Is it Time to Pull Rank?

Despite my pledges not too I've been continuing to argue with people on Twitter. One particular argument began on January 21st (21/1/15) and is still continuing some two weeks later. So you'll excuse me if I only give you the edited highlights.

Basically it began when I left a comment on a news report about both sides in the Ukraine conflict agreeing to a fresh ceasefire. I made the comment that hopefully pressure would be put on the junta in Kiev to actually adhere to it. That's because if the Kiev junta had been pressured to adhere to the Minsk agreement they'd signed up to there wouldn't be any fighting in eastern Ukraine because the junta's forces would have withdrawn from the entire Donbass region. This ceasefire would have then allowed them time to remove the Nazi and neo-Nazi elements of the junta who want to remove the entire ethnic Russian minority that live in the east from Ukraine. Or to quote them; "Liquidate the sub-humans." Of course if the junta was unable to remove those elements we would then have to start looking at dividing Ukraine along ethnic lines as happened in Yugoslavia and then again in Serbia.

Another Twitter user (@Vtechp) who lives in the US then commented on my comment sarcastically calling the Donbass rebels Nazis. He backed this up by showing me pictures of the Donbass rebels and entirely separate pictures of Kiev forces wearing Nazi insignia and making Nazi salutes. When I pointed out to him that if the people in the two entirely separate groups of photographs were on the same side there wouldn't be a conflict going on just a genocide. He then challenged me to prove the junta were Nazis. So I simply posted him a picture of Oleksandr Sych the self-appointed Deputy Prime Minister and member of the proudly Nazi Svoboda Party giving a Nazi salute at a party rally. The response I got back was a flat denial that it was Sych which is the equivalent of you showing me a picture of Barack Obama and me going; "No, that's Vladimir Putin."

I then pressed on by showing him pictures of the annual rally in Lviv, Ukraine (Poland until 1945) honouring the 1st Galician Division. For those of you who aren't familiar with it the 1st Galician is the Polish/Ukrainian name given to the 14th Division of the Waffen SS branch of the Nazi German army. It went on to become the Ukrainian National Army. I thought this was rather good evidence of the Kiev junta's links to Nazi Germany and the person I was arguing with went quiet for a couple of days.

Unfortunately holocaust memorial day (27/1) seemed to excite him again so I pointed out that the 1st Galician along with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) militia and the Einsatzgruppen death squads that were part of the Nazis security police slaughtering some 3 million ethnic Russian Ukrainians during the holocaust it was perhaps understandable that Ukraine's ethnic Russian minority were a bit nervous now they were back in power. His response to this was that they deserved it for invading Ukraine. So I pointed out that ethnic Russians have been indigenous to eastern Ukraine for at least 1000 years, long before Ukraine and Russia were even accepted as nations. Much of the western Ukrainian states where the junta have their heartland on the other hand were part of Poland up until 1945. This led to something of a surreal argument about whether Putin had somehow managed to travel back in time to alter of the evidence of Slavic Europe in preparation for his 'invasion of Ukraine.'

Possibly after one too many glasses of wine I made the mistake of laying down the challenge to @Vetchp of proving that there were Russian troops in Ukraine. This wasn't a problem because I was then presented by a deluge of evidence. In fact I was quickly presented with photographs of the Russian troops in Crimea that were taken in the days immediately after the coup. Russian troops have been stationed in Crimea for about 300 years and funnily enough they didn't magically teleport out the moment the Ukrainian government was overthrown. The person I was arguing with didn't seem at all put off by the fact that these confirmed Russian troops were wearing completely different uniforms to all the pictures of Donbass rebels that he claimed were also Russian troops.

On Sunday (1/2/15) @Vtechp suddenly became a much skilled troll and suddenly much better at British rather then American slang. I think that what happened was that the fire at the Moscow library of Slavic European history gave him an idea of who he was talking too prompting him to read this blog. However there is always that concern that the Tweets I'm reading on my phone haven't actually been written by the user they claim to be from especially with the British Army setting up a dedicated social media propaganda division.

