Civil war in Ukraine

Status
Not open for further replies.

jouni

Senior Member
Joined
Jul 29, 2014
Messages
3,900
Likes
1,138
Hey Jouni, you starting an early Monday at your job here eh :taunt: :D



Last sentence should read more like: Only thing stopping Russia is the constant meddling of Western powers in Russia's affairs (for over a century), destabilizing and nearly disintegrating Russia each time; not to mention the enormous loss of human life caused by Western nations, thanks to spreading democrazy and fake liberal values. :thumb:
Still Sunday here. Just wanted to write something positive because our new Russian member. Btw I talked with Russian history teacher and she also confirmed Rurik was a Finn.
 

Razor

STABLE GENIUS
Senior Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
Messages
7,701
Likes
9,101
Country flag
Still Sunday here. Just wanted to write something positive because our new Russian member. Btw I talked with Russian history teacher and she also confirmed Rurik was a Finn.
Rurik was Scandinavian, give me (by pm) that Russian teachers contact, I'll teach her some history.
Nice try though. :thumb: :taunt:
 
Last edited:

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
Yes, Free democratic and developing Ukraine will be a role model for Russia to follow in the coming decades. Based on its people, size and natural resources Russia should be one of the leading countries in the world. Only thing stopping has been constant weak and bad regimes.


It's a metaphor.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
NYC Photo Exhibition Vandalized, Curator Attacked


A photograph from the 'Material Evidence' exhibition partially cleaned up after being defaced earlier today (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)


Photo of vandalism in the gallery (photo provided to Hyperallergic)


Some of the neo-Nazi pamphlets left by the vandals (photo courtesy Benjamin Hiller)

Three individuals were involved in an attack on an exhibition in Chelsea this morning in which photographs were defaced, neo-Nazi leaflets dispersed, and a curator assaulted with pepper spray, Hyperallergic has learned. The assailants objected to the Ukraine-focused section of a photojournalistic show on recent unrest in that country and Syria called Material Evidence held at 540 West 21st Street (formerly home of the Eyebeam Art & Technology Center).
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
Critique of another gem from US propaganda and myth-peddling website called NYT. Pardon the expletive.

Obama: US "Upholds Core International Principles...You Don't Invade Other Countries." Is This Real Life?

Dry that one out and you can fertilize the White House South Lawn

Your faithful Russia correspondent was minding his own business when he accidentally clicked on an link which he naively thought was a picture of a funny cat. Instead it was a New York Times article that nearly melted his brain.

There is no way to prepare for what you are about to see.



Imagine if Ted Bundy had evangelized about how "you can't murder people," and that The New York Times dutifully relayed this statement without bothering to mention that Ted Bundy was a prolific serial killer and necrophile, to boot.

Actually, our analogy is deeply flawed because Ted Bundy was never able to sanction people that he accused of murder. Also, Ted Bundy was duly executed.

We understand that we live in a post-post-modern world where there is no such thing as truth and objectivity is actually just a patriarchal form of subjective oppression. But come on, friends. This is becoming childish.

Your correspondent was going to type out a long, painful laundry list of all the countries that the United States has bombed/invaded/tortured/ruined forever in just the last twenty years, but what's the use? Instead we defer to Ivan Eland, a senior fellow at The Independent Institute: "During the post-World War II era, in terms of numbers of military actions, the United States has empirically been the most aggressive country in the world -- the vast majority of these interventions having nothing to do with spreading freedom and some of them even extinguishing it."

That's hippie think tank speak for "the United States is very firm on the need to uphold core international principles, and one of those principles is you don't invade other countries."

Do we now live in a M. C. Escher twilight zone on crack? We must have missed the memo.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
Zeman: Khodorkovsky is swindler and Pussy Riot are a pornographic group


Prezident Miloš Zeman
Foto: ÄŒTK

Translated via Google translation and corrected from Český Rozhlas, a Czech Radio Station, where the Czech President commented on Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot.

"I start from the definition of a political prisoner which was customary for the Soviet Union, when these people called themselves the so-called prisoners of conscience," Zeman said.

