Freedon4Europe
–
“Official statistics of the National Bank show that the amount of gold in the vaults drastically fell, and it is unclear where it went. At the beginning of this month, the volume of gold was about $1 billion, or 8 percent of the total gold reserves,” the head of Ukraine’s National Bank, Valeria Gontareva, said in an interview with Ukraine’s Kharkiv TV.
As of November 1, the latest available data, foreign currency reserves stood at $12.6 billion, which puts Ukraine’s national gold stockpile at just $123.6 million, ZeroHedge reported.
However, this figure contradicts the $988.7 million, which is the level gold should stand at, if the ratio of gold to total reserves was 8 percent.
In February, before then-President Vicktor Yanukovich was toppled, gold reserves stood at about 21 tons, according to then chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine Sergey Arbuzov.
One theory is that Ukraine decided to shift its gold reserves to the US shortly after the presidential coup when Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk held a meeting with President Obama.
At the end of February, gold stood at $1.8 billion, or about 12 percent of reserves. The Central Bank reported that reserves stood at $1.6 billion in both July and August, and $1.7 billion in September.
In October, the bank was forced to sell $874 million worth of gold to service domestic and foreign public debts, according to the International Monetary Fund.
One of the main functions of the National Bank of Ukraine is to accumulate and store foreign exchange reserves and precious metals.
In May, the previous bank head, Stepan Kubiv, said that Ukraine planned to use part of its first tranche of International Monetary Fund loan to boost gold and currency reserves to stabilize the ailing currency, the hryvnia.
The IMF, which has denied Ukraine loans before due to corruption, in April pledged $17 billion over two years to help the country trying to closer align itself with Europe, and not Russia.
The bank stopped supporting the currency in mid-November when it fell into complete free fall. The hryvnia has lost 50 percent of its value against the dollar since the beginning of the year.
“The devaluation of the hryvnia is now 100 percent. At the last minute, businesses began to panic. Even after the devaluation of 50 percent, which began in July, we were able to stabilize the situation, but then the war started,”Gontareva said.
Ukraine’s economy has spun out of control since revolution and war gripped the country. The new government is facing rock-bottom reserves, sky-high inflation, contracting growth, natural gas shortages, and a looming default on debts.
LONDON, October 21 (RIA Novosti) – The ASEM summit in Milan cruelly exposed the illusions EU leaders hold about the Ukrainian conflict, and not for the first time
Ever since the February coup in Ukraine, the EU’s leaders have held to two assumptions: First, that the crisis in Ukraine is a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and second, that they can bend Russia to their will by applying pressure on it to achieve the outcome they want in Ukraine. This outcome would entail the complete restoration of Kiev’s undiluted political control over the whole country, including the rebellious regions in the east (even the EU leaders quietly acknowledge that Crimea is lost to Ukraine forever).
These two assumptions blind the EU leaders to reality. Since they insist on seeing the conflict as one between Ukraine and Russia, they deny the reality that the regime in Kiev that they are supporting came to power through a violent, unconstitutional coup, which is behind the current conflict. As a result, they refuse to see that this is not a conflict between Ukraine and Russia but an internal conflict between Ukrainians, between the people of eastern Ukraine who opposed the February coup and the ultra-nationalist, Russophobic regime in Kiev and the political system it has created.
The other reality the EU leaders seem ignorant of Russia itself and its role in the world. Not only is Russia far stronger economically than they seem to realise (witness its success in absorbing the recent oil price fall) but their entire approach shows that they have still not adjusted to the comparative relevance of the Chinese and Asian economies in terms of Russian oil and gas consumption. They act as if it is still only the West that matters. That Russia is not dependent on their goodwill for its economic survival and has other partners to trade with is something they seem unable to face.
The assumption that the conflict can therefore be “solved” in the manner the EU wants, by pressuring Russia, is therefore doubly misplaced. Russia didn’t cause the conflict in Ukraine and is not responsible for its outcome; it cannot simply switch it off at the EU’s bidding in the way EU leaders appear to think it can, even if it wanted to. At the same time, the sanctions the EU has imposed to pressure Russia, while causing Russia real problems, cannot damage Russia in the way they think. Europe’s moves are much more likely to anger Russia and consolidate popular support for the Russian government than bend it to their will. In the meantime it is becoming clearer by the day that by adopting sanctions, the EU leaders seriously underestimated the harm they would do to their own economies.
This persistent failure of the EU leaders to face reality has set the scene for a fiasco.
With their own economies coming under increasing pressure and with Ukraine itself continuing to suffer due to its deepening crisis, the EU leaders, especially Angela Merkel, need to resolve the Ukrainian conflict quickly. They seem to have persuaded themselves that a combination of sanctions, falling oil prices and their collective presence in Milan would somehow force the Russians to retreat in the way they wanted. They seem to have disregarded warnings from Moscow that this would not happen and that Moscow would not change its policies in order to get sanctions lifted.
What happened therefore came as a shock. Not only did the Russians not retreat as expected but as Dmitry Peskov, the Russian Presidential spokesman said, they sought instead once more to educate the EU leaders about what’s really going on in Ukraine, explaining that the conflict is an internal one and not one between Ukraine and Russia. Since this is a reality the EU leaders refuse to face, the lesson was extremely unwelcome.
