Prior WWL installments on the Ukrainian Disaster, with firsthand accounts are here:
Postcards From the Ukraine
Postcard from the Ukraine II: Factions, Putin and Painted Corners
Cries from the Ukraine: Save Donbass People
(as always, may only be reprinted with express permission)
Ethnic cleansing is a very strong term, yet it is the only applicable term for the systematic slaughter of those resisting Fascism in the Ukraine - most of whom are target for their Russian heritage.
eth·nic cleans·ing
noun: ethnic cleansing
the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
Via my friend living in the Ukraine, Dmitri (Дмитрий Колесник):
"What we see now in Ukraine is a terror against own people unleashed by militaries and far-right squads. The soldier of far-right battalion Donbass Oleh Dub relates about recent ‘cleansing’ of the village of Nikolayevka near Slavyansk. As he says he witnessed how an unarmed person was shot down. “Our bad chiefs intimidated the soldiers before and indoctrinated them with info that there are no ‘our’ people or civilians in the village – only separatists. And, therefore, we have to make a harsh cleansing, to throw grenades into all ‘dark corners’ and shoot at everybody who seems suspicious” – said Oleh Dub
“Only my unit kept guns on safety devices and didn’t use grenades. While others threw grenades into all the directions – into every hole… A man in a T-shirt and sport trousers wento out into his backyard and those paranoids have shot him down. He was unarmed”.
- Oleh Bub
Dmitri: "The soldier also tells that there were no ‘separatists’ in that village. Soon the chief of the battalion S. Semenchenko called the soldier Oleh Dub ‘a spy’. The soldier was imprisoned."
BACKGROUND:
Since our last report, the Right Sector has been marching South and Eastward, overtaking many small towns. Shortly after the May 2nd massacre in Odessa some soldiers had been laying down arms, switching sides, sickened by killing their own.
The influx of US funding to the tune of a cool billion, and IMF sent the first 3.9 billion of the promised 17 billion, the EU who sent 100 million euros in May had been a game changer.
Since then, the flow of blood money, and weaponry to support the Fascist Right Sector has only increased. Obama has pledged not only another billion, but to send troops to train them.
Since March, the White House has approved more than $23 million in security assistance to Ukraine. Now the US is providing additional $5 million aid for "the provision of body armor, night vision goggles and additional communications equipment."
The White House said other aid for Ukraine has included 300,000 ready-to-eat meals and financing for medical supplies, helmets, hand-held radios and other equipment.
"The United States is absolutely committed to standing behind the Ukrainian people not just in the coming days, weeks, but in the coming years," Obama said.
Obama said it was critical that other countries also support Poroshenko and Ukraine’s new government, including by training its military and police.
Now, Nato has added their intent to support the Fascists, with an open wallet. They added directly sending WEAPONRY to their filthy laundry list of supporting ethnic cleansing. Both the last announcements came right as the Ukranian Regime announced they are using scientific research funding for weapon production.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he will reduce the country’s “useless” science programs to finance the production of drones and precision weapons.
“There will be no more spending of billions of people’s money, taxpayers’ money on useless research programs, which were used as a tool for theft,” said a statement published on the president’s website early on Wednesday.
“Today, Ukrainian production will be busy making precision weapons systems, Ukrainian drones, everything Ukrainian army needs, starting with bullet proof vests and ending with thermographic cameras,” he said.
The support of the US/EU/NATO is essentially the IMF's goal, the banking cabal that demands ever more austerity for the citizens of the countries they control, and more money for them. They will support any regime, no matter what crimes against humanity they commit, if it furthers their goal of privatization, and more money in the hands of the Global Elite Rich.
Here is the payoff for their support, their reason in a nutshell, taking public mines that once served as property of all the people of the Ukraine, whose profits benefited them all, and auctioning them off to the highest bidder, where evermore those profits will only benefit one rich owner:
Ukrainian authorities are preparing the biggest in 20 years, privatization
In recent months, a number of representatives of Ukrainian authorities announced plans privatization objects under their control. In particular, the deputy head of the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine Yuriy Zyukov reported that his department is preparing the privatization of 38 mines.
"The direction of our - it is only the privatization of a public auction. Choose the best company. Such 38 mines, which can be put up for privatization of us" - said Zyukov.
NOVOROSSIA:
These are the people the US and Europe consider "terrorists" and supporting the ethnic cleansing thereof. I add the text in full, for the words of people striving to be free should never be abridged.
Declaration of Independence of Novorossia
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to come free from such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Regions; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Ukrainian conquer mode is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Regions. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
· The Kiev Regime has refused the Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
· The Kiev Regime has forbidden it's Governors to pass urgent and crucial laws, unless their action is not delayed until the sovereign consent, but when so suspended, Government pointedly left them without any attention.
· The Kiev Regime has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Federalisation, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
· The Kiev Regime has dissolved local authorities and brushed local leaders aside repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness it's invasions on the rights of the people.
· The Kiev Regime has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing to investigate the massacre of people on Maidan in Kiev and in Trade Union House in Odessa.
· The Kiev Regime has made Judges dependent on it's Will alone with illegal dissolution of the Constitutional Court.
