Only the airport remains under the control of the national government of Ukraine. Aided by Russian volunteers crossing the border through "humanitarian corridors" opened by separatist rebels, the Ukrainian civil war has gone live in Luhansk. A Ukrainian jet fighter launched S-8 air-to-surface missiles near the regional administration building killing eight people on Monday. A string of 13 craters begins near a park jungle gym and ends in the blasted building wall. The new Ukrainian government blamed the deaths on rebels misfiring an anti-aircraft missile. However, there were eyewitness to the incident who escaped unharmed and who corroborate the airborne attack. Armed separatist are occupying government administration buildings in the eastern third of Ukraine. The main border guard base in Mirny district surrendered to rebels at 4am Wednesday. Ukraine's interior minister told a western reporter he was "aware Luhansk is falling but there is not much we can do--Luhansk is a big problem." A member of the "Light Rus", volunteers from Moscow who traveled through a cross-border corridor said, "Luhansk has already won the war against Kiev. The locals will not forgive an air strike on civilians." Thrity-three Russian citizens were killed in fighting for Donetsk's airport; there bodies were returned to Russia. Now, a secure ground route from Russia to Luhansk exists for rebel fighters, obviating the need to re-capture the local airport. Moscow has already expressed its willingness to help separatists continue their fight to join Russia.Any conversation between the heads of former allies at the upcoming D-Day commemorations on Friday will definitely be strained. Nevertheless, President Putin told the French media recently he is willing to talk with "all his partners including President Obama", but adding ultimately a dialogue "is his choice.". He also said that if the United States has evidence of Russian troops in Ukraine they should present it to the world, referring to the US Secretary of State "waving a test tube with some powder at the United Nations Security Council" when the US wanted UN authorization to invade Iraq. He characterized presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's remark he was trying to redraw borders like Hitler as ungraceful and extreme. Allowing it was "better not to argue with women", he later suggested, "maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman." Vladimirovich is definitely old school, and US feminists will definitely blow a fuse over that rejoinder! Add to her insult the Current Occupant's reference to his "dark tactics" while parading in front of the flags of former socialist republics, and it is the "evil empire" all over again. One has to ask, "which side moved the contest east to the borders of Russia? Last summer, Moscow made a proposal for a joint Russian, EU and US rescue of Ukraine's moribund economy. The offer was rejected by the Americans and Europeans who want Ukraine solidly in the corporatist camp. It is time to return to Russia's proposal before the shooting makes compromise impossible.
Undoubtably, Ukraine's disintegration is attributable in part to the geopolitical struggle between Russia and the west [see map]. Former President Yanukvych refused to sign the EU association agreement for significant economic reasons. The western carrot, an IMF loan, came with severe austerity conditions similar to the ones that caused riots in southern Europe. His refusal upset corporatists' and bourgeois' plan for western economic integration. The financially frustrated found natural allies in neofascist nationalists. The new Kiev government has installed seven members of the neo-nazi Svoboda Party in its cabinet. This is the party that proudly claims historical ties to Stepan Bandera*, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) leader and Nazi collaborator, and which the European Union at one time said was incompatible with its fundamental values and principles. The national army is so reluctant to kill fellow Ukrainians, the Kiev government called upon the fascist paramilitary Right Sector to join its "anti-terror" operation against ethnic Russian separatists in the east. The specter of fascist pogrom can be seen in the Odessa massacre. Unconfirmed reports say that the majority of the 32 people who died in the torching of the Odessa House of Trade Unions on May 2nd were chloroformed. The UN is investigating the allegations and an official report is due June 17th. Cookies anyone?
*Banderites were vehement Jew haters on par with the Nazis. They killed four thousand Jews of Lviv (Lvov) in a few days after its capture by the Germans. By the time Soviet troops retook Lviv only 200 to 300 Jew survived. Lvov's 1939 Jewish population was 200,000 including 100,000 Jewish refugees from Poland. One of the largest atrocities of the war was committed at Babi Yar by Germans and German "auxiliaries" under the command of Einsatsgruppe C. The auxiliaries were Ukrainian Hilfspolizei and the Abwehr battalion Nichtigall, both Banderite organizations. In two days over 33,000 Kiev Jews were shot in small groups. In total an estimated 100,000 Jews, communists, Soviet POWs, and Roma were killed at the ravine. The Ukrainian Waffen SS is responsible for the murder of perhaps as many as 500,000 people during the war. Typical of the collaboration between fascists and the victorious allies, the British used Bandera to run agents into Ukraine under the Soviet Union. When his own party, the OUN-B, ousted him because of his dictatorial tendencies the British dropped him. In 1956 he was picked by the penetrated West German intelligence (BND) to run a new set of operatives from West Germany. On October 14, 1959 after lunch with senior BND officials to discuss expansion of their operation in Ukraine, KGB assassinated Bandera in his apartment building. Both Victor Yushenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, prominent present day Ukrainian politicians, were protéges of Slava Stetsko, wife of Bandera's hand-picked Premier, Yaroslav Stetsko.