By Babylon’ 13, Cinema of Civil Society
10.09.2014
Re-posted by Voices of Ukraine
In eastern Ukraine, a festival called: “From A Country, into Ukraine” was organised by Ukrainian activists, inviting various music bands and a team from BABYLON’13. It took place in Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka, Ukraine.
The video has English subtitles if you turn them on under the “cc” button on the bottom right of the video.
By Wings Phoenix (Iurii Biriukov), army volunteer, Assistant Minister to Col. Gen. Valeriy Heletey–the recently-appointed Minister of Defense
10.07.2014
Translated by Wings Phoenix Eng and edited by Voices of Ukraine, used with permissions
This year of my life goes under the motto “Suddenly.” And not only in my life.
Suddenly the summer flew past and the nights became cold. And more – we became specialists in thermal underwear and other weird and unexpected things. By the sound [of the mortar], you can determine if it is an 82mm or 120mm [shell], and by the remains of the shrapnel – the type of munition. Details that nobody needed before, but that became very important, suddenly.
Suddenly, the harvest is ripe. Overripe, hanging in gardens and wanted by no one, but now become a favorite treat for soldiers, who have been brought to these holiday villages by a quirk of fate. Traces of the old and now forgotten peaceful life. Preserves, an old TV, an old VCR. We are trying not to break anything, not to damage property. Because once this is all over, the owners will return. We aren’t going to leave them a sudden surprise in the form of a destroyed home.
Suddenly, “Grad” [“hail”] shells are falling in the garden. In its path, a tree and an old toilet hut turn to fragments. The windows were shattered and it’s become cold. So we fixed the windows, fired up the stove, and were drawn into sleep. Sweet dreams, however, are not an option, they are dangerous – one needs to be dressed, have one’s boots on, remember where the cellar is. “Grads” often arrive, and always – suddenly. However, we are often rescued by the local mascot – a little dog of unknown name and origin. Affectionate, trusting. And a very light sleeper. A few tens of seconds before the next shells land, he’s running into the cellar – a sure sign.
Suddenly, our purring [Editor: by which he means snoring] Major was contacted online by his old friend who asked him to help her relative. She is somewhere in the US, and her uncle is in a tiny town on the outskirts of the Donetsk airport. And despite it being extremely dangerous, and we could have refused to help citing thousands of (very real) reasons – we went to this village looking for Lenin Street. Of course it’s Lenin Street. Even if a village had only 3 streets in it, one of them would be Lenin Street. It has no electricity from the end of May, no gas, no stores that are open. But there is a part of our army there. They are helping with food, fixing windows, giving bottled water, bringing bread. This is our sector now, so we are picking up the baton. We found this house, with some difficulty. And we found three local pensioners there. They have no relatives to evacuate them, they have no means by which to leave. So they stay. Water, food from the can, bread, and cereal. A group of “islanders” who are covering our butts have given these pensioners their readymade meals, although nobody asked them to. No worries, we’ll find some more canned food, and we’ll find some onions in a dacha garden. And we will help the locals more often now. They are very much afraid of everything, and rightly so. Only yesterday a mortar landed in their garden – yes, yes, also suddenly. Nobody was hurt, only the windows shattered.
Suddenly, someday, peace will come.
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Source, translation: Wings Phoenix Eng
Source, original: Wings Phoenix
By Donbas Battalion
10.12.2014
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine
The video and song are in Ukrainian (and if you want to translate any lines from it please do so in the comments) but it’s too beautiful and important not to post this now; the visuals are, of course, universal:
“Leaving”
The chorus is: “I’m leaving you today, Don’t wait for me tomorrow.”
The names in the video are as follows
(in order of appearance, followed by their call names):
Andrew Zhuravlenko -Voshmyi [“Eight”]
Vadim Antonov – Samalyot [“Plane”]
Vitaly Kostyuk – Ulybka [“Smile”]
Mark Paslavsky – Franko [from “Ivan Franko” the poet]
Gorden Kiktenko – Bang
Serhei Petrov – Tur [“Taurus”]
Serhei Shkarivskyi – Schultz
Alexander Romanenko – Skiff [“Scythian”]
Yuriy Boyko – Nemo
For financial aid to Donbas Battalion (who sustained many losses at Ilovaisk):
Locally:
Map Privat – 4405885822253933
Credit cards: http://goo.gl/rhVQ6h
Friends from abroad:
Support the volunteer organization Helping Ukraine (in Toronto, Canada).
All money transferred to them, goes to help our wounded.
