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Thread: Ukraine: Russo-Ukr War (June-December 2015)

  1. #381
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    How can this be—first the Russian FM and Putin literally for months after the shot down of MH17 DEMANDED andinternational investigation and constantly harassed the West for not doing it AND NOW?????

    They had wanted with their version of the shot down the Ukraine to be held responsible BUT now that the evidence gets closer and closer to Putin and company THEN this today-----

    Russian min. of foreign affairs is against intl. investigation of MH17 tragedy. Wonder why http://tvrain.ru/news/mid_rossii_vys...ribuna-390004/

    As saying goes "when hat on a thief burns"-RUS MFA says idea with MH17 international tribunal's "counterproductive" http://russian.rt.com/article/99746

    Counterproductive---what would Hess had said at Nuremberg—that it was “counterproductive”???

    The entire Russian MFA is smoking something more than Mary Jane it seems???
    http://sputniknews.com/world/2015062...#ixzz3eAoCvEdb

    Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said that establishment of an international tribunal on last year's downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine would be untimely and counterproductive.

    The Netherlands Pushes for International Tribunal to Prosecute MH17 Crash Suspects
    MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The establishment of an international tribunal on last year's downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine would be untimely and counterproductive, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Friday.

    Various media outlets have over the last week reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that the Netherlands is seeking the creation of an international tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the crash.

    "We know that it [the idea] is untimely and counterproductive. It is necessary now to wait for the end of the investigation and not adopt any hasty resolutions on the creation of tribunals," Gatilov said.
    http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150606/1023019211.html
    On 6/6/2015 Russian Sputnik even went so far as to declare the bellingcat analysis of the MH17 crash and the accusations that the Russian MoD has falsified their satellite data –to be fake “because an alleged former Stasi employee” had worked on the analysis.
    Man are they getting desparate-----

  2. #382
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    Merkel: Ukraine also violates Minsk Agreement, but separatist violations are greater. #Sigh #OMW
    via @Ukropo4kA

    WHY does she say that---- because Germans count “shooting back” as a violation—WHEREAS the US stated self defense is not a violation.

    Still does not excuse Merkel from not condemning the constant mercenary shellings and ground attacks—the key question is WHY is she so silent as Minsk 2 was her product????

    Cannot believe she believes the Ukrainians should simply hide in a bunker and allow themselves to be killed and wounded??????

    Core question--is in fact Merkel trying now to appease Putin--especially after the announcement by Gazprom of a new North Stream pipeline being built with apparent German approval which will bypass the Ukraine.
    Someone better wake up both Merkel and her Foreign Minister.

    Militants fired 122 Grad-P rockets at Ukr & Rus monitors of joint control center in Berdyanske
    http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/06/26/7072558/ … pic.twitter.com/pBimtVN9GH

  3. #383
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    ElectricYerevan after midnight #Armenia #Yerevan pic.twitter.com/LaKC4pKBVE
    Russians Watch Protests in Yerevan with Apprehension - or Inspiration http://bit.ly/1KfzjPe pic.twitter.com/B4tPRJPjHo

    Crowd shouts "We are #Armenia !" Right now in #Yerevan pic.twitter.com/gw2MOfLv29

    People yelling "Towards the barricades", "join us", "no to plunder" #electricyerevan pic.twitter.com/D3sURl4oE4

    Protesters are blocking streets of #Yerevan in #Armenia #ElectricYerevan pic.twitter.com/wS9lnWxwLB

    youtube.com/watch?v=LPUy18-8TWs … Guy fr Yekaterinburg,#Russia: #ElectricYerevan 'must go' or face snipers+'NATO-drugged' thugs pic.twitter.com/HrVPv8BTzf
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-26-2015 at 04:17 PM.

