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Category: Ukraine

  • Black Sea Crisis Deepens As US-NATO Threat To Iran Grows

    Black Sea Crisis Deepens As US-NATO Threat To Iran Grows

    by Rick Rozoff

    Global Research, September 16, 2009

    Tensions are mounting in the Black Sea with the threat of another conflict between U.S. and NATO client state Georgia and Russia as Washington is manifesting plans for possible military strikes against Iran in both word and deed.

    Referring to Georgia having recently impounded several vessels off the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia, reportedly 23 in total this year, the New York Times wrote on September 9 that “Rising tensions between Russia and Georgia over shipping rights to a breakaway Georgian region have opened a potential new theater for conflict between the countries, a little more than a year after they went to war.” [1]

    Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh ordered his nation’s navy to respond to Georgia’s forceful seizure of civilian ships in neutral waters, calling such actions what they are – piracy – by confronting and if need be sinking Georgian navy and coast guard vessels. The Georgian and navy and coast guard are trained by the United States and NATO.

    The spokesman of the Russian Foreign Ministry addressed the dangers inherent in Georgia’s latest provocations by warning “They risk aggravating the military and political situation in the region and could result in serious armed incidents.” [2]

    On September 15 Russia announced that its “border guards will detain all vessels that violate Abkhazia’s maritime border….” [3]

    Russia would be not only entitled but obligated to provide such assistance to neighboring Abkhazia as “Under mutual assistance treaties signed last November, Russia pledged to help Abkhazia and South Ossetia protect their borders, and the signatories granted each other the right to set up military bases in their respective territories.” [4]

    In attempting to enforce a naval blockade – the International Criminal Court plans to include blockades against coasts and ports in its list of acts of war this year [5] – against Abkhazia, the current Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili is fully aware that Russia is compelled by treaty and national interests alike to respond. Having been roundly defeated in its last skirmish with Russia, the five-day war in August of last year, Tbilisi would never risk actions like its current ones without a guarantee of backing from the U.S. and NATO.

    Days after last year’s war ended then U.S. Senator and now Vice President Joseph Biden flew into the Georgian capital to pledge $1 billion in assistance to the nation, making Georgia the third largest recipient of American foreign aid after Egypt and Israel.

    U.S. and NATO warships poured into the Black Sea in August of 2008 and American ships visited the Georgia port cities of Batumi and Poti to deliver what Washington described as civilian aid but which Russian sources suspected contained replacements for military equipment lost in the conflict.

    Less than a month after the war ended NATO sent a delegation to Georgia to “evaluate damage to military infrastructure following a five-day war between Moscow and Tbilisi….” [6]

    In December a meeting of NATO foreign ministers agreed upon a special Annual National Program for Georgia and in the same month Washington announced the creation of the United States-Georgia Charter on Strategic Partnership.

    In the past week a top-level delegation of NATO defense and logistics experts visited Georgia on September 9 “to promote the development of the Georgian Armed Forces” [7] and on September 14 high-ranking officials of the U.S. George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies arrived at the headquarters of the Georgian Ministry of Defense “to review issues of interdepartmental coordination in the course of security sector management and national security revision.” [8]

    The ongoing military integration of Georgia and neighboring Azerbaijan, which also borders Iran – Washington’s Georgetown University is holding a conference on Strategic Partnership between U.S. and Azerbaijan: Bilateral and Regional Criteria on September 18 – by the Pentagon and NATO is integrally connected with general military plans in the Black Sea and the Caucasus regions as a whole and, even more ominously, with joint war plans against Iran.

    As early as January of 2007 reports on that score surfaced in Bulgarian and Romanian news sources. Novinite (Sofia News Agency) reported that the Pentagon “could be using its two air force bases in Bulgaria and one on Romania’s Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran….” [9]

    The bases are the Bezmer and Graf Ignitievo airbases in Bulgaria and the Mihail Kogalniceanu counterpart near the Romanian city of Constanza on the Black Sea.

    The Pentagon has seven new bases altogether in Bulgaria and Romania and in addition to stationing warplanes – F-15s, F-16s and A-10 Thunderbolts – has 3,000-5,000 troops deployed in the two nations at any given time, and Washington established its Joint Task Force-East (JTF-East) permanent headquarters at the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase in Romania.

