So .... what's up in the Ukraine?

While the world is focused on Syria and the invasion of refugees to EU from Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq and from every country where the USA and NATO have meddled, bombed, killed and uprooted those now fleeing to Europe - let's read below what's going on in the Ukraine.  Remember the Ukraine, the country that USA and Canada "brought out of Russian influence" ?  Yup, that Ukraine!
 
A good place, if you desire to know more on the situation in the Ukraine or on Russia, after reading the articles below, the The Saker blog has most of the nitty-gritty.  Here's the latest  report of Feb 4 from that blog.

Michael Jabara Carley writes
Ukraine: Still Smouldering Tinderbox (I)  

 The international situation is very dangerous. Syria seems to be holding everyone’s attention, but the Ukrainian tinderbox still smoulders. Fascists hold power in Kiev. They do not miss an opportunity to make provocative declarations or commit hostile acts against Russia or against Russian people in Ukraine. The Kiev junta is a repressive, murderous regime intolerant of political opposition.

Former Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera have been transformed into national heroes remembered in torch light parades evocative of Nazi Germany. Violence is exalted and tawdry fascist masculinity is openly celebrated.

Recently, Petro Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine declared that in 2016 the junta would retake control of the Donbass and Crimea. Whilst the fate of the Donbass remains uncertain, the status of Crimea is clear. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said recently, Crimea is an integral part of the Russian Federation and there is nothing to «negotiate» about it. In fact, the only way Ukraine can hope to take over Crimea would be in the aftermath of a Third World War won by the United States and its NATO vassals. To say the least, this is an unlikely eventuality. Not that a world war would overly trouble the burlesque Poroshenko, who still seeks to drag the European Union (EU) and the United States deeper into the Kiev junta’s conflict with Moscow. It is his lone hope for success....

....US intervention in Ukraine is a grave matter and a direct attack on the security of the Russian Federation. It is also an attempt to change the course of history and to break the bonds of culture, religion and kinship dating back more than one thousand years. The first Russian state was established at Kiev in the 9th century. During the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods Ukraine was a contested borderland and no-man’s land between Muscovy, then tsarist Russia, Poland-Lithuania and the Ottoman Empire. Before 1991 Ukraine never existed as an independent state, or did so only in Kiev for a few months in 1918 and 1919, and then as a puppet regime of Wilhelmine Germany or France. It is ironic that so-called Ukrainian «nationalists», then as now, could only establish their putative authority under foreign domination. Then as now, foreign powers seek to use a Ukrainian client state as a place d’armes or as a proxy to attack Russian power in Moscow....

Ukraine: Still Smouldering Tinderbox (II)

 Back in the 1930s, the Soviet government knew better how to deal with the Nazis. Fashizm – eto voina was a well-known Soviet slogan, fascism means war. Only after six vain years of attempts to organise an anti-Nazi coalition with the West did the Soviet government seek to buy time by signing the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact in August 1939, another example, incidentally, of sinuous Russian diplomacy. Come to think of it, one might even compare the Minsk accords to the non-aggression pact. «Play for time», the strategy seems to be in Moscow: count on a favourable turn of events, hope for a genuine implementation of Minsk leading to the end of fascism in Ukraine, and obtain security and real autonomy for the Donbass. If these scenarios sound like wishful thinking, they are, for the Kiev junta has not respected the Minsk accords for a single day.....