’s artillery in order to provoke those clashes do not count as large scale attacks.

Bu what is the purpose of this state of siege? Since the Donbas forces have proved their strength and resilience the Kiev regime has little hope of achieving the total destruction of those forces and imposing its will on the Donbas. Kiev and NATO also know that Russia does not want to be drawn into a direct clash with NATO that could lead to a general war. In consequence the Kiev-NATO axis have decided to engage in operations that have direct political repercussions designed to disrupt the Russian-Donbas alliance or to paralyze it and try to enlist new allies and it is noted that the western media immediately blamed Russia for the assassination to try to stir up trouble. At the same time they have decided to make the war more costly for the Donbas and Russia both in military and economic terms, and to try to bring about a gradual exhaustion of their physical and moral resistance.

We see this strategy being played out with the constant increase of economic warfare against Russia, which is clearly the ultimate target, the increasing use of propaganda including the planting in the media of the most absurd stories about Russia and its government, the use of the OSCE observes as intelligence agents for NATO as happened in the Yugoslav war, and, in the political sphere, attempts by the United States and Britain to humiliate Russia; from the Olympics to the downing of flight MH17, the Skripal affair, and the fantasies about Russian influence on western “democracies.”

Clausewitz said that “war is a pulsation of violence, variable in strength and therefore, variable in the speed with which it explodes and discharges it energy’ and that, “If we keep in mind that war springs from some political purpose, it is natural that the prime cause of its existence will remain the supreme consideration in conducting it.”

Indeed we see in Ukraine the expression of the Anglo-American-German political purpose: the desire to force Russia to submit to their will. They failed in World War I. The attempt failed again in World War II. The so–called Cold War succeeded in bankrupting the socialist state but the capitalist state that rose from that sad decline is gathering its strength once again and refuses to submit to any one’s diktats. And so the NATO coup in Kiev, in order to take Ukraine away from Russian influence as the Nazis tried to do in World War II.

But the Kiev-NATO cabal cannot break the will of the peoples of the Donbas nor of Russia and so the constant attacks, the constant propaganda, the constant turning of the economic screws.

These actions are all illegal under international law and the laws of war. They are violations of the principles and articles of the UN Charter. They are violations of several Geneva Conventions and other international treaties. The attacks on civilians are war crimes. The use of prohibited weaponry, in these attacks, is a war crime. The collective punishment of entire populations is a war crime. The use of economic warfare is a war crime. Yet nothing is done by any western government to stop it nor does the International Criminal Court lay any charges where it can. Instead it stands by and condones these crimes by its inaction.

Article 6 of the Rome Statute that created the ICC states the actions of the NATO-Kiev axis constitute acts of genocide.

It states,

“For the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;”

Article 7 states that, “crimes against humanity includes persecution of an identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic…grounds.”

Article 7-2(b) states that, “the crime of extermination includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia, the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.”

Article 8 defining war crimes, states that,

“it includes willful killing, willfully causing great suffering, extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity, and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population not taking part in hostilities, intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, attacking or bombarding by whatever means towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives, declaring that no quarter will be given, using weapons designed to inflict unnecessary suffering or are indiscriminate, and intentionally using starvation as a method of warfare.”

The list goes on and is a compendium of the crimes being committed by the Kiev-NATO axis powers in Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Minister reacted to this act of NATO supported international terrorism, for one of the aims of the assassination is to terrorise the peoples of the Donbass, by stating,

“It is a blatant provocation aimed at undermining the implementation of the Minsk Agreement in eastern Ukraine. Given the current situation, it’s impossible to talk about the nearest meetings in the Normandy format like many of our European partners would have wanted. It is a serious situation that must be analyzed. We are doing it right now.”

But it is not just a “provocation” for in concert with the assassination the Kiev regime has begun troop movements near Donbass lines. It also seems to be a prelude to further military action.

“After the terrorist act, we’ve registered the movements of troops along the Line of Contact,” said Eduard Basurin, a representative of the DPR Operations Command. “The Ukrainian forces were put on alert for combat training.

“We think this is the eventual goal in terms of destabilizing the situation in the areas near the Line of Contact – something the Ukrainian and US secret services have hoped to gain. We don’t rule out an offensive at one of the sections of the line. They also hope to push the situation in the entire republic off the balance.”

“This act of terror is aimed at destabilizing the situation in the republic and was carried out by Ukraine’s special services under the control of US special services. All military units have been put on the highest possible level of alert.”

When the Minsk Agreements were signed in 2015 it was doubtful that the Kiev-NATO axis had any intention of using it except as a means of pausing their operations in order to reorganise and prepare for the next offensive and so it seems to be.