· The Kiev Regime has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
· The Kiev Regime has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our elected authorities.
· The Kiev Regime has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
· The Kiev Regime has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving it's Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
1. For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;
2. For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these Regions;
3. For cutting off our Trade with all our partners;
4. For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent;
5. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Presumption of Innocence;
6. For transporting LPR and DPR citizens to Kiev to be tried for pretended offences;
7. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments;
8. For suspending our own authorities, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
· The Kiev Regime has declared us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
· The Kiev Regime has plundered us, ravaged and burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
· The Kiev Regime at this time transporting large Armies of neo-Nazis and foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
· The Kiev Regime has constrained our fellow conscripted Citizens to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
· The Kiev Regime has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of each other, sending against us most notorious misanthropes whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. Members of the Kiev Regime whose characters are thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, are unfit to be the rulers of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Kiev brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of a referendum we held and the sovereignty of independent people's republics we announced. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the Republics of Novorossia, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of Republics of Novorossia, solemnly publish and declare, That these Republics are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Ukrainian, and that all political connection between them and the State of Kiev regime, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Republics may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
I have already documented the purity tests for employment, the banning of speaking Russian, the absolute ethnic and Nazi hatred on which the illegal Right Sector Regime bases their ethnic cleansing in articles past.
I cannot reiterate enough: All the Donbass people want is to live in Peace, multi-culturally, and not beholden to the austerity of the European model, not persecuted for having even a drop of Russian blood.
THE CLEANSING:
My friend Nelly reports that book burning is now epidemic. Starting with any books on Communism, by Marx or Lenin, it expanded from Kiev outward to include any tome, on any subject written in Russian. Remember that the eastern half of Ukraine was once Russia, and keep in mind that most of the people speak Russian as a second language, if not their first language.
Works of science or math, schoolbooks, literature, art, philosophy, all destroyed forever to History because of rabid ethnic hatred.
They don't want to just mass expel or kill the people, they want to eradicate every bit of evidence they ever existed within their borders. Ethnic. Cleansing.
Starting small:
Writ large:
One cannot hear this without echoes of the Nazi Book Burnings; echoes all the more pointed because the Right Sector idolizes Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera and all he stood for.
But book burning is the least when the cost of human misery and murder is tallied.
Donetsk and Lugansk and some kilometres around them are the only areas not under Right Sector control. The right still holds Donetsk's airport, though. She says there are many tanks and military vehicles surround Donetsk.
Nelly reports this morning:
"Today the protesters made an attack to capture the airport where the Ukrainian Nationalist (Right Sector) troops are blocked.
I live nearby. We wanted to go to the cafe but soldiers didn't let us go. He said: "Girls, where are you going? You don't want to live?" Mostly I liked how he kindly said, "Girls!" There was a lot of firing from different types of weapons. Now it's peaceful."
**
SHE IS UPDATING ME AS THIS ARTICLE IS BEING WRITTEN
UPDATE 11:46 EDT
Just now
Here has been a great explosion near my place
The fight is going on
UPDATE 11:56 EDT
just now I saw an anti-aircraft gun set on the crossing in 50 metres fom my house! Just now. I can't take a pic - they don't allow but send you a pic from the net
**
20 of her close friends have left already, to the safety of Russia. She estimates that the number of refugees is high, and growing, "Half million at least may be more - people mostly go to Russia and the Crimea." She adds the streets are mostly empty in the evenings. The DNR - Donetsk People's Republic - holds the city, save the airport, but they are surrounded and fear that bombing from the air may begin, as it has in smaller eastern cities that once were also free. "They have so many more weapons than we do."
These numbers seem to be substantiated by Time who reported back in June that over 5,000 had left from just the city of Luhansk for the safety of Russia.
Contrary to the fear-mongering and red-baiting of the pro-Maiden press in the US and Europe, they have gotten no help from Russia at all. No money. No weapons. In fact they are trying to pay their soldiers to support their families 1000$ a month, but that too may not last while they are surrounded and cut off. Store shelves, as pictured to the left are growing empty.
In Kramtorsk, where people walked freely under the so-called "rebels" - shopped, visited, went to work and church? The streets stand empty under the Ukrainian Nationalist's "liberation" of them. In plain language, when the Fascists came, all that were not killed ran for their lives, effectively executing the Ethnic Cleansing they sought. Its is now empty of the residents who have always called it home, wiped clean for the Nazi Fascists to fill with "their own kind."
American photographer Patrick Lancaster gives an eyewitness account of Kramtorsk's genocide.
It’s kind of strange, because in the last five days of the bombing and shelling, we haven’t seen a single militia compound that has actually been hit. Every building that we’ve seen being hit by the Ukrainian mortars have been civilian buildings. We personally have seen over 40 different civilian buildings bombed, that includes a school, an orphanage – we were in an orphanage the day before yesterday that was hit – and a lot of large apartment buildings have been hit . Some of the apartment buildings – it’s not like the Ukrainian army missed the their target – [quite the opposite], the same [apartment] buildings when they were bombed, they hit them very hard [repeatedly]. We spoke to one woman who said that in the night a few days ago her apartment building was hit with ten different mortars.
