Putin Ridding Himself Of Another Critic

[lindapalmara]

The latest killing of BorIs Nemtsov, a critic of Putin, liberal member of the opposition and critic of Russia's involvement in Ukraine and Crimea (not such a surprise then). This time it was six bullets and not plutonium!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31665380

[Khandro]

ichkeria; If you know anything about the history of the Ukraine, you should know that it is not a single entity by choice, the peoples of East Ukraine, particularly the miners, have been betrayed and abused by Kiev for generations and are equidistant between there and Moscow. Have you read 'The Borderlands' by Anna Reid? If not, it's well worth doing so and you will see why the so called rebels will not concede an inch to Kiev.
The real rebels are the bunch of fascists who seized power from the legitimate (albeit, less than perfect) government whom the Americans wish to support for the purpose of the expansion of NATO to the very border of Russia.

[ichkeria]

Utter nonsense khandro
I can't be bothered going over the benefit of the whole thing just for you but you are very poorly informed if you think that - particularly the tired old 'fascist government in Kyiv' nonsense (by the by the Communist a Party stood freely in the last elections, whereas surprise surprise they were banned from standing in the 'rebel' areas
And it's 'Ukraine' not 'the Ukraine' :-)

[ichkeria]

Re-reading what you wrote, and it is hardly relevant anyway, but "the peoples of Eastern Ukraine" are not as a matter of fact "equidistant between (Kyiv?) and Moscow" Donetsk for example is much closer to Kyiv than it is to Moscow
Not really relevant though, but all the same :-)
Ukraine could have done with a more decentralised government over the years (as could a lot of countries) but while there are the sort of regional suspicions of the centre that you might expect in such a huge country, the majority of people in the east regard themselves as Ukrainian and have no desire to be part of Russia or a breakaway entity. And the fact of the fact of the matter is that Putin doesn't want them either. He just wants to use the discontent on the region to destabilise the whole country. nasty and cynical but it may come back to bite him because as I said earlier he risks unleashing extreme nationalist forces that he may struggle to control

[Khandro]

ichkeria; http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/04/who-governing-ukraine-olexander-turchynov
You'll see from this that they mostly comprise of members the old far-right nationalist Svoboda party, and could most certainly be described as fascists.
I stand corrected over the use of definite article usage, but I use it as I do for 'the' United States, etc. :0)

[ichkeria]

Khandro the article you quote is from last year. When Yanukovych had just fled and an interim government had to be formed. And people were asking 'so who runs Ukraine?' In fact the people who 'took over' then were the same people who had been in parliament all along and the president himself was constitutionally impeached by them.
Since then there has been a presidential election and parliamentary election in each of which the percentage of votes for 'far right' candidates was minuscule. Svoboda is more like UKIP anyway. Pravy Sektor are the real far right party.
It's true that the insanely courageous Azov Batallion currently fighting in SE Ukraine is largely on the far right but when the country is under threat and your army is unprepared you take all the help you can get

[Khandro]

I've just checked too;Donetsk-Moscow = 1,000km Donetsk-Kiev = 700 km
and the more westerly parts of Ukraine are an enormous distance away.

[janbee]

Vlad the Mad has said he will do all in his power to hunt down the person/s responsible for this murder. Methinks he won't need to look too far. Just look in the mirror Vlad !

[sevenOP]

"Why didn’t the Rada impeach Yanukovych?"

http://www.ponarseurasia.org/article/was-yanukovych%E2%80%99s-removal-constitutional

[ichkeria]

When you look at the circumstances of Nemtsov's death it seems most unlikely that people in very high places were not directing it. For one thing he was killed in an area close to the Kremlin - it would have been crawling with low profile security. Someone must have been following his movements very closely using sophisticated listening device - leaving a restaurant and deciding unusually to walk. Just a quick call from someone to the hired assassins known to be held n standby in a local apartment and Vlad's your (wicked) uncle :-)

[Peter Pedant]

Itch
I reached for the Irony Klaxon when Khandro said 'if you (Itch) knew anything about Ukraine...."

Blaaaaarp !

When the aircraft was shot out of the sky, you gave us URLs of the transmissions back to Moscow - "there are bodies falling out of the sky and none of them have uniforms on..." And ya couldnt do that without special knowledge

[ichkeria]

Peter:
It's just a question of following the flow of info that exists these days.Social media damned the perpetrators of MH17. They boasted about shooting it down but most of the tweets were deleted. A guy in a trolleybus in Donbass (I forget which town) filmed a convoy of Russian military vehicles on his phone. And so on.
Meanwhile days after the event of Friday Russian state media is doing its usual cover up story: no doubt Life TV will be showing footage soon of a car leaving the scene of the killing with some President Poroshenko in the back holding a smoking pistol