    A U.S. government website provides these details about Joint Task Force-East:

    “All U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force training operations in Romania and Bulgaria will fall under the command of JTF–East, which in turn is under the command of USEUCOM [United States European Command]. Physically located in Romania and Bulgaria, JTF East will include a small permanent headquarters (in Romania) consisting of approximately 100-300 personnel who will oversee rotations of U.S. Army brigade-sized units and U.S. Air Force Weapons Training Deployments (WTD). Access to Romanian and Bulgarian air and ground training facilities will provide JTF-East forces the opportunity to train and interact with military forces throughout the entire 92-country USEUCOM area of responsibility. U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) and U.S Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) are actively involved in establishing JTF-East.” [10]

    The four military bases in Romania and three in Bulgaria that the Pentagon and NATO have gained indefinite access to since the two nations were incorporated into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004 allow for full spectrum operations: Infantry deployments in the area and downrange to Afghanistan and Iraq, runways for bombers and fighter jets, docking facilities for American and NATO warships including Aegis class interceptor missile vessels, training grounds for Western special forces and for foreign armed forces being integrated into NATO.

    Added to bases and troops provided by Turkey and Georgia – and in the future Ukraine – the Bulgarian and Romanian sites are an integral component of plans by the U.S. and its allies to transform the Black Sea into NATO territory with only the Russian coastline not controlled by the Alliance. And that of newly independent Abkhazia, which makes control of that country so vital.

    Last week the Romanian defense ministry announced the intention to acquire between 48 and 54 new generation fighter jets – American F-16s and F-35s have been mentioned – as part of “a new strategy for buying multi-role aircraft, which means to first buy aircraft to make the transition to fifth generation equipment, over the coming 10-12 years.” [11]

    With the recent change in government in the former Soviet republic of Moldova – the aftermath of this April’s violent “Twitter Revolution” – the new parliamentary speaker, Mihai Ghimpu, has openly spoken of the nation merging with, which is to say being absorbed by, neighboring Romania. Transdniester [the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic] broke away from Moldova in 1990 exactly because of the threat of being pulled into Romania and fighting ensued which cost the lives of some 1,500 persons.

    Romania is now a member of NATO and should civil war erupt in Moldova and/or fighting flare up between Moldova and Transdniester and Romania sends troops – all but a certainty – NATO can activate its Article 5 military clause to intervene. There are 1,200 Russian peacekeepers in Transdniester.

    Transdniester’s neighbor to its east is Ukraine, linked with Moldova through the U.S.-concocted GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova) bloc, which has been collaborating in enforcing a land blockade against Transdniester. Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko, whose poll ratings are currently in the low single digits, is hellbent on dragging his nation into NATO against overwhelming domestic opposition and can be counted on to attack Transdniester from the eastern end if a conflict breaks out.

    A Moldovan news source last week quoted an opposition leader issuing this dire warning:

    “Moldova’s ethnic minorities are categorically against unification with Romania.

    “If we, those who are not ethnic Moldovans, will have to defend Moldova’s
    statehood, then we will find powerful allies outside Moldova, including in Russia. Along with it, Ukraine, Turkey and Bulgaria would be involved in this fighting. Last year we all witnessed how Russia defended the interests of its nationals in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Why does somebody believe that in case of a civil war in Moldova Russia will simply watch how its nationals are dying? Our task is to prevent such developments.” [12]

    Indeed, the entire Black Sea and Caucasus regions could go up in flames if Western proxies in GUAM attack any of the so-called frozen conflict nations – Abkhazia and South Ossetia by Georgia, Nagorno Karabakh by Azerbaijan and Transdniester by Moldova and Ukraine. A likely possibility is that all four would be attacked simultaneously and in unison.

    An opportunity for that happening would be a concentrated attack on Iran, which borders Azerbaijan and Armenia. The latter, being the protector of Nagorno Karabakh, would immediately become a belligerent if Azerbaijan began military hostilities against Karabakh.

    On September 15 news stories revealed that the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC, founded in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell, had released a report which in part stated, “If biting sanctions do not persuade the Islamic Republic to demonstrate sincerity in negotiations and give up its enrichment activities, the White House will have to begin serious consideration of the option of a U.S.-led military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.” [13]

    The report was authored by Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator from
    Virginia, Daniel Coats, former Republican senator from Indiana, and retired General Charles Wald, a former deputy commander of the U.S. European Command.

