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The Cossacks Are Coming
Following the Ukraine government's most recent retaliatory escalation, which saw the death of some 50 people in Odessa on Friday, everyone has been waiting to see how the Kremlin would respond. For now while Putin appears to be merely biding his time until the various referendum votes take place in east Ukraine, quite confident they will have the same outcome as the Crimean vote to join Russia, thus giving him a legitimate basis to annex further Ukraine regions, some "independent" military units, according to local press, appear to be making their way into Ukraine: Cossacks, that roving group of militants (and sometimes mercenaries) who have been so instrumental in shaping the history of both Ukraine and Russia.
Several clips distributed earlier on social networks purport to show Russian Cossacks who have entered eastern Ukraine, specifically the town of Anthracite.
While one can't determine the validity of these reports (at least not yet), it is certain that both the Ukraine government and NATO will latch on to reports that Russian mercenaries are operating and supporting the eastern militias. However, what this will achieve aside from even more futile diplomatic bluster, is unclear.
And for those who are not familiar with the Cossack culture, here is a reminder from SkyNews:
Russian Cossack leaders have plans to cross into Ukraine to "rescue" Russian-speaking communities in the east of the country, after providing militias which helped Vladimir Putin's Crimean land grab.
Atamans, or headmen, of two Cossack communities, said they had traditional claims on the lands on both sides of the border, adding: "One day we will take them back."
But they warned they would expect rewards for acting as the Russian president's muscle.
Romanticised by the Tsars but crushed by the communists, Russia's Cossack communities are rapidly rebuilding themselves and have become a powerful symbol of nationalist fervour.
To many Russians, they have betrayed their martial roots to become henchmen for the worst aspects of Mr Putin's rule.
Most recently, they have been seen on the streets of Crimea, often heavily armed and sometimes drunk, blockading Ukrainian troops in their barracks and running road blocks.
They were also filmed whipping members of the band Pussy Riot when the all-female group attempted a street performance at the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
They also admit being close to other hard-line Slav nationalists, Serbs in particular.
Earlier this month, Alexei Sushkov was responsible for hosting a group of black-bearded Chetniks, Serb militia, in Sevastopol.
They serve under a death's head insignia and volunteered to help with Russia's invasion of Crimea.
"You have to have great personal discipline. You need to be religious and of good character to be a Cossack," he confided.
Mr Sushkov is not so much a bear of a man as a man who looks like he ate a bear, and the meal was a little wanting.
He says that when the Cossacks invaded Crimea, they brought their own weapons or picked them up from local authorities when they arrived. They also turned up with an armoured personnel carrier - or a "mini-tank", as they called it.
He spoke with passion about how he wished he had been able to help the Serbs fight in the former Yugoslavia and of how they were bilked of the province of Kosovo, which won its independence after a civil war with Serbia and Nato bombardment of Serb forces.
"Russia was weak back then," he growled.
On the outskirts of Taganrog, a few miles from the border with Ukraine, Cossacks demonstrated how they were reviving the tradition of horsemanship which was central to the Cossacks' culture.
Their warlike tendencies and citizen cavalry meant their regiments became a celebrated part of Tsarist imperial life.
The Don Cossacks ruled a vast Host on both sides of the River Don for centuries and were given a degree of autonomy from central government.
When many sided with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks in the early part of the last century, though, they were crushed by the Soviet rulers who snuffed out any potential threats to the Party's hegemony.
They are gentle with their horses, ride with light hands and are freely affectionate towards their mounts - kissing and cuddling them like beloved children.
Such tenderness is in sharp contrast to what they have planned, the details of which they won't share, in the neighbouring Ukrainian region of Donetsk.
"We are ready to go in whenever the time comes to protect our people," said Andrei Lovlenski, the ataman of the Taganrog Cossacks. "We are ready."
In Rostov-on-Don, a city of one million people and home to a vast helicopter factory, the Cossack revival is being driven by Timor Okkert, the local ataman.
He is a combat veteran of Russian conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Close to the Patriots' Sports Club where his Cossack disciples work out and learn martial arts, his offices house an impressive collection of swords and automatic weapons.
He led Cossacks into Crimea and is convinced he will be asked to go into other parts of Ukraine too.
"We've been used like this for many centuries," he said.
But what does he expect from Mr Putin in return?
Mr Okkert allows a brief sneer to cross his face.
"That's a rhetorical question," he said. "We're still waiting for an adequate answer from our government."
That's a warning - it means once unleashed, the Cossacks may be hard to control.
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As the granddaughter of a Russian speaking Ukrainian Cossack in service to the Czar, I think that it's worth noting that they recognize a Bolshevik coup when they see one.
Great.
Just what Ukraine needs.
Gypsies with AK74's instead of driveway sealer.
Putin attacks the Ukraine in about 4-5 weeks before NATO sets up their war games in Eastern Europe
US is ready to send in the BLM, and damn sure will if it has to.
BLM?
Buncha pussies.
We got the new 69th Gay Division.
Hup 2 3 4...
"We dont care what anyone thinks
They haven't met the Fighting Twinks
We will bring you Death and Gloom
And we'll redecorate your room.