Such people are said to be in incarceration because of their political opinion and in this category, Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot do not fall.
"Mr. Khodorkovsky allegedly carried in the 90s plastic bags filled with millions of rubles, and that he obtained some assets just like Mr. Kožený, Mr. Krejcir, Mr. Pir and others did," Zeman noted.
"I have no reason to consider Mr. Khodorkovsky as a political prisoner, although it's a great excuse to be cleaned. Rather, I think it was swindler. And if something about the Putin regime should bother you, Khodorkovsky was imprisoned and other oligarchs were not, "he added.
Indiscriminately with then president also expressed about Pussy Riot. "In my opinion, this is a pornographic group that is at least guilty of the offense of rioting in the Orthodox Church, despite the fact that one member of the group participated in sexual intercourse at an advanced stage of pregnancy," Zeman said.
 

sgarg

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2014
Messages
3,480
Likes
986
Yes, Free democratic and developing Ukraine will be a role model for Russia to follow in the coming decades. Based on its people, size and natural resources Russia should be one of the leading countries in the world. Only thing stopping has been constant weak and bad regimes.
Ukraine has been free and democratic for last 25 years but still has not developed.

Russia is also free and democratic for last 25 years.

You live in history. You forget collapse of USSR.

Russia cannot afford to have a security nightmare of the size of Ukraine on its border.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
I have made passing references to banking cartels, and how wealthy bankers finance wars. Some of you might have observed me make references to George Soros, the founder of Open Society, in a not so generous manner. That is because I see him as evil. Now, let's give a face to this evil, and I will, with the help of the article below, explain why!

Please note, that there is also a subtle angle to this story, and that is how Vladimir Putin threw a spanner in the works of this mischievous warmonger, who wished to make money out of the blood of innocent commoners, as we are seeing in Donbass.


Soros (Net Worth $24 Bil) Demands $20 Billion From IMF For "Russia War Effort"


Worn out his welcome

Forbes claims he's worth $24 billion as of July. If its so urgently, desperately, necessary, why doesn't he just pay for it himself?

Someone who saw Soros at a public event recently told us that he looked completely ga-ga.

Brilliant at investing, even before he was senile, Soros was lousy at public policy and politics, making himself unwelcome at home and in most coutries of the world, but especially in Russia, with his meddling and lecturing. This might well be his last eruption before stumbling off into oblivion.


Here are the highlights from what the Open Society founder has to say about the "existential" Russian threat in a just released Op-Ed:

Europe is facing a challenge from Russia to its very existence. Neither the European leaders nor their citizens are fully aware of this challenge or know how best to deal with it. I attribute this mainly to the fact that the European Union in general and the eurozone in particular lost their way after the financial crisis of 2008.

Getting warmer:

[Europe] fails to recognize that the Russian attack on Ukraine is indirectly an attack on the European Union and its principles of governance. It ought to be evident that it is inappropriate for a country, or association of countries, at war to pursue a policy of fiscal austerity as the European Union continues to do.

Even warmer:

All available resources ought to be put to work in the war effort even if that involves running up budget deficits

And hot, hot, hot:

[IMF] should provide an immediate cash injection of at least $20 billion, with a promise of more when needed. Ukraine's partners should provide additional financing conditional on implementation of the IMF-supported program, at their own risk, in line with standard practice.

And there it is: the Russian "existential" war threat is, to Soros, nothing but an excuse to end the whole (f)austerity experiment (just don't show Soros Europe's latest record high debt load), and to return to its drunken sailor spending ways.

Ironically, this is precisely what we said would happen, only the globalist neo-cons were hoping the Ukraine civil war would become an all out war between Russia and Ukraine, thus unleashing the "spend your way to prosperity" Soroses of the world. For now, this plan has failed which is why ISIS was brought into the picture.

But it never hurts to try, eh George. And the one thing that is not mentioned is that the people who would gain the most from this latest IMF spending spree would be, you guessed it, billionaires like George Soros of course.

From George Soros, first posted in the New York Reviews Of Books

Here's the full, windy article: [READ MORE]
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
Sanctions Policy Is a Massive Fail. Hurting Europe, Helping China, and Isolating... the US

[LINK]



Edward Lozansky and Martin Sieff

Edward Lozansky is President of the American University in Moscow. Martin Sieff is a national columnist for the Post-Examiner online newspapers and a senior fellow of the American University in Moscow.

National governments and international alliances can sometimes be short sighted, petulant and self- destructive.

The ever–escalating programs of economic sanctions that the United States and the European Union are imposing on Russia are proving to be a classic example of this.