    Iran is to be given 60 days to in essence abandon its civilian nuclear power program and if it doesn’t capitulate the Obama administration should “prepare overtly for any military option” which would include “deploying an additional aircraft carrier battle group to the waters off Iran and conducting joint exercises with U.S. allies.” [14]

    The main Iranian nuclear reactor is being constructed at Bushehr and would be a main target of any U.S. and Israeli bombing and missile attacks. As of 2006 there were 3,700 Russian experts and technicians – and their families – living in the environs of the facility.

    It has been assumed for the past eight years that a military attack on Iran would be launched by the United States from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and by long-range Israeli bombers flying over Iraq and Turkey.

    During that period the U.S. and its NATO allies have also acquired access to airbases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan (in Baluchistan, bordering Iran), Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in addition to those they already have in Turkey.

    Washington and Brussels have also expanded their military presence into Bulgaria, Georgia and Romania on the Black Sea and into Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea bordering northeastern Iran.

    Plans for massive military aggression against Iran, then, might include air and missile strikes from locations much nearer the nation than previously suspected.

    The American Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced plans last week to supply Turkey, the only NATO member state bordering Iran, with almost $8 billion dollars worth of theater interceptor missiles, of the upgraded and longer-range PAC-3 (Patriot Advance Capability-3) model. The project includes delivering almost 300 Patriots for deployment at twelve command posts inside Turkey.

    In June the Turkish government confirmed that NATO AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) planes would be deployed in its Konya province.

    The last time AWACS and Patriot missiles were sent to Turkey was in late 2002 and early 2003 in preparation for the invasion of Iraq.

    On September 15 the newspaper of the U.S. armed forces, Stars and Stripes, ran an article titled “U.S., Israeli forces to test missile defense while Iran simmers,” which included these details on the biannual Juniper Cobra war games:

    “Some 1,000 U.S. European Command troops will soon deploy to Israel for a large-scale missile defense exercise with Israeli forces.

    “This year’s Juniper Cobra comes at a time of continued concern about Iran’s nuclear program, which will be the subject of talks in October.

    “The U.S. troops, from all four branches of service, will work alongside an equal number of Israel Defense Force personnel, taking part in computer-simulated war games….Juniper Cobra will test a variety of air and missile defense technology during next month’s exercise, including the U.S.-controlled X-Band.” [15]

    The same feature documented that this month’s exercise is the culmination of months of buildup.

    “In April, about 100 Europe-based personnel took part in a missile defense exercise that for the first time incorporated a U.S.-owned radar system, which was deployed to the country in October 2008. The U.S. X-Band radar is intended to give Israel early warning in the event of a missile launch from Iran.

    “For nearly a year, a mix of troops and U.S. Defense Department contractors have been managing the day-to-day operation of the X-Band, which is situated at Nevatim air base in the Negev Desert.” [16]

    The same publication revealed two days earlier that the Pentagon conducted a large-scale counterinsurgency exercise with the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 12th Combat Aviation Brigade last week in Germany, “the largest such exercise ever held by the U.S. military outside of the United States….” [17] The two units are scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, but could be diverted to Iran, which has borders with both nations, should need arise.

    What the role of Black Sea NATO states and clients could be in a multinational, multi-vectored assault on Iran was indicated in the aftermath of last year’s Georgian-Russian war.

    At a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels a year ago, Russian ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin “said that Russian intelligence had obtained information indicating that the Georgian military infrastructure could be used for logistical support of U.S. troops if they launched an attack on Iran.” [18]

    Rogozin was further quoted as saying, “What NATO is doing now in Georgia is restoring its ability to monitor its airspace, in other words restoring the whole locator system and an anti-missile defence system which were destroyed by Russian artillery.

    “[The restoration of surveillance systems and airbases in Georgia is being] done for logistic support of some air operations either of the Alliance as a whole or of the United States in particular in this region. The swift reconstruction of the airfields and all the systems proves that some air operation is being planned against another country which is located not far from Georgia….” [19]

    Early last October Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Russian Security
    Council “described the U.S. and NATO policy of increasing their military presence in Eastern Europe as seeking strategic military superiority over Russia.

