Russia ‘fires at Ukraine ships and captures three vessels’ amid rising tensions off Crimea

A Russian cargo ship earlier blocked Ukraine’s boats from entering the Sea of Azov

 

The Ukrainian president calls for emergency session of his war cabinet after at least two sailors are injured in the strikes.

Ukraine says Russia has opened fire on its ships in the Black Sea and captured three vessels.

Two sailors have been wounded after two artillery boats were hit in the strikes, the Ukrainian navy said.

Ukraine: Is Russia Planning A New Invasion?

Pictured: A Russian-backed rebel observing Ukrainian army positions near Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine, May 17, 2015. (Image source: Mstyslav Chernov/Wikimedia Commons)

 

• Russia’s aggression into Ukraine came in direct violation of its obligations under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
• “After four years of war, Russia has at least 260,000 troops deployed along the Ukrainian border,” ready to advance. — Oleksandr Turchynov, Chairman of Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council, April 13, 2018.
• The First Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Security Service, Viktor Kononenko, recently reported that Russia might be planning another attempt to destabilize Ukraine in the fall “under the pretext of protecting the Russian-speaking population”.

This April marks the fourth year of the ongoing war in Ukraine between the Ukrainian military and Russian backed separatists in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine, also known as the Donbas region. Prior to the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.

The Deep State Closes In On The Donald: Mueller’s War, Part 2

Part 1 can be found here:

The Deep State Closes In On The Donald, Part 1

 

 

What is going on in the eastern Mediterranean and over the skies and on the ground in Syria is absolutely nuts; it’s also scary dangerous and utterly unnecessary, too.

After all, the imminent Russian/American military clash is over the skeleton of an artificial backwater nation confected in 1916 by two swells in the British and French foreign offices. At length, what was never a nation anyway has finally been reduced to rubble, misery and sectarian fragments.

So there is nothing to contest now, and, in fact, there never was. The sovereign government of Syria long ago invited the Russians in and Washington out. Period.

Ukraine Gets Official NATO Status: Weighing Up the Pros and Cons

 

NATO has granted Ukraine the status of an aspirant country. Macedonia, Georgia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina have similar status. This means Kiev has been offered a real chance to make its dreams come true. The next step will be obtaining its Membership Action Plan (MAP), a set of criteria to meet before the country is allowed to join. It is tailored to each applicant country’s individual profile. This type of plan can be granted at any time; there is no need to wait for summits or ministry-level meetings. Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are aspirants with a MAP.

Last summer, Ukraine’s parliament (Rada) adopted a resolution recognizing full membership in NATO as a foreign policy goal. In 2008, NATO agreed that Ukraine and Georgia should become members at a future date.

America’s Cyber Vulnerabilities

ISTOCK.COM/MONSITJ

 

Cyber is the newest branch of warfare. Even in its baby stages, it has the potential to cripple the United States.

On the afternoon of Dec. 23, 2015, Ukrainian engineers from a Prykarpattya Oblenergo power station stared at a computer screen while the cursor progressed on its own across the monitor. The mouse on the table had not moved. But the cursor hovered over the station’s breakers, each one controlling power to thousands of Ukrainian citizens. Then, with one mouse click at a time, the hackers now in control of the power station began shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.

At the same time, Kyivoblenergo employees watched as dozens of substations shut down, one by one. In their case, there was no phantom mouse. A computer on their network that they could not locate was being used by someone to shut down the power—and there was nothing they could do.

Russia’s Real Endgame

 

Russia’s Putin has never taken his eye off the ball. His ambition is not global hegemony or European conquest. Putin seeks what Russia has always sought: regional hegemony and a set of buffer states in eastern Europe and central Asia that can add to Russia’s strategic depth.

It is strategic depth — the capacity to suffer massive invasions and still survive due to an ability to retreat to a core position and stretch enemy supply lines — that enabled Russia to defeat both Napoleon and Hitler. Putin also wants the modicum of respect that would normally accompany that geostrategic goal.

Understanding Putin is not much more complicated than that.

A President’s Policy

BERLIN (Own report) – Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President-elect of the Federal Republic of Germany is the epitome of the past two decades of Berlin’s expansionist policy – from the war over Kosovo to intervention in the Syrian war. As State Secretary in the Federal Chancellery, Steinmeier was implicated in the aggression against Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999, with which Germany, in violation of international law, entered its first war of aggression since 1945. As head of the Federal Chancellery, he had participated in the struggle to obtain access to Russia’s vast natural gas reserves. As Foreign Minister, he was massively striving to roll back Russia’s political influence by associating Ukraine with the EU, even condoning a coup – with fascist participation – in Kiev. Steinmeier’s activities had also been influenced by the so-called war on terror. In the Chancellery, he played a leading role in cooperation with the CIA’s torture program. In the fall of 2002, he helped to prevent an innocent native of Bremen from being released to Germany from the US Guantanamo torture camp. He was complicit in the interrogation of German suspects in Syrian and Lebanese torture chambers. Just recently, Steinmeier provided political support to a jihadist militia, classified a terror organization by the German judiciary.