The only way forward is to resolve the conflict at the political level on the basis of the recognition of the right to self-rule and autonomy for the Donbas republics, the creation of a federal state to assure ethnic stability, and the commitment by Ukraine that it will be a neutral state and not part of any plan to “contain” Russia, a plan that can only lead to world war. But the NATO puppets in charge of Ukraine do not act in the interests of Ukraine. They act in the interests of the masters of war who have no concern for humanity in general or Ukrainians in particular and if they continue their operations they will not succeed in uniting Ukraine but only in laying it waste. The assassination of Alexander Zakharchenko, a crime that should be condemned by the world, is a message from NATO to Russia, that instead of living in peace, as quietly flows the Don, to use the title of Sholokhov’s novel, the people of the Donbass can expect only more war, for a hero is dead, and bloody flows the Don.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

As the wreckage of Malaysian flight MH-17 laid scattered in eastern Ukraine, and many days before the first investigators even arrived on scene, the US had already blamed Russia and separatists it accused of aiding for the tragic downing of the passenger plane and the loss of all 298 people on board.

It would be a July 31, 2014 article by the BBC titled, “Ukraine MH17: Forensic scientists reach jet crash site,” nearly 2 weeks after the aircraft’s downing that would announce the arrival of forensic scientists at the crash site.

Yet as early as July 21, more than a week before investigators arrived, Newsweek in its article, “U.S. Report Outlines Evidence That Rebels Downed Flight MH17,” was already claiming:

The U.S. State Department has outlined the evidence behind its assertion that Russia-backed separatists are responsible for the missile strike that downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17. In a statement posted on the website of the U.S. embassy to Ukraine, it said the flight was “likely downed by a SA-11 surface-to-air missile from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.”

The assertations made within the report were a summary of accusations the US leveled against Russia even earlier still.

An Australia’s ABC would report a day before the investigators’ arrival in eastern Ukraine that the US and EU had already leveled additional sanctions against Russia, spurred on by US accusations regarding MH-17.

The article, “MH17: US and EU to impose broad sanctions on Russia over support for Ukraine rebels; fighting keeps investigators from Malaysia Airlines crash site,” would note:

The measures mark the start of a new phase in the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War, which worsened dramatically after the downing of MH17 over rebel-held territory on July 17. 

German chancellor Angela Merkel, who had been reluctant to step up sanctions before the crash because of her country’s trade links with Russia, said the EU measures were “unavoidable”.

Washington’s accusations and its rush to leverage their impact on public and political circles at the time to pass further sanctions against Russia fits a pattern not of an impartial investigation or search for truth, but a cynical propaganda campaign carried out at the expense of both.

A Familiar Lack of Evidence…

The subsequent Joint Investigation Team (JIT) assembled to supposedly ascertain the truth behind the airliner’s downing included among its member states, Ukraine. As others have pointed out, Ukraine was and still is a prime suspect.

Ukraine’s decision not to close airspace over contested areas where military aircraft were already being shot down alone makes Kiev at least partially culpable for the loss of MH-17.

Expectations of honesty and cooperation from Kiev (berated by even its Western sponsors as being corrupt, abusive and inept) are unrealistic and their inclusion within the JIT undermines its credibility and any conclusion they reach, especially if that conclusion lacks substantial evidence to support it.

The fact that no convincing evidence has been produced by either the JIT or the nations using it as a vehicle to target Russia years after the incident and that the JIT itself cited “social media” as an “important part of the investigation,” further illustrates the political motivations of the team.

Mentioning the use of “social media” as evidence points toward NATO-backed propaganda platforms like “Bellingcat” which, again, represent “investigators” and “experts” on the payroll of and working with potential suspects in the downing of MH-17 itself.

If it would be unreasonable to place Russia at the center of such an investigation, it is likewise unreasonable to place those who benefit most from Russia being found “guilty” at the center of it as well.

…And a Familiar Lack of Motivation 

Russia and any separatists it was backing in eastern Ukraine at the time had nothing to gain by shooting down a civilian airliner. At best, if separatists did launch the missile that allegedly brought down MH-17, it would have been an accident with Ukrainian military aircraft undoubtedly their intended target.

Conversely, the US and its allies had everything to gain by either allowing a civilian airliner to stray over territory knowingly putting it at risk, or shooting it down themselves as part of a false flag operation.

It is already admitted fact, even across the Western media that Ukraine failed to close airspace over eastern Ukraine.  This is despite Ukraine losing several military aircraft to separatist air defenses in the weeks leading up to MH-17’s downing.

The BBC just days before the MH-17 downing would report in their July 14, 2014 article, “Ukraine military plane shot down as fighting rages,” that:

A Ukrainian military transport aircraft has been shot down in the east, amid fighting with pro-Russian separatist rebels, Ukrainian officials say. 

Despite this incident and others like it leading up to the loss of MH-17, Kiev has claimed it did not believe civilian airliners would be at risk.

A Reuters article titled, “Ukraine defends not closing airspace where MH17 shot down,” would claim:

Ukraine on Tuesday defended its decision not to close airspace in the east of the country where a Malaysian passenger plane was shot down, saying it was unaware that anti-aircraft weapons were being used in the area and that planes could be under threat.

How the JIT is moving forward with a “trial” implicating Russia while Kiev’s overt negligence remains not only unpunished, but now unmentioned, further illustrates the politically motivated nature of the JIT and the nations involved.

A day after the MH17 plane crash inquiry team announced murder charges against four men, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has condemned the decision as “ridiculous”.

The article also noted: