Russia sends tanks and troops into Ukraine, seizes a strategic town

Russian tanks and troops fired their way into eastern Ukraine on Thursday and seized a strategic gateway town on the road to the heavily militarized Crimean peninsula in a brazen display of support for pro-Russia separatists fighting Ukrainian government troops. Defense officials in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, said two armored Russian columns burst across the border into southern Ukraine at midday and rolled over the town of Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov, opening a new front in the 5-month-old separatist battle.

 The government’s account was bolstered by satellite photos released by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization showing convoys of tanks and armored vehicles entering Ukraine from Russia's Rostov region over the last two weeks. Also exposing Russia’s hand in the Ukraine crisis, a key separatist leader said in an interview with Russian state television that at least 3,000 Russian citizens, most of them military veterans or active-duty soldiers on leave, have been fighting in Ukraine on the side of the insurgents. “They are fighting with us, understanding that it is their duty,” Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, told Russian state television in an interview aired Thursday.

 The evidence of Russian troops and hardware on the territory of sovereign Ukraine undermined Russian President Vladimir Putin’s steadfast denials that Russia has been arming and instigating the anti-Kiev uprising, which has taken more than 2,000 lives since April. President Obama deemed the Russian military intrusion into Ukraine proof, “if there was ever any doubt, that Russia is responsible for the violence in Ukraine.” “This is not a homegrown, indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine,” Obama told a White House news briefing. “The separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia.”

 He said Russia was now “more isolated than at any time since the Cold War” and that the latest provocation would lead to a toughening of sanctions, which have already spooked investors who are pulling billions out of the Russian economy. French President Francois Hollande said the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine was unacceptable. “If the escalation continues, European Union sanctions will remain and could even be strengthened,” he warned.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ukraine-russia-invasion-20140828-story.html

Ukraine Accuses Russia of Invasion

Kiev Orders Draft Reinstated as Obama Rules Out U.S. Military Response; Putin Remains Defiant

Kiev and its Western backers accused Moscow of sending Russian troops and armor to fight alongside rebels in eastern Ukraine, dimming hopes for a diplomatic solution to the crisis and prompting the U.S. and Europe to threaten new sanctions. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko convened an emergency meeting of his security chiefs Thursday and vowed that "Ukraine can defend itself." He dispatched troops to meet the Russian-backed advance as his government ordered the reinstatement of a draft this fall—though it pledged not to send conscripts into the war zone.

 But while officials in Kiev called on Western capitals for support, including military aid, the initial reaction from the U.S. and Europe included expressions of frustration with the Kremlin but no immediate action. President Barack Obama ruled out a U.S. military response but said that the escalating incursion into Ukraine would bring more costs for Moscow. "It is not in the cards for us to see a military confrontation between Russia and the United States in this region," he said at a White House news conference.

 In an apparent sign of defiance, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an appeal to the separatists early Friday, hailing their successes on the battlefield and calling on them to open corridors to allow encircled Ukrainian troops to escape. He demanded Kiev end its military operation immediately. His appeal used the word "Novorossiya," a czarist-era term for lands including much of what is now southern and eastern Ukraine that has been taken up by the separatists. Mr. Putin first used the term publicly in the spring, but he had since dropped it from official statements until Friday.

 Mr. Obama didn't detail any new consequences that the Kremlin might face, but the White House said later that he had discussed the situation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and agreed that it was necessary to consider additional economic sanctions on Russia. "We want a diplomatic solution; we won't let up in this," Ms. Merkel said earlier in Berlin. "But we must observe that things in recent days have become more difficult and have deteriorated." The White House also said Mr. Obama would host Mr. Poroshenko in mid-September to show the U.S. commitment to stand with Ukraine. In Brussels, diplomats said a summit of European leaders set for Saturday could lay the groundwork for widening economic sanctions, but that there doesn't appear to be support for sweeping new measures.

 Mr. Obama also said further actions would be discussed at a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit next week in the U.K. Russia's latest moves suggested that the sanctions so far weren't enough to serve as a deterrence, despite helping to push its economy into recession. The Russian benchmark Micex equity index fell 2% on the tensions, while the ruble weakened to the lowest level against the dollar in nearly six months. A senior NATO official said Thursday that more than 1,000 Russian troops were fighting alongside the separatists in eastern Ukraine, by far the largest such force ever reported by the alliance. But he stopped short of calling it an invasion, saying it represented an "incursion" apparently aimed at preventing Kiev's forces from defeating the rebels.

 NATO also released new satellite photos that it said showed Russian forces engaged in military operations in Ukraine. The photos showed Russian self-propelled artillery units moving through the Ukrainian countryside and setting up firing positions in the area of Krasnodon, NATO said. This and other evidence shows "a severe escalation in the situation" over the past two weeks, said Brig. Gen. Nico Tak, head of NATO's crisis-management center. NATO planned to hold an emergency meeting on Friday at the request of Ukraine.

