Critical Observer

US GEAR FOUND INSIDE ABANDONED UKRAINIAN TANK

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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A Ukrainian tank seized by members of the Donbass People's Militia is currently being repaired and will soon take up positions on the DPR’s side of the separation line, a Donetsk People’s Republic’s military spokesman said on Tuesday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="385" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IGjdjM43DJE" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="640"></iframe><span style="font-style: italic; line-height: 23px;">“A tank with a US-made Motorola intercom and radio communications system on board was abandoned by the Kiev forces as they beat a hasty retreat during a battle fought late last month. The tank will be restored and will equip our units soon,” Eduard Basurin said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">The T-64 tank was abandoned by its crew near the village of Belaya Kamenka where Ukrainian armored units made an attempt to break through the independence fighters’ positions but, facing strong resistance, were forced to fall back.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Five instances of the ceasefire violation have been reported in the past two days as Ukrainian troops have shelled settlements in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">According to the DPR defense ministry, the settlements of Spartak, Staromikhailovka, Alexandrovka and the vicinity of the Donetsk airport came under shelling.</span></span></div>
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From Sputnik News</div>
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US GEAR FOUND INSIDE ABANDONED UKRAINIAN TANK

A Ukrainian tank seized by members of the Donbass People's Militia is currently being repaired and will soon take up positions on t...

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GERMANY PRAISES RUSSIA’S ROLE IN UKRAINE TRUCE

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Germany appreciates Russia’s “important role” in securing the resumption of the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) speaks with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.<br />
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“According to what we have recently been observing there Russian politicians did much to make sure that the truce resumed on September 1 and was observed by all sides. We also hope that this will prevent any elections in Donetsk and Lugansk held on a day other than October 25,” Gernot Erler, German Special Coordinator for Russia Policy, said during a meeting on Tuesday with Konstantin Kosachev, who heads the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Federation Council – the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.<br />
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“It is paramount for the 18-day ceasefire to hold and for the upcoming elections to be held in line with the provisions of the Minsk accords,” he added.<br />
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Gernot Erler underscored Berlin’s insistence that these provisions be implemented in equal measure both by Russia and Ukraine.<br />
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Kiev authorities have set the country-wide local elections for October 25.<br />
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The Lugansk People's Republic is planning to hold separate elections on November 1, while the Donetsk People's Republic has decided to hold the elections on October 18.<br />
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Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko earlier urged the pro-independence leaders of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics to hold local elections strictly in line with Ukrainian laws.

GERMANY PRAISES RUSSIA’S ROLE IN UKRAINE TRUCE

Germany appreciates Russia’s “important role” in securing the resumption of the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Se...

