Have I mentioned before that Fourth Turnings never fizzle out or resolve themselves peacefully? I can’t wait for Obama’s next stern statement to Putin after he sends troops into the Ukraine to support his people. I think he is running out of red paint with all those lines he has painted in the last year.
Ukraine’s Slavyansk under siege as Kiev orders crackdown on protests
Casualties were reported on both sides as gunfire broke out in Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine, where anti-government protesters seized several buildings. The city is under siege as Kiev announced an “anti-terrorist operation” against the protesters.
Follow RT’s live updates on the turmoil in Ukraine
The shooting apparently erupted Sunday morning at a checkpoint, which was established by protesters Saturday evening on the outskirts of the city. Amid the skirmishes, Ukrainian helicopters were flying overhead. Local residents also said several transport helicopters landed at an old airfield some 5 kilometers from the town center. Troops wearing black uniforms disembarked and went toward Slavyansk.
In the skirmishes, one of the troops from Kiev was killed and five others were injured, coup-appointed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov reported on his Facebook page, which he regularly uses to report on his ministry’s activities. The officer killed was a member of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), he said, adding that among those injured is the commander of the SBU’s Anti-Terrorist Center. Avakov said that the protesters had also sustained casualties, but gave no further details. He accused them of using civilians as human shields.
Reporters in Slavyansk said that some locals were present at the protester-held buildings and barricades, but said they were volunteers supporting the pro-independence cause. The Donetsk region health authorities said one person has been killed on a road connecting Slavyansk with Artyomovsk, and another five injured by gunshots in the city of Slavyansk. It was not immediately clear whether these casualties were the ones referred to earlier Sunday by Avakov.
The protesters in Slavyansk said one person was killed and two others injured on their side. They also claimed that two of the Kievtroops were killed. A local man has told RT that the Right Sector members, as he assumes, were shooting at him and other people as they were heading to Slavyansk to deliver humanitarian aid. “We [two cars] were heading from Donetsk to Slavyansk to deliver humanitarian aid: food, medicine, warm clothes. On the way a pick-up truck was going on us.
They started shooting. One [of our cars] took to the left. Another car turned around to go back. Three people were injured. One seriously,” Sergey Karpachev has said. At least one of the protesters’ checkpoints was taken down and demolished by troops from Kiev. However, the defenders fell back and erected a new barricade at a bridge, RIA Novosti reports. The defenders of the city set on fire some of the barricades, which were made from tires.
Approaches to the city have been blocked by uniformed troops besieging the city, RIA Novosti reported. Local bus services from the city have been canceled due to the blockade, Itar-Tass reported. There are rumors that among the troops besieging Slavyansk are members of the radical ultranationalist Right Sector movement. On Saturday, Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh announced he was “mobilizing” his movement’s members “to take decisive steps to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Kiev’s troops are still not in control of the town center. The protesters at the Slavyansk police station, which was the first building they captured Saturday, are preparing to fend off a siege, LifeNews reports from the scene. The building has been reinforced with barricades over the past 24 hours. Similar defensive precautions are being taken at other buildings controlled by the protesters. “The people are rising up, fortifying the barricades,” Slavyansk resident Miroslav Rudenko told RT. “People do not recognize the government currently sitting in Kiev.”
Avakov on Sunday morning has announced an “anti-terrorist operation” in Slavyansk. As the confrontation was under way, the official said that civilians in the city should remain indoors and away from windows. Avakov already announced “zero-tolerance policy towards armed terrorists” in Slavyansk and the deployment of anti-terrorist troops in the city on Saturday morning.
However no action materialized, as security troops reportedly refused to follow an order to attack protesters. Russia has warned that if Kiev uses force against anti-Maidan protests in eastern Ukraine, this would undermine the effort to convene a four-party conference on resolving the crisis in the country, which would include the US, the EU, Russia and Ukraine.
One Killed, Many Wounded After Shooting Breaks Out Between Ukraine Special Forces And Pro-Russia Separatists
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/13/2014 08:37 -0400
“Ball is in Kiev’s court.” That is how we concluded our article yesterday reporting that Moscow won’t accept force against demonstrators after Kiev warned it would use special forces to quell ongoing “terrorist” uprisings across cities in east Ukraine.
Predictably, Ukraine couldn’t wait to shoot the ball right back at Russia and re-escalate (in hope that the west will finally stand up and side along the acting government in what continues to be a very foolish gambit) and early this morning local time, units of the Ukraine special forces started an anti-terrorist operation in eastern town of Slavyansk, where police station was seized yesterday by separatist protesters, as reported by the Interior Minister Arsen Avakov posts on Facebook, who also warned local residents to stay inside, saying separatist protesters have opened fire in direction of approaching special police units.
