BOUblog

Boudine:

Op 11 mei, dus gisteren, vierde men in Donetsk de onafhankelijkheid:

[eng subs] DPR liberty parade celebrating anniversary of 11/05/14 referendum

Happy Birthday Donbass!

Just a short – but dramatic – year ago, the people of the Donbass voted in a referendum to create the People’s Republic of Donetsk (DNR). They naively hoped that this referendum would force the junta in Kiev to finally begin serious negotiations. Instead, they got *total* war featuring armored assaults, aerial bombings, the use of ballistic missile and chemical attacks. And yet, under these absolutely horrific conditions, the people of the DNR made absolutely amazing achievements; not only did they transform a volunteer militia into a real military force, while at the same time beating back two full-scale military attacks by the Ukronazi military, they also cracked down on the huge crime wave of war-profiteering, kidnapping, rapes, aggravated assaults, etc. They did not let the infighting between various groups, clans, leaders and factions turn into an internal civil war and they succeeded, albeit with great difficulty, in unifying the command structure. They have started down the long road of re-establishing normal, social and governmental services and even though the socio-economic situation is still critical, the people of the DNR understand what is happening and an overwhelming majority supports it.

Boudine:

CrossTalk: Teetering Ukraine duurt 25 minuten.

Ukraine – a country in the balance. For more than a year Ukraine has been in political turmoil and at war with itself. From the western backed coup to a fragile ceasefire, Ukraine’s future is open to question today. Are there any good choices left? CrossTalking with Ben Aris, Dmitry Babich, and Alexander Mercouris.

Boudine:

While Revolutionaries Can Be Murdered, You Cannot Kill Ideas.
Posted by Gleb Bazov ⋅ May 24, 2015

It is war that is the greatest injustice. We are not fighting the ones responsible. Those who finance, who stir it up, who through the media set one people against another—it is them whom we must fight.

— Aleksey Borisovich Mozgovoy

What struck me about Mozgovoi is that he was no hypocrite—he was the same in real life as he was in his public appearances. There is always the possibility that yet another “popular leader” is insincere, wears the mask of an advocate for truth, while in secret desires glory and riches. As a known skeptic, I expected there to be a certain divergence between his media image and the man in real life. Mozgovoi was nothing like that; he was driven by ideas. He chose to fight for his ideals, even though he could have elected to fit into the system he dislike so much and, like the rest, to forget about justice, equity and other lofty goals. In this regard, in his death and in his life, Mozgovoy demonstrated his honesty and his readiness to die for what he believed in.

I still remember his words, that “I went to war without leaving a shred of me behind, cannot deal with the family, while there is war, my brigade is my family.” He truly, to a large degree sacrificed his personal comfort for a common cause, even though, like others, he could have in “that ignominious war” considerably enriched himself, for instance trading in coal. He had a different path, and he walked it from the beginning to the end.

Mozgovoy lived very modestly and mercilessly pursued the local criminal underworld. Unlike Plotnitskiy and Kosytsyn, who became mired in coal-trading scandals, Mozgovoi had no part in corrupt schemes. He was constantly trying to foster grassroots activism, and, having no ability to spread his ideas across the Republic, he tried to do what he could, to change at least something in the world around him.