The Post 2013 Smouldering Fire Along the Western-Eastern Roman Empire Border

Required Reading:

Eastern Europe Long Term Geo Political Dynamics
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/09/western-eastern-roman-empire-101.html

Plus various Continuing Counter Reformation articles from late 2013 and into 2014 about  this part of the world.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-clashes-rage-third-day-sparking-eu-concern-151326291.html

excerpt-

Avdiivka (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels were on Tuesday locked in fighting for a third straight day at a flashpoint town that left thousands shivering without power and sparked renewed EU concern about security in its backyard.

The industrial hub of Avdiivka came under an unexpected assault Sunday from insurgents seeking to wrest back territory controlled by Kiev during the nearly three-year war.

The clashes have claimed the lives of at least 13 civilians and fighters on both sides since Sunday -- the worst outburst of violence since the two sides agreed a new truce on December 23.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko underscored the urgency of the situation by cutting short a visit to Berlin on Monday and convened an emergency meeting of his National Security and Defence Council.

Poroshenko is worried that Donald Trump's rise to the US presidency and praise for Russia's Vladimir Putin may add fuel to a conflict that began shortly after Ukraine's 2014 ouster of its Moscow-backed leader and tilt toward the West.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the Kremlin was "extremely worried" but had "reliable information" that renegade units of pro-Kiev fighters were in fact responsible for the initial attacks. ...

http://www.businessinsider.com/moscow-will-get-the-message-us-flexes-muscles-with-largest-ever-deployment-to-poland-2017-1

excerpt-

In January, a US Army brigade of nearly 3,500 troops and 2,700 pieces of heavy equipment arrived in Poland in the largest deployments of US troops and armor to that country

The brigade came with a simple mission — integrate with the Polish army and deter Russia on all fronts

"Russian aggression takes many forms," Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of the US Army in Europe, told NBC News.

"Cyber, misinformation, threatening other countries, Russian snap exercises. We're serious — this is not just a training exercise. It's to demonstrate a strategic message that you cannot violate the sovereignty of members of NATO ... Moscow will get the message — I'm confident of it. "

The combine US and Polish forces immediately started training with tanks, artillery, and helicopters in an overt show of force.

Meanwhile, US soldiers in Lithuania had just finished a similar exercise. Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary will all also see US troops deployed on a rotational basis.
But the US assurance to vulnerable NATO states in the Baltics comes after a years-long Russian military buildup. Current and former US generals have expressed doubts about NATO's ability to deter or stop an outright attack from Russia, and a report from the think tank RAND Corp predicts that Russia could seize control of the Baltic States within 36 hours of a blitz-like invasion.  ...

... For now, US forces will train, eat, and sleep alongside their European allies, meaning that a Russian attack of any sort on the Baltics will draw an immediate reaction from the US.

 http://www.newsweek.com/after-putin-call-merkel-set-meet-ukraines-poroshenko-549978

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump’s frenetic day of phone calls that included herself and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Merkel, whose country brokered the maligned ceasefire between Moscow and Kiev in eastern Ukraine, known as the Minsk agreement, is fast becoming the Western leader most supportive of Ukraine’s struggle to integrate into Europe.

Since the start of the conflict in 2014, governments previously hawkish toward Russia, notably the U.S. under Barack Obama, have been replaced by leaders such as Trump implementing a softer stance. The approach within Europe itself is also threatening to splinter after rising French electoral candidate Francois Fillon described sanctions against the Kremlin as "pointless," Reuters reported.

Ukraine’s Poroshenko will visit Berlin to meet with Merkel as well as the President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.

Speaking to one of Ukraine’s major Russian-language broadcaster’s Inter, Klimkin said that during the visit Monday, the two leaders would discuss a broad agenda of issues.

"We had an agreement in early February to discuss a number of important issues particularly how to make Russia fulfill Minsk agreements, the security situation in Donbas, what can we do to free captives and how we can take make use of the Normandy format most effectively today," he said referring to the German-French brokered ceasefire.

Klimkin added that Ukraine and Germany were not only “political partners but friends” and that Kiev would seek German help in implementing anti-corruption reforms.

The Ukrainian minister also dismissed the possibility that Western sanctions on Russia would be dropped without implementation of the ceasefire, despite the Trump administration’s repeated suggestions that the U.S. may lift its sanctions to secure a Russian concession on another issue.

“We are going around in circles again on this issue,” Klimkin said, telling his interviewer the Ukrainian vision was simple. “First we discuss how we define the steps of the implementation of the Minsk (ceasefire) agreements. Then we get guarantees from Russia's fulfillment of the Minsk agreements.”

So far the ceasefire deal, agreed in Minsk, Belarus, has been hard to implement due to a fundamental disagreement about the nature of the Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine. Kiev treats them as de facto Russian troops, having captured soldiers not only equipped with Russian military issue weaponry, but also found to be either active or past servicemen.

However, Russia has continued to argue that the militant forces near the Russian border that have kept Ukraine’s vast armed forces at bay for almost three years are local independence fighters, who receive no military support from Moscow.