Moments later the operation turned deadly after at least one member of the special forces was killed and as many as 9 wounded, as well as an unknown number of casualties on the “separatist” side. But most importantly, Russia now has a pretext to step in and “defend” its ethnic population just as it warned it would do.
WSJ reports:
A Ukrainian special forces officer was killed and five others wounded Sunday in a gunbattle with heavily armed pro-Russian forces who had commandeered a police station in the eastern city of Slavyansk, Ukraine’s top police official said.
The firefight erupted early Sunday as Ukrainian forces moved to clear the building where approximately 20 men dressed in camouflage had seized control the day before. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said an unspecified number of the pro-Russian activists had been wounded in the exchange.
This wasn’t the only casualty as other firefights broke out in close proximity to the first one.
In addition to the dead and wounded at the police station, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported one person was killed and four others wounded in a gunfight at a checkpoint along the road leading from Slavyansk to the regional capital of Donetsk. The Slavyansk operation, dubbed an “antiterrorist action,” involved Ukraine’s state security service and military and police units from across the country, Mr. Avakov said. “May God be with them,” Mr. Avakov wrote on his Facebook page early Sunday, announcing the operation had begun.
A short time later, he said that the men holed up inside the building had begun firing at the Ukrainian forces and urged residents in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city to remain indoors and away from their windows.
Residents reported seeing armored personnel carriers approaching the city and helicopters flying overhead. Russian television station Rossiya 24 reported that tires that had been used as a barricade in front of the building had been set on fire and black smoke could be seen above the city center.
The clash comes after pro-Russia protests spread Saturday in eastern Ukraine, with armed men, some in unmarked, military-style uniforms, moved to commandeer more government buildings.
So now that Ukraine has had its official warning by Lavrov, which it openly ignored, and commenced a crack down on the separatist forces, who may well have been camouflaged Russian army units just like in the Crimea scenario, Kremlin now sees itself fully in its right to cross the border and “defend” people in the east. To be sure, NATO and the west will hardly share Russia’s interpretation of events which only means that the situation will further escalate some more.
And if not in Slavyansk, there are more than enough other cities that allow both sides to escalate into lethal gunfights. Reuters reports:
Separatist protesters on Sunday seized control of the mayor’s office in the town of Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, on the Azov Sea, local media said.
The protesters entered the building following a rally involving about 1,000 people demonstrating in favor of the creation of a separate republic in eastern Ukraine, a local journalist for the newspaper Priazovsky Worker said.
Police did not try to stop them. They entered the offices, took down the Ukrainian flag and were erecting barricades outside the building, the journalist said.
A photo from Mariupol:
As we said earlier, if this is merely a gambit by Kiev to provoke western nations into action, it will likely fail. Poland PM Tusk explained why earlier when speaking on Polish radio Zet on events in the Ukraine, when he said that he’s “concerned” there is “relatively little will” in EU, other countries to “strongly support Ukraine. Nobody accepts Crimea annexation, but nobody wants to head for sharp conflict. Which also means Poland itself is isolated in a potential expansion next: Tusk said it’s important Russia doesn’t threaten Poland’s security “we need to know how to mobilize international community.” Hopefully it will have more success than Ukraine.
Sure enough, the best the west can mobilize was and continues to be nothing more than harsh language.
Something Putin knows too well and continues to capitalize on.
Obummer obviously grew up in isolation where he never heard the kiddie poem: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
Putin has a really large and close supply of sticks and stones and Obutthead has a never ending supply of words..
I’m sure this will end well.
MA
Ukraine Mobilizes Military, Gives Separatists Ultimatum; Russia Slams Escalation As “Criminal”, Yanukovich Warns Of Civil War
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/13/2014 14:59 -0400
If Russia’s intention was to give Ukraine enough “escalation” rope with which to hang itself once again, it may have succeeded when a little over an hour ago acting president Oleksander Turchinov said in a televized address that Ukraine has mobilized its armed forces to launch a “full-scale anti-terrorist operation” against pro-Russian separatists. Furthermore, knowing the only real escalation Kiev can engage in is in the war of words department, Ukraine set an 0600 GMT Monday deadline for pro-Russian separatists to give up their weapons and leave buildings they have occupied in the east of the country, a presidential decree said. It is unclear if this would be the catalyst to launch the military operation, but should Kiev indeed bring in the army it is certainly clear that Russia will respond in kind.