    “The official added that the United States would need allies in the region if the country decided to attack Iran.” [20]

    Patrushev stated, “If it decides to carry out missile and bomb attacks
    against Iran, the US will need loyal allies. And if Georgia is involved in this war, this will pose additional threats to Russia’s national security.” [21]

    Later last October an Azerbaijani website reported that 100 Iranian Air Force jets were exercising near the nation’s border and that “military sources from the United States reported that territories in Azerbaijan and in Georgia may be used for attacking Iran….” [22]

    Writing in The Hindu the same month Indian journalist Atul Aneja wrote of the effects of the Georgian-Russian war of the preceding August and offered this information:

    “Russia’s military assertion in Georgia and a show of strength in parts of West Asia [Middle East], combined with domestic political and economic preoccupations in Washington, appear to have forestalled the chances of an immediate strike against Iran.

    “Following Russia’s movement into South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged that Moscow was aware that serious plans to attack Iran had been laid out. ‘We know that certain players are planning an attack against Iran. But we oppose any unilateral step and [a] military solution to the nuclear crisis.’

    “Russia seized control of two airfields in Georgia from where air strikes against Iran were being planned. The Russian forces also apparently recovered weapons and Israeli spy drones that would have been useful for the surveillance of possible Iranian targets.” [23]

    The same newspaper, in quoting Dmitry Rogozin asserting that Russian military intelligence had captured documents proving Washington had launched “active military preparations on Georgia’s territory” for air strikes against Iran, added information on Israeli involvement:

    “Israel had supplied Georgia with sophisticated Hermes 450 UAV spy drones, multiple rocket launchers and other military equipment that Georgia, as well as modernised Georgia’s Soviet-made tanks that were used in the attack against South Ossetia. Israeli instructors had also helped train Georgia troops.” [24]

    Rather than viewing the wars of the past decade – against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq – and the concomitant expansion of U.S. and NATO military presence inside all three countries and in several others on their peripheries as an unrelated series of events, the trend must be seen for what it is: A consistent and calculated strategy of employing each successive war zone as a launching pad for new aggression.

    The Pentagon has major military bases in Kosovo, in Afghanistan and in Iraq that it never intends to abandon. The U.S. and its NATO allies have bases in Bulgaria, Romania, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait, Bahrain (where the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is headquartered) and other nations in the vicinity of the last ten years’ wars which can be used for the next ten – or twenty or thirty – years’ conflicts.

    1) New York Times, September 9, 2009
    2) Ibid
    3) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 15, 2009
    4) Ibid
    5) Wikipedia
    6) Agence France-Presse, September 8, 2009
    7) Trend News Agency, September 9, 2009
    8) Georgia Ministry of Defence, September 14, 2009
    9) Turkish Daily News, January 30, 2007
    10) U.S. Department of State
    11) The Financiarul, September 9, 2009
    12) Infotag, September 11, 2009
    13) Bloomberg News, September 15, 2009
    14) Ibid
    15) Stars and Stripes, September 15, 2009
    16) Ibid
    17) Stars and Stripes, September 13, 2009
    18) Russian Information Agency Novosti, September 17, 2008
    19) Russia Today, September 17, 2008
    20) Russian Information Agency Novosti, October 1, 2008
    21) Fars News Agency, October 2, 2008
    22) Today.AZ, October 20, 2008
    23) The Hindu, October 13, 2008
    24) The Hindu, September 19, 2008

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/black-sea-crisis-deepens-as-us-nato-threat-to-iran-grows/15239

  • Poor Richard’s Report

    Poor Richard’s Report

    Poor Richard’s Report                                                                         

     

                                                                                                    Over 300,150 readers

    My Mission: God has uniquely designed me to seek, write, and speak the truth as I see it. Preservation of one’s wealth while providing needful income is my primary goal in these unsettled times. I have been given the ability to evaluate, study, and interpret world and national events and their influence on the future of the financial markets. This gift allows me to meet the needs of individual and institution clients.  I evaluate situations first on a fundamental basis then try to confirm on a technical basis. In the past it has been fairly successful.

                                 SPECIAL BULLITEN:

     

                                 Our President is about to be Tested – Big Time

     

                The Middle East is about to blow sky high. We have now involved the UN Security counsel plus Germany (called P-5+1) to make Iran negotiate their nuclear weapons program. The due date is September 24, 2009.  To make matters worse the President promised Israel that if they did not take military action with Iran, he would deliver crippling sanctions with Iran.

