Ukrainian army troops receive munitions on the outskirts of Izyum. Photograph: Sergei Grits/AP
UPDATE 16 April 2014: The continuing and ever expansive Russian orchestration of military provocations and outright military aggression against Ukraine has finally resulted in a military response from NATO. In the US these facts on-the-ground in Ukraine have also finally been acknowledged by the White House. The Russian actions dictated by Tsar Vladimir Putin (a/k/a Gog) have been designed to look like a Ukrainian civil war. However, the fact of the matter is that these actions are purely Russian aggression in pursuit of military reconquest of territory that was formerly under the control of the Russian Empire and its heir, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The NATO alliance this morning declared its intent to militarily oppose this Russian aggression. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen just held a press conference in Brussels wherein he declared:
“We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land. We will start to implement these measures straight away. Our decisions today are about defense, deterrence and de-escalation. They send a clear message: NATO will protect every ally and defense against any threat against our fundamental security. ”In addition, James Jeffrey, the former Bush Administration Ambassador to Kuwait and Obama Administration Ambassador to Iraq, has made a very public call for the deployment of US ground combat forces in today's issue of the Washington Post. Ambassador Jeffery's concluding paragraph reads:
"We do not need to be apologetic about the risk of even “tripwire” presences. Putin has no illusions about America’s combat-hardened conventional superiority. But by all appearances he has great doubt about America’s will to use force, and that creates a dangerous situation. After seeing American boots on the ground, Hussein decided not to threaten Kuwait anew. But recall that half a world away and six decades ago, the United States took a different approach, withdrawing its forces from South Korea. North Korea and its Russian supporters saw that as a green light to invade, only to learn, three years and millions of casualties later, that the United States was serious about defending a friend."This will likely be the last update for Global SITREP B19-14; a new Global SITREP will take over where this one has left off.
14 April 2014: The United Nations Security Council emergency session intended to diffuse the Russian-Ukrainian military crisis descended from the world-class diplomatic forum it is supposed to be into something akin to a schoolyard shouting and recriminations match. Both sides of the conflict and their ardent supporters were responsible for the failure of cooler heads to prevail. One would think that a line in the sand has been drawn along the entire remaining length of the Ukrainian-Russian border, and Ukraine has asserted its sovereign right to reestablish its laws and order in the eastern Oblasts.
Those administrative centers were over run by armed Russian Spetsnaz and ethnic Russian-speaking supporters last week, but were under a Ukrainian government ultimatum issued late Thursday to withdraw within 48 hours or face armed eviction. Yesterday Ukrainian government forces made good on the government's ultimatum and began the operation of a forced eviction. As expected, urban warfighting commenced with Ukrainian security forces backed by Ukrainian military units going on the offensive, and the fog of war immediately descending and masking the action as the day progressed. A focal point emerged at Slovyansk, a small city located deep in the heart of eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast. Slovyansk is situated 50 miles north of Donetsk, and 100 miles from the nearest Russian military forces massed on the border. A full-scale Russian military invasion of Ukraine could be mere hours away.
7 April 2014: It has begun. In the three easternmost Oblasts of Ukraine bordering on Russian territory (see map below to locate: Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk) civil disturbances began this morning in the same false flag type of operation as previously executed in Crimea. This tactic involves Russian Spetsnaz (Special Forces) masquerading as Ukrainian militiamen wearing sanitized camouflage uniforms and steel helmets assaulting and seizing the regional administrative government buildings and then securing them with makeshift barbed wire fencing. Once the buildings were secured the false flag operation enters its second phase with the Special Forces troops requesting Russian Federation President Putin to intervene with an invasion force to secure their independence from Ukraine. Updates as they are received.
6 April 2014: This is an update that could easily fit right in with "And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea...", but I will post it here and just link back to that item as benchmark reference material.
I awoke this morning at Oh-Four Hundred with a burning thought which was the central theme of a dream I was having just prior to waking. There is a beast rising in the in the West, his domain is being re-constructed and prepared for by a central cadre, an elite of the elite if you will. I have referred to these people as the Global Oligarchy in the past. Even the MSM has taken to using this term in recent weeks, so they are very real indeed. To simplify things I am going to abbreviate the Global Oligarchy down to the acronym GO.
The GO in control of the major powers in the West are on the rise, but at present do not have their act together enough to actually make a difference. They appear and in a very real sense are weak and lacking effective, qualified and competent leadership. This is largely due to the leftist elements which currently hold sway and the reigns of power. Most folks are likely to say at times like this, "Where's a Churchill or a Reagan when we need them?" Yes, at the moment the western stage does appear to be filled with a cast of quasi-socialist versions of Neville Chamberlain.