 At a U.N. Security Council meeting, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin did not deny there were Russians fighting in Ukraine, but said they were volunteers. "No one is hiding that," he said. Mr. Obama called the moves a continuation what Russia has done for months. "Russia determined that it had to be a little more overt in what it had already been doing, but it's not really a shift," the president said. A Ukrainian diplomat at the United Nations, Oleksandr Pavlichenko, urged the West to act urgently. "How many more red lines are to be crossed before this challenge is addressed?" he said.

More: http://online.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-accuses-russia-of-invasion-west-to-consider-sanctions-1409222768?tesla=y

Hitler's Nightmare: Part 1 of 5

Hitler's Nightmare: Part 1 of 5

Hitler's Nightmare: Part 1 of 5

Hitler's Nightmare: Part 1 of 5

Iranian General Threatens Surprise Attack on Israel

Iranian military leaders on Tuesday vowed that Tehran would take military action against Israel in response to an alleged Israeli drone that was shot down in Iran on Sunday. Iran “will not give a diplomatic response,” but will air its grievances with Israel on the “battlefield,” senior Iranian generals were quoted as saying on Tuesday. “Our response to this aggression will not be diplomatic, we will retaliate in the battlefield, but will not necessarily announce it,” Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the Lieutenant Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) was quoted as saying during a ceremony on Tuesday meant to commemorate “martyred” Iranian military personnel. “The enemy will see and understand it,” Salami was quoted as saying by the semi official Fars News Agency. “We never step back (in the confrontation) against the enemy. The Islamic Republic is powerful and is capable of confronting any power at any level and we never bring down the level of our goals.”

 The threat of a surprise attack against Israel for its apparent attempts to send a spy drone into Tehran came just a day after Iranian government officials threatened to sue Israel in the International Criminal Court. Iranian military leaders announced over the weekend that they had used a surface-to-air missile to shoot down a drone that it claimed was an Israeli-made Hermes 450 unmanned plane. The drone was allegedly on its way to the Natanz nuclear enrichment site, which is believed to be part of Iran’s clandestine attempts to build a nuclear weapon.

 “This hostile action is a violation of Iran’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham was quoted as saying Monday by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Afkham also hinted that military action is being considered by Tehran. “Iran has the right to take the necessary defensive action and pursue the case in international legal courts,” IRNA reported Afkham as saying. Other IRGC officials also have adopted the rhetoric of war and slammed Israel in vitriolic terms following the incident. “This mischievous attempt once again made the adventurous nature of the Zionist regime more evident and added another black page to the dark record of this fake and warmongering regime, which is full of crimes and wickedness,” the IRGC said in a statement reported by Al-Manar News.

 The IRGC claimed that it “reserves the right of response and retaliation for itself,” according to the statement. IRGC leader Salami claimed that Tehran has definitive proof the drone was made by Israel and claimed that it had not originated from the Jewish state, but another nearby country. “What some people say that the drone had started its flight from Israel is not correct and we are almost certain about its origin, yet we would like to reserve judgment at present,” Salami was quoted as saying during a press conference on Tuesday. Iranian military leaders apparently spotted the drone on its border but permitted it to “enter the country to see the intention (of the hostile forces operating it) and then we targeted and hit it at the right time,” Salami said, according to Fars. Salami further claimed that the technology in the drone is not unfamiliar to Iran, which has itself built several indigenous models of drones, some of which are believed to be based off of a downed U.S. drone reportedly captured in 2013. The U.S. State Department has remained quiet thus far when confronted with questions about the incident. When asked on Monday if she could confirm that an Israeli drone was downed by Iran, State Department Spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki demurred. “I don’t have anything to update you on that front,” Psaki said. “My apologies.”

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/iranian-general-threatens-surprise-attack-on-israel/

Hamas and Israel Agree to Extended Gaza Cease-Fire

GAZA CITY — Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday reached a long-term cease-fire after seven weeks of fighting, according to officials on both sides, halting the longest, bloodiest battle either side has experienced in years — but without resolving many of the bigger issues underlying the conflict.

 “Israel has once again accepted an Egyptian proposal for a complete cease-fire,” a senior Israeli official said on the condition of anonymity. “This cease-fire is unlimited in time.” Shouts of “God is great” rang out from mosque loudspeakers across Gaza City, as people fired gunshots into the air to celebrate. “We declare the victory of the Palestinian resistance, the victory of Gaza,”
 Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the militant Hamas movement that dominates Gaza and led the Palestinian militants’ operation, announced at a news conference at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “We achieved some of our instantaneous demands out of this battle.” The agreement came on the 50th day of a conflict that has killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and destroyed thousands of homes and other buildings across Gaza, displacing at least a third of its 1.7 million residents.