    Big deal. What we withhold, China and Russia will deliver. This is now guts ball diplomacy that will reverberate across the whole world.

                Here is a scary and realistic scenario that could happen while everyone is concerned with what is going on in the kiddy pool of health care reform and economic recovery.

                ISRAEL will never, never allow itself to be at mortal risk. If and when their intelligence concludes the Iranians are close to getting a bomb, diplomacy will end. Russian expansionism has always been in the setting of somebody else’s war. Putin will ignite the match if he ever gets the chance. Imagine. They get Georgia without a contest, and open the door to secure Ukraine, and make trillions of Rubles selling “high test” to Europe after the Iranians close the Straits of Hormuz. It would stir up a real blizzard and they could retake the Baltic region while NATO is off figuring out how to get the gulf oil turned back on.           

     Buy GLD (NYSE-$99+) or CEF (NYSE-$13+) and top off your home fuel tanks.

     Have a strong cash position also.

     

    Richard C De Graff

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    [email protected]

     

    This report has been prepared from original sources and data which we believe reliable but we make no representation to its accuracy or completeness. Coburn & Meredith Inc. its subsidiaries and or officers may from time to time acquire, hold, sell a position discussed in this publications, and we may act as principal for our own account or as agent for both the buyer and seller.

  • Turkey bumps Ukraine as transit nation?

    Turkey bumps Ukraine as transit nation?

    ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 17 (UPI) — An energy agreement between Moscow and Ankara puts Turkey above Ukraine as the top transit nation for Europe, an analyst says.

    Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin emerged from an Aug. 6 meeting in Ankara with a document that secured Turkish approval for the construction of the South Stream natural gas pipeline in its territorial waters in the Black Sea.

    South Stream would travel from the Russian port city of Novorossiysk to Varna, Bulgaria, and on to Italy and Austria through the Balkans. It would expand the gas pipeline network in Europe, adding diversity to a market dependent on transit nations.

    Jeffrey Mankoff, an adjunct fellow of Russian studies at Yale University, told Turkish daily Today’s Zaman that Putin’s visit was meant to find a viable alternative to Ukrainian transit options.

    A January row between Kiev and Moscow over gas debts and contracts resulted in regional gas disruptions as 80 percent of all Russian gas bound for Europe travels through Soviet-era pipelines in Ukraine.

    “Given the problems between Moscow and Kiev, Russia’s position toward the Europeans carries the purpose of finding a way to not have to rely on Ukraine as a transit country, hence Russia’s agreement with Turkey,” he said.

    South Stream will carry as much as 35 percent of the Russian gas for Europe. Prior to the Ankara agreement, Moscow had considered building South Stream through Ukrainian waters.

    Mankoff says that now, however, the Turkish concessions “would reduce Ukraine’s ability to disrupt the transit of Russian gas, though Kiev could still cut gas through the onshore pipelines, which are much larger than South Stream is planned to be.”

  • Crimea hosting Kurultai of International Union of Turk Youth

    Crimea hosting Kurultai of International Union of Turk Youth

    KYIV, August 10 /UKRINFORM/. About 200 delegates from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Australia, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, the Netherlands and other states have registered to participate in the 14th Kurultai (Council) of the International Union of Turk Youth in Yalta (Crimea), the Majlis of Crimean Tatar People reported.

    Majlis head Mustafa Jemilev said the delegates have gathered together to discuss their problems and conjointly find nonviolent methods of their solving. According to him, the major task of the Yalta international forum is promoting friendly mutual relations of Turk nations, cultural integration of youth and mutual support to the members of the single Turk family.

    The forum will stay open till August 14, 2009.

  • In Volatile Crimea, Tatars Bang The Drum For Land Return

    In Volatile Crimea, Tatars Bang The Drum For Land Return

    Crimean Tatars continue to protest in front of the government building in Kyiv, demanding the return of land seized during World War II.

    August 09, 2009
    By Claire Bigg

    For the 88th day in a row, Lyubov Halilova packed her banners and headed to government headquarters in central Kyiv.

    The elderly Halilova has spent the last four months camped outside the building in the Ukrainian capital with some 20 other protesters, banging on drums, sounding horns, and calling on Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to hear their grievances.

