Ukraine SITREP-update April 30, 16:12 UTC/Zulu: "US/EU Hedgehog scaring techniques"

• China has officially strongly criticized any sanctions saying that they would be useless.
• Another six cities of the eastern Ukraine have rebelled.
• Dmitryi Olegovich Rogozin Russian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia and Deputy Prime Minister of Russia in charge of defense industry has declared that Russia will respond to words with words and to actions with actions.  For example, he said, if the US would try to hurt the Russian aerospace industry they could fly their astronauts to the International Space Station themselves.
• Oleg Tsarev, one of the most popular political figures from the eastern Ukraine officially quit the Presidential race explaining that it was impossible for him to participate.
• Mikhail Dobkin, a top Party of Regions figure and close friend of the Major of Kharkov Gennadi Kermes - who has been shot and is in critical condition in an Israeli hospital declared that he is also thinking of quitting the Presidential race.
• Russian pilots have reported that the GPS signal over Ukraine appears to have been degraded by the USA.  The USA also did that in Libya and during the 08.08.08 Ossetia.  Luckily, the Russian constellation of GLONASS satellites is at its full capacity (24) and it can easily take over.
• US Secretary of State John Kerry:"Today Russia seeks to change the security landscape of Eastern and Central Europe, we have to make it absolutely clear to the Kremlin that NATO territory is inviolable we will defend every single inch of it." 
• In Kiev the Right Sector and the Maidanites have fought each other
  Turchinov admits that his operation has failed:"I would like to say frankly that at the moment the security structures are unable to swiftly take the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions back under control. Security personnel tasked with the protection of citizens are helpless. More than that, some of these units either aid or co-operate with terrorist groups.  Our task is to stop the spread of the terrorist threat first of all in the Kharkiv and Odessa regions."
• It has been announced by the military authorities in Russia that two newcomers will participate in the next May 9th (aka "Victory Day") parade in Moscow: a Spetsnaz unit in its new bullet-proof combat fatigues and silenced rifles and a Naval Infantry unit from the Black Sea Feet which will be flying the flag of the Russian Crimean Republic.  I can just about imagine the rage of the NATO attaches invited to watch the parade (which they always are each year).
• The pro-US liberal activist Boris Nemtsov has committed political suicide by going on Ukie TV and comparing Putin to Stalin.  Not that he has much to lose since his "Parnas" party was firmly pegged in the single digits. 
• Nemtsov, Khodorkovsky, Kasparov and Navalnyi and a few others are basically political corpses now
• On the same program on Ukie TV which featured Nemtsov,  a well-know Ukrainian nationalist, Iurii Lutsenko, seriously declared that the "genetic code of the Ukrainian people give them the ability to live outside lies, whereas the genetic code of childern of Gengis Khan makes them willing to live in lies and spread the patriotic syphillis".  His comments about the genetic makeup was made particularly comical since he was sitting next to a Jew (Nemtsov), on a TV show hosted by a Jew (Savik Shuster) and that he was co-organizing the conference which invited Nemtsov to Kiev with another famous Jew (Khodorkovsky).  I wonder why these Jews who usually are hyper-sensitive to "genetic" issues all remained silent and smiling when a neo-Nazi nationalist was seriously discussing how the Asia genes of Russians made them different and less capable of opposing lies than the putative Ukrainian "race".
• The USA and EU have adopted further symbolic sanctions on Russia which only serve one purpose: to convince the Russians that the West cannot and will not take any meaningful punitive measures against Russia.
• Finally, the US is gleefully reporting that sanctions are hurting Russia which is now suffering from a capital outflow.  This is partially true, there are signs of capital outflow, but this is speculative capital anyway which, like in 08.08.08 is moved out by western plutocrats in response to an anti-Russian campaign and which will soon be right back.  So far, there are absolutely no signs of disinvestment for the simple reason that the Western plutocrats are not willing to suffer the consequences of such a move.

I might have mentioned his here, but there is a great Russian saying about making empty threats.  It goes like this: "to try to scare a hedgehog with a naked butt".  That is exactly what the US and EU are doing now: they are trying to scare Russia with sanctions which will hurt them infinitely more than they would hurt Russia.  Not only that, but the very notion that slapping 15 or 30 people with a 6 months travel ban into the Eurozone will break the will of a people which withstood events like the 900 days of the blockade of Leningrad by the German military (with hunger, cold and artillery and Luftwaffe bombing raids every day) is laughable.

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The good news today is the admission by Turchinov that he lost the Lugansk and Donetsk Oblast and that what he as to do now is to prevent these events from spreading to other parts of the Ukraine such as the Odessa and Kharkov  regions (see map).  My personal feeling is that Kharkov is gone too.  But Odessa might be more complicated.  The situation in Dnepropetrovsk is even more complex.

What could happen is a two-step disintegration of the Ukraine.  In the first step the Lugansk, Donetsk and Kharkov regions would break off and form their own independent republic.  Then a relative lull will take place between the upcoming Presidential elections (assuming they happen), the payment of pensions, the price increases and the total termination of Russian gas supplies to the Ukraine.  Then over the summer and early Fall the rest of the Ukraine will explode in social protests which will push regions such as Odessa or Zaporozhie to break off while the oligarchs and neo-Nazis battle each other for the control of Kiev.  The single most powerful factor affecting the Ukrainian disintegration process will be the economic boom in Crimea.  If last year the Ukrainians compared the economic prosperity of Russians and EU-members, this year they will compare  the economic situation in the junta controlled Ukraine (which I call "Banderastan") and Crimea.  As for the People's Republic of Donetsk, it will have to join Russia sooner or later if only for security reasons.

Then, I can only express my amused amazement at Kerry's latest expression of hot air.  What does "we have to make it absolutely clear to the Kremlin that NATO territory is inviolable we will defend every single inch of it" supposed to mean?!  Does Kerry seriously believe that anybody - nevermind the Russians - will seriously believe that Russian tanks are about to attack NATO?  This also begs the question of how exactly would NATO propose to fight Russia if the latter occupied the Baltic Statges (which Russia neither wants nor needs).

Kerry is turning into a full-time buffoon who makes Hillary look rational.

On last thing: I have heard that something close to 70% of Americans are unhappy with Obama and is his handling of the Ukrainian crisis, while Putin's popularity is pegged around 80% of support.

Looks to me like the Russian people and the American people very much have a similar point of view.  Too bad that a parasitical plutocracy of 1% has put a non-entity like Obama in power.

The Saker