you know, I've often thought in this 'Ukraine' time if it would be o.k if the Russians came knocking on East Germany's door ... ( yes, what used to be the east ) .. I mean after all it was Russia's at one time. And just think what a great deal could be made about the oil.
it's cyclic .. eddies, at least i mean i think always are .. i wonder if Jesus came back he could be fascist, and the rest of the world at peace .. sorry, it's a weird thought .. is early here ..
Emails obtained by BuzzFeed show a Russian diplomat disparaging Russian dissidents, praising Stalin and talking about America’s “homosexual authoritarianism.”
..I guess they love all the 'ism's' too? .. hard to believe ..but still
Nadya Tolokonnikova, center, and Maria Alyokhina, center left, of Pussy Riot. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
update Updated with comment from a Russian Embassy spokesperson.
WASHINGTON — A senior diplomat at the Russian embassy in Washington made sexist statements about Pussy Riot in 2012 emails, suggesting that the all-female protest group “just need a good fuck.”
In emails to a U.S. government official working on Russian human rights issues obtained by BuzzFeed on the stipulation of anonymity for both parties, the Russian official mused about Pussy Riot, who were at the time about to go on trial for an anti-Putin protest inside Moscow’s main Orthodox church. BuzzFeed has viewed the emails and agreed not to publish the names to protect the anonymity of the correspondents.
“Life is strange — kill 12 people in a movie theater, and you are a psyco boy, maniac; show your ass in a nation biggest cathedral — and they will call you a prisoner of conscience,” the official wrote, referring to the mass shooting in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater that summer.
The U.S. official responded: “It’s hard to be a prisoner of conscience without being in prison, not saying their performance wasn’t offensive or even illegal, but fines for trespassing would be a little more ‘European’ than the SIZO… and I don’t understand your point on the Aurora shootings.” “SIZO” is a Russian pre-trial detention center.
The Russian diplomat responded that the women of Pussy Riot “are simply not happy in their sexual lives.”
“How can you know it wasn’t offensive?” the Russian diplomat wrote. “Novaya gazeta is saying that, or you guys held hearing on it?,” he asked, referring to Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s only investigative newspaper. “Imagine someone did that somewhere in Saudi Arabia, one of the greatest democracies on Earth and the US ally. By the way, Russia is a orthodox (predominantly) country, so they had rather think twice before doing it. Now they have to be held accountable, as you put it. Generally, I am of the opinion that those pussies are simply not happy in their sexual life. And that makes them riot. They simply need a good f..k, not SIZO. Unfortunately, we don’t have such a capital punishment in our criminal law.”
Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina of Pussy Riot are in the United States this week, where they attended several White House Correspondents Dinner events and lobbied lawmakers on Capitol Hill to push for more additions to the Magnitsky List of Russians banned from traveling to or keeping money in the U.S. Both were found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after the group’s church protest and sentenced to two years in prison. They were pardoned by Vladimir Putin in December and released three months early.
The diplomat in question has sent other offensive emails, including one from this year warning of “homosexual authoritarianism” threatening the U.S. and one from last year describing his nostalgia for Stalin, who “fucked” a “feminine” Russia.
“One thing about Stalin is that with him Russian state was at its highest,” the diplomat wrote in 2013. “I am convinced without this guy we would never launch Gagarin in outer space, though it happened a bit later,” he wrote, referring to Yury Gagarin, the first man in space and a Soviet hero. “Yes he kinda fucked Russia, but Russian soul is feminine by it’s nature. So I believe we need to step back and look at him in a longer perspective, like the French did with Napoleon. It’s complicated like so many things in Russian history.”
In an email titled “gay SOS,” the diplomat writes: “In Russia when someone does studies of a foreign country, he or she is most probably trUly in love with it. I am myself was deeply in love with France. Now it doesn’t work here in the States. Why most of Russia watchers in Washington DC are indeed Russia haters? Probably because this is a Cold War legacy. You studied USSR to know your enemy. Now the only way to make Russia a living is to help hating it - be it Vladimir Putin or human rights. Actually I was thinking about homosexual authoritarism [sic] threatening America. Here is a good piece on Arizona buzz. Why don’t anyone write something similar about Russian anti-propaganda law? The answer my friend is blowing with the wind…. [ http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/jan-brewers-foolish-veto-104014.html?hp=l1s” ]
In another email from this year about a PSA produced by a group called the Fair Games Project protesting Russia’s anti-gay law in light of the Sochi Olympics, the diplomat questioned why Russia is being criticized when other countries can “legally kill fags.”
“Of note, not a single face there I could recognize as Russian. But anyway we are clearly losers by their own standards: they claim only a minor penalty for being gay in Russia (which is not true), while others can legally kill fags or send them in prison. Rossija vpered!” (“Russia Forward!”).