Russia Protects Established Big Religion, Revives Soviet Era Mandating Finking

"Yarovaya's Law" to Buttress Establishment Religious Monopoly, 
bans religious meetings outside established institutions
passed July 6, 2016
to take effect today- July 20, 2016

Irina Yarovaya

From wikipedia:

Irina Anatoleyvna Yarovaya (Russian: Ири́на Анато́льевна Ярова́я; born in Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, October 17, 1966) is a Russian political figure, Member of the State Duma from United Russia Party and member of United Russia's General Council. She was elected to the 5th State Duma of the Russian Federation (2007) and 6th State Duma of the Russian Federation (2011). In December 21, 2011, she became the Head of the Parliamentary Committee for Security and Anti-Corruption.^[1]

She authored or co-authored multiple laws, including the toughening of responsibility for violating the rules of holding rallies, tightening immigration, criminal libel and registration requirements for 'foreign agents' for non-profit organizations with foreign funding. In 2014, she sponsored a bill prohibiting rehabilitation of Nazism.^[2] Another law known as the Yarovaya-Ozerov bill required in particular that telecommunications providers record all of their traffic and keep the record for three years (later shortened to six months). The first version of this counter-terrorism bill would have made it a criminal offense to fail reporting suspicious activities potentially linked with terrorism. This bill's language was subsequently watered down by the Duma.^[3][4]

Yarovaya is generally considered a reactionary, in that she sponsored laws limiting civil freedom in the name of security.^[5] She was accused of producing low-quality bills possibly contradicting the Constitution of Russia.^[4][6][7]

From 1997 to 2007, she was a member in Yabloko Party, and was elected to the Council of People's Deputies of Kamchatka Oblast, where she served as head of the Kamchatka Regional Council, member of the Party's Central Bureau and Vice-Chairman of Yabloko.^[8]

On 27 June 2016, she was included to the election list of United Russia as a frontrunner in the Far East region, which virtually guarantees that she is going to be elected to the 7th State Duma in September 2016.^[9]

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/calls.to.prayer.as.russias.evangelicals.face.draconian.restrictions/90386.htm

From Human Rights Watch

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/23/draconian-law-rammed-through-russian-parliament

Tanya Lokshina

Russia Program Director TanyaLokshina

UPDATE (June 24, 2016): The revised bill was finally published on the morning of June 24, the day of the voting. The lawmakers did eliminate the provisions on stripping Russian nationals of their citizenship. The other deeply problematic draft amendments described below remained practically unchanged. At around 12.30 pm the State Duma of the Russian Federation passed the "Yarovaya Law."

On June 24, its very last day in session before the summer break and the September parliamentary election, the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament is planning a final vote – without any meaningful debate or scrutiny – on a set of legislative amendments that severely undermine freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, and the right to privacy – all allegedly in the name of protecting the public from terrorism and extremists, put all really in the service of government control. The draft amendments – called the “Yarovaya Law,” after their key author, Irina Yarovaya, a leading member of the ruling “United Russia” party – included numerous deeply disturbing provisions.

Foremost among them would have enabled the government to strip Russian nationals of their citizenship if they served in foreign armed forces, worked for an “international organization” in whose creation Russia did not take part (whatever that means) or were found guilty of terrorism and extremist crimes. These crimes included, for example, incitement to hostility against an ethnic, social or religious group – a deeply problematic article of Russia’s criminal code often misused and abused by the authorities with the aim of stifling dissent.

It is this “stripping of citizenship” amendment that caused a staggering media outcry when the version of the bill that would be put to the final round of voting was published on the State Duma’s website earlier this week. And no wonder. The Russian Constitution stipulates that, “A Russian Federation national cannot be stripped of his citizenship” – with no exceptions.

The promoters of the bill argued that the provision applied only to those who have a second citizenship or “were in a position to acquire” another citizenship. But their attempts at justification didn’t make it more constitutional or less incoherent.

Heated discussions around this scandalous amendment on the other hand diverted media and public attention from other extremely worrying provisions of the Yarovaya Law that require serious debate and evaluation for their compliance with basic human rights protections. They include:

- Requiring cellular and Internet providers to store all communications data in full for six months and all metadata for three years in the interests of the security services (who cares about the costs, not to mention the right to privacy);

- Making cryptographic backdoors mandatory in all messaging applications (who cares if WhatsApp and many others don’t even hold encryption keys… not to mention the right to privacy);

- Banning proselytizing, preaching, praying, or disseminating religious materials outside of “specially designated places,” like officially recognized religion institutions (who cares about freedom of conscience); and

- Reviving the infamous Soviet norm on criminal liability for failure to report to law enforcement authorities that someone else “has been planning, is perpetrating, or has perpetrated” certain types of crime, and yes,  just like in the Soviet times, it could mean that a priest, for example, will be under obligation to report on what he hears during confession. At the same time, it’s not clear what “planning” stands for or what level of knowledge needs to be proved to hold a person liable.

On the evening of June 22, the final draft of the Yarovaya Law suddenly disappeared from the Duma’s website. At around noon today, June 23, TASS, a pro-Kremlin wire service, reported that the bill is undergoing last minute revisions and that the provision on stripping Russian nationals of their citizenship has been removed. TASS supposedly has a copy of the latest draft – but has not published it. So, with less than 24 hours before the final voting on the bill, we really don’t have a clue about what got scrapped, changed, or added.

It is hard to avoid the impression that the alleged removal of the bill’s most scandalous provision may have been specially designed to have the public breathe a sigh of relief and skim over the fact that even with some improvements, the Yarovaya Law will still severely curb people’s right to exercise free expression and other fundamental freedoms in Russia.

And from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-yarovaya-law-religious-freedom-restrictions/27852531.html

By Mike Eckel

July 11, 2016

The legislation, signed into law earlier this month by Russian President Vladimir Putin, had already drawn scorn from critics in and outside of Russia.

Known as the "Yarovaya Law," the measure includes new police and counterterrorism measures that directly echo the sweeping powers wielded by the KGB to stifle dissent and repress opposition activists throughout the Soviet era.

But one largely overlooked aspect of the law is garnering new scrutiny and worry: tight restrictions on the activities of religious groups, particularly smaller denominations.

The new restrictions "will make it easier for Russian authorities to repress religious communities, stifle peaceful dissent, and detain and imprison people," said Thomas J. Reese, who heads the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal government agency that monitors religious expression around the world.

"Neither these measures nor the currently existing antiextremism law meet international human rights and religious freedom standards," he said in statement released last week.

Since the breakup of the communist Soviet Union 25 years ago, Russia's main religious faiths have flourished, with the largest denomination, the Russian Orthodox Church, now awash in money and believers. A law passed in 1997 officially named Orthodox Christianity, along with Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, as the country's four "traditional" faiths.

After Orthodoxy, Muslims make up the second-largest religious group in Russia, and state funds have been used to help build mosques from Chechnya to Tatarstan.

Other major Christian denominations like the Roman Catholic Church have also been allowed to operate openly and largely without restrictions, though the Vatican and Russian Orthodox leaders have clashed in the past over ownership of church property dating back to the Bolshevik Revolution.

But denominations with a smaller presence in Russia -- Protestants or Jehovah's Witnesses, for example -- have long been viewed with hostility from state officials and religious authorities, and many have long complained the 1997 law set up registration and administrative procedures that were onerous and expensive to comply with.

The law signed by Putin, which takes effect on July 20, is ostensibly aimed at tightening measures in the fight against terrorism.

Among its most controversial provisions, the law increases security agencies' access to private communications, requiring telecom companies to store all telephone conversations, text messages, videos, and picture messages for six months and make this data available to authorities.

But the law also puts more restrictions on religious groups' activities in the name of fighting "extremism," a term that rights activists have long complained is so broad and ill-defined that any manner of dissent or unsanctioned protest could be criminalized.

For religious groups, the new law requires people to get official permits through a registered religious group and bars things like prayer meetings from taking place anywhere except for officially recognized religious buildings. That would potentially forbid house churches.

Members of a religious group would also potentially be barred from e-mailing invitations to people interested in services, according to Christianity Today, a web-based news service focused on religious issues.

Violators could be fined, or potentially expelled from Russia.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Utah-headquartered denomination known widely as the Mormons, issued a statement on July 8 suggesting concern with the law, saying it "will have an impact on missionary work." Mission work, which involves members, typically young people, spreading information about the church, is a central precept for the denomination.

"The church will honor, sustain, and obey the law," said the organization, which has around 23,000 members in Russia. "The church will further study and analyze the law and its impact as it goes into effect."

Sergei Ryakhovsky, a Pentecostal church leader and co-head of an organization of Protestant churches in Russia, said in an open letter co-signed by him that the law contradicted the Russian Constitution.

"The obligation on every believer to have a special permit to spread his or her beliefs, as well as hand out religious literature and material outside of places of worship and used structures, is not only absurd and offensive, but also creates the basis for mass persecution of believers for violating these provisions," said the letter, which was posted on the Russian-language religious website Portal-Credo.

"This law brings us back to a shameful past," it said.

Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses rely heavily upon door to door proselytizing.

However, such a law would weigh even heavier upon the Amish faith, as forbidding holding services in houses would effectively ban the Amish faith, as it rejects churches, and holds services in the homes of its various members, while Jehovah Witnesses will have modest church structures and the Mormons having rather significant ones.

Indeed "Yarovaya's Law" is in complete contradiction with Acts 17: 24-25:

Acts 17:24-25King James Version (KJV)

²⁴ God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
²⁵ Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

King James Version (KJV) Public Domain

As such, this law can be viewed as an instrument of satan.

Russian Government Saw Opportunity For Ukraine Partition In Early 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/world/europe/russia-ukraine-crimea-annexation.html?_r=0

excerpt

MOSCOW — A memo drafted in the weeks leading up to the collapse of the Ukrainian government last year recommended that Russia take advantage of the chaos next door to annex Crimea and a large portion of southeastern Ukraine, a Russian newspaper reported on Wednesday, printing what it said was a document that had been presented to the presidential administration.