  4. #384
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    Get ur program!! Know ur Trolls: RussiaInsider + 3 Top Ru Trolls http://kremlintrolls.com/t/20150616-ri3m.html … #KremlinTrolls @webradius pic.twitter.com/9qmyqoucTG

    Donetsk 15:06 Avay towards airport-#Pisky-#Optyne occasional salvos. Like after UAVs. https://twitter.com/AlfaNubovsky/sta...04392536641536

    In last day, Militants 4 times fired on Mariinka checkpoint & twice on Berezove CP. 1 wounded - Border guard service
    http://dpsu.gov.ua/ru/about/news/news_7644.htm

    This morning militants shelled an Observation post of Ukr monitors in Berdyansk'e (near Shyrokyne) with GRAD-P
    http://112.ua/ato/sckk-zayavlyaet-ob...no-240554.html

    How is Putin going to deal with 'the coming chaos' among Russia's elite? http://buff.ly/1LJZBrE by Peter Sattler pic.twitter.com/pVYlEaHzpv

    Ukrainian army's positions in Donbas shelled 86 times in past 24 hours http://24today.net/open/455090 pic.twitter.com/8PC173deCb

    Trapped on #Ukraine's frontline: Life in one of Europe's biggest coking plants http://uatoday.tv/society/trapped-on...ts-446274.html

    Russian army of occupation tells #OSCE_SMM it drives Grad MLRS artllery "for maintenance only" http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/167161 … pic.twitter.com/U9VLoEm7Jo

    New battalion formed in #Mariupol - Donetsk Police Head Abroskin http://en.censor.net.ua/photo_news/3...broskin_photoshttp://Censor.NET 26 Jun pic.twitter.com/2XjOEoHlhr

  5. #385
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    Amazing to watch twitter here in Europe--US Supreme Court decision on gay marriage is beating out the Ukrainian war and the response from Europe is interesting--all positive.

    Only two countries are flipping out via their media outlets ---- Russia and Belarus.

    Russian trolls are totally silent--first time in over a year that they are at loss for words.

  6. #386
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    Video by Russian cretins inadvertently shows how Ukrainian "return fire" is simulated https://youtu.be/zb3xouoiJx4?t=21s

    Militants fired 86 times at Ukr forces y-day, 50of them in #Donetsk area. Pisky, Opytne, Maryinka r under dense fire https://www.facebook.com/ato.news/po...22246624452810

    Today militants shelled UKR positions about 35 times. UKR forces also clashed with enemy DRG near Krymske - ATO
    https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...97&__tn__=%2As
    Looks like a Russian Spetsnaz attack occurred on Krymske.

    This week's Top Extremism- and Terrorism-Related Stories in Russia http://extremistrussia.com/2015/06/2...-26-june-2015/

    Finland suspects airspace violation by Russian Il-76 south of Porvoo at 2:15pm, identified by Hornets. http://www.defmin.fi/ajankohtaista/t...ella.6287.news

    bit.ly/1RCR37F @KarenaAv and I wrote about Ramzan Kadyrov and Chechnya in Russia's federal system for @opendemocracyru

    Mayorsk which is near Artemivsk were shot at for an hour from 82 mm mortar by putin's army https://twitter.com/UaForces/status/614473615552180224
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-26-2015 at 05:01 PM.

  7. #387
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    Russians Watch Protests in Yerevan with Apprehension - or Inspiration http://bit.ly/1KfzjPe pic.twitter.com/B4tPRJPjHo

    Crowd shouts "We are #Armenia !" Right now in #Yerevan pic.twitter.com/gw2MOfLv29

    People yelling "Towards the barricades", "join us", "no to plunder" #electricyerevan pic.twitter.com/D3sURl4oE4

    Protesters are blocking streets of #Yerevan in #Armenia #ElectricYerevan pic.twitter.com/wS9lnWxwLB

    youtube.com/watch?v=LPUy18-8TWs … Guy fr Yekaterinburg,#Russia: #ElectricYerevan 'must go' or face snipers+'NATO-drugged' thugs pic.twitter.com/HrVPv8BTzf
    Putin and His Entourage Can’t Imagine People Can Protest on Their Own, Eidman Says | The Interpreter http://www.interpretermag.com/putin-...n-eidman-says/

    Russia robbed #Ukraine's people through corrupt gas deals
    #Russia robs #Armenia's people through corrupt electricity deals
    #ElectricYerevan


    Westerners commenting on #Armenia's #ElectricYerevan on #Russia state propaganda sites are all NOT there, but "know" everything about it...