“We do not comment private correspondence of unknown and unnamed persons,” said Yevgeniy Khorishko, press officer at the Russian Embassy. “Such alleged correspondence has nothing to do with the Embassy.”
Ukraine Faces Struggle to Gain Control of Militias, Including Those on Its Side
By ANDREW ROTHMAY 23, 2014
Pro-Russian militiamen rested on Friday near the body of a member of the pro-Ukrainian Donbass Battalion at a checkpoint about 10 miles west of Donetsk. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
KARLOVKA, Ukraine — In a secluded wood in eastern Ukraine, a group of 120 men who call themselves the Donbass Battalion had commandeered a children’s summer camp to prepare for war.
The goal was to transform a motley collection of machinists, stockbrokers and students into armed fighters who could go toe-to-toe with the anti-Kiev militants that have swept through Ukraine’s east over the past two months.
“Isn’t it clear by now that the only way to lead is to have a weapon?” said Sergey, a gangly 25-year-old who awkwardly gripped an AK-47 assault rifle for the first time on Monday.
Last week, he left his job as a journalist for the pro-revolution information center in Kiev, the capital, to come east and train under a coterie of army veterans, some of whom had served in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
“They tell me my job for now is to eat and get stronger,” he said.
What once seemed a sideshow to Ukraine’s campaign against the rebel militias took center stage on Friday when a firefight pitting the Donbass Battalion against a pro-Russian militia left at least seven people dead just south of Donetsk, the largest city in the region.
[ VIDEO in original .. substitute here ]
[this re original embed] A group of Ukrainians loyal to Kiev formed the Donbass Battalion to provide a new front against pro-Russian militias that have attacked military units and taken over government buildings. By Grant Slater on Publish Date May 23, 2014
The origins of the clash were in dispute.
Before the shooting had stopped, Semyon Semenchenko, the battalion’s leader, claimed that his fighters had been ambushed near a rebel checkpoint in Karlovka, a village about 45 minutes’ drive from Donetsk. Locals and pro-Russian fighters, however, said that Mr. Semenchenko had led an assault on the checkpoint and found himself surrounded when enemy reinforcements arrived.
The battle showed the devastating potential for violence between ad hoc militias, some with little formal training, which could continue even if clashes between the Ukrainian Army and the rebels cease. Until Friday, the Donbass Battalion had seen little action, and was known best for storming a police station in the small town of Velyka Novosilka. Yet the levels of violence have escalated recently. As many as 15 Ukrainian conscript soldiers were killed .. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/world/europe/ukraine.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0 .. in an ambush on Thursday at a checkpoint on an isolated country road about an hour south of Donetsk.
Hundreds of Kiev supporters have joined the newly reinstated National Guard, hastily formed military units of inexperienced fighters who have found themselves on the front lines of the simmering conflict.
The presence of these new units, particularly of the “Dnieper brigade,” which is backed by Ihor Kolomoysky, the oligarch governor of the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, has often fueled anger in the east.
, an episode that reinforced a common refrain here that western Ukraine is sending hired killers to subjugate the country’s east.
How the Donbass Battalion is financed remains murky. Mr. Semenchenko, 40, claimed that the group did not have connections to the government or to Mr. Kolomoysky, and survived on donations from a “number of patriotically minded citizens.”
Asked about the danger of a widening conflict as more militias acquire weapons and organize, Mr. Semenchenko said that the government had lost control of the country.
“It’s better a civil war than what they have in store for us,” he said.
After the clash in Karlovka on Friday, the body of a man who had graying hair and wore a flak jacket lay shot dead behind a concrete outpost. Nearby, embers glowed from a fire that had gutted a new restaurant, which pro-Russian fighters said had burned down after the pro-Kiev fighters took up positions inside.
No police were present even hours after the attack.
At a checkpoint several miles away, where dozens of heavily armed pro-Russian militants were positioned, a white van pulled up quickly and tossed another body onto the curb, where it lay for several hours.
“It was me who shot him,” said a young fighter who gave his name as Dmitry and who held a Dragunov sniper rifle, as he pointed at the body.
Neither Mr. Semenchenko nor other members of his militia could be reached on Friday evening, but those controlling the group’s Facebook account denied rumors that he had been captured or killed.
Speaking more than a month ago, when the militia was first formed, Mr. Semenchenko said his men were not ready to challenge militants in Slovyansk or other pro-Russian strongholds.
“I won’t take my soldiers to a fight if they are not ready,” he said then.
Others in the group, though, seemed keen for action.
“We sacrificed Crimea without a shot fired,” said Andrey Gobzhelyan, 45, a military veteran and former machine tools maker. “This time we just have to fire.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 24, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Ukraine Faces Struggle to Gain Control of Militias, Including Those on Its Side.
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