 On the Israeli side, 64 soldiers and five civilians were killed – the last one even as the cease-fire was being announced, as mortar rounds from Gaza struck near a swimming pool on a kibbutz just beyond its border. People familiar with the agreement said it would ease but not lift Israeli restrictions on travel and trade, largely reviving the terms of a 2012 cease-fire agreement that ended an eight-day air war. It also will allow construction materials and humanitarian aid to enter Gaza in large quantities for a major rebuilding effort, with a monitoring mechanism to ensure that concrete and cement would go only to civilian purposes. “We’re not interested in allowing Hamas to rebuild its military machine,” the senior Israeli official said. Other issues — including Hamas’s demand for a Gaza seaport and airport, Israel’s demand for Gaza’s demilitarization, and the return of Israeli soldiers’ remains believed to be in Hamas’s hands — were to be addressed after a month if the truce holds, people familiar with the agreement said.

 Drafts of a document outlining cease-fire terms had been passed back and forth throughout the day on Tuesday, even as Israeli airstrikes killed at least half a dozen people in Gaza and felled two high-rise buildings. More than 100 rockets from Gaza also rained down on Israel’s battered south, continuing even beyond the 7 p.m. deadline that some officials said marked the onset of the cease-fire. The mortar that killed the Israeli around 6:30 p.m. wounded six others, two of them seriously, according to a spokesman for the Israeli police.

 In Ashkelon, the Israeli city less than 10 miles from Gaza, a long-range rocket destroyed one home, damaged dozens of others and sent 20 injured people to the hospital, the most in a single strike this summer. The rocket smashed through the red-tile roof of the home where Yuval and Ofra Cohen had lived for 10 years with their children, now 14 and 17, according to the Israeli police and Ynet, an Israeli news site. Continue reading the main story “We hadn’t managed to make it into the safe room when it fell in our bedroom,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview on Army Radio. “It caught us in the children’s room, all the shrapnel and the dust and all of the glass. I don’t know how we escaped without harm, it’s a miracle.”

 In Gaza, the Health Ministry said two people were killed in an afternoon airstrike in east Gaza City. Two others died in a drone attack in the territory’s north, and two more were killed in an airstrike at dawn, the ministry said. Voice of Palestine radio said that more than 20 homes had been destroyed overnight. Israel’s felling of two Gaza City towers took place in the early hours on Tuesday, after having destroyed an 11-story Gaza City apartment tower on Saturday.  Assessing the Damage and Destruction in Gaza The high-rise destroyed on Tuesday, known as the Italian Compound, had 13 floors, with four apartments on each floor. It rose above an 80,000-square-foot mall with seven shisha cafes surrounding a garden and shops selling shoes, pharmaceuticals and mobile-phone accessories, as well as the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Public Works. It was one of Gaza’s finest residential buildings, with 24-hour guards, and generators and wells to keep the elevator running and taps flowing when electricity and water ran short. On Tuesday morning, the apartment line on the southeast corner and the elevator shaft were all that was left after a series of Israeli airstrikes that started after midnight, injuring about a dozen residents and leaving 40 families homeless.

 “We spent the whole night in the street outside because it was dangerous to move,” said Hani Ashi, 44, who bought his 1,750-square-foot apartment on the tower’s fifth floor for $63,000 four years ago. Mr. Ashi said he had fled in shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, carrying only his family’s identity cards and a jalabiya, or cloak, which he donned when he got outside.

FULL STORY: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-strip-conflict.html

The West Forgets History. Putin Repeats It

By outsourcing the Ukraine problem to Germany, the U.S. echoes 19th century mistakes that led to repeated conflicts.

Hapless in response to Vladimir Putin's wars, successive American leaders are left puzzling over the Russian's place in time. "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century," said President George W. Bush in August 2008, after Russia's invasion of Georgia. When the Russian force of "little green men" took Ukraine's Crimea last February, Secretary of State John Kerry exclaimed, "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext." Mr. Putin has proved impervious to complaints about his outdated behavior. On Monday morning, Ukraine reported that a column of 10 Russian tanks and a couple of armored vehicles charged over Ukraine's southeastern border into areas held by Russian rebels. Russian artillery now fire at Ukrainian military positions from inside Ukraine's territory, NATO said on Friday. Ignoring objections from Kiev, Russia announced its intentions to send a second "humanitarian aid" convoy in a week of military trucks dressed in white, bringing and taking who knows what. As the military pressure grows on the pro-Western government in Kiev, the Europeans are adding their own. Plainly anxious that these latest escalations risk a replay of 20th century wars, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday turned up in Kiev to push for an accommodation with Moscow. The chancellor pressed the Ukrainians to cease fire and ruled out new EU sanctions against Russia. So Mr. Putin comes into talks Tuesday in Minsk with Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko with fresh leverage.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/matthew-kaminski-the-west-forgets-history-putin-repeats-it-1409008065