Joaquin Flores
Fort Russ
Fort Russ publishes a complete summary of the military situation in the Donetsk People's Republic over the past day as a result of today's briefing by the deputy commander of operations, Eduard Basurin.
The situation on the battle line remains tense.
Over the past day in the Donetsk area Ukrainian occupation forces shelled the districts of eight settlements. The enemy fired 60 mines from mortars of various caliber, and also fired from the arms of infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers and small arms.
Five settlements were attacked in the Gorlovsky area. During the shelling, mortars of 82 mm caliber, BMP armament, grenade launchers and small arms were used.
In the Mariupol area, the enemy fired at areas of five settlements, firing 80 minuntes from mortars of various calibres, and also used BMP armament.
As a result of shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, two housing constructions and an electrical substation in the city were damaged. Likewise in Dokuchaevsk, in addition, neat the city of Donetsk three houses were destroyed in the Kominternovo.
The Ukrainian punitive forces did not stop there and continued shelling the settlements of the Republic since morning. So, as a result of shelling in Dokuchaevsk, multiple fragment wounds were received by Valery Prokopenko, and as a result of the shelling of the village of Zaitsevo, citizen Moskalets Anatoly Nikolayevich was killed.
Also, during the restoration work on the DFS in the presence of representatives of the OSCE mission, the soldiers of the Armed Forces, despite the security guarantees provided, opened fire from small arms.
I would like to note that the Ukrainian leadership is doing its utmost to resume the active phase of the fighting in the Donbass, resulting in this week injured nine civilians and one died.
In just one day Ukrainian gangs violated the truce 36 times.
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This month marks the one year anniversary of the downing of Malaysian
Airlines flight MH17 - an incident that took place against a backdrop of
a brutal proxy war - pitting Kiev and its supporters in Washington DC,
the EU and NATO - against rebel forces in eastern Ukraine and Russia. As
with most 21st century conflicts, truth has been the first casualty of war here.
On July 17, 2014, flight MH17 traveling east from Amsterdam, Netherlands
to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - crashed near the village of Grabovo, and on
the outskirts of the town of Torez just outside of Donetsk in eastern
Ukraine, approximately 40 km from the Ukrainian-Russian border.
To call this situation volatile would almost be an understatement. A
pivotal event such as this could easily be used as a pretext for
escalating not only a New Cold War between the West and Russia, but also
a hot war. Only six months previously, the Ukraine found itself in the throes of a western-backed coup d'état
in Kiev which tore the country apart. This was quickly followed by a
snap referendum in Crimea, where voters opted for secession from the
Ukraine and into the relatively secure arms of the Russian Federation.
The west cried foul and so began a new grudge match. Arguably, tensions
between the west and Moscow have been at their highest since the apex of
the Cold War during the east-west Soviet era. Needless to say, with
MH17 the stakes could not be any higher, and regarding the west, it was
obvious who would be assigned the blame for this tragedy.
More than any other incident, this one was flushed out firstly
through public relations channels, and then secondly through official
government bodies. From the onset the West took its position by claiming
it had "proof" that 'Russian-backed rebels' were responsible for
shooting down the passenger airliner. Immediately after the incident
took place, the western government-media complex insisted that the
murder weapon was a Russian-made BUK Surface to Air Missile system.
Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Asia Times' roving correspondent Pepe Escobar just returned from a
reporting trip to the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), the pro-Russian
enclave in the Donetsk Oblast province of eastern Ukraine. The area's
been the scene of heavy fighting between pro-Russian rebels and the
Ukrainian military.
I've just been to the struggling Donetsk People's Republic. Now I'm back in the splendid arrogance and insolence of NATOstan.
Quite a few people - in Donbass, in Moscow, and now in Europe - have asked me what struck me most about this visit.
I could start by paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg in Howl - "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness".
But these were the Cold War mid-1950s. Now we're in early 21st century Cold War 2.0 .
Thus what I saw were the ghastly side effects of the worst minds
of my - and a subsequent - generation corroded by (war) madness.
I saw refugees on the Russian side of the border, mostly your average
middle-class European family whose kids, when they first came to the
shelter, would duck under tables when they heard a plane in the sky.
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Sputnik
The chief of Ukraine's General Military Staff Viktor Muzhenko acknowledged that Russian regular army units were not involved in combat action in the troubled Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
"Right now the Ukrainian army is not engaged in combat operations against Russian regular units," he underscored.
Muzhenko added, however, that he had information about Russian civilian
and military individuals fighting alongside independence supporters in
the country's east.
He also said the Ukrainian army had everything it needed to rout
what he described as illegal armed units in Donetsk and Luhansk
regions.
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Two days ago the UN’s website published Ban-Ki Moon’s condemnation of Israel’s attack on Gaza, during which almost 1,300 people have been killed, 6,000 wounded and 140,000 displaced and hosted by the UN.
A-list celebrities Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Pedro Almodovar denounced Israel’s attack on Gaza in an open letter, while earlier Israeli film-makers called for an end to Gaza Conflict. Brian Eno wrote a heart-wrenching letter about Gaza and The Loss of Civilization.
It’s not just the political and cultural elites that are expressing
their disgust at Israel’s actions. There is a widespread outrage amongst
the international public. Social media is overfilled with posts about
Gaza with even the most apolitical people expressing their shock and
horror. The protest is not confined to sofa activism – thousands of
people around the globe, from Sydney to Mexico, took part in a worldwide protest against Israeli attack on Gaza.
This outrage against Israel, reverberating throughout our planet, is
totally justified in the face of such a large number of Palestinian
casualties, including more than 240 children. A Guardian front page succinctly summarised the situation – “The world stands disgraced.”
So the question that I have is this: how can the world be
outraged about over 1000 civilian death toll in Gaza, but not about a
similar death toll in Donbass, an Eastern part of Ukraine where the
Ukrainian army has been fighting anti-Kiev government rebels?
The numbers of casualties in Gaza and East Ukraine are almost the
same. As many as 1,129 people have been killed and 3,442 injured in
Ukraine since the beginning of the anti-terrorist operation in mid-April
2014 until July 26, according to a UN report.
However, in this report the focus is on condemning the abductions and
tortures performed by local criminals, who re-branded themselves as
members of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and not on condemning
Ukrainian government, who are firing Grad rockets at residential areas, as reported by Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch has issued two reports on the use of Grad rockets
by the Ukrainian Army, calling for the end of indiscriminate rocket
attacks (Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians: Stop Use of Grads in Populated Areas), which, they cautiously state, ‘may amount to war crimes’. Why such caution in the face of such atrocities?
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