Russia has long contended that it acted spontaneously to reclaim Crimea, mainly to protect Russian speakers who it said were threatened, and to stave off what it suspected was an attempt by NATO to colonize the Black Sea region.

The report in Novaya Gazeta, one of the few often-critical voices still published in Russia, said that before the Ukrainian government collapsed on Feb. 21, 2014, the memo had already advised the Kremlin to adopt the policy it has since largely pursued in Ukraine.

The memo appears to have been drafted under the auspices of a conservative oligarch, Konstantin V. Malofeev, the report said. The memo laid out what it called the inevitable disintegration of Ukraine and suggested a series of logistical steps through which Russia could exploit the situation for its own good — steps not far from what actually occurred, though Russia has not annexed any territory in eastern Ukraine.

Sometime between Feb. 4 and Feb. 12 — while Russia was still voicing staunch support for its ally in Kiev, President Viktor F. Yanukovych — the memo predicted Mr. Yanukovych’s overthrow and suggested that Russia use the European Union’s own rules on self-determination to pry away Crimea and a significant chunk of eastern Ukraine.

Dmitry S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, dismissed the memo as a hoax. “I don’t know whether this document exists at all,” he said. “I don’t know who might be the author, but for sure, the document has nothing to do with the Kremlin.”

The authenticity of the document could not be independently verified. The newspaper did not publish any pictures of the memo or provide any proof that the policy described in it had actually been adopted.

The loss of Crimea had been a sore point in Moscow since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In addition, President Vladimir V. Putin suggested last year that much of southeastern Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Odessa, actually formed a distinct area known in czarist times as New Russia.

That talk faded as it became clear that only a minority of the population in and around just two cities, Luhansk and Donetsk, had any interest in joining Russia. But Russia has pushed for federalization of Ukraine, another recommendation in the memo, since the beginning.

In February, with the Yanukovych government teetering, the memo’s author recommended that Russia take advantage of the “centrifugal forces” tearing Ukraine apart to merge its east with Russia.

“The dominant regions for the application of force should be Crimea and the Kharkiv region,” it said, noting that strong groups there endorsed the idea of joining Russia....

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/03/putin-crimea-seizure-breaks-taboo-of.html

Russia: 3rd Pillar & Ace Of Rome

http://jesus-partisans-balkans.blogspot.com/2015/02/bishop-fulton-j-sheen-on-fatima-and.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/09/western-eastern-roman-empire-101.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/06/born-october-7-1866-1952.html

http://control-avles-blogs.blogspot.com/search/label/Russia

Putin Offer To Split Ukraine With Poland - 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rados%C5%82aw_Sikorski

In June 2014, Wprost magazine in Poland published transcripts of a secretly-taped conversation between Sikorski and the former Polish finance minister Jacek Rostowski in which Sikorski criticised British Prime Minister David Cameron and his handling of the EU to appease Eurosceptics in very derogatory terms.^[29][30][31] Sikorski did not deny the remarks attributed to him. The recordings were believed to have been made in one or more restaurants in the Polish capital, Warsaw, and recorded sometime between summer 2013 and spring 2014.^[32][29] In other leaked conversations Sikorski was reported to have said: "The Polish-American alliance isn’t worth anything. It is even harmful because it creates a false sense of security for Poland".^[33] He continued and said: "We will get a conflict with both Russians and Germans, and we’re going to think that everything is great, because we gave the Americans a blowjob. Suckers. Total suckers,". He also described the mentality of Poles as "thinking ‘like a negro.’"^[34][35]

In 2014, Sikorski labeled pro-Russian separatists as "terrorists".^[36] He also said: "Remember that on that Russian-Ukrainian border, people’s identities are not as strong as we are used to in Europe. ... They reflect Ukraine’s failure over the last 20 years and Ukraine’s stagnant standards of living. You know, when you are a Ukrainian miner or soldier, and you earn half or a third of what your colleagues just across the border in Russia earn, that questions your identity."^[37] According to Spiegel Online: "... [Sikorski] hopes that NATO and the EU will finally take off the kid gloves in their dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He wants to see the West stand up to Moscow and, if necessary, threaten the Russians militarily."^[38]

http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-offered-to-partition-ukraine-with-poland-2014-10

excerpt

Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly tried to tempt Poland into invading Ukraine with the goal of partitioning the country in 2013, former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told Ben Judah in an article in Politico.

According to Sikorski, who was Poland's foreign minister from 2007 until this past September and is now a member of parliament, the Polish Foreign Ministry first became alarmed over Putin's expansionist ambitions in the summer of 2013. The Ministry discovered that Russia was thinking about which Ukrainian provinces it could conceivably grab even before protests broke out in Kiev in November of 2013.



http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/vladimir-putins-coup-112025_Page3.html#.VFhrvhZTYWc

excerpt

The buildup to war actually began as early as 2008, according to Sikorski. He says Russian intentions were becoming transparent by the time of the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest. “This is where [Putin] gave his extraordinary speech saying Ukraine was an artificial country and the greater part of these lands historically belonged to Russia.” At the summit the Kremlin warned it would respond militarily to moves by Ukraine or Georgia to join the NATO alliance: months later Russian forces seized on a provocation from Tbilisi and invaded Georgia.