Of course they can, and already do, cause certain damage to the Russian economy, but if Western strategists believe that this will foment an anti-Putin revolt, they would be well advised to abandon their wishful thinking.

Not only do Putin ratings keep climbing up with each new wave of sanctions but, in addition, far from isolating Russia, they are driving it and China far closer in economic ties and strategic cooperation in a new Eurasian dynamic that India has made clear it wants to be a full partner in as well.


Clueless

In addition, as the recent Caspian agreement shows, Russia is also making new common cause with Iran and other Asian countries to counter U.S. and European economic and other penetration of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus.

On the economic front the continuing consolidation of the BRICS nations creates an important shift in economic and financial weight from the West when U.S. and Europe no longer can dictate and impose their rules of the game on the rest of the world.

It is indeed an extraordinary strategic fantasy to imagine that the United States and the EU can "isolate" Russia and China, which are not so lonely after all. European countries getting more and more frustrated with Washington's dictates and many South American nations, at least morally, are on the Russian side.


More popular, and more confident, than ever

Ironically a few European nations are far more dependent on Russia than Russia is on them: Siberian natural gas remains essential to heat the homes of hundreds of millions of European homes every winter. Even in prosperous, booming Germany, at least 300,000 well-paying industrial jobs remain directly dependent on Russian orders for their exports alone.

The more anti-Russia Western policy becomes, the more Russian and Chinese regional and geopolitical interests converge as Beijing realizes that Washington will not hesitate to cross any red line to promote its interests.

The bigger question is whether such policy will indeed serve American interests in the long run. The coming together of Russia and China threatens both U.S. security and two important global economic goals: the creation of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe and a similar Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Asia.

These initiatives would benefit American companies enormously. However the development of a Russia-China economic axis forged in reaction to the sanctions regime against Russia and China's frustration at what it interprets as U.S. efforts to "quarantine' or confine it in Asia, would create a political, strategic and economic power bloc that some European and Asian nations can not afford to ignore.

The fact is that an economically weak and troubled European Union, crippled by a dysfunctional currency and massive, structural high unemployment in France, Italy, Spain, and other countries, is too interconnected with Russian markets.

At the same time the United States for its part cannot afford to anger China too much since the State Bank of China continues to hold around one third of all U.S. Treasury Bonds in existence. Washington too runs enormous risks if it goes too far in angering and alienating Russia, which remains its crucial partner for global strategic nuclear security.

Policymakers in Washington and Brussels continue in the delusion that they live in an "End of History" world where their shared liberal and democratic values are bound to win – and quickly – over every alternative economic and political system.

However, the harsh truth remains that we live in a fragmenting world of 7 billion people where competing and very different centers of civilization and power have already emerged. It is the world predicted 21 years ago by the late American historian and geo-strategist Samuel Huntington.

In Huntington's multi-polar world, which, in fact, already exists, the West's sanctions on Russia will certainly not bring Moscow to heel over Ukraine. They will backfire, creating instead the very nightmare that Washington and Brussels policymakers should avoid at all costs: The creation of a world divided between different trading and strategic blocs.

Economic sanctions are not isolating Russia: They are isolating the United States and straining the bonds of the European Union. Those outcomes are already clear.
 

Ray

The Chairman
Professional
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
43,132
Likes
23,838
I had appended an article that indicated that Soros was upto his neck in the Ukrainian confusion.

Here is something more on this chap.

George Soros admits to funding the Ukraine crisis

George Soros told CNN's Fareed Zakaria over the weekend he is responsible for establishing a foundation in Ukraine that ultimately contributed to the overthrow of the country's elected leader and the installation of a junta handpicked by the State Department.

"First on Ukraine, one of the things that many people recognized about you was that you during the revolutions of 1989 funded a lot of dissident activities, civil society groups in eastern Europe and Poland, the Czech Republic. Are you doing similar things in Ukraine?" Zakaria asked Soros.

"Well, I set up a foundation in Ukraine before Ukraine became independent of Russia. And the foundation has been functioning ever since and played an important part in events now," Soros responded.
It is well-known, although forbidden for the establishment media to mention, that Soros worked closely with USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (now doing work formerly assigned to the CIA), the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Freedom House, and the Albert Einstein Institute to initiate a series of color revolutions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia following the engineered collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Many of the participants in Kiev's 'EuroMaidan' demonstrations were members of Soros-funded NGOs and/or were trained by the same NGOs in the many workshops and conferences sponsored by Soros' International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), and his various Open Society institutes and foundations. The IRF, founded and funded by Soros, boasts that it has given 'more than any other donor organization' to 'democratic transformation' of Ukraine," writes William F. Jasper.

