The ex-Israeli soldier who led a Kiev fighting unit
'Delta' has headed 'the Blue Helmets of Maidan' of 40 men and women - including several IDF veterans - in violent clashes with government forces.
He calls his troops “the Blue Helmets of Maidan,” but brown is the color of the headgear worn by Delta — the nom de guerre of the commander of a Jewish-led militia force that participated in the Ukrainian revolution. Under his helmet, he also wears a kippah.

Delta, a Ukraine-born former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, spoke to JTA Thursday on condition of anonymity. He explained how he came to use combat skills he acquired in the Shu’alei Shimshon reconnaissance battalion of the Givati infantry brigade to rise through the ranks of Kiev’s street fighters. He has headed a force of 40 men and women — including several fellow IDF veterans — in violent clashes with government forces.

Several Ukrainian Jews, including Rabbi Moshe Azman, one of the country’s claimants to the title of chief rabbi, confirmed Delta’s identity and role in the still-unfinished revolution.

The “Blue Helmets” nickname, a reference to the UN peacekeeping force, stuck after Delta’s unit last month prevented a mob from torching a building occupied by Ukrainian police, he said. “There were dozens of officers inside, surrounded by 1,200 demonstrators who wanted to burn them alive,” he recalled. “We intervened and negotiated their safe passage.”

The problem, he said, was that the officers would not leave without their guns, citing orders. Delta told JTA his unit reasoned with the mob to allow the officers to leave with their guns. “It would have been a massacre, and that was not an option,” he said.

The Blue Helmets comprise 35 men and women who are not Jewish, and who are led by five ex-IDF soldiers, says Delta, an Orthodox Jew in his late 30s who regularly prays at Azman’s Brodsky Synagogue. He declined to speak about his private life.

Interesting Q and A with Putin and the press.
eng.kremlin.ru/news/6763

Further down, after the Q and A section: An extended comment by Putin.

Beginning: First of all, my assessment of what happened in Kiev and in Ukraine in general. There can only be one assessment: this was an anti-constitutional takeover, an armed seizure of power. Does anyone question this? Nobody does. There is a question here that neither I, nor my colleagues, with whom I have been discussing the situation in Ukraine a great deal over these past days, as you know – none of us can answer. The question is why was this done?...................................

Wise Haven wrote:
I posted this earlier, but you can see the whole Q&A with the press here:

Kiev snipers hired by Maidan leaders - leaked EU's Ashton phone tape

The snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders, according to a leaked phone conversation between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister, which has emerged online.

Source RT
rt.com/news/ashton-maidan-snipers-estonia-946/

“There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition,” Urmas Paet said during the conversation.

“I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,” Ashton answered.

The call took place after Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet visited Kiev on February 25, following the peak of clashes between the pro-EU protesters and security forces in the Ukrainian capital.

(Reuters) - Armed men seized Robert Serry, a special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Ukraine's Crimea region on Wednesday, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said.

Russian forces have taken control of Crimea in southern Ukraine. Serry was held in the region's main city, Simferopol, a ministry spokeswoman said.

ITV News' Europe Editor James Mates pictured with UN representative Robert Serry in Crimea. Credit: ITV News/James Mates

Local militia are blocking the entrance of a coffee shop in Crimea where UN representative Robert Serry is being held.

The men, dressed in combat fatigues with some wearing pro-Russia black and gold arm bands, are not allowing anyone in or out of the shop.

When did Russia Today suddenly appear on our radars? What had the Russians done immediately prior to that?

Estonian Foreign Ministry confirms authenticity of leaked phone call discussing how Kiev snipers who shot protesters were possibly hired by Ukraine's new leaders

During the call, Paet claims a doctor told him both protesters and police were shot by snipers during clashes in Kiev allegedly on the orders of the opposition.

But while the Baltic state acknowledged the audio was genuine, it denied that it had blamed opponents of Ukraine's deposed president for sniper killings during last month's unrest.

In the leaked audio, Paet, speaking in imperfect English, says a doctor identified only as Olga had told him on a visit to Kiev that snipers may have come from the opposition.

'The same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides among policemen and then people from the street,' Paet says.

'So that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition,' he said, referring to the former opposition to deposed President Viktor Yanukovich.

He added that Ukrainians do not trust the Maidan leaders as all the opposition politicians have a 'dirty past'.

LINK: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2573923...nes-new-leaders.html

Down goes another protesting RT presenter.

Anchor at Putin’s News Channel Just Quit On Air

Video at Source link

RT America anchor Liz Wahl abruptly resigned from her job while filming a live segment on Wednesday afternoon. “I cannot be a part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin,” she said. “I’m proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth. And that is why, after this broadcast, I am resigning.”