But this will not always be the case. Elections are coming. Change from the leftward direction of our current governance seems inevitable and the political pendulum swing back to the right. And it seems apparent also that current events will catalyze a more purposefully driven cadre of the GO into the reigns of power. In this the new geopolitical reality of a militarily aggressive Russian Federation and rampant Islamonazi jihadism is almost made-to-order. And this is where the burning thought from my dream comes in. The GO will manage and manipulate the global situation. It has been said that while the GO leadership is playing geo-political checkers, Vladimir Putin is playing chess. I disagree with this idea to some extent. Vladimir Putin is playing chess, but the GO is now playing Risk! Everyone wants to control the world to their advantage, and the Biblical prophetic world informs of who will succeed at this very short-term game who will be defeated and summarily run over by the dragon-worshiping GO and its Beast.
The management and manipulation might come in allowing something like this to occur: The more invincible Putin/Gog thinks he is the more he can be successfully manipulated by the rising but still hidden beast in the GO. Over the next couple of years, as the GO quickly regains its dominant edge, the emphasis will be to contain him as much as possible until the required overwhelming power to effect a roll-back is achieved. Remember, Revelation 13:4, "Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?"
This brings me to the bottom line of what I awoke with this morning. Vladimir Putin/Gog of Magog might just be the very first great victim of the emergence of this beast rising up out of the sea; a beast which according to the Bible never really died. Over the past 1700 years it symbolically went from being two iron legs to a pair of feet with ten toes of world conquering iron and clay. Is it not apparent though Bible prophecy that the destruction of Gog of Magog on the mountains of Israel heralds the arrival of the Roman Antichrist and his "covenant among many"?
2 April 2014: It needs to be said here, for reference at a minimum, that the former-KGB colonel and current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, is not and was not a Russian Communist. He is now and always has been something even worse than any Russian Communist ever dreamed of being. He is a Russian nationalist. A Russian nationalist just like the one the world is a little more familiar with who was born in Kazakhstan and named Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Vladimir Putin was born in 1952 in St. Petersburg, Russia, which is located north of northeast of Estonia and southeast of Finland, and both of which he desires to conquer and repossess for Mother Russia if given the opportunity. Unchecked Western fecklessness in the ongoing dismemberment of Ukraine will provide Vladimir Putin with the opportunity. Russian nationalists are exceptionally bombastic, but they actually do mean what they say.
1 April 2014: This second map depicts the anticipated Russian invasion routes. The extent of actual military conquest includes of all the oblasts (provinces) east of the red line. These areas will forcibly be made part of the Russian Federation. The remaining oblasts west of the red line will be forced into a type of federalized republic under Moscow's direct control. Russia will suddenly have a long border with the NATO countries of eastern Europe. A new "Iron Curtain" appears to be in the making. So much for the fictional post-Cold War "peace dividend."
UPDATE 30 March 2014:
It looks like Putin and Lavrov are enjoying themselves in an apparent
game of high-stakes bait and switch with Obama and Kerry in setting
autonomy demands for several Ukrainian provinces (oblasts) that the
Americans cannot possibly deliver. Lacking anything of a physical nature
to forestall a full-scale Russian military invasion of eastern Ukraine,
it seems Kerry has capitulated to an ultimatum delivered by Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in order to at least appear to be
relevant in great power politics.
My best assessment is that Russian forces will soon invade along four main axes noted in the image above by red-colored wedge shapes along a broad front on the Russian-Ukrainian border from Chernihiv to Kharkiv to Luhansk and Donetsk. The Russian columns that cross the frontier at Kharkiv oblast will run head-on into crack Ukrainian formations that are fully prepared for full-scale combat operations. I do not expect the current quiet to last for long.
28 March 2014: The title of this SITREP is not the line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but one that by all current indications and warnings is about to come from a modern-day Caesar, namely, 'Tsar' Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of the Russian Federation. Those indications and warnings has folks in the Pentagon very concerned that a military invasion by Russian forces of the rest of Ukraine may well be imminent.
Current estimates are of 30,000 Russian troops in full battle array at key points along the length of Ukraine's eastern border with Russia, and another 50,000 reportedly in rapid movement away from their assembly points and garrisons and towards the Ukrainian border, far more troop than have ever been seen in movement for an "exercise" that simply does not exist. To say that alarm bells are ringing in Western capitals would be a tremendous understatement.
