Veterans Today 9-4-14… “Momentum building for ceasefire on Friday in Minsk”

Originally from RT, this shows some promise. Also, supposedly we just came out of some astrological whatchamacallit as of 9-3-14. Are the stars and cosmos aligned? For Peace?

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Momentum building for ceasefire on Friday in Minsk

Kiev & Self-Defense forces ready for Friday ceasefire if Minsk talks successful

from  Russia Today, Moscow

[ Editors note:  We all have to be suspicious of anything these folks say at this point based on their horrible track record, but this time is different as the planets are all aligned.

The EU has its next round of sanctions lined up but deferred for a Saturday trigger, after this Minsk meeting.

France has put the delivery of the Mistrial on hold pending the determination of “Russian aggression” in Ukraine. The French had been in the process of delivering the ship when someone leaned on them hard to hold up. You can guess what that was.

The 200 NATO troops on maneuvers planned with Ukraine and Poland can be discounted as a bad joke. But Obama got Estonia to play the “missile shield” card, speaking for the Baltics, that they felt a strategic missile shield would provide them protection from a Soviet attack. So despite this silliness the point is we can see the ducks being lined up in a row with a hidden hand at work.

Moscow also hinted that once foreign source replacements deals were signed that they would not be cancelled even with a settlement of the Ukraine crisis. There are many layers to cutting that Gordian Knot with getting the fighting stopped being just the first. The Ukraine economy is way more destroyed now than it was when the coup-meisters took over with their Western backs.

All the IMF money put in up to now has been whizzed away, still owed, with billions in war damage reconstruction soon to follow, which will provide badly needed paychecks but could have been  much better spent. And then there the energy bills to be paid, and layers to that, with Russia only demanding $1.5 billion of the current $4.5 billion in arears.

The EU will be pushing for Russia to write much of this off, but why should Russia to that? Will  NATO threaten to deploy the missile shield if they don’t? Are we down to that level of threats as part of the game now? We shall know more on Friday.

And even then the devil will be in the details. Unhappy Right Sector units and the Oligarch battalions could make a lot of trouble with more attacks, even with international monitors on the scene.

We have had the OSCE European observers on the ground repeatedly reporting that no Russians troops had crossed the border, but were ignored by Westean media, nations and especially NATO.

The really good part about a ceasefire is more reporters will be able to get in to start interviewing the folks, especially the Ukraine army, to learn the details of the disaster. We will be able to find out a lot more about the “Western contractors” and the oligarch brigades… Jim W. Dean ]

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–  First published  …  September 4,  2014  –

The Ukrainian president and the heads of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk have said they are ready to order a ceasefire if peace talks in Minsk, Belarus on Friday are successful.

“At 14:00 local time (11:00GMT Friday), provided the [Minsk] meeting takes place, I will call on the General Staff to set up a bilateral ceasefire and we hope that the implementation of the peace plan will begin tomorrow,” Petro Poroshenko said on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Wales on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Poroshenko expressed “great hope” that the peace process in Ukraine will commence in Minsk on September 5, when representatives of Kiev, Moscow and OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) are scheduled to meet.

The self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are “ready to order a ceasefire tomorrow on September 5, 2014 at 15:00 local time (12:00GMT) if agreement is reached and the Ukrainian representatives sign up to the plan for a political settlement of the conflict,” the leaders of the two republics said in a joint statement.

The People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk “will also present their proposals on the ceasefire, which would describe in detail the guarantees of implementation of the truce by the sides involved in the conflict, to the contact group in Minsk on Friday,” the statement added.

The announcements pave the way for implementing the 7-step peace plan, which was proposed to the conflicting sides by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.

The Russian president’s proposals envisage: a the halt to the militia’s advances in the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions; withdrawal of Kiev troops to a distance that makes shelling impossible; objective international control over the ceasefire; a ban on the use of combat aircrafts against civilians; unconditional prisoner exchange; organization of humanitarian corridors, and provision of direct access for repair crews to destroyed infrastructure.

The heads of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk said that they are ready to implement the ceasefire at 11:00GMT on Friday, on condition that Kiev subscribes to the plan for a political settlement to the conflict.

Ukraine has been engulfed in violent internal conflict since April, when Kiev’s military began its crackdown on the southeastern regions of the country.

According to United Nations’ estimates released on Tuesday, over 2,249 people have been killed so far and more than 6,033 wounded in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The number of internally displaced Ukrainians has reached 190,000, with another 207,000 finding refuge in Russia, the UN said.