  8. #388
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    Video by Russian cretins inadvertently shows how Ukrainian "return fire" is simulated https://youtu.be/zb3xouoiJx4?t=21s

    Militants fired 86 times at Ukr forces y-day, 50of them in #Donetsk area. Pisky, Opytne, Maryinka r under dense fire https://www.facebook.com/ato.news/po...22246624452810

    Today militants shelled UKR positions about 35 times. UKR forces also clashed with enemy DRG near Krymske - ATO
    https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...97&__tn__=%2As
    Looks like a Russian Spetsnaz attack occurred on Krymske.

    This week's Top Extremism- and Terrorism-Related Stories in Russia http://extremistrussia.com/2015/06/2...-26-june-2015/

    Finland suspects airspace violation by Russian Il-76 south of Porvoo at 2:15pm, identified by Hornets. http://www.defmin.fi/ajankohtaista/t...ella.6287.news

    bit.ly/1RCR37F @KarenaAv and I wrote about Ramzan Kadyrov and Chechnya in Russia's federal system for @opendemocracyru

    Mayorsk which is near Artemivsk were shot at for an hour from 82 mm mortar by putin's army https://twitter.com/UaForces/status/614473615552180224
    Finnish Air Force picPicture of RA-78784 by Finnish Air Force, according to @Alexfly35 landed at Chernyakhovsk AFB 15:55msk. pic.twitter.com/dZGEteqkFV

    Russian transport plane which is suspected of violating Finnish airspace today. Yle Uutiset pic.twitter.com/I5QEmnMZ5A

  9. #389
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    RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA
    They film their own equipment and pretend it was captured at #Debaltseve, but can't be geolocated
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPiM5c7p4wk

    This so-called 'captured armor' is filmed here http://wikimapia.org/15340624/ru/ (thanks to @5urpher) at Russian side of contact line (at that time).

    Furthermore @MrKovalenko (who was there!) does not recognize the armor!! pic.twitter.com/IMEAOhAiVi

  10. #390
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    Number of troops in the area of the ATO up to 60 thousand - Poroshenko
    http://interfax.com.ua/news/general/274642.html … pic.twitter.com/WJ6V0tpLUi

    Russia masses 54,000 troops in #Donbas and on Ukraine border – ATO Headquarters
    http://uatoday.tv/news/russia-masses...rs-446163.html

    21:02 #Starohnativka @Staroignatievca It started: mortars, signal flares, explosions, machine guns [here]

    21:02 #Donetsk Kirovsky ds @UrriKara4en Fr/SW, Petrovsky direction,sporadic separate heavy gunshots&short series can be heard

    20:20 #Shakhtarsk @Helgi__UA Such pic.twitter.com/jepGnPbOR6 cabriolet, 2 Kamaz trucks, 1 wagon truck w/escort tow/#Donetsk

    21:26 #Starohnativka @Staroignatievca Artillery ceased, mortar and machine guns are still firing
    Now quiet----

    Just over a year ago, Ukraine had about 6000 combat-ready troops. Today, Poroshenko says there are 60,000 Ukrainian troops in the war zone

    21:25 #Donetsk Putilovka @UkraineSuper1 Outgoing and incoming at once

    21:10 #Donetsk @Don_Riccio Machine guns in #Trudovski direction

    Mariinka, Krasnogorivka, both light and heavy arms... https://twitter.com/arthurnkua/statu...04819819216896

    21:20 #Luhansk @100007182042214 #Stanytsia_Luhanska is being shelled again, landings also in #Kondrashevska_Nova station area

    21:52 #Starohnativka @Staroignatievca Again machine guns and mortars
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-26-2015 at 07:07 PM.