This transformation led to fascist ultra-nationalists controlling Ukraine's security services. In April it was announced Andriy Parubiy and other coup leaders were working with the FBI and CIA to defeat and murder separatists opposed to the junta government installed by Victoria Nuland and the State Department. Parubiy is the founder of a national socialist party in Ukraine and currently the boss of the country's National Security and Defense Council.

Now that the billionaire "chocolate king" Petro Poroshenko is president of Ukraine, the effort to wipe out all opposition in eastern Ukraine will pick up steam. Poroshenko is a near perfect choice for the globalists and EU apparatchiks. He sat on the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine and collaborated with the IMF, Wall Street and the European Commission.

Following the murder and expulsion of those opposed to the IMF lording over the government and the people of Ukraine, Russia can expect further provocation, especially now that it has stepped away from supporting the resistance. The financial elite and their EU collaborators are determined to diminish and ultimately eliminate any challenge by Russia and the BRICS as these countries move to counter the neoliberal financial agenda.

"The buildup of NATO air and ground forces along the borders of Russia in eastern Europe and President Barack Obama's American power-influencing trip to Asia have a single purpose," Wayne Madsen wrote earlier this month. "The seen and unseen forces who dictate policy to their political puppets in Washington, London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and other vassal capital cities have decided to smash BRICS – the emergent financial power bloc encompassing Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa."

Poroshenko and the February coup leaders are now killing civilians in Donetsk as the effort continues to dislodge and eradicate "pro-Russian militants" and "terrorists," i.e., armed resistance fighters going up against Right Sector enforcers possibly accompanied by American mercenaries with the help of the CIA. Civilians are also victims in "rebel"-held Slovyansk and neighboring Kramatorsk as retaliation against resistance to the junta in Kyiv intensifies.

The military response with its overly fascist character, including the terrorist torching of a trade union building in Odessa by "pro-regime rioters" (i.e., Right Sector paramilitaries), can be directly attributed to the activism of George Soros and the hands-on approach of the U.S. State Department, various NGOs (which are, in fact, government and Wall Street fronts), and USAID, NED, and the malattributed "Freedom House," etc.
George Soros admits to funding the Ukraine crisis
I had checked out the details of the Ukrainian overthrow and so I did not quite buy the idea that the Ukrainian Govt overthrow was not a political move and extension of the US and the West and the grandstanding about democracy was a great deal bogus and disingenuous.

That is the reason why what is being said on this thread I find requires truckloads of salt
 

Razor

STABLE GENIUS
Senior Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
Messages
7,701
Likes
9,101
Country flag
I have made passing references to banking cartels, and how wealthy bankers finance wars. Some of you might have observed me make references to George Soros, the founder of Open Society, in a not so generous manner. That is because I see him as evil. Now, let's give a face to this evil, and I will, with the help of the article below, explain why!

Please note, that there is also a subtle angle to this story, and that is how Vladimir Putin threw a spanner in the works of this mischievous warmonger, who wished to make money out of the blood of innocent commoners, as we are seeing in Donbass.


Soros (Net Worth $24 Bil) Demands $20 Billion From IMF For "Russia War Effort"


Worn out his welcome

Forbes claims he's worth $24 billion as of July. If its so urgently, desperately, necessary, why doesn't he just pay for it himself?

Someone who saw Soros at a public event recently told us that he looked completely ga-ga.

Brilliant at investing, even before he was senile, Soros was lousy at public policy and politics, making himself unwelcome at home and in most coutries of the world, but especially in Russia, with his meddling and lecturing. This might well be his last eruption before stumbling off into oblivion.
Soros and the rest of the Banking cartel like to fund their activities by hiding behind deceptive names like "Open Society Foundations", "Human Rights Watch".
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
I had appended an article that indicated that Soros was upto his neck in the Ukrainian confusion.

Here is something more on this chap.



I had checked out the details of the Ukrainian overthrow and so I did not quite buy the idea that the Ukrainian Govt overthrow was not a political move and extension of the US and the West and the grandstanding about democracy was a great deal bogus and disingenuous.