Ukrainian intelligence points to Russian operatives beginning to move into Crimea from 2012 and possibly even 2010. There have also been reports of Kremlin operatives openly discussing a project to annex the territory beginning in the summer of 2013. Sikorski says Russian intentions toward Crimea first began to alarm him in 2011 and 2012, when Putin began visiting the festivals of Russian nationalist biker gangs in the peninsula. However it was not until the summer of 2013 that alarm bells began to ring inside the Polish Foreign Ministry.

“We learned Russia ran calculations on what provinces would be profitable to grab,” says Sikorski, who claims that Poland became aware the Kremlin had calculated it would be profitable to annex Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa regions, while the assessing that the Donbass area currently controlled by Putin’s rebels would not, on its own, not be profitable to incorporate into Russia.

“By that time they were already doing calculations about how to seize Crimea as a way of blackmailing Viktor Yanukovych,” says Sikorski, “I know from my conversations and meeting with Yanukovych that he wanted to get the [European Union-Ukraine] Association Agreement. But in November 2013 something happened, something snapped. Based on our conversations, my sense is that it was something Putin told him in Sochi. I think that Putin had kompromat [blackmail material] on Yanukovych: we now know there was a weekly, biweekly truck taking out the cash [stolen from the Ukrainian budget] in a cash transfer. And I think he told him: ‘Don’t sign the Association Agreement; otherwise we’ll seize Crimea.’ That’s why he cracked.”
 
The Kremlin gambled it was playing with Poland’s own repressed imperial fantasies: Moscow is well aware that among the country’s bestselling novels is a historical fantasy of a Poland that teamed up with Nazi Germany to conquer the Soviet Union. Nor had it gone amiss in Moscow that Sikorski himself has praised the novel, on more than one occasion. This is why the Kremlin sent out feelers to Warsaw with a message from the speaker of the clownish Russian speaker of parliament, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, offering Poland five provinces of Western Ukraine. [at other times Zhirinovsky has promoted restoring the 1937 German-Polish border] The belief in Warsaw was this message was a deniable feeler from the Kremlin’s innermost circles. “We made it very, very clear to them—we wanted nothing to do with this,” says Sikorski.

Nobody knows where Putin will stop. But there is fear in Poland and the Baltic states that sooner or later he will try and conquer the rest of what he claims of what he calls “Novorossiya,” or New Russia: a huge territory stretching from Donetsk all the way to the borders of Moldova. “What I fear,” says Sikorski, “is that the Russians simply cannot accept the existence of Ukraine as a nation. They cannot admit that a separate nation exists. And if they want to go head to head against Ukrainian nationalism, well, then be my guest. Then Russia will learn that Ukraine is really a nation and face a situation of 20 years of partisan war. The Russians could grab the entire territory of Novorossiya easily, but they will have a rump Ukraine arming her, supplying her with weapons, seen by the whole world as the real Ukraine, with a sizable amount of the population supporting the real Ukraine. They could win the battle. But to hold down this enormous territory would require a force of 200,000 to 300,000 troops and a 10-year commitment. And they could never sustain it without permanent, national mobilization.”

Europe’s leaders think this is why the Kremlin will now freeze the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. But they are not certain. Many speculate Putin will try to carve out a land bridge to Crimea, others that he will cut off Ukrainian gas this winter. Whatever happens, it’s clear Europe’s foreign policy machine has been exposed as clueless. The EU and its member states have more than 57,000 diplomats around the world, but they failed to predict either the war in Ukraine or the Arab Spring. Bildt laments: “Most of the staff in the EU embassies can’t even speak the local language.”

The hawkish Bildt and Sikorski see Russia as a real threat to other European states, but most European leaders disagree. As one European foreign minister from a small eastern country explained the discord: “There are two kinds of threat assessments in the EU right now. There are those of us who see the only real threat to our statehood coming from Germany if the euro and the EU collapse, and then everything else, ISIS, Ukraine and all that, as being threats that only seem real on TV; and then there are those of us like the Poles, and the Baltic states, who really do believe that Russia imminently menaces their statehood.”

Still, Bildt and Sikorski are taken very seriously in Brussels: they have the ear of Europe’s leaders on all matters concerning Russia. Both see more Kremlin-instigated war in Europe through the decades ahead. “I have talked to NATO generals,” says Sikorski. “And they see what I see: that he is capable of pushing us to the limit. Of pushing us to the limits before we crack. I believe that Putin has us completely sussed. He thinks he’s facing a bunch of degenerate weaklings. And he thinks we wouldn’t go to war to defend the Baltics. You know, maybe he’s right.”