  11. #391
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    SBU detained one of the leaders of the "Berkut" who involved in the shootings on the Maidan

    http://liveuamap.com/en/2015/26-june...the-berkut-who

  12. #392
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    vk.com/colonelcassad?z=albums111228080 … 'Novorussia project not over, get ready for surprises.' pic.twitter.com/xOsCC9VZ4C

    vk.com/colonelcassad?z=albums111228080 … Guy fr #Russia-held Sevastopol enjoys gory pix of dead #Ukrainian soldiers. pic.twitter.com/DzEsjvCjKO

  13. #393
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    Number of troops in the area of the ATO up to 60 thousand - Poroshenko
    http://interfax.com.ua/news/general/274642.html … pic.twitter.com/WJ6V0tpLUi

    Russia masses 54,000 troops in #Donbas and on Ukraine border – ATO Headquarters
    http://uatoday.tv/news/russia-masses...rs-446163.html

    21:02 #Starohnativka @Staroignatievca It started: mortars, signal flares, explosions, machine guns [here]

    21:02 #Donetsk Kirovsky ds @UrriKara4en Fr/SW, Petrovsky direction,sporadic separate heavy gunshots&short series can be heard

    20:20 #Shakhtarsk @Helgi__UA Such pic.twitter.com/jepGnPbOR6 cabriolet, 2 Kamaz trucks, 1 wagon truck w/escort tow/#Donetsk

    21:26 #Starohnativka @Staroignatievca Artillery ceased, mortar and machine guns are still firing
    Now quiet----

    Just over a year ago, Ukraine had about 6000 combat-ready troops. Today, Poroshenko says there are 60,000 Ukrainian troops in the war zone

    21:25 #Donetsk Putilovka @UkraineSuper1 Outgoing and incoming at once

    21:10 #Donetsk @Don_Riccio Machine guns in #Trudovski direction

    Mariinka, Krasnogorivka, both light and heavy arms... https://twitter.com/arthurnkua/statu...04819819216896

    21:20 #Luhansk @100007182042214 #Stanytsia_Luhanska is being shelled again, landings also in #Kondrashevska_Nova station area

    21:52 #Starohnativka @Staroignatievca Again machine guns and mortars
    Donetsk, howitzers outgoing

    22:06 #Donetsk Izumrud @lagyz "Fireworks? Someone's damn birthday?"

    Donetsk
    22:06 Kalininsky @vladimi71543390 I heard few dull distant sounds
    22:06 center @CatBoobon Volleys heard

    22:06 #Donetsk Kyivsky ds @Newrashkineits Loud sounds like incoming started suddenly

    youtube.com/watch?v=lLD36LnnGI8 … #Mariinka today. Still standing. pic.twitter.com/gFaGytNx1N

    22:07 #Makeevka @PlohoiBorsch Volleys heard in the western part

    Donetsk - both Mariinka and airport directions are loud. bigtime action.

    Medal for "storming #Shyrokyne"
    One of the men (Hisam) is from Tatarstan, Russia.
    https://vk.com/photo271329756_365652000 … pic.twitter.com/nZmxDhQoG4

    Russian proxies shell white phosphorus at suburb of Donetsk in Ukraine
    Video:... http://fb.me/7yGKAP8Rv

    22:11 #Schastya @AlexRychkoff "Evening party" started, not that intense as yday.
    22:19 Small arms, AGL, couple shots frSPG-9

    22:18 #Donetsk north @HuAdvokatos "i can hear 'rocket' starts"

    10:23 #Makeevka @PlohoiBorsch No, singles w/10-20sec interval, but there were not many of them

    22:10 #Schastya @AlexRychkoff Yday's total: 3 wounded civilians, 2-3 impacts on residential area

    Donetsk - same directions, Mariinka, Airport, combat ongoing

    22:21 #Luhansk eastern blocks @SvobodaLuhansk Again artillery can be heard

    22:31 #Donetsk center @CatBoobon Again distant cannonade has started

    22:29 #Maryinka @faina_ukr Battle in progress. Rumble in police checkpoint area, boarding school, Sovkhoz

    22:00 #Krasnohorivka @audrius1977 Skirmishes became more intense, impacts but outside the town
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-26-2015 at 07:48 PM.