The EU leaders were left clutching at a comment by President Putin that he did not want to see the situation in eastern Ukraine become another frozen conflict and that Russia does not dispute or seek to undermine Ukraine’s integrity. These words in fact simply reflect what has been Russia’s position all along – that since this is an internal Ukrainian conflict, it is for the Ukrainians themselves to settle their differences between themselves through negotiations and that the outcome is for them to decide. However, the EU leaders refuse to see this, instead persisting in the fantasy that the conflict is one between Ukraine and Russia, with Russia committing “aggression” against Ukraine, and misunderstood these banal words as Russia somehow “backing off” from its phantom aggression.
The only practical result that appears to have come out of the summit is that Ukrainian customs officials and guards will resume working at their posts on the Russian border. This was actually agreed on by the Russians as long ago as July 2, 2014 at an earlier summit in Berlin and is therefore nothing new. Both Ukrainian officials and OSCE monitors have been observing the border for months and have seen no evidence of the heavy traffic of Russian troops and military equipment the Ukrainians and the West claim is happening. The fact that there is no evidence for it does not however shake the EU leaders’ belief that it is going on. Given their stubborn belief in something for which they have no proof, it is difficult to see how a further deployment of Ukrainian customs officials and guards and of more OSCE monitors on the border is going to make any difference.
The Milan summit is a textbook case of a conflict that is being unnecessarily prolonged because of a refusal to face facts. It is still in theory possible to resolve this crisis diplomatically through a settlement brokered by the Russians and the Europeans. However, for that to happen, the Europeans need to completely change their understanding of the crisis. Since it seems they cannot do this, the conflict will continue, and will not be settled diplomatically but by events on the ground. It is a certainty when that happens that the result will not be the ones the Europeans like, but by refusing to face facts, they are losing the ability to influence the outcome.
The Milan summit witnessed a similar fiasco in the gas negotiations, again because the Europeans came to them with a completely wrong set of assumptions. That however is something to discuss later, once the latest round of tripartite gas negotiations between the Ukrainians, the Russians and the Europeans are over.
Alexander Mercouris is a London-based lawyer. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
We bring to the attention of Global Research Readers a video on the atrocities committed in Eastern Ukraine. The mainstream media is silent on the issue. These videos are the object of censorship. Ukraine’s National Guard which is supported by the West is controlled by Neo-Nazis with Nazi emblems.
Documented in the video, war crimes are being committed by both the Ukrainian Army and the Ukrainian National Guard.
In the media’s coverage of unfolding atrocities directed against civilians in Eastern Ukraine, the words Nazi, Fascist or Neo-Nazi are a taboo. They have been eliminated from the anthology of investigative reporting.
The mainstream media by denying the very existence of these crimes against humanity committed by Neo-Nazi military and paramilitary formations is complicit under the Nuremberg Principles of “crimes against peace”
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research
War crimes committed by both the Ukrainian Army and the Ukrainian National Guard in Eastern Ukraine against civilian population. Mainstream media channels won’t show you any of this footage. This is a war they don’t want you to see.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-kiev…
Kiev’s warmongers and fascists on the ground keep on killing innocent civilians. 90% of the footage shown here was filmed by the locals and is readily available here on YouTube. The blood that’s being spilled over by Kiev’s punishers will never be washed away.
If you want to see pictures of July 2nd airstrike on Staraya Kondrashovka, here they are (WARNING, GRAPHIC): https://vk.com/album-69838054_198072706
Ukrainian mainstream media immediately blamed the incident on the rebels who don’t even have an aircraft. Though on the 3rd of July, a deputy commander of the Public Relations of Battalion Azov had admitted that the cause of fire was pilot “error”. All of the war crimes committed by Ukrainian government and their punitive battalions is blamed on the rebels who just wouldn’t kill their own parents, wives, and children since over 90% of the rebels are made up of local citizens. Facts speak otherwise and images don’t lie. Ukrainian propaganda machine is really on it. Disgusting.
A local resident at the scene of the village of Kondrashovka, destroyed by Kiev troops (Still from RT video)
The village of Kondrashovka in eastern Ukraine lies devastated after shelling by Kiev troops which killed seven people. Bodies torn to pieces are strewn across the settlement and those who survived are asking: why did Kiev kill their families?
Shells devastate entire streets in eastern Ukrainian town (VIDEO, PHOTOS)
At least five shells hit the settlement, destroying an entire street in the peaceful Lugansk region community, 25km from the city of Lugansk.
Dramatic RT footage shows the ravaged village, including a local resident’s backyard which was literally transformed into a grave.
“They killed my mother, and my father is injured. I took him to hospital,” Aleksandr Mironenko told RT’s Marina Finoshina, one of the few journalists to report from the scene.
Aleksandr was desperately going around the place, showing pieces of human flesh scattered all across the property.
“Come here – can you see this? It’s a human body which has been torn to pieces. Let’s go and film some more, I’ll show you. Bodies everywhere, obviously all of them are terrorists!” he said sarcastically through tears.
Just next door, Kondrashovka residents are telling a tragic story of their friend, who lost his 5-year-old son.
“He celebrated his son’s fifth birthday yesterday, and today, the boy’s leg was cut off – I don’t know if he’s alive or not,” said Sergey, a neighbor.
“No, no, he died, said another man.
“He died? Yes. Then he died,” adds Sergey.
The streets of Kondrashovka devastated by Kiev troops (Still from