In the end, however, the threat from Russia could stem as much from its instability as its ambitions. Putin appears too entrenched to be toppled without bloodshed or a coup. European diplomats note soberly they believe sanctions cannot crack the regime: If they succeed, they will only make it more reticent to intervene abroad, at the cost of becoming much more repressive at home. This means the real risk is that Putin will attempt to repeat his success in Crimea every time his popularity begins to flag—and there might be an even greater risk of this now that the price of oil is falling, and with it Russia’s prosperity.

“Should it go decisively below $80 a barrel and stay there for two years he’s in trouble,” warns Sikorski. “But what’s bad for him is not necessarily good for us. He’s a gambler. And he’s got a lowered sense of danger. He’ll take these huge gambles because the real danger for Putin is his own life. He can’t let go. He can’t leave the Kremlin. Once you’ve spilt blood, once you’ve had apartment bombings, once you’ve sent death squads abroad, once you’ve had Georgia, Ukraine, all these mothers, and all the bodies of soldiers being disposed of from secret wars… You can’t just let go.”

Ben Judah is author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/vladimir-putins-coup-112025_Page3.html#ixzz3I4rdS9BA

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/10/putin-2008-offer-to-split-ukraine-with.html

Why Do Anti Westerners Hate Merkel?

Because she stands against the Eastern Roman Empire

Anti Merkel Italian newspaper 

weirdly cited favorably by the supposedly anti-Rome 'The UnHived Mind'

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/10/what-circus-3.html

Merkel is Lutheran, with her paternal family previously being Roman Catholic before converting during the 1920s.

Merkel is acknowledged as 1/4 Polish.

Her maiden name was Kasner, which is the Germanification of Kazmierczak.

Merkel's father was Horst Kasner (1926–2011),^[13][14] a native of Berlin.

Merkel's paternal grandparents were Horst's father Ludwig Kasner, a German national^[16] of Polish origin from Posen/Poznań^,  born 1896, and his German wife Margareta.

Merkel's paternal paternal great-grandparents - the parents of Ludwig Krasner - were Anna Kazmierczak and Ludwig Wojciechowski who were un-married, with Ludwig taking his mother's surname and growing up with her and her later husband Ludwig Rychlicki in Poznan. Thus, Merkel's earlier blood ancestral paternal name was not Kazmierczak but rather Wojciechowski.

Angela Merkel's paternal Grandparents - Margareta and Ludwig Kazmierczak

http://www.dw.de/the-german-chancellors-polish-roots/a-16698783

Merkel's mother was Herlind, born in 1928 in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) as Herlind Jentzsch, a teacher of English and Latin.

Merkel's maternal grandparents were the Danzig politician Willi Jentzsch (born 15 May 1886 in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, died 23 May 1936 in the Free City of Danzig), and his wife, married in Danzig in 1921, Gertrud Alma Drange.

Willi Jentzsch was a German teacher, school administrator and politician.and maternal granddaughter of the city clerk of Elbing (now Elbląg, Poland).  He served as chairman of the Danziger Beamtenbund (Danzig Federation of Civil Servants) and was elected as one of the eleven senators of the Free City of Danzig on 27 October 1926, but resigned on 1 November 1927 for health reasons. On 1 November 1927, he was appointed rector of the renowned Gymnasium St. Johann in Fleischergasse. In March 1936, he became school director in Danzig, and thus head of all elementary schools in the city-state, mere weeks before his death.  Gertrud Alma Drange, if I recall correctly, was of Kushubian-Polish ethnicity.  If so, that makes Merkel more then 1/4 Polish. 

Merkel's maternal paternal great-grandfather, the father of Willi Jentzch, was Wilhelm Jentzsch, a landowner (Gutsbesitzer) who belonged to a prominent family in Bitterfeld-Wolfen.

Merkel's maternal maternal great-grandparents, the parents of Gertrud Alma, were Emil Drange, (born in East Prussia, 18 March 1866, died 8 April 1913 in Elbing), and his wife Emma Wachs (born in Glogau in 1871 and died in 1935).

Emil Drange was a German municipal official who served as the city clerk (Oberstadtsekretär) and deputy mayor of Elbing and thus as one of the top municipal officials of the city.  His father, was a miller born in Lower Silesia, and his mother was a native of the Posen (Poznan) area.^[1]

Merkel is favored by Poles:

http://www.dw.de/the-german-chancellors-polish-roots/a-16698783

The Poles have developed a soft spot for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The reason: According to the largest Polish daily "Gazeta Wyborcza," her grandfather Ludwig Kazmierczak was Polish and is believed to have fought against the Germans as a Polish soldier in 1918.

At the time of the First World War, Poland had been divided and occupied by Germany, Russia, and Austria, and lost its statehood for 123 years. Merkel's grandfather fought to put Poland back on the map.

And also important Polish-Americans:

Chancellor Merkel's strategically tough-minded stance against Putin's anti-European adventurism provides the leadership that Europe needs.- Zbignew Brzezinski

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2013/11/merkel-ukraine.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/01/against-russian-imperialism-for.html

 http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/02/brzezinski-on-ukraine.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/09/western-eastern-roman-empire-101.html

Putin's Cancer Clock 2014-2017?

http://www.inquisitr.com/1562615/does-vladimir-putin-have-cancer/

Vladimir Putin may be suffering from cancer of the spine or pancreas, if some news outlets possess accurate information.

