Russian BUK-M1-2 SAM System TELAR combat vehicle
BREAKING NEWS UPDATE 24 July 2014: It was just announced that Russia has been attacking Ukrainian military forces via field artillery fired from Russian territory onto Ukrainian territory for several days now. Corporate media are citing U.S. government sources (i.e. the Obama Pentagon) are referring to the artillery strikes as "a military escalation." This is not a military escalation. This is an unprovoked act of war by Russia against Ukraine. It remains to be seen in the next several hours if Ukraine launches its own counter-fires against the Russian artillery.
Just days ago Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 from (Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur) was blown out of the sky by a Russian BUK-1/2 SAM air defense system as seen in the image above. The Russians apparently mistook MH17 for a Ukrainian intelligence collections aircraft and blew it out of the sky so as to hide what Russia is doing just over the border - massing heavy weapons such as tanks, howitzers and SAM systems in preparation for a much expanded war with Ukraine.
As seen in the image directly above a BUK-M1-2 TELAR that was clearly missing at least one and possibly two of its onboard missiles was filmed leaving rebel-controlled Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine and entering Russia just hours after the shootdown occurred. This image is a single frame from that film. In short, Russia has been caught red-handed in an act of war against a sovereign state and murdering many innocent citizens of NATO nations on board a commercial aircraft in an international air corridor in order to hide its hostile intentions.
Ukrainian combat soldiers on-the-move near Kramatorsk, Ukraine
15 May 2014: OSCE-sponsored talks on the Ukrainian crisis going absolutely nowhere fast as pro-Russian insurgents are unwilling to attend the face-to-face sessions in Kiev, they demand the talks be held in Donetsk, capital city of their self-declared Republic of Donetsk. This stark reality led to the events which transpired last night as Ukrainian military forces once again took the battlefield initiative and launched simultaneous operations against pro-Russian bases outside of two key locations: Kramatorsk and its neighbor to the northeast Slovyansk. Both pro-Russian bases were destroyed according to an Associated Press report that hit the wires very early this morning. The report also cited a Ukrainian defense ministry source as saying there were no Ukrainian casualties in either operation.
Slovyansk became a focal point in this crisis early on as it is the location of a former-Soviet and Russian arms depot holding over one million ground combat weapons of various types. Securing this arsenal was clearly a primary objective for the Russian Spetsnaz forces who infiltrated early on following their successful Crimean operation. It is unknown if Ukrainian forces destroyed this arsenal last night of if it another insurgent base they took out. Odds are this arsenal is very high on a list of immediate Ukrainian military objectives.
There is far more to this Ukrainian-Russian military face-off than just the fact that most of the unrest is being stirred up in majority Russian-speaking oblasts inside Ukraine. The invasion and annexation of Crimea was just an essential territory for Russia to control from the outset because its greater strategic objectives lie in several Ukrainian oblasts (provinces) I identified in earlier in the posts on this subject. Many of us may be reading in the papers that Russia has Ukraine over a barrel over with respect to natural gas pipeline imports and the debt Ukraine has piled up because of its imports of this essential resource.
However, neither the majority Russian-speaking population or the natural gas issue satisfactorily addresses the full truth of the matter. The bigger picture revolves around the fact that Ukraine has the factories and the defense industry infrastructure which the Russian military relies upon as much as Ukraine relies upon Russian natural gas imports to keep its economy afloat, perhaps even more so. For our eschatological interests in this conflict this is an essential item to make a note of: Russia needs the the defense infrastructure that exists today in Ukraine because without it it is a questionable proposition that Russia could successfully mount the type of military operation we have prophetically described for us in Ezekiel 38/39.
Consider these facts:
- The Ukrainian company Motor Sich produces helicopter engines and spare parts that largely enable the Russian military's helicopter fleet to maintain its flight operations. Of the 1,000 engines that will be produced in Ukraine in 2014 at least 400 of them are for Russian choppers, which is 100 more engines than exist in Russia's current attack helicopter fleet.
- The servicing and maintenance of Russia's SS-19 nuclear missiles is a $10-million per year business for the Ukrainian company Yuzhmash. Moreover, a full 80% of the entire Russian strategic nuclear rocket forces were designed and built in Ukraine.
- There are a minimum of 50 Ukrainian factories which provide all manner of military hardware and services to the Russian war machine, and this constitutes a critical infrastructure to the Russian capability to project its military power outside of its borders - such as described in Ezekiel 38/39.
No hard conclusions can be drawn as yet because this crisis has some distance to go before a viable forecast can be made, yet it seems reasonable to assess at this point that either Ukraine will fall into full servitude to Russia as it was during the days of the Soviet Union, or Ukraine may find a new and growing market for its military hardware in the alliance just to its west known as NATO.