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MINSK AGREEMENT DELAYS IN UKRAINE POROSHENKO'S FAULT

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The action, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has been undertaking, cause delays in execution of the Minsk agreements, head of the delegation from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) to the Contact Group on settlement of the Ukrainian crisis Denis Pushilin told the Donetsk News Agency on Saturday.<br />
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"Pyotr Poroshenko does not have any plan of executing the Minsk agreements, he acts in a confused, inconsistent way," he said. "Yesterday he disavowed words of his representative [Ukraine’s former President] Leonid Kuchma that Minsk-2 execution terms may be extended."<br />
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He continued saying since the amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution had not been discussed with the self-proclaimed republics, they will have to be agreed to be presented once again to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament).<br />
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"They will have to agree them with us, as it is a requirement of item 11 of the Complex of Measures," he said. "At the same time, a new voting procedure will take at least four months according to the Ukrainian legislation."<br />
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Thus, he said, the terms of the Minsk agreements are to be extended inevitably to early 2016.<br />
"This is a most optimistic forecast, and clearly the responsibility for the delay is purely with Poroshenko. He chose not to agree and still to present to Rada the unacceptable draft of the constitutional reform, and thus now we have to begin everything afresh thus slowing down the settlement process."<br />
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On Friday, Poroshenko ruled out the possibility of extending the Minsk agreements for 2016. "I asked Leonid Kuchma, my representative at the Contact Group, to cancel the statement that the Minsk process can be continued in 2016. No, everyone should fulfil the commitment within 2015," the Ukrainian president said.<br />
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According to the Minsk accords, all points of the agreement, especially the constitutional reform with consideration of separate areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, should be implemented by end of 2015.<br />
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On Thursday, Kuchma said that the Contact Group on the settlement of the situation in Donbass announced it is necessary to extend the Minsk agreements for 2016 if they are not implemented fully by end of 2015.<br />
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President Petro Poroshenko said he did not rule our holding a meeting in the "Normandy format" on settling the situation in Donbass in the framework of the UN General Assembly session in New York in late September.<br />
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"On September 12, the first meeting of the foreign ministers will take place - it will focus on agenda and draft documents to be discussed [in Paris]," Poroshenko told journalists on the sidelines of Yalta European Strategy (YES) meeting in Kiev.<br />
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"I do not rule out that one more meeting in this or another format may take place in the framework of UN General Assembly at the end of September in New York," the Ukrainian president said.<br />
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Minsk accords on settlement of crisis in Ukraine<br />
A peace deal struck on February 12 in Minsk, Belarus, by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France envisaged a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and people’s militias starting from February 15, followed by withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of military engagement and prisoner release.<br />
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The package of measures envisages the pullback of all heavy weapons by both parties to locations equidistant from the disengagement line in order to create a security zone at least 50 kilometres wide for artillery systems with a calibre of 100 mm or more, a zone of security 70 kilometres wide for multiple rocket launchers and a zone 140 kilometres wide for multiple rocket launchers Tornado-S, Uragan and Smerch and for Tochka-U tactical rocket systems.<br />
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The Ukrainian forces and the self-defence forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics (DPR and LPR) have repeatedly accused each other of violating ceasefire and other points of the Minsk agreements.<br />
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According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the violence in Ukraine has killed 6,500 people in the past year, wounded 16,000 and left 5 million people in need of humanitarian aid. With more than 1.3 million registered IDPs, Ukraine has now the ninth largest number of internally displaced in the world, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

MINSK AGREEMENT DELAYS IN UKRAINE POROSHENKO'S FAULT

The action, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has been undertaking, cause delays in execution of the Minsk agreements, head of the del...

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KIEV PREPARES CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST EASTERN UKRAINE

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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ukraine stockpiling chemical weapons for deployment in Slavyansk, insider reveals. <span style="line-height: 1.1;">According to eastern Ukrainian sources who contacted WMR, the Ukrainian central government in Kiev has been stockpiling cylinders of toxic gas and canisters of other poisonous substances at an electrical plant in Slavyansk, a town in eastern Ukraine that remains occupied by Kiev troops.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, populated by mostly ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, declared independence last year as the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The Ukrainian government, aided by neo-Nazi and Israeli mercenaries, as well as “Al Qaeda” and “Islamic State” veterans from Iraq and Syria, have been waging a war against the people of eastern Ukraine with military assistance from the United States and other NATO nations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A source in Slavyansk reports, “There’s chlorine in cylinders, in not less than five covered wagons and also in other containers with contents I know nothing about, labeled with words and signs “poison, “danger,” and “do not touch without protection.” The source added, “All of it was brought in under the guise of varnishes and paints, but I know the look of the packaging of both, and whatever was brought here last week has got nothing to do with it, it looks like a chemical weapon.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The report from the Donbas region also stated that the intelligence service of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) was informed by its sources inside the Ukrainian Security Service that Kiev plans to use the chemical weapons in eastern Ukraine and then blame the eastern Ukrainian separatists. The source with DPR intelligence said, “I think they will follow the suit of the militants in Syria, they [Kiev] will use it against their own soldiers and civilians, and blame us, following which they will invite foreign reporters, show the corpses, raising a worldwide scandal with demand that NATO forces bomb us.”</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A Ukrainian rail and road transportation industry source confirmed that the suspect canisters spotted in Slavyansk were, in fact, transported as dangerous cargo by the Ukrainian Security Service and Ukrainian military intelligence, with the full cooperation of Kiev and local authorities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In Syria, Islamic State guerrillas and their allies used sarin and chlorine gas to attack civilians outside of Damascus and then blamed the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad for waging chemical warfare against his own people. The charge that certain governments have resorted to using chemical weapons, known as the “poor man’s weapon of mass destruction,” has been a favorite neocon propaganda tool employed against targeted leaders, including Assad, Libya’s late leader Muammar Qaddafi, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, and, possibly soon, the leadership of eastern Ukraine. In all these cases, the story of chemical weapons use was either totally false or was altered to show it was the governments that used the weapons and not U.S.-supported rebels.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Assad was accused of using sarin gas on to kill some 1300 civilians near Damascus, including children (above). In fact, it was the Islamist guerrillas that carried out the attack and another in Aleppo that killed 30 civilians. The Israeli media blamed Assad and the international media, pressured as usual by Israel’s propaganda machine, blamed Assad. However, the neocon propaganda was so weak, President Obama opted not to commit U.S. forces to fight against Assad’s government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The intelligence chatter from eastern Ukraine indicates that the United States and its allies in Kiev are going to use, once again, a page from the WMD false flag playbook, previously employed in Syria, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Article by <b>Wayne Madsen</b></span></div>
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KIEV PREPARES CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST EASTERN UKRAINE