Reuters reports:
Angered by the death of a state security officer and the wounding of two of his comrades near the flashpoint eastern city of Slaviansk, Turchinov gave rebels occupying state buildings until Monday morning to lay down their weapons.
He blamed Russia, which opposed a pro-Europe uprising that forced Moscow-backed former president Viktor Yanukovich to flee, for being behind the rash of rebellions across Russian-speaking towns in eastern Ukraine.
“The blood of Ukrainian heroes has been shed in a war which the Russian Federation is waging against Ukraine,” he said in an address to the nation. “The aggressor has not stopped and is continuing to sow disorder in the east of the country.”
Russia promptly responded, alleging Ukraine’s planned operation is criminal:
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that an announcement by the authorities in Kiev that they will mobilise the army to put down a rebellion by pro-Russian militants in eastern Ukraine was a “criminal order”.
The ministry said the West should bring its allies in Ukraine’s government under control. “It is now the West’s responsibility to prevent civil war in Ukraine,” it said in a statement posted on Facebook.
It also said that Russia would put an urgent discussion of the situation in eastern Ukraine on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council.
“The situation in southeastern Ukraine is taking on an extremely dangerous character. The authorities in Kiev, who put themselves in power as a result of a coup d’etat, have set a course to use force to put down popular protests,” the statement said.
“We decisively condemn attempts to use brute force against protesters and activists … We are particularly indignant about the criminal order of (Ukrainian Acting President Oleksander Turchinov) to use the army to put down protest.”
The statement said the West had sponsored the rulers in Kiev and should now “rein in its out-of-control proteges, force them to distance themselves from neo-Nazis and other extremists, stop using armed force against the Ukrainian people, and immediately start a genuine dialogue”.
As usual, the only solace out of NATO was issuing wordy statements:
With East-West relations in crisis, NATO described the appearance in eastern Ukraine of men with specialised Russian weapons and identical uniforms without insignia – as previously worn by Moscow’s troops when they seized Crimea – as a “grave development”.
Adding even more fuel to what increasingly appear a civil war fire, was self-exiled president Yanukovich who said in a televized from Russia’s Roston-on-Don that Ukraine is a foot in the door to civil war. “Blood was spilt today,” Yankovich told journalists referring to the events in the eastern city of Slavyansk. “Now our country finds itself in a totally new situation – with one foot in the door of a civil war. Kiev junta has issued a criminal order to use military forces.”
Part of the responsibility for dragging the country into domestic war lays on the US, which brutally interfere in the situation and to point out what to do, Yanukovich said. The ousted president declared that CIA chief John Brennan visited Ukraine and it was after the meeting that the coup-imposed authorities in Kiev ordered a military operation in the country’s east.
Brennan “de facto sanctioned” the use of weapons and thus provoked the bloodshed, Yanukovich said.
Ukraine is now “inexorably” heading towards bankruptcy, Yanukovich also warned in his speech.
So according to the counter-West narrative, it is the CIA’s actions that have led to the escalation in the east, not Russian actions. Bottom line: for now lots of enflamed words, yet no actual actions to resist the “pro Russia separatists.” And in the meantime the casualties mount:
Though the Ukrainian military did not resist the Russian takeover of Crimea with force, Turchinov threatened robust action against the rebels in the east. “The National Security and Defence Council has decided to launch a full-scale anti-terrorist operation involving the armed forces of Ukraine,” he declared.
Ukraine has repeatedly said the rebellions are inspired and directed by the Kremlin. But action to dislodge the armed militants risks tipping the stand-off into a new, dangerous phase as Moscow has warned it will protect the region’s Russian-speakers if they come under attack.
One Ukrainian state security officer was killed and five were wounded on the government side in Sunday’s operation in Slaviansk, interior minister Arsen Avakov said. “There were dead and wounded on both sides,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Looking ahead in terms of immediate catalysts, 0600 GMT is in a few hours hours, and certainly well before the US market opens. What happens then, certainly nothing if Russian response to previous Ukraine ultimatums is any indication, may determine of last week’s sell off continues in earnest on Monday or if, by some surprising development, there is a relief rally.
Finally, this just in: SECURITY COUNCIL WILL MEET AT 8 PM NY TIME FOR EMERGENCY MEETING ON UKRAINE CRISIS – RUSSIA’S NEWS AGENCY CITING UN SOURCE.
Or just in time for the Nikkei open.