By General Wesley K. Clark (Ret.), former Supreme Allied NATO Commander at the Atlantic Council
10.09.2014
Transcribed from video by Voices of Ukraine
Retired General Wesley Clark, who served as NATO’s top officer, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, during a thirty-four year military career, visited the Atlantic Council on a tour to promote the book he released this week, titled Don’t Wait for the Next War: A Strategy for American Growth and Global Leadership.
During this videotaped discussion, General Clark had the following to say about Ukraine, Maidan and Putin [from 48:23 to 53:25 on above video]:
“We have to understand that what Putin thinks is a different shade from the way we think. Putin’s a geo-strategist, that’s the way they’re all trained. So, it’s like: ‘This country, is it my country or your country, cause if it’s your country I want it, if it’s my country I’m keeping it.’ And that’s the way they operate. I mean, he bemoans the loss of the Soviet Union, now as a geo-strategist, he has to look at China as a threat; and, it’s the greatest threat, he knows it. I mean, (give you an example of this) when I was in Kazakhstan, the Deputy Prime Minister or the #2 in China, Wen Jiabao, came to Kazakhstan in 2005 and he was meeting people, he went to a reception, and he said: ‘How many people are in this country?’ Well the answer was like 15 million, you know, Kazakhstan is like three times the size of Texas. And Wen Jiabao says in passing, ‘I pity them.’ Sure, because they’re right next door to China.
So, Putin has to feel that. So if you were Putin and you’re a long term planner, what are you thinking? You’re thinking, ‘I’m gonna get my lunch eaten by China. The only way I can handle it myself is if I can be stronger. How do I get stronger? I gotta have Ukraine back. How do I get Ukraine back? I gotta pry it out of the hands of the West. He’s been doing this for years. He’s got control of the electricity grid, he’s got the gas, he’s got air defense, he’s got border security, he’s infiltrated the armed forces, the police, the governmental structure, he’s bought off the oligarchs.
And then he had to go back to his war plan, which he’s rehearsed. Zapad (West) 2009, Zapad 2013. Four phases:
We thought these plans were about terrorists coming into the Soviet Union, or into Russia rather, but they aren’t. They’re about Russians creating terrorists. So, they actually played out the war plan against us in Ukraine. So they sent the Spetsnaz in, and they were the terrorists, then they sent the GRU [Russian intelligence and subversive groups] in to build the insurgency up, then they sent the regular forces in to control it, and, in their war games they always use a nuke to finish it off, they use nukes for de-escalation. In other words, what they say is, ‘Ok, if NATO starts to come in, what we’ll do is we’ll fire a couple of nukes off, maybe hit, well we’ll hit Norfolk, that’s a favorite target, and maybe Warsaw, and NATO will be shocked and jump back. Well, he actually ran through his war plan against Ukraine this summer.
But, what he sees is, if he plays this right, in six months, if he plays it right, he’ll have Ukraine. He’ll have Bashar al-Assad in control of most of Syria thanks to U.S. air power, and he’ll have sanctions released because he’s been “good” in following through – it “hasn’t been his fault Ukraine collapsed.” He’ll have the 2 Mistral ships, he’ll be invited to the G20 Summit in Australia, and he’ll still have the Americans saying, ‘We have to have Russian help [video transmittal interrupted]. We’re in a political world, he’s in a geo-strategic world, and we look at him and say, ‘Oh, he can’t keep going, we’ve got sanctions against him. Yeah, he likes those sanctions, because what happens is the people that weren’t his friends say, ‘You’ve caused us problems. He says, ‘I will help you. I’ll give you money.’ He likes that, it gives him greater control. We saw Milosovec do the same thing in the Balkans. So, we know the sanctions, in some ways, they may hurt the economy, but they promote his control. And, we say, ‘He’s got big domestic problems.’ Yeah, he does; I mean these mothers don’t like their kids being killed in Ukraine. But, you know, if you use this correctly, it’s like the Chinese Hundred Flowers Campaign. So, let a hundred flowers bloom, let those who would object, object. And then [makes a scything motion with right hand as if chopping off the heads of a hundred flowers], they’ve identified themselves and you take them out.
So, there’s an entirely different mindset that you have to understand when you’re working against Putin. Or, with China: different.
Source, video: Atlantic Council
Source, article: Atlantic Council
By Boris Nemtsov, Russian politician
10.11.2014
Translated and edited by Voices of Ukraine
Project “Novorossiya” is [finally] closed. Putin ordered to return 17.6 thousand troops to their places of permanent deployment. They can now take a break and draw some conclusions. They [the conclusions], are terrible. Neither one of the goals set by Putin has been realized:
That’s how he beat everyone… First and foremost, Russia.
Source: Boris Nemtsov FB
Voices of Ukraine 