    The protesters are Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea, and they are in Kyiv to voice their nation’s longstanding demand: the return of land seized during the World War II deportation of Tatars from the Crimean peninsula, in what is today Ukraine.

    So far, Ukrainian officials have largely ignored the protest on their doorstep.

    “There has been no progress,” sights Halilova. “Nobody is coming out, nobody is taking an interest in us.”

    ‘Please Go Home’

    President Viktor Yushchenko last year set up a committee to settle the dispute. But critics accuse the new working group, which has yet to distribute a single plot of land, of deliberately dragging its feet.

    Volodymyr Haptar, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry which oversees the committee, insists the issue is in capable hands.

    Crimean Tatars gathered in Simferopol in May to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the mass deportation.

    “We’re doing wearisome, difficult work trying to create a register of people who are to be allotted land. We are trying to determine the state of the land in these regions and to whom it belongs,” he told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. “Crimean Tatars are displaying their strength of will, but not everything can be settled through force and strikes. People, please go home. Sooner or later, this issue will be settled.”

    Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the mass deportation of Crimea’s Turkic, Muslim Tatars in May 1944 on grounds that they had allegedly collaborated with Nazi Germany.

    In a three-day operation, the peninsula’s more than 180,000 Tatars were rounded up and loaded onto cattle trains bound for Central Asia and Siberia.

    An estimated 40 percent of them died during the journey or in the first year of exile.

    Although the Tatars were rehabilitated by the Kremlin and allowed to return in the late 1980s, neither the Soviet regime nor post-Soviet Ukraine has helped them resettle in their historical region.

    Paradise Lost

    Ismet Sheikh-Zade, a well-known Crimean Tatar artist, was born in Uzbekistan.

    His parents had settled down in the Central Asian republic after being deported from Crimea as children, together with their entire families.

    Today, Ismet and his parents are back in their ancestral land. But he says they are treated like intruders.

    “Five Russian families now live in the house in Feodosia where my mother was born and from which she was deported. Six Russian families live in my father’s house in Belogorsk,” he says.

    “We are not asking for these houses, because we know this would create a conflict. We’ll compromise and take empty land instead. But the surrounding population doesn’t understand that Crimean Tatars are making concessions by not demanding the restitution of their property,” Ismet says.

    Some 270,000 Crimean Tatars have returned to the peninsula over the past two decades. Many live in chaotic settlements erected in recent years, sometimes without running water.

    Although they now represent just 12 percent of their homeland’s total population, Crimean Tatars have been extremely vocal in lobbying for land and for recognition of the crimes perpetuated against their people.

    They held the first-ever World Congress of Crimean Tatars this year on May 18, the 65th anniversary of the deportation. Some 20,000 protesters rallied in Crimea’s main city of Simferopol on the congress’ sidelines to renew demands for greater rights.

    The Crimean Tatar community, however, is divided over how to promote its interests.

    Like Mustafa Dzhemilyov, the head of the Crimean Tatars’ Mejlis representative body, some disapprove of the current protest in Kyiv and say Tatars should instead seek to resolve the land dispute through diplomatic channels.

    “We were against it from the start. We formed a commission, and that commission is working,” he says. “There are 47 million people in this country. If everyone came to the ministers’ cabinet and started beating drums, I don’t think problems would get solved in our country.”

    Others, weary of waiting, believe only rallies, hunger strikes, and other protests can draw attention to their plight.

    Mounting Resentment

    In May, Yushchenko ordered the creation of a special unit to investigate the deportation of Crimean Tatars and other minorities from the peninsula.

    But this has done little to soothe feelings of anger and disappointment among Crimean Tatars.

    Many say Yushchenko and his former ally Tymoshenko, whom Crimean Tatars massively supported during the 2004 Orange Revolution, have not made good on promises to improve their fate.

    “They’ve gone to extreme lengths to repatriate in a peaceful manner, but I often wonder about their patience with the amount of resistance that they’ve had to push through,” says Dr. Greta Uehling, a U.S. anthropologist and an expert on Crimean Tatars.

    “I worry about that in terms of the sheer frustration level of having tried so hard for so long and to continue to meet all these barriers and obstacles, to the point where their needs simply aren’t met,” Uehling says.

    The simmering discontent among Crimean Tatars is particularly alarming since it is playing out on the backdrop of souring relations between Moscow and Kyiv.