Despite the Russian president’s macho image as an outdoorsman and martial artist, rumors of this nature have circulated before in several elements of the overseas media over the last few years.

The latest health rumor has surfaced in the Page Six celebrity gossip section of the New York Post, which claims that the illness may explain Putin’s rush to invade Ukraine as well as changes in his physical appearance.

With regard to Ukraine, The Inquisitr previously reported that Putin allegedly tried to hatch a plan back in 2008 to invade Ukraine and divide the country with Poland, according to a top Polish government official. There is also growing concern in the Baltic region that Russia could eventually invade other neighboring countries with ethnically Russian populations, as it did in Ukraine.

This week, Putin leveled criticism at U.S. foreign policy for in his view putting the world at risk and endangering global security. According to the Washington Times, however, President Obama’s weak response as perceived by national security experts to Russia’s aggressiveness has emboldened Putin to push the envelope: “Russian military provocations have increased so much over the seven months since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine that Washington and its allies are scrambling defense assets on a nearly daily basis in response to air, sea and land incursions by Vladimir Putin’s forces. Not only is Moscow continuing to foment unrest in Eastern Ukraine, U.S. officials and regional security experts say Russian fighter jets are testing U.S. reaction times over Alaska and Japan’s ability to scramble planes over its northern islands — all while haunting Sweden’s navy and antagonizing Estonia’s tiny national security force.”

With regard to Russia’s aforementioned expansionist ambitions, Page Six scribe Richard Johnson noted, “Others say Putin has three years to live and wants to leave a legacy of expanding the Russian borders just like Peter the Great or Stalin.”

Specifically about the Putin cancer rumors, Johnson claimed that…

“News outlets from Belarus to Poland have reported for months that the Russian strongman has cancer of the spinal cord. But my sources say it’s pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal forms of the disease. Putin is allegedly being treated by an elderly doctor from the old East Germany whom Putin met decades ago while serving in Dresden for the KGB. The doctor has been trying various treatments including steroid shots, which would explain Putin’s puffy appearance…”

Writing earlier this year for the U.K. website The Week, intelligence analyst and British military vet Crispin Black asserted that given the Russian leader’s influence on the world stage, the status of Putin’s health is important both domestically and internationally.

“President Putin is seriously ill, according to a number of seasoned observers of the Russian scene. Some of them suggest that he is suffering from cancer, perhaps even one of the most feared forms of the disease — cancer of the spinal cord, which might explain his periodically bad back…

What happens to Putin is important to us all even though his fervent nationalism and strong preference for ‘traditional’ (his word) sexuality have upset Western elite opinion…

Like many Russian leaders before him, Putin’s rule, although obeying the forms of the (elastic) Russian constitution, is basically personal. He is Tsar in all but name, and like the Romanovs, has appropriated a large chunk of Russia’s wealth to himself. Unlike the Romanovs, he has no obvious heir. If he becomes seriously ill in office, any succession struggle will be made doubly bitter by the extreme wealth as well as political power up for grabs.”

Black also observed that around Christmas time last year, Putin uncharacteristically freed one of his foes from after 10 years because the man’s mother had a terminal cancer diagnosis. “Some have suggested [Putin] is clearing his conscience.”

Do you think that there is any basis for the Vladimir Putin cancer rumors?

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1562615/does-vladimir-putin-have-cancer/#aoC437yhUrlaBkbv.99

Putin 2008 Offer to Split Ukraine With Poland?!

This quoted article makes no mention of just what border was suggested by Putin.

http://news.yahoo.com/putin-offered-divide-ukraine-poland-polish-ex-minister-210859509.html

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's parliamentary speaker, Radoslaw Sikorski, has been quoted as saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to Poland's then leader in 2008 that they divide Ukraine between themselves.

Related Stories

1. Australia PM vows to 'shirtfront' Putin at G20 over MH17 AFP
2. Putin orders troops away from Ukraine border Associated Press
3. Putin orders troops to return from Ukraine's border The Week (RSS)
4. China's Li in Russia for Putin talks AFP
5. Australia's Abbott Has Tough Words for Putin The Wall Street Journal

Sikorski, who until September served as Poland's foreign minister, was quoted telling U.S. website Politico that Putin made the proposal during Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's visit to Moscow in 2008 - although he later said some of the interview had been "overinterpreted".

"He wanted us to become participants in this partition of Ukraine ... This was one of the first things that Putin said to my prime minister, Donald Tusk, when he visited Moscow," he was quoted as saying in the interview dated Oct. 19. 

"He (Putin) went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow is a Polish city and why don't we just sort it out together," Sikorski was quoted as saying.

Before World War Two, Poland's territory included parts of today's western Ukraine, including some major cities such as Lwow, known as Lviv in Ukraine. 