That is the reason why what is being said on this thread I find requires truckloads of salt
Sir, most of the free thinking world does not buy the western propaganda anymore. The west has oversold this charade of "democracy." The desperation is evident in the deterioration in the quality of the articles popping up in the western press. The deterioration has been rather rapid, and also significant, that many articles in the western propaganda media have come down to the level of YouTube bickering.

Europe is facing a recession, and their squeals of defiance are getting louder. So are the various "corruption" rankings and "freedom" rankings coming out of "research" sources in the west that not many have even heard about.

It is to be see what happens in the next month. I am expecting a major militia push very soon.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
Soros and the rest of the Banking cartel like to fund their activities by hiding behind deceptive names like "Open Society Foundations", "Human Rights Watch".
The Bank of England needs to be thoroughly investigated. I will open a thread later, separately.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
It's Hard Times for Russia's Nationalist Putin-Bashers


  • Russia is sending more materiel to Novorussia
  • Key Novorussian commanders have declared full support for Putin
  • Strelkov has harshly rejected the right-wing criticisms of Putin
  • A life and death battle continues in Russia between the Eurasian Sovereignists (conservatives) and the Atlantic Integrationists (liberals).


This article originally appeared at The Vineyard of the Saker.

I don't know if you have noticed, but the usual crowd of Russian right-wing, nationalist, Putin-bashers is being uncharacteristically quiet these days, especially the ones I call the "hurray patriots".

Some of their blogs have simply been closed, others are apparently frozen, and those still minimally active are getting very few visitors (nope, I shall not name them here, both on principle and in order not to direct any traffic towards these cesspools).

They are all apparently getting tired of chanting their favorite mantras ("Putin has sold out!", "Putin has betrayed Novorussia!", "Putin is a puppet of the oligarchs!", etc.). The reason for that sudden drop in energy is simple: the Putin bashers have just suffered a series of painful political defeats.

Let's look at them one by one:


1) Russia has fully reopened the military supply spigot and done so quasi overtly (hence the huge convoy of trucks in the Donetsk city center, to make darn sure it is filmed and posted on YouTube). Whether this will be enough to deter a junta attack is unclear, but the notion that Russia has "sold out Novorussia" is now demonstratively false.

2) At the Valdai club Putin made his most anti-Western speech (transcript here) since his famous Munich speech in 2007. As Mikhail Khazin correctly interpreted it, it appears likely that Putin is about to deliver an ultimatum to the West about new rules in international relations. We will see that at his address to the Federal Assembly.

3) Several key Novorussia leaders have openly expressed their total support and trust for Vladimir Putin, including Givi, Motorola, Bezler and others.

4) Alexander Zakharchenko was elected by a landslide in Novorussia. For weeks the Putin bashers had told us that Zakharchenko was the Kremlin's man (for the sellout of Novorussia, that is) and that the people of Novorussia did not trust him. This myth is now also dead in the water.

5) Finally, the hurray-patriots have tried to lure Igor Strelkov to participate in a nationalist demonstration "for Novorussia" but, in reality, "against Putin" and he harshly turned them down. He said that while things are far from perfect, those who were calling for the removal of Putin were acting in the interest of the "enemies of Russia" and that they were trying to "set fire to their own home" (Colonel Cassad covered this - in Russian - here, here and here, hopefully the English Cassad will translate this).​

In other words, in a relatively short span of time all the lies of the Putin-bashers were proven false, the people of Novorussia made the "wrong" choice, and now even Strelkov has firmly condemned these pseudo-patriots.

No wonder they are silently licking their wounds now...

For the record, however, I want to clarify the following. While I do really despise these Putin-bashers for their intellectual dishonesty and for being, at best, useful idiots, I am not accusing all those who are critical of Putin of being Putin-bashers. There are real and objective problems in Russia and the Kremlin is zig-zagging.

As I have said it many times, there is a fight to the death going on between the "Putin people" (Eurasian Sovereignists) and the pro-Western "big money" (Atlantic Integrationists).

Putin is fighting on both fronts at the same time: against the US Empire outside Russia and against what he called the "5th colunm" inside Russia. True, he is winning on both fronts (his latest popularity rating are something close to a "stratospheric" 88% I think), but he has not won any decisive victory yet on either front.