However it must be said that the quality of the 'evidence' he was producing didn't improve. For example he sent me about a half dozen links to various news stories all reporting the same claim by US General and NATO Chief Phillip Breedlove that Russian troops were in Ukraine. What happened immediately after was that Russia asked Breedlove if he had any evidence to back up his claim. We're still waiting for Breedlove to get back to them.

However my knowledge of that story highlights the fact that this is a very real situation that is changing all the time. From some of the other people I follow on Twitter I'm aware that this sort of direct approach is considered very bad manners because it could alter the outcome of delicate negotiations. A prime example of this has been the sort of journey that the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) have been on during this conflict. From the start the OSCE have acted as an entirely partisan organisation with a clear bias against Russia. For example in May 2014 they attempted to enter Crimea. Normally in these situation an impartial observer organisation would delicately negotiate such a move with all parties. However the OSCE simply turned up unannounced and demanded to be let in. As such you get the impression they had no intention of entering Crimea but instead wanted to cause a confrontation that could be used as 'evidence' of this Russian invasion.

The OSCE pulled a similar stunt in the aftermath of the MH17 crash when they issued a flurry of statements accusing the rebels of blocking the investigation, stealing evidence and abusing the corpses of the victims. However when the junta in Kiev finally relented and allowed an investigation to begin the air crash investigators commended the rebels for their help and their responsible handling of what was a very complex and challenging situation.

Since then the OSCE have been slowly and discreetly getting back to reality. For example on January 13th (13/1/15) 12 people were killed when  a civilian bus was hit by artillery fire. The junta immediately claimed that they had evidence showing that the rebels had carried out the attack on purpose. Once the OSCE finished their investigation they didn't go so far as to accuse the junta of lying but they did make clear that it was impossible for the artillery fire to have come from the location the junta had claimed. As a result it was impossible for them to rule out that the junta had carried out the attack for propaganda purposes.

Also in the midst of this argument we were joined by a guy from Taiwan who seemed confused as to whether we were discussing Russia's relationship with Ukraine or China's relationship with Taiwan. In light of today's plane crash I'm starting to think that now it's got a death toll it might be time to walk away from this argument. Mind you the almost a year of no-one challenging the epic lies that have been coming out of both Kiev and Washington also has a death toll and that's far higher.

22:00 on 4/2/15 (UK date).

Edited at around 15:15 on 5/2/14 (UK date) add;

As you may have noticed I wrote the above in a bit of a rush so I've now been back to tidy it up. However I've also remembered some of the other highlights of the exchange.

The main one of these was when @VTechp  claimed that the Great Soviet famine wasn't the result of an epic policy failure that ended up killing around 30 million people across 9 time zones. Instead it was a carefully planned conspiracy to kill Ukrainians that just happened to have a 92% collateral damage rate.

Also he presented me with around 20 links to various western news agencies who were reporting a claim that Russian soldiers were being secretly buried after being killed in Ukraine. If I'd had more then 160 characters I would have explained that it doesn't matter how many people re-print the story it's still just one claim. The person making this particular claim is part of "Human Rights House" network of NGO's based in Norway. It is entirely focused of highlighting human rights abuses in the Caucus region (Chechnya etc) and Georgia where there were similar claims of Russian aggression back in 2008. It is heavily linked to Swedish intelligence who along with Poland and the US have been making some very wild claims about Ukraine. This specific claim was that 1 in every 6 people killed in the Ukraine conflict was a Russian solider. Given what we know about the death toll of civilians and junta fighters that is extremely hard to believe.

Recently there's been this big story in Russia about a mother of seven who was arrested for spying after contacting the Ukrainian Embassy to provide them with information about troop movements within Russia. That struck me as the Russians making the point that just because a woman lives in Russia it doesn't automatically mean that her loyalties lie with Russia. Sadly that point seemed to go straight over the head of the US' Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power.