  14. #394
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    Donetsk, howitzers outgoing

    22:06 #Donetsk Izumrud @lagyz "Fireworks? Someone's damn birthday?"

    Donetsk
    22:06 Kalininsky @vladimi71543390 I heard few dull distant sounds
    22:06 center @CatBoobon Volleys heard

    22:06 #Donetsk Kyivsky ds @Newrashkineits Loud sounds like incoming started suddenly

    youtube.com/watch?v=lLD36LnnGI8 … #Mariinka today. Still standing. pic.twitter.com/gFaGytNx1N

    22:07 #Makeevka @PlohoiBorsch Volleys heard in the western part

    Donetsk - both Mariinka and airport directions are loud. bigtime action.

    Medal for "storming #Shyrokyne"
    One of the men (Hisam) is from Tatarstan, Russia.
    https://vk.com/photo271329756_365652000 … pic.twitter.com/nZmxDhQoG4

    Russian proxies shell white phosphorus at suburb of Donetsk in Ukraine
    Video:... http://fb.me/7yGKAP8Rv

    22:11 #Schastya @AlexRychkoff "Evening party" started, not that intense as yday.
    22:19 Small arms, AGL, couple shots frSPG-9

    22:18 #Donetsk north @HuAdvokatos "i can hear 'rocket' starts"

    10:23 #Makeevka @PlohoiBorsch No, singles w/10-20sec interval, but there were not many of them

    22:10 #Schastya @AlexRychkoff Yday's total: 3 wounded civilians, 2-3 impacts on residential area

    Donetsk - same directions, Mariinka, Airport, combat ongoing

    22:21 #Luhansk eastern blocks @SvobodaLuhansk Again artillery can be heard

    22:31 #Donetsk center @CatBoobon Again distant cannonade has started

    22:29 #Maryinka @faina_ukr Battle in progress. Rumble in police checkpoint area, boarding school, Sovkhoz

    22:00 #Krasnohorivka @audrius1977 Skirmishes became more intense, impacts but outside the town
    Russian Support for Putin’s View that Russians & Ukrainians Are ‘One People’ Falling http://bit.ly/1LASAwC pic.twitter.com/WNwQK2ib1i

  15. #395
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    Russia-n An-26 violates #Estonia-n airspace http://news.err.ee/v/defense/2b17580...f-4434c246eef3

    Hisam left Kazan early January to join Russian-led illegal armed group in Ukraine.
    Russia could easily stop this
    . pic.twitter.com/IFk3O6nR3x

    Russia-controlled VK forum for Russians exchanging info on how to join Russian-led illegal armed groups in Ukraine
    http://vk.com/topic-67059574_29521374?post=69219

    Excellent take by @anders_aslund on current economic state of play in #Russia (a hint; much worse than you think!) http://www.bfna.org/sites/default/fi...%20%282%29.pdf

  16. #396
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    Russia is in clear and blatant violation of Minsk 2.

    30 of #Ukrainian #POWs are in Russia. RU-led terrorists keep ~270 #Ukraine POWs, (70 are civilians): govt negotiator center repr. Y.Tandit.

  17. #397
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    PROPAGANDA
    DPR-soldier 'Lynx' shows a Ukrainian concentration camp. But it's just an empty building.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aS7kxt8ekg

    This has been a Russian propaganda theme for months now--in books, and again in broadcast videos on their news media--but never do they actually show an actual concentration camp--they only "allude" to them.