The good news is that the both people of Russia and of Novorussia clearly understand what is taking place, and that the pseudo-patriotic arguments of the Putin-bashers are having very little traction with them.

This is not to say that Putin is some deity which cannot be criticized, but for criticism to be credible with the Russian and Novorussian people, it needs to be intellectually honest, factually informed, and well-intentioned, not just a mud-slinging campaign.
 

Ray

The Chairman
Professional
Joined
Apr 17, 2009
Messages
43,132
Likes
23,838
I have maintained that Russia is getting 'cornered' with every new push by the US and West to close in to the borders of Russia.

It is but natural.

The US was ready for a nuclear war over the crisis in Cuba and was justified to feel threatened. Now, in the same way, Russia feels threatened. Anyone would.

I also have become sceptical about the ' Freedom and Democracy' that the West and the US wants to bring to the world with the zeal of the missionaries of the days of colonisation and imperialism.

I look at all these shenanigans of both the US and the West and Russia purely from a geostrategic prism and the unending jockeying in Ukraine, through fair and foul means, is but a game to extend one's strategic space.
 

pmaitra

Senior Member
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
Messages
33,262
Likes
19,598
Why does the west hate Putin and love Khodorkovsky?



There's A New Book Out in English Explaining Why Khodorkovsky is a Murderer

Estimates are that Khodorkovsky has spent upwards of $100 million on western PR burnishing his image as some sort of latter-day democratic hero, but even ill-gotten gazillions can't wash away some unpleasant truths.

Written by the widow of an assassinated Siberian city mayor, it implicates ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the murder.

Vladimir Petukhov – the first popularly-elected mayor of oil-rich Nefteyugansk – was shot dead on his way to work on June 26, 1998. The investigation found the killing to have been a well-prepared assassination, coordinated by former Yukos oil company Vice-President Leonid Nevzlin and organized by former Yukos security head Aleksey Pichugin.

While a Russian court sentenced Pichugin to a life term in prison for three murders and four attempted murders, Nevzlin was sentenced to life in absentia, as he escaped to Israel to avoid the charges. Unlike his subordinates, Yukos CEO Khodorkovsky was not charged with murder, but spent 10 years behind bars for tax evasion, fraud and money laundering.
According to the widow, the killing took place following a rift between Khodorkovsky and Petukhov.

"I hold the view that my husband's assassination was only needed for Khodorkovsky," she states in the book.

"The Yukos executives wanted the mayor to have a secret deal with them to cover up the taxes of Yukos oil company," she said in Prague.

Serving as the mayor of Nefteyugansk, Petukhov publicly demanded that Yukos pay due taxes in May 1998.

Only about a month later, Petukhov was shot dead on the date that coincided with Khodorkovsky's 35th birthday.
As is customary, the west rushed to the defense of this criminal (link):
In June 2009 the Council of Europe published a report which criticized the Russian government's handling of the Yukos case, entitled "Allegations of Politically Motivated Abuses of the Criminal Justice System in Council of Europe Member States":[42]

"The Yukos affair epitomises this authoritarian abuse of the system. I wish to recall here the excellent work done by Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, rapporteur of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, in her two reports on this subject. I do not intend to comment on the ins and outs of this case which saw Yukos, a privately owned oil company, made bankrupt and broken up for the benefit of the state owned company Rosneft. The assets were bought at auction by a rather obscure financial group, Baikalfinansgroup, for almost €7 billion. It is still not known who is behind this financial group. A number of experts believe that the state-owned company Gazprom had a hand in the matter. The former heads of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, were sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for fraud and tax evasion. Vasiliy Aleksanyan, former vice-chairman of the company, who is suffering from Aids, was released on bail in January 2009 after being held in inhuman conditions condemned by the European Court of Human Rights.3 Lastly, Svetlana Bakhmina, deputy head of Yukos's legal department, who was sentenced in 2005 to six and a half years' imprisonment for tax fraud, saw her application for early release turned down in October 2008, even though she had served half of her sentence, had expressed "remorse" and was seven months pregnant. Thanks to the support of thousands of people around the world and the personal intervention of the United States President, George W. Bush, she was released in April 2009 after giving birth to a girl on 28 November 2008."​

Statements of support for Khodorkovsky and criticism of the state's persecution have been passed by the Italian Parliament, the German Bundestag, and the U.S. House of Representatives, among many other official bodies.[43]
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top