Ukraine stockpiling chemical weapons for deployment in Slavyansk, insider reveals. According to eastern Ukrainian sources who contacted ...

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Ukrainian military camp.. For Kids!

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STARE, Ukraine — More than 100 Ukrainian schoolchildren will have unusual tales to tell their mates when classes resume, after spending part of their summer vacations undergoing training by the National Guard.<br />
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The training at a National Guard camp about 75 kilometers (45 miles) from Kiev taught children aged 11-15 rudimentary military skills and gave them a taste of army life in courses over three days. At night the children were quartered in army tents; by day they got instruction in marksmanship, hand-to-hand fighting, weapons maintenance, first aid, map reading and orienteering.<br />
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For 11-year-old Oleksander Olinichenko, whose mother and father are both in the Ukrainian army, the camp was a chance to pursue his interest in all things military, as well as show his patriotism.<br />
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“’’I like everything here, they teach me to take apart and to assemble the assault rifle, they teach us hand-to-hand fighting, first aid - it’s very interesting,” said Oleksander, his face disguised by military goggles and a regulation helmet.<br />
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Some children are from military families in Kiev, others are refugees who relocated to the Ukrainian capital, having left their homes in eastern Ukraine when fighting broke out in 2014. Some of the children chosen to attend the camp come from low-income families, according to the National Guard press office.<br />
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National Guardsman Oleksander Honcharenko gave the children instruction in hand-to-hand fighting and karate. He told The Associated Press he and all the other instructors at the camp had served in the Ukrainian army during the conflict in East Ukraine.<br />
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“I think every person has to be able to defend himself and his relatives, his nearest and dearest, his family and property. The most important thing is to be able to react quickly in an extreme situation and to make the right decision. The kind of the hand-to-hand fighting that we teach helps them develop such abilities,” said Honcharenko, who is vice president of the Ukrainian Karate Association.<br />
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Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko recently vowed to increase troop numbers to fend off attacks by Russia-backed separatist rebels and warned his countrymen that there is still the threat of a “large-scale invasion.” He claimed that Russia had massed about 50,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, still had 9,000 soldiers in eastern Ukraine and had supplied the rebels with about 500 tanks and 400 pieces of artillery.<br />
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By <b>Dmytro Vlasov</b> |  AP | August 31

Ukrainian military camp.. For Kids!

STARE, Ukraine — More than 100 Ukrainian schoolchildren will have unusual tales to tell their mates when classes resume, after spending pa...

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