    VIDEO This is how Russia's Hybrid Army in Ukraine gets trained: live shooting on the wall above their heads.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7rRGSHhQZQ

    Russian Ambassador to Turkey 1869: "We are not understood". pic.twitter.com/I95Zpn7Msm

    Recognize the propaganda theme again in 2014/2015?????

    How Pro-#Russia Trolls Manipulate Finns Online - great investigation by Yle Kioski #Finland
    http://kioski.yle.fi/omat/troll-piece-2-english … pic.twitter.com/BxtQusdbne

  18. #398
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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    Putin and His Entourage Can’t Imagine People Can Protest on Their Own, Eidman Says | The Interpreter http://www.interpretermag.com/putin-...n-eidman-says/

    Russia robbed #Ukraine's people through corrupt gas deals
    #Russia robs #Armenia's people through corrupt electricity deals
    #ElectricYerevan


    Westerners commenting on #Armenia's #ElectricYerevan on #Russia state propaganda sites are all NOT there, but "know" everything about it...

    Scenes from #ElectricYerevan : Protesters passing out song sheets, learning & singing Sardarabad & other nat'l songs pic.twitter.com/dcVkyo3jm5

    Must be called "The Strange Revolution" pic.twitter.com/tni0WVI7dg

    ElectricYerevan Exposes #Kremlin's Mindset
    http://www.rferl.org/content/electri.../27095362.html … pic.twitter.com/7IqGs4HSvi

  19. #399
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    With the initial reports or anti war demos by ethnic Russians coming out of the Russian occupied Ukrainian zones and this article--I will go out on a limb and state Putin has lost his non linear war in the eastern Ukraine--and badly lost it.

    Yes the fighting will go on for awhile and the dying and destruction as well but he has lost and has yet to see it.

    He has lost the Ukrainian civil society as a whole--and that was his target in the eastern Ukraine and he has driven a wedge for years to come between Russians and Ukrainians who share a lot historically.

    http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/26/...ore-ukrainian/

    Why Ukrainians Are Speaking More Ukrainian

    By Ievgen Vorobiov
    June 26, 2015 - 5:14 pm

    It’s been 16 months since the first Ukrainian soldier was shot by Russian troops in soon-to-be occupied Crimea. Since then, Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine has presented the country’s Russian-speaking population with some tricky questions about identity.

    “I’m afraid of speaking Russian now, because Putin might want to protect me” — that became the frequently repeated joke last year after the Russian president made it clear he considered Russian-speakers in Ukraine to be endangered by Kiev’s new government.

    Now many Russian speakers in Ukraine — who live primarily in the country’s east and in large cities — are demonstratively turning to Ukrainian as a badge of self-identification. A concise tutorial on how to switch from Russian to Ukrainian, written by a Kiev blogger, has earned thousands of shares and reposts. Patriotic Russian-speakers in Kiev and big eastern cities are pledging on social networks to speak Ukrainian to their children, hoping to make the next generation more fluent and natural speakers of their native tongue.

    For the first time in decades, speaking Ukrainian is seen as fashionable rather than backward.

    Ukraine’s strong civil society has also been an important factor in “socializing” the country’s adult population into using Ukrainian. Amid the dire lack of state-funded support for life-long education, dozens of organizations and initiatives teach the language to adults across the country. Activists say the bulk of their students came in the wake of the Euromaidan revolution and the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Most of the students, says an organizer of the biggest course in Kiev, are 30-to-50-somethings. Free Ukrainian courses have mushroomed in big, mostly Russian-speaking cities such as Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Kramatorsk and Odessa. However, they’ve also popped up in Lviv and Vinnytsia, Ukrainian-speaking cities where many people displaced from Crimea and the east have settled.

    The media landscape is also unmistakably becoming more Ukrainian. Granted, the traditional media are still somewhat dominated by Russian: two of the top three TV channels broadcast their evening news and most entertainment programs in Russian. Most high-circulation weekly magazines are published in Russian. However, the emergence of powerful Internet-based news outlets is bucking the trend. Ukrainian-language web-based TV, most notably Hromadske.TV and Espreso, have few Russian-language competitors of comparable quality, although the former has started to produce programs in Russian.

