Eastern Ukraine: No-Fly Zone
"This is not just a local conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk but a full-scale war in the center of Europe. I'm certain the international community this time will pay attention and understand."He can indeed be certain the international community is now fixated on the events unfolding in eastern Ukraine with Russia's aggression and threats culminating in Moscow's annexation of Crimea, and its ongoing incitement and support for pro-Russian Ukrainian thugs happy to divest themselves of Ukrainian citizenship and determined to remove Ukraine's geography from its sovereignty, gifting it to Russia instead.
Vitali Klitschko, mayor of Kyiv
He can be assured as well that Europe and North American well understand what Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing in vigorously reasserting Russia's hegemony over an unwilling Ukraine, insistent that it has no wish to linger in the oppressive shadow of the Kremlin and has every intention of asserting its full sovereign weight as an independent country shed of the suffocating, confining restraints Moscow is intent on casting once again on its neighbour.
Suspicion and hostilities gave way to accusations and threats, and finally a full-scale insurrection that Ukraine had no option as a self-respecting nation other than to confront head on. With Moscow encouraging the rebellious ethnic Russian Ukrainians to declare themselves and the towns and cities in which they live to be fully autonomous, separate and apart from Kyiv and finally independent and part of Russia, the conflict was engaged.
With Moscow playing a double role; that of urging the pro-Russians in their game of separation, arming them with powerful weapons with which to confront the Ukrainian military and sending in their covert agents to act as Ukrainian rebels, guiding the rebels to what they insist will be victory -- and casting blame on Ukraine. This is a dispute that has drawn the international community in to challenge Russia's hegemonic plans with NATO promising assistance to Ukraine even while restraint on both sides is urged.
Restraint is the last thing on the minds of the pro-Russian rebels. Near the town of Grabovo innocent people have become victims of a monumental atrocity. Bodies lie strewn in a field with remnants of the passenger plane they had only a short time earlier been seated within on their way to a destination distant from Russia and Ukraine, merely a flyover. Rescue workers have no one to rescue; instead they gather up the dead and place them in tents. The destroyed plane was still smouldering on Thursday night when reporters arrived.
A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard. The plane exploded, crashed and burned in an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists. A Russian-made antiaircraft missile blew the plane out of the sky where it flew at 33,000 feet, according to both Ukrainian and U.S. officials.
A recording was translated by English-language Kyiv Post of a Russian audio with a separatist commander, Igor Bezler, informing a Russian military intelligence official: "We have just shot down a plane." Another call reveals a man at the scene of the crash stating that Cossack militiamen shot the plane down. A passenger plane, he affirms, the debris of which had no indication it was a military plane. Weapons? he was asked: "Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medical equipment, towels, toilet paper."
Vladimir Putin pointed out that Ukraine's government has created what he termed the conditions for the insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Where previously separatists bragged that they shot down at least three Ukrainian military aircraft. Whoever shot down the Malaysian civilian passenger craft clearly must have thought this would be a fourth notch of achievement. President Putin made no denial that a Russian-made weapon had brought down the jetliner.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was, he said, stupefied that Flight 17, bound for Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam with 283 passengers including three infants and 15 crew members was destroyed with that wholesale loss of life. The aircraft had been traveling a heavily trafficked, approved route. It vanished from radar screens at 2:15 p.m. local time, with no distress signal, about 20 miles from the Russian border.
"This is a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia", he said from Kuala Lumpur. "If it transpires that the plane was indeed shot down, we insist that the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice." Ukrainian authorities have declared the eastern part of the country now to be a no-fly zone.
And while American and European carriers have rerouted their flights, Aeroflot announced it had suspended all flights to Ukraine for at least three days with the exception of Aeroflot flights to Crimea.
"This is a tragic day in what has already been a tragic year for Malaysia", he said from Kuala Lumpur. "If it transpires that the plane was indeed shot down, we insist that the perpetrators must swiftly be brought to justice." Ukrainian authorities have declared the eastern part of the country now to be a no-fly zone.
And while American and European carriers have rerouted their flights, Aeroflot announced it had suspended all flights to Ukraine for at least three days with the exception of Aeroflot flights to Crimea.
 |
| Witnesses reported that Flight 17 broke up in the air near the village of Grabovo, Ukraine. The wreckage from the crash was strewn across farmland in an area as large as six square miles. |
Labels: Aggression, Atrocity, Conflict, Malaysia, Russia, Secession, Ukraine
posted by Pieface @ Friday, July 18, 2014
<< Home