Wahl, who works in the channel’s Washington bureau, cited fellow RT anchor Abby Martin, who publicly criticized Russia’s “military occupation” of the Ukranian peninsula of Crimea, as well as her own grandparents, who immigrated to America during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, as inspirations for resigning.

Spring Fails in Ukrainian Plunderland - by Pepe Escobar

And here is Russian President Vladimir Putin, already last year, talking about how Russia and China decided to trade in roubles and yuan, and stressing how Russia needs to quit the "excessive monopoly" of the US dollar. He had to be aware the Empire would strike back.

Now there's more; Russian presidential adviser Sergey Glazyev told RIA Novosti, "Russia will abandon the US dollar as a reserve currency if the United States initiates sanctions against the Russian Federation."

So the Empire struck back by giving "a little help" to regime change in the Ukraine. And Moscow counter-punched by taking control of Crimea in less than a day without firing a shot --
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The "West" once again has learned you don't mess with Russian intelligence, which in a nutshell pre-empted in Crimea a replica of the coup in Kiev, largely precipitated by UNA-UNSO -- a shady, ultra-rightwing, crack paramilitary NATO-linked force using Ukraine as base, as exposed by William Engdahl.

And Crimea was an even murkier operation, because those neo-nazis from Western Ukraine were in tandem with Tatar jihadis (the House of Saud will be heavily tempted to finance them from now on).
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Then there are the new regional governors appointed to the mostly Russophone east and south of Ukraine. They are - who else -- oligarchs, such as billionaires Sergei Taruta posted to Donetsk and Ihor Kolomoysky posted in Dnipropetrovsk. People in Maidan in Kiev were protesting mostly against -- who else -- kleptocrat oligarchs. Once again, Western corporate media -- which tirelessly plugged a "popular" uprising against kleptocracy -- hasn't noticed it.
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Geo-economically, the Empire needs Ukraine to be out of the Eurasian economic union promoted by the Kremlin -- which also includes Kazakhstan and Belarus. And geopolitically, when NATO Secretary General, the vain puppet Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said that an IMF-EU package for the Ukraine would be "a major boost for Euro-Atlantic security," this is what clinched it; the only thing that matters in this whole game is NATO "annexing" Ukraine, as I examined earlier.

It has always been about the Empire of Bases -- just like the encirclement of Iran; just like the "pivot" to Asia translating into encirclement of China; just like encircling Russia with bases and "missile defense." Over the Kremlin's collective dead body, of course.
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So any mediation now hinges on Germany. Berlin has no time for "sanctions" -- the sacrosanct American exceptionalist mantra; Russia is a plush market for German industry. And for all the vociferations at the Economist and the Financial Times, the City of London also does not want sanctions; the financial center feeds on lavish Russian politico/oligarch funds. As for the West's "punishment" for Russia by threatening to expel it from the Group of Eight, that is a joke. The G-8, which excludes China, does not decide anything relevant anymore; the G-20 does.
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What's left for millions of Ukrainians is the bloodsucking IMF, to be duly welcomed by "Yats" (as Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is treated by Vic "F**k the EU" Nuland).
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The endgame is all but written; Moscow controls an autonomous Crimea for free, and the US/EU "control," or try to plunder, disaster capitalism-style, a back of beyond western Ukraine wasteland "managed" by a bunch of Western puppets and oligarchs, with a smatter of neo-nazis.
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Full Article at the Link> www.opednews.com/articles/1/Spring-fails...aine-140306-487.html

A referendum on the status of Crimea will be held March 16, the region’s deputy prime minister announced. Crimeans will be asked to decide if the autonomous republic stays part of Ukraine or joins Russia.

"The referendum will take place March 16," said the autonomous region’s First Deputy-Premier Rustam Temirgaliev, according to ITAR-TASS.

The new date is two weeks earlier than the one announced last week.

There will be two questions on the ballots.

“The first one: Are you in favor of Crimea becoming a constituent territory of the Russian Federation. The second one: Are you in favor of restoring Crimea’s 1992 constitution,” Temirgaliev said.

Autonomous Republic of Crimea: 1999–2013[edit]

Down goes another protesting RT presenter.

Anchor at Putin’s News Channel Just Quit On Air

Video at Source link

RT America anchor Liz Wahl abruptly resigned from her job while filming a live segment on Wednesday afternoon. “I cannot be a part of a network funded by the Russian government that whitewashes the actions of Putin,” she said. “I’m proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth. And that is why, after this broadcast, I am resigning.”

Wahl, who works in the channel’s Washington bureau, cited fellow RT anchor Abby Martin, who publicly criticized Russia’s “military occupation” of the Ukranian peninsula of Crimea, as well as her own grandparents, who immigrated to America during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, as inspirations for resigning.