Putins Trojan 'humanitarian' aid

Winter has finally arrived, and Putin is sending more than a hundred UNAUTHORISED trucks of so-called 'humanitarian' aid into Donetsk. Reuters (Dec. 1st, 2014) reports that,

"Ukraine said on Sunday that a convoy of 106 vehicles had entered its eastern territory from Russia without Kiev's permission and accused Moscow of once again using humanitarian aid shipments to send weapons and ammunition to separatist rebels." (my emphasis)

Meanwhile, the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, re-affirms (30 Nov., 2014) his support for Ukraine,

Stephen Harper

and stated that whilst the rest of the world realised that the Cold War was over, it was like a splinter in the mind of Putin, driving him into a 'criminal' frenzy of unbelief that those ex-Soviet eastern European countries could actually have, themselves, choosen to look westward for their futures.

"Putin has criticized the U.S. and European Union nations for encroaching into former communist Europe, including Ukraine, saying they pose a threat to Russia’s national security." (Halia Pavliva and Elena Popina: Bloomberg: Nov 30, 2014) 

Vladimir Putin, Russia's President, has criticized the U.S. and European Union nations for encroaching into former communist Europe, including Ukraine, saying they pose a threat to Russia’s national security.

To ease the pain of this 'splinter in the mind of"  Putin,

"New Russian propaganda is getting exceptionally creative. In fact, the bag of tricks Putin uses to twist, turn, manipulate and suck countries in Eastern Europe back into the Russian orbit is wide-ranging. There’s brute force, of course, but Ukraine is not a one-off. We seem to forget that Putin invaded Georgia a half dozen years ago and, like Crimea, annexed the country’s provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.",

as Jeffrey Gedmin (November 30, 2014) in his 'Letter from Prague' explains. (my emphasis)

In the forefront of Putin 'sucking Eastern European countries back into Russia's orbit' is the South Stream gas pipeline.
 
" The United States and the EU pressured Bulgaria this summer to quit the project, which Russia wants because it ends Gazprom’s dependence on Ukraine’s gas-transit system. But this did not deter Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has followed his own accommodationist line toward Russia over Ukraine and even declared this summer that Putin’s Russia was a model of a successful country. Hungary’s lawmakers recently voted to go forward with the South Stream project." (ibid Jeffrey Gedmin)

Victor Orban, Hungarian Prime Minister

If Putin thinks that he could chalk this up to success in wooing former Eastern European countries into Russia's orbit, he should think again!

OIL PRICES ARE GOING TO TUMBLE!

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, discusses tumbling oil prices as OPEC declines to reduce output . (Bloomberg Surveillance.)

Gas sales to the EU are NOT going to be able to compensate for the loss of revenue from falling oil prices, currently estimated at $100 billion.

""We are losing around $40 billion per year due to geopolitical sanctions and we are losing some $90 to $100 billion per year due to oil prices falling 30 percent," Siluanov said in a speech at an economic forum in Moscow, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency." (AFP : Nov. 24, 2014) (my emphasis)

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov

Is it any wonder that the Soviet-dyed-in-the-wool Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, is 

"....accus[ing] the West  ...... of attempting to achieve "regime change" in Russia through sanctions that aim to destroy the economy and rouse public protests." (Sky News : Monday 24 November 2014)

Sergey Lavrov

Is, therefore, this upping of the military stakes by Putin, his strategy to galvanise the Russian people onto a war footing against the West? Is this why he is reinforcing his troops in Donetsk, and supplying them with military hardware, food, and medical equipment?  

And he wants the world to believe that this is 'humanitarian' aid for the people of Donetsk?

Let us not forget what he did to the people of St. Petersburg in 1992, when they were on the verge of starving and he bamboozled them out of $100 million that was supposed to be providing them with food.

"In 1992, Putin was investigated for a deal he oversaw while an official in the mayor’s office. The deal involved the export of $100m worth of raw materials in exchange for food for the citizens of St Petersburg. The materials were exported, but the food never arrived." (April 19, 2012 by Maeve McClenaghan)

The late Marine Salye

(to be continued)