I agree with the main thrust of Alexander Mercouris’ analysis of the counterproductive nature of Kiev’s blockade of the Donbass.
The blockade severs lingering economic links with Ukraine while raising the impetus to accelerate integration with Russia, puts at risk the recent strong Ukrainian economic recovery, and as Mercouris emphasizes, and top off all the zradas, it doesn’t even attract the Western attention that it once did in the pre-Trump era
Three years after the violent coup on Ukraine’s Maidan left the delicate cultural and political balance in the former Soviet republic in tatters, the Kiev regime has little to show to justify itself to the world.
At least 10,000 people have died in the regime’s war against its own people in Donbass, the country’s GDP has declined by more than half, and promised anti-corruption crackdowns and visa-free travel with the EU have failed to materialize.
The latest fighting in and around the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdeevka is being represented as the product of a supposedly new Ukrainian ‘infiltration’ tactic whereby Ukrainian troops are said to insert surreptitiously into no-man’s land thereby gradually gaining territory and putting the eastern Ukrainian militia at a disadvantage.
The new President has cast aside Barack Obama’s Ukraine policy and essentially walked away from the 2014 coup that overthrew a democratically elected government.
This explains Kiev’s renewed offensive against the people of the Donbass. The EU, NATO, and Kiev appeared to be setting a trap for Trump – but he isn’t being fooled by it.
READ MORE: Trump administration fails to back Ukraine
Though the White House has not yet published on its website a readout of US President Trump’s telephone conversation on Saturday with Ukrainian President Poroshenko, it is clear that it did not contain the strong support for Ukraine Poroshenko must have been looking for.
The conversation took place against the backdrop of intense fighting between the Ukrainian military and the eastern Ukrainian militia around the town of Avdeevka in eastern Ukraine.
Though the fog of war sometimes lies heavy on fighting in eastern Ukraine, the latest clashes are something of an exception, with a reasonably clear picture of what happened trickling through (the Wikipedia entry on the battle follows the Ukrainian line, and is wrong and should be disregarded).
Exclusive: A Ukrainian military offensive into rebel-held eastern Ukraine is giving Washington’s war hawks an excuse to demand President Trump escalate tensions with Russia, negating his hopes for détente, writes Jonathan Marshall. By Jonathan Marshall Less than two weeks into…Read more →
Just a few days ago on RT’s Crosstalk programme Peter Lavelle, myself and the two other guests, Dmitry Babich and Ed Lozansky, discussed the Ukrainian regime’s likely reaction to the new Trump administration.
We all agreed that the likely response of the Ukrainian regime to the steps the Trump administration is taking to try to patch up US relations with Russia would be to escalate military tensions in the Donbass with a view in part to bolstering its political support in the West as this appeared to slide.
With much of America glued to Trump’s Twitter page and Obama’s increasingly nasty decrees against Russian diplomats, two of the President-elect’s must vocal opponents from within the Republican party made a move designed to weaken Trump’s international prestige, sow internal Republican discord and weaken improvements in US-Russian relations in the aftermath of the 20th of January.
As a fragile and partial cease-fire in Syria totters, the back story is the political warfare in Washington where powerful hawks seek to escalate both the war in Syria and the New Cold War with Russia, ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains. By Alastair Crooke…Read more →