Russia threatens to shoot down missiles test-fired by Ukraine

Russia’s air defense network on the Ukrainian border was placed on its highest level of alert on Wednesday evening following Ukraine’s announcement that it will conduct missile tests on Thursday and Friday near Crimea, an area that Russia annexed in 2014. Kiev claimed that the missiles are to be launched towards the Black Sea, west of Crimea.

EU and Russia on the brink of WAR as Kremlin official blames Brussels for ‘VISA GENOCIDE’

Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014

 

TENSIONS between the EU and Putin are at breaking point as a Kremlin official labelled the Brussels ban on issuing visas to Russians living in the Crimea as “visa genocide”.

Putin’s deputy foreign minister has slammed Eurocrats for making ordinary Russians hostages to a Western political agenda and claimed the move is a violation of human rights.

Aleksey Meshkov said: “Today, I raised the question about the visa genocide of Crimean residents, and I raised it in a very harsh way.

Russian Military Expert: ‘Russia Is Creating Three Strong Army Groups On The Border With Ukraine… Capable… Of Launching A Quick Strike In The Direction Of Kiev’

Russia- Ukraine border with potential directions of Russian attacks (source: Royal United Services Institute)

 

On July 15, the Russian daily Vedomosti published an article by a Russian military expert, Ruslan Pukhov, about Russian military planning objectives.[1] In his article, Pukhov explains that the concern exhibited by NATO members about the Baltic States’ security is misplaced, as Russia did not take any significant measure to bolster its military presence in the Kaliningrad region bordering on the Baltics. On the contrary, Russian forces were radically reduced in the area. 

Pukhov stressed that Russia avoids being drawn into a direct military rivalry with the West, but concentrates its forces around its main and fundamental security issue: Ukraine. Pukhov wrote that Russia is creating three strong army groups on its border with Ukraine, which are capable, if necessary, of launching a quick strike in the direction of Kiev. Therefore, Pukhov explained, current Russian military planning is divorced from any ‘threat from NATO’ or ‘threat to NATO’, but is geared towards creating a powerful force on the Ukrainian border, “which will allow the Kremlin to expand the range of possible [military] force options to the Ukrainian situation.”

Russia Begins Massive War Games Involving Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet

 

The exercise codenamed as Caucasus 2016 follows a period of heightened tensions between Russia and Ukraine after the Kremlin accused Kiev of plotting terror attacks against Russians in Crimea.

On Monday, the Russian forces began a massive military exercise to test troops’ combat readiness and cooperation between different branches of the country’s armed forces. The exercise, involving over 12,500 servicemen including Navy, Airborne and Aerospace units was conducted in the south of Russia.

Russian Troops Prepare Snap Military Drills on Ukrainian Border

A couple of Russian Army helicopters fly over the Monument to Scuttled Ships, during a promotional campaign for contract service for Russian Army in Sevastopol, Crimea, Saturday, Dec. 20 / AP

 

Russian forces were placed on full combat alert Thursday as troops prepared to conduct snap military drills on the nation’s Western flank bordering Ukraine, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the exercises to examine the ability of southern troops “to deploy promptly self-sufficient forces to localize crisis situations,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The Defense Ministry will also test the preparedness of forces in the western and central regions to deliver support to the southeast. The drills will continue through Aug. 31.

Crimea braced for ALL-OUT WAR: Region may spiral out of control as independence day looms

SECURITY experts have warned Crimea could descend into a bloody war within a week amid rising tensions that could escalate during celebrations to mark Ukraine’s independence day on August 24.

Russia and Ukraine have been urged to reduce tensions in the region as fears grow that Moscow and the West could become embroiled in a proxy war over the small Black Sea peninsula, which was annexed in 2014.

Russia builds up forces in Crimea with int’l attention focused elsewhere

Russia’s FSB security service announced Wednesday that it had foiled a series of attacks by armed Ukranians in Crimea, and minutes later President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of choosing the path of terror instead of peace. On the same day, far from the eyes of the media, Russia sent large military forces, including dozens of armored vehicles, armored personnel carriers and tanks, to the peninsula that it took over in 2014.

Renowned Russian Intellectual Fyodor Lukyanov On Valdai Discussion Club Website: ‘The End Of The G8 Era: Russia Does Not Need Western Hierarchy’

On April 12, 2016, the website of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club published an article by Fyodor Lukyanov, academic director of the Valdai Discussion Club, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and editor-in-chief of the Russia in Global Affairs journal. In his article, titled “The End of the G8 Era: Russia Does Not Need Western Hierarchy,” Lukyanov argues that there is no reason to revive the G8 after Russia’s 2014 suspension from it following the Russian annexation of Crimea. Noting that “the G8 reflected a certain period of history when Russia really wanted to be integrated into the so-called Extended West,” he adds that since Russia’s suspension from the G8, it has become clear that Russia does not “fit into the Western community.”