"decorate your room"
That's frighteningly anagramable to: 'adore yoor rectum'
and excuse me for even noticing. Now I need to wash out my mind with soap and then make love to my woman
Just sent to the National and Foreign desk editors at the NY Times:
You smeared the pages with photos of Syrian sarin attacks - why haven't you done the same when the Nazis and Nationalists massacre innocent, unarmed, men, women, and children in the Ukraine?
Do you not understand that the internet has exposed your propaganda campaign for the lie that it is? What do you tell yourself when you go home, knowing you have lied to the world, and prostituted the NY Times for the CIA/NATO/ EU/IMF/Obama propaganda machine?
Go ahead, look at these photos. I provided you with a photo of a Right Sector supporter filling Molotov cocktails - exactly where do you think the petrol bombs came from - that photo is the answer - and not running it and not dealing with its reality makes the blood flow onto your hands.
Now the Ukrainian junta tells the world it is going to send "special forces" officially labeled as Kiev-1, which are "civic activists" from Kiev, to take over policing duties in Odessa. Everyone in the world - with the exception of you apparently - knows these are Nazis and Nationalists - they are ruthless butchers who will hunt down Russians fist - then the Jews. Or maybe you forgot who manned the Death Camps for Hitler. Oh yeah - it was Ukrainian Nationalists!!
Because of your untruthful presentation of the unelected, Kiev junta, these Jew-killers will reign again. Even more blood - this time the blood of Jews - will be on your hands.
I guess you have to be a psychotic sociopath to be a desk editor at the NYT - no guilt, no shame, no conscience.
How else can anyone explain the way you've covered for the murderers in Odessa - and will no doubt cover for the soon-to-be Holocaust coming to Ukraine with the arrival of Kiev-1.
"How Neo-Nazi Thugs Supported by Kiev Regime Killed Odessa Inhabitants. Photographic Evidence"
http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-neo-nazi-thugs-supported-by-kiev-regime-killed-odessa-inhabitants-photographic-evidence/5380504
Kenneth
Thanks for including this link to the evidences of murder in Odessa from the Kiev criminals. But you’ll get no support from me on your use of this tragedy to promote the Zionist world agenda linking Jews as the victims of atrocities when they actually played the major role in overturning the elected Ukrainian government, and are the lever that has brought the United States into the wars of aggression in the Middle East.
How tragic that you would use these Odessa people’s extinguished lives for ulterior purposes.
JR:
Thank you for your reply.
There are more than a few Jews who are very knowledgeable about the events in the Ukraine who completely disapprove of the actions taken by Nuland, et. al.
They see the western propaganda and are repulsed by the role the MSM is lying to the world. The know the history, and see that this is a contrived situation brought about by some Jews who have assimilated into the bankster culture.
The problem with racist generalizations is that they act as if 100% of the people tossed under a label are lock-step with the description of that label. That is a lie.
There are some who are whores to the banksters, and some who see the banksters for what they are, and oppose them. The overwhelming bulk of Jews are being, and will continue to be, crushed by the War of the Oligarchs.
The idiocy of picturing anyone who is Jewish as a beneficiary of the Oligarch’s psychotic greed and lust for control is self-evident; there are Jews at all levels – classes if you will – and those outside the .01% of society will be destroyed just as will any Gentile.
We are individuals, and people who rely on generalized labels to define the world are far from being critical thinkers.
-30-
Jews may be individuals, but they act cohesively as a group with largely a single message to the world. And, btw, using the fire in Odessa to connect to the Jewish story is exactly what we’re talking about, i.e., the use of a tragedy to recall events that depict Jews as innocent, constant victims in the world, even when their revolutionary goals generally result in attempts to overturn their host countries’ cultures. As evidence of the latter, I submit for your consideration the 1965 Immigration Act, reorienting America's European culture to a Third World welfare society, that dilutes representation in the family-oriented, individualistic Christian culture, in which Jews claim they will feel "safer."
In short, Israel, the Neocons and the monopolistic Jewish-dominated American media use the Zionist explanation and Jewish power every time in referring to the Nazis and Hitler without ever revealing the role the Jews played in Bolshevism and its critical role in the causes of WWII. It is always presented from a one-sided viewpoint.
"There are more than a few Jews who are very knowledgeable about the events in the Ukraine who completely disapprove of the actions taken by Nuland,"
Yup, their clamor is absolutely deafening :/
About as vociferous as a turnip
day saids on der fox news actuality channel dat der cussacks are dangeus and like hiltler once day raped ukrainia day come for der america heartlands.
i tells ya i cants protect der homeland from bein raped and pillaged by dem dam scarey fellas i not a coward just sickly.
i got flat feet and athletes neck
I would suggest, that, to differentiate themselves from the author, everyone can educate themselves about Cossacks. It makes no difference. Isn't this what used to be called, "yellow journalism" ? We can be sure not a single Cossack would take time to comment on this.... "journalist" . Using a barn-sized brush to paint portraits of people never yields a very good likeness.
I consider myself truly fortunate I've never been in a situation so fucked-up I've said, "Thank God the Cossacks are coming."
It would be tragic to see Horsemen from the 18th Century charging into machine gun fire. We last saw this in 1914.