(snip)
But, in an addition to civilian homes that have been hit, they are targeting the infrastructure of the town as well. Sometimes the water doesn’t work, because I believe they’ve hit some of the water pumping stations. Yesterday afternoon we went to a gas station that was hit… Actually, it was twice the day prior – once in the afternoon and once in the evening.
The vast majority of the shelling has hit civilian homes.
He also speaks to the Russian myth, and the terror the citizens are being subjected to by the oppressive Nationalist Ukrainian Fascists.
Since the bombing started, the sentiment has gone: “What is Poroshenko doing? Why is he killing us?
Why is our president murdering our people?”
(Re: Putin) People are kind of thinking: “What is he waiting for? Why isn’t the Russian government helping us?”
The official
death toll of the latest offenses in the south and eastern regions is 478 civilians - note that they use a very liberal use of combatants, thus negating many men of any age.
“In the area of the operation in eastern Ukraine, 478 civilians have died, including 30 women and seven children,” he said.
According to Lazoryshynets , a further 1,392 people were injured in the fighting, with 104 women and 14 children among them.
“Two hundred and seventy-nine currently remain in hospital,” he added.
By their account: "Disregard of civilians by Kiev troops saw the number of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Russia reaching 110,000 people,
while 54,400 others were displaced within Ukraine. By resident accounts, anecdotally - those numbers are much higher.
Ukrainian Mother Protects Child During Bomb Raid
Read the chilling language of the Directive approved by Poroshenko. They want to get the mines, and "decimate" anyone who is Russian; noting that anyone in the Donbass region who didn't leave their own home is considered an enemy. That is ethnic cleansing of the area for an ethnically and ideologically "pure" state. "Anyone who tries to resist shall be executed on the spot." "guarded by units who are considered to be ideologically safe"
Сonfidential document on Ukraine by the RAND Corporation leaked. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko follows the action plan proposed by RAND analysts.
This Memorandum on the advisable course of action automatically means that peace plan confirmed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fails.
This is a long video showing the war crimes and ethnic cleansing by the Fascist regime. I know not everyone can view video, nor has the 45 minutes to take it all in. Beyond the shelling, and the tears, please watch a minute or so at the 27:14 mark of the Right Sector nonchalantly dumping human bodies by the roadside. Taking them far from the reporters and photographers who might report what they are doing:
Again, at 36:39, showing the grand exodus from the cities in fear of the Fascists, your heart cannot help but break from the woman with babe in arms speaking of how are their men are killed and shot, nor the grandmother crying out how not even the German Nazis were so lawless in war - "not even a German would do what they are doing now!"
"Now they don't pity children, they don't pity anybody!"
The US is, as always, turning a blind eye to the civilian loss of life, the utter destruction of whole cities, the ethnic cleansing of whole areas... it is classic Shock Doctrine, after all, to shock and awe a population, wipe it to a clean slate, and repopulate it with people friendly to predatory Capitalism.
These are not "pro-russian rebels" - these are people who enjoyed a Unified and Multi-cultural, tolerant Ukraine before the coup d'etat by Fascists, Nazis and Right Wing extremists who want martial law and economic control of their lives. These are people who don't think they should be shot for speaking their own languages, nor sign pledges of allegiance to the fascists to be allowed to work jobs they have always held. These are people terrified of the austerity European banking has bestowed on their own people.
These are people longing to be free, who want fair wages and a right to enjoy the benefits of the mines their cities straddle.
Shell civilians? No problem, says the US.
After all, our interests can purchase your mines, begin fracking, and control the petro-flow to Europe through your lands. We will even offer bribes for you to kill your own people to make it so as we did when we cleansed our own land of the Native Americans, "Land parcels will be given out for free to the servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other military formations, as well as to the employees of Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine that are defending territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country in eastern and southeastern regions of Ukraine."
SOUND FAMILIAR??? Kill an Indian Donbass resident, and get 10 acres and mule their land!!!
Take all publicly held things, and make them for predatory profit.
Slavyansk, them marching male citizens off to prison camps, or worse.
In the end, my sources say the number killed and displaced are far underestimated by the MSM press. In fact? CNN is so inept it placed Slavyansk in the Crimea, which it most assuredly is not. It is hundreds of miles north of it.
Widescale bombing of civilians, removal of residents to refugee camps, the giving of land to the "conquering" military presence, the "nabka" to Russia for safety, the total devastation of infrastructure... this has gone beyond Civil War, and can only be called what it is:
Ethnic Cleansing, done by a Terrorist State.
In the end, when an ethnically Ukrainian-pure state is formed, when the rich own everything, and the poor who backed the Fascists are starving in misery... who will cry for them, and ask, "Who let this happen? Why? How could this be?"
Not me.
I cry now, for the people who only want freedom from tyranny; the brave souls standing between Fascism and a Free Ukraine.
Donetsk and Lugansk are the last free cities standing. And we should be backing Novorossia who bravely stated,
"We, therefore, the Representatives of the Republics of Novorossia, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of Republics of Novorossia, solemnly publish and declare, That these Republics are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Ukrainian, and that all political connection between them and the State of Kiev regime, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Republics may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."