ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

All the signs are that the freaks in Kiev have decided to put down the demonstrations in Kharkov, Donetsk and Lugansk by force. YouTube is full of amateur footage showing all sorts of militarized units, APCs and even artillery pieces being moved towards these cities. Local people have tried to stop them, but without success. It appears that the attacking force will include loyal cops from other cities, regular military units, private contractors hired by the oligarchs, riot police, "anti-terrorist" units of the SBU and volunteers from the Right Sector. Facing them are crowds of largely unarmed or minimally armed civilians. In Lugansk some of these civilians have looted the SBU armory and have assault rifles (AKM-74s). The crowds are relatively large, but not huge, most of the local activists have taken up positions inside key government buildings which they occupy and while there are some barricades around these buildings, they do not appear to be properly defended, at l

By Naomi Klein " The Guardian " - The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of Representatives ( H.R. 6 ), one in the Senate ( S. 2083 ) – that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin's fossil fuels, and enhancing US national security. According to Cory Gardner, the Republican congressman who introduced the House bill, "opposing this legislation is like hanging up on a 911 call from our friends and allies". And that might be true – as long as your friends and allies work at Chevron and Shell, and the emergency is the need to keep profits up amid dwindling supplies of conventional oil and gas. For this ploy to work, it's important not to look too closely at details. Lik

By Alex Lantier  Ukraine stands on the brink of civil war, as the unelected pro-Western regime that seized power this February in Kiev threatens a bloody crackdown on protesters occupying local government offices in cities across traditionally pro-Russian sections of eastern Ukraine. Protesters are demanding a referendum to federalize Ukraine and limit the authority of the new, far-right regime in Kiev. Some protesters have also called on their areas to vote to join Russia, as the former Ukrainian region of Crimea did last month, or declared independent “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Kharkiv. Andrei Senchenko, the deputy head of the presidential administration in Kiev, said his regime’s security forces would “shoot to kill” if protesters did not abandon buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv by today. Senchenko’s threats echoed those of Irina Farion, a legislator from the Fatherland Party of US-backed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk. She demanded death for the protesters sa