John Hall reports that,"Ukrainian prosecutors are preparing charges against the director of a winery in Russian-occupied Crimea for allegedly uncorking a 240-year-old bottle for Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi.
........
Massandra was Ukrainian government property before being nationalized by Russia, following its annexation of Crimea in March 2014. It has rare wine and sherry dating back more than 200 years in its collection; one bottle fetched nearly £32,000 in 2001." (Mail Online :
Mediaset trial 2: on a personal tax evasion of €7.3 million committed in 1994–98 through illicit trade of movie rights between secret fictive companies
(4) Pedophilia: "Silvio Berlusconi is to go on trial on 6 April, charged with paying an underage prostitute and then trying to cover up the alleged offence by abusing his position as Italy's prime minister. ( John Hooper : Guardian : Tuesday 15 February 2011)
So whilst, as reported by Unian,
Putin and Berlusconi are publicly displaying, and reinforcing, the Mafia-like criminality of Putin's regime.
As Vice-President Joe Biden stated in his address at the Brookings Institute (30 May, 2015),
"So long as Ukraine leaders keep faith with the project of reform, the U.S. will continue to stand with them.” (UA Position : 30 May, 2015) (my emphasis)
Petro Poroshenko, speaking at the recent YES (Yalta European Strategy) Conference in Kiev, proposed that,"Russia [..] be stripped of its UN Security Council veto, calling the country a “challenge to the democratic world” with “deadly new imperial ambitions”.(Matthew Day : The Telegraph : 11 Sep 2015) (my emphasis)
This "challenge to the democratic world " of Putin is best illustrated by his current Syrian gambit, as reported by Ivan Nechepurenko (right) of the Moscow Times.
"The recent flood of media reports claiming that Russia is boosting its
military presence in Syria has detracted international attention from
the Ukraine conflict in what analysts say is likely a deliberate ploy on
Moscow's part. .......
“Syria is a bigger problem for the West, so Russia can use the uproar about it to camouflage what is happening in Ukraine,” said Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst. ( Moscow Times : Sep. 15 2015) (my emphasis)
What Putin is particularly aiming to camouflage in the rebel held territory of eastern Ukraine is, as outlined by the Deputy Head of the [Ukrainian] Presidential Administration Kostiantyn Yeliseyev (right),
"Ukraine has held consultations with the German side today to determine what measures should be taken to prevent militants from holding elections [in occupied eastern Ukraine]
...
"We hope that these messages and signals will finally reach the corresponding capital [Moscow], and these "elections" will be canceled, otherwise they will have unpredictable and negative implications for the entire process," Yeliseyev said." (UNIAN : 18.09.2015) (my emphasis)
"We hope that these messages and signals will finally reach the corresponding capital [Moscow], and these "elections" will be canceled, otherwise they will have unpredictable and negative implications for the entire process," Yeliseyev said." (UNIAN : 18.09.2015) (my emphasis)
What is even more disconcerting is that the real aim of Putin's proxies in eastern Ukraine is to,
"Despite [opposite] claims, the leaders of DPR and LPR want to hold
[local] elections at the same time with the rest of Ukraine, that is on
October 25, in order to obtain legitimate authority over the whole of
Donbas, not just a small part of it, which is now under their control, -
in case of reintegration [of the temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk
and Luhansk regions],"- the source has told the publication." (UNIAN : 05.08.2015) (my emphasis)
Putin is now trying to stoke the fires of disparate groups of 'separatists' throughout the EU and the US.
As
Alec Luhn reports,
"The Russian government has helped fund a conference in Moscow to bring together separatists from the United States and eastern Ukraine, despite cracking down on its own dissidents.
...
Among international participants were representatives of Sinn Féin,
the Catalan Solidarity for Independence party and Italy’s European
Communitarian party Millennium, as well as separatist groups from Hawaii
and Puerto Rico and the US-based radical black power Uhuru Movement." (The Guardian : Sunday 20 September 2015) (my emphasis)
This conference was simply to function as a 'legitimization' of the demands of Putin over control of eastern Ukraine, as voiced by his rebel proxies.
While Putin is subsidizing these disparate extreme left-wing groups in the EU and the US, the Russian people are having to tighten their belts even further as the cost of Putin's war with Ukraine, and his annexation of Ukrainian Crimea, bears down upon them.
Real wages declined 9.8 percent from a year earlier after a 9.2 percent drop in July, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said Thursday. Retail sales tumbled 9.1 percent on an annual basis, matching a revised 9.1 percent plunge a month earlier." (Bloomberg Business : September 17, 2015) (my emphasis)
And whilst Putin's 'Mafia' cronies and his 'siloviki' are lining their pockets, whilst the ordinary Russian citizen is having to bear all the costs of his 'imperialist dreams of Novorossiya',
Kalyeena Makortoff (right) reports that,"The conflict in eastern Ukraine hasn't hurt the country's reputation as the breadbasket of Europe, a Ukraine minister told CNBC on Tuesday.
Oleksiy Pavlenko, the Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture and Food, said agricultural exports were still thriving despite tensions between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian troops surrounding key farming land in Donetsk and Luhansk." (CNBC : Tuesday, 15 Sep 2015) (my emphasis)
Yet, while Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk is predicting that Russia will,
"...impose a full embargo on Ukrainian agricultural exports in 2016 when the free trade zone agreement with the EU comes into force..." (Interfax Ukraine : 21.08.2015),
This was, however, in August of this year, and Medvedev may have been banking on the fact that the Czech Republic may veto the Ukraine-EU Free Trade Agreement.
Unfortunately for Medvedev,
"The lower house of Czech parliament passed the Association Agreement
between the European Union and Ukraine at its session shortly before
midnight on Thursday (17 Sept., 2015), after months of protraction and despite strong
criticism of the opposition Communist Party (KSČM)." (Prague Post : 18 September 2015) (my emphasis)President Miloš Zeman of the Czech Republic, a staunch supporter of Putin, is now legally bound to ratify it.
Putin has now put on, what Anna Nemtsova (left) describes as, "Putin's Pre-UN Charm Offensive"She is, however, rather dubious whether this 'charm offensive' is fake, or whether it signifies some sort of breakthrough between Putin and the West.
As she states,
"Is Russian President Vladimir Putin launching a charm offensive that promises real breakthroughs, or just repackaging long-held objectives?" (The Daily Beast : 21.09.15)
Stanislav Belkovsky, a former adviser to the Kremlin, is of the opinion that,
"“Coming to the UN, Putin seeks the West’s appreciation for his efforts to fight against the Islamic State,” says Belkovsky.
“He dreams of meeting with Obama—Putin secretly adores Obama—and for the sake of that meeting, he temporarily freezes the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. But if the UN members mistreat him, which is a very likely, the conflict will burn again.” (ibid Anna Nemtsova) (my emphasis)
These speculations are just that, 'speculations'.
That Putin supposedly 'dreams' of meeting President Obama simply does not ring true, when considering that he shared a stolen 240 year-old bottle of wine with Berlusconi, the Mafia-linked criminal and sexual predator, but a few days ago in annexed Ukrainian Crimea.
As the old saying goes,
"If wishes were horses, Beggars would ride."
(to be continued)
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