    Many Ukrainians accuse Moscow of plotting to stoke unrest in Crimea, an increasingly disputed region that is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and growing pro-independence sentiment among its majority ethnic Russian population.

    Russia has reportedly handed passports to thousands of Crimean residents.

    “I think the region is very unstable and very vulnerable to various parties’ attempts to bring it into their sphere of influence,” says Uehling. “On that score, I see things getting worse before they get better, because there is such intense interest and so many factions within Crimea that can be recruited onto various sides.”

    The current protest in Kyiv illustrates how desperate many Crimean Tatars have become in recent years.

    One month into their sit-in, seven of the protesters launched a hunger strike that lasted two weeks and resulted in the hospitalization of three participants.

    The demonstrators have also accused Ukraine of genocide, and have issued a declaration threatening to disrupt the country’s efforts to integrate with the West and ensure the Crimean Tatar question becomes “the main problem” in Ukraine.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/In_Volatile_Crimea_Tatars_Bang_The_Drum_For_Land_Return/1795804.html
  • Geopolitical Diary: Shades of a Second War

    Geopolitical Diary: Shades of a Second War

    August 6, 2009

    One year on from the outbreak of war between Georgia and Russia, events precipitating that conflict bear a striking resemblance to the situation today.
    First, it must be said that things are never quiet in the Caucasus. Russo-Georgian relations are cold in the best of times, and they certainly are not going to warm while the pro-Western government that took power Georgia in the 2003 Rose Revolution remains in place. Under this “Rose” government, Tbilisi has courted the West politically, economically and militarily in order to solidify its independence of Russia, with the goal of joining the NATO alliance – something that Russia has resisted at every turn.
    In 2008, the Russians shifted from resistance to invasion. The reasons are many, but one stands out: 2008 marked the final dissolution of Serbia, with Western institutions recognizing the independence of Kosovo. Serbia was Russia’s last ally in Europe, and the idea that Russia’s protests could not sway the West’s actions in the least was daunting for Moscow. Russia had to prove that not only was it still relevant, but that it could and would move militarily against an American and European ally. The target was Georgia, and the five-day war that followed was as decisive as it was swift.
    Events appear to be moving along a similar track in the early days of August 2009.
    Last month, following a trip to Georgia, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden gave an interview in which he called Russia out not only for being weak but, to put it bluntly, doomed to collapse. Needless to say, the Russians might be feeling the urge to prove Biden wrong in the court of global opinion. Russian officials are loudly and regularly warning that they stand ready for war, while Vladislav Surkov – a Kremlinite arguably second in power only to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin himself – has spent some personal time of late in South Ossetia, the tiny (Russian-allied) breakaway province of Georgia that was the proximate cause for the 2008 war.
    Biden’s comments are only one possible reason why the war drums are being beaten; there are others.
    The United States appears to be sliding toward conflict with Iran, and Russia has invested no small amount of political capital in bolstering the Iranians against the Americans. In Moscow’s mind, a United States fixated on the Persian Gulf is one that cannot fixate on Russia, and a United States that is at war with Iran is one that cannot stop Russia from adjusting borders in places like Georgia.
    And of course, there is Georgia itself. President Mikhail Saakashvili is no stranger to dramatic performances, and as the leader of a fractured country with next to no military capability (even before Georgia’s defeat in August 2008), he has few means of countering Russia at all. One option is to provoke a crisis with his northern neighbor in the hopes that the West will ride to the rescue. Considering what happened a year ago, this is perhaps not the wisest strategy, but it is not as though Saakashvili – personally or as Georgia’s president – has a wide array of options to peruse.
    War is not a process that Russia would choose carelessly, even if it would be a very, very easy war to win. What simply doesn’t fit in current circumstances is the boldness with which the Russians are acting. They have all but stated that war is imminent, they are backing the Iranians to the hilt, sending top Kremlin strategists to the region to coordinate with allies, and have even resumed nuclear submarine patrols off the east coast of the United States. The Russians have a well-earned reputation for being far more circumspect than this in the shell game that is international relations. It is almost as if all of this is simply noise designed to keep the Americans off balance while something else, something no one is watching, is quietly put into play.
    STRATFOR doesn’t have a good answer for this. All we can say is that the Russians are up to something – and if it is not a war, it is something big enough that a war would seem to make a good distraction. Now that bears some watching.