Otherwise, I see no relevance to "Cossack" as a military unit that has no horse cavalry. What would it be to be Cossack with no horse?!
Sort of like calling up the Swedish Vikings and seeing a group of bearded men with shields and swords charging from wooden boats...pure tragedy in the modern era.
Did you know that people are nearly always more freaked-out if a robber pulls a large blade out as opposed to a gun? He'll hand over his money either way, but that blade scares him more than the gun does.
It's psychological. If your village is stormed by military in cammo with guns, it's going to be a bad day. But if the force consists of a bunch of wild men hacking at you with axes, your gonna shit your pants big time.
You're more likely to see Icelandic bankers armed with contracts for investment schemes.
The Cossacks whipped Pussy Riot in public?
Mama, bake a cake for those men!
I wonder who will ride to the rescue of God-fearing hard working Americans who are trapped in a country with a crumbling Constitution where liberalism, socialism, and Fascism control the media, the courts, and the politicians.
That's pretty much my position on book clubs.
Perfect!
Czarist Russia, in it's later years, depended heavily on Cossacks for internal security. The actual history of how various Cossack communites developed is complicated and go way back in the history of Russian frontier communites, especially on the open plains of Ukraine.
It is only natural that these historical elements would emerge to recapture their culture after the great Soviet experiment in supression of all human qualites.
The tradition of getting into the fight along frontire regions and the internal security of the Russian state makes the Cossacks the prefect element to get involved in fighting the West's drive to the East. After giving it long thought, I can only call today's Ukrainian political situation what it clearly is. It is an attempt to use a natural ally, the West Ukrainian non-orthodox peoples as an agent to create conditions for a German/NATO/USA drive to the East, just as Hitler sought to conquer these lands, a new, and much more clever West is hoping to kill and conquer their way to total control of the traditional Russian regions of East Ukraine, that the foreign agents of the USSR, Stalin, a Georgian and Kruschev, a Ukrainian gave as gifts to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine.
The German and NATO move is prefect militarily giving Germany lands they have always wanted at the expense of Russia, and also gives the Communist ditatorship in Brussels a chance to bring back the Soviet System of foreign domination to the East Ukraine, again at Russian expense.
The war is on in every sense. The fighting will determine who wins, thus Cossacks will have a say in the NATO drive east. Or as a famous post war history book written by a German was titled "Hitler Moves East". As in 1941, the gun will decide this issue. Not Obama and not Putin, but the guns on the ground in Ukraine.
This civil war is one of a long series of nation destroying western attacks. Iraq today is a pefect example of the destroyer of nations, i.e Washington DC in action. Libya, have a look at that state. Or Afghanistan, after over a decade of military victories and many battles honors, Taliban owns 90% of the place, and the US is pulling it's main battle forces out, leaving a rapid reaction force of about one infantry division and another division soze force of paid contractors. Pakistan is on the list for destruction, as are most South American states that Washington can influence with funding fascist legions. Ukraine is simply one of many. but the msot dangerous power play. It puts us all at risk of nuclear war, just so a tiny elite in the Washington DC power center and their allies in Israel can spread their power. Our money, our lives, and they get to play with them like toys, while using their media to spread an endless stream on lies about the great good that Washington is spreading across America and the world. Like NSA, a global force for good, or CIA another global force for freedom and prosperity,
Jack, excellent appraisal in every way!
AIPAC's Cossacks will protect Amerika.
...with one hand, and take our wallets with the other.
"They serve under a death's head insignia and volunteered to help with Russia's invasion of Crimea."
Did I miss something? When did Russia invade Crimea?
... and the transgendered Nato forces are positively breathlessly waiting to engage! ;)
I'm not sure a referendum in eastern Ukraine makes Russian annexation legitimate. It seems clear that the mechanism by which the current government of Ukraine was installed did not quite pass constitutional muster, but that does not make any and every individual local action in opposition legal, constitutional, legitimate, moral, or otherwise acceptable. It also does not make invasion by a foreign country legitimate. Having said that, legitimacy has never been firmly on the side of the invader. The closest case to a legitimate invasion was probably during World War II.
Legitimacy in the eyes of the Western powers depends solely on convenience.
In presenting legal arguments to justify Kosovo independance to the UN, the US argued that a unilateral declaration by Kosovo is all that is required, and that there is no requirement for Serbia approval. That is exactly how it happened.
And there was no referendum held, in Kosovo or anywhere.
The quoted SkyNews article is complete garbage.
Zero Hedge needs to be more critical in picking material for it's blog entries. The stuff from FoxNews/SkyNews is really way below any conceivable journalistic standard and should only be used, if ever, for some kind of facetious purposes or to demonstrate low grade propaganda methods.
Sky News reduced its coverage of important economic/political/geo-political/global news and began focusing much more on celebrity "news", womens issues, latest health issues/fads and other assorted social issues, much of which cannot really be described as "news". They don't have "news programmes" any more, they're called "news shows".
Important real news is being ignored or covered in the most shallow of ways and stuff that is reported, is heavily slanted towards the government position. Reading out govt Press Releases dressed up as news has become the norm.