Sikorski, who accompanied Tusk on his trip to Moscow, was quoted as saying Tusk did not reply to Putin's suggestion, because he knew he was being recorded, but Poland never expressed any interest in joining the Russian operation.

"We made it very, very clear to them - we wanted nothing to do with this," Sikorski was quoted as saying.

After publication of the interview, Sikorski said it was not entirely accurate.

"Some of the words have been overinterpreted," Sikorski wrote on his Twitter account late on Monday, adding that Poland does not take part in annexations. 

The interview could further aggravate tension between Poland and Russia, already at odds over the Ukrainian crisis and Poland's arrest of two men suspected of spying for Moscow. 

Neither Poland's Foreign Ministry nor Russian officials were immediately available to comment.

"If such a proposal was made by Putin then that's scandalous," Ewa Kopacz, who replaced Tusk as prime minister after his departure for a top job in Brussels, said late on Monday in an interview with public broadcaster TVP.

"No Polish prime minister will participate in such a disgraceful activity like partitioning another country", she said, adding she had not heard about such a proposal before.

Sikorski's account is not the first suggestion that Russia was seeking Poland's support in partitioning Ukraine. 

Following the annexation of Crimea, Russian parliamentary speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky sent a letter to the governments of Poland, Romania and Hungary, proposing a joint division of the country.

(Reporting by Wiktor Szary; Editing by Alison Williams)

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/03/russian-duma-member-calls-to-partition.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/04/ukraine-to-scrap-criminal-curzon-line.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/02/polish-kresy-re-annexation-now.html\

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/03/gorbachev-offered-riga-line-to-poland.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2013/12/ukraine-split-ghosts-of-polish.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-reincarnation-of-polish-lithuanian.html

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/02/kiev-founded-by-east-polans.html

Putin Upset About Failure of Scotland Independence?

Russian bombers Near Scotland As It Rejects Independence from U.K.

This is significant insofar as the Union of England and Scotland has been characterized as akin to that of Western and Eastern Poland, given the recent and on-going conflict in the latter - the lands of the East Polans currently called 'Ukraine'

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/19/russia-calls-foul-scottish-referendum


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11108857/RAF-Typhoons-scramble-to-long-range-Russian-bombers.html

Romanov Death September 15, 2014

The 2nd Dynasty of the Eastern Roman Empire - 1613-1917

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Romanov,_Prince_of_Russia

26 September 1922 – 15 September 2014

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Dimitri_Romanov

 17 May 1926 -

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/oldest-member-of-russia-s-romanov-dynasty-dies-at-92/507103.html

Nikolai Romanov, the most senior member of the Russian Empire's Romanov dynasty, passed away in Tuscany, Italy at the age of 91, TASS state news agency reported Monday.

The Romanovs, Russia's last royal family, was overthrown during the October Revolution of 1917. Tsar Nikolai II and his family were placed under house arrest before being moved to Yekaterinburg and executed by Bolshevik forces in June 1918.

Following the revolution, members of the tsar's extended family fled Russia to avoid the fate of their relatives, the Romanov Family Association claims in material published on its website. Eventually losing hope that their family's rule over Russia would be restored, the Romanov relatives settled across Europe and the U.S.

According to the website, Nikolai had formally presided over the family since 1990.
Nikolai's brother Dmitry Romanov reported the death to TASS, referring to it as "an enormous loss." Funeral arrangements have not yet been made, according to the report.

Nikolai Romanov, known among his family as Prince Nikolai Romanovich, was born in Cap d'Antibes, France, in 1922, to Roman Romanov and Praskovia Sheremetyeva.

His family moved to Rome before World War II. In 1942, the Mussolini government asked the 19-year-old Romanov to become king of occupied Montenegro, but he declined, he told the BBC's Russian service in a 2006 interview.

Romanov and his wife, Italian Countess Sveva della Gherardesca, had three daughters together. The family managed an estate in Tuscany before moving to Switzerland.

Nikolai Romanovich first visited Russia in 1992. Shortly thereafter, he founded the Romanov Fund for Russia which provides financial assistance to Russian hospitals and kindergartens.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipatiev_House

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_All_Saints,_Yekaterinburg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Romanov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_succession_to_the_former_Russian_throne

Wlodimir Put-In On The Katyn Massacre

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2014/06/born-october-7-1866-1952.html

… after the April 2010 plane crash that killed ninety six Polish dignitaries on their way to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences, but rather undiplomatic-ally added that the incident at Katyn may have been an act of revenge for Polish atrocities committed during the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. 

     While large numbers of Soviet troops died during the war, they were not executed as at Katyn, but were killed in battle.   Most of these casualties occurred during a dramatic flanking maneuver personally led by Pilsudski, which in turned the tide of the war and likely prevented communist revolution in Europe in the aftermath of WWI.  The Soviets, particularly Stalin who was personally involved in this defeat, never forgave Pilsudski or Poland for this heroic feat.  This animosity is apparent even today , decades after the fall of communism.

Unvanquished: Joseph Pilsidski, Resurrected p xiii