    Since over half of Ukrainians regularly use the Internet, the social media is turning into another channel of “Ukrainization,” especially of the middle class. Top bloggers writing in Ukrainian on Facebook and Twitter are boosting their follower bases, and many Ukrainian Internet users are starting to abandon platforms based in Russia, such as VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. A controversy over Facebook blocking Ukrainian-created content, allegedly by Russian citizens staffing tech support teams in Dublin, provoked calls to write more in Ukrainian as a way to insulate the “Ukrainian” blogosphere from Russian interference. Discussing politics in Ukrainian makes it harder for Russian trolls to chip in.

    The gravitational pull of the Ukrainian language is making a mark on business, too.

    For the first time, Ukrainian pop music is selling better than Russian.

    A popular chain of coffee shops, Lviv Handmade Chocolate, has made waitresses and baristas that serve customers only in Ukrainian into a signature policy, yet the chain is popular across the whole country. Roman Matys, a Ukrainian activist, campaigns for companies to include labels and documentation in Ukrainian in addition to Russian, and several large companies have yielded to his group’s petitions.

    For the past twenty years, state education policy has been to promote Ukrainian in schools without directly impending the use of Russian. Ukraine’s post-Soviet governments, even pro-Russian ones, treated secondary education in Ukrainian as a generous concession to national-minded activists. While only 47 percent of Ukrainian schools taught in Ukrainian at the end of Soviet rule in the 1980s, that rate steadily increased to 75 percent in 2004 and 86 percent in 2013. And as Ukrainian has become the principal teaching language at leading universities, schoolkids and their parents perceive it as more of a priority, even if they use Russian at home.

    The trend was not reversed even after the passage of the 2012 “language law,” which provided for greater use of Russian on the regional level. Legislative initiatives pertaining to the language use have been politicized since the Maidan revolution as well. Parliament’s attempt to repeal the controversial language law in February 2014 (which was rejected by a presidential veto) was used as a rallying call by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

    Ukraine is still a bilingual country. But the Ukrainization phenomenon is not just anecdotal — survey data shows that, in the last decade, the country’s linguistic landscape has undergone a visible change. In 2005, 42 percent of Ukrainians claimed that they spoke mostly Ukrainian at home. By 2011, 53 percent said they spoke it in their everyday lives. Since most of them are perfectly fluent in Russian as well, the 11 percent upsurge, representing at least 5 million people, reflects the share of Ukrainian society that has switched from Russian to Ukrainian. The Euromaidan revolution and conflict with Russia accelerated that trend: a poll conducted in May 2015 shows that almost 60 percent of the population prefer to use Ukrainian in everyday communication.

    This burgeoning popularity of Ukrainian, especially among the youth and the middle class, is having unifying effects on the country’s social structures. It facilitates social mobility between the east and the west. Many western Ukrainian students are bringing their Ukrainian to universities in Kiev and the big eastern cities. Young IT and service professionals who move from Kharkiv or Dnipropetrovsk to Lviv tend to bring Ukrainian into their everyday lives, despite Lviv’s tolerance for Russian speakers.

    The revival of Ukrainian is only one of many societal upshots in the Ukrainian-Russian war.

    CONTINUED............
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 06-27-2015 at 08:57 AM.

  20. #400
    Council Member
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    Reference the shot down of MH17 by Russia.


    Eliot Higgins @EliotHiggins aka bellingcat
    Russia doesn't want an international MH17 tribunal because
    - They provided the Buk that shot it down
    - They faked evidence to blame Ukraine

    In 2014, #Russia wanted to frame Ukraine for MH17 & demanded closer UN involvement. Then came @bellingcat... ❓���� pic.twitter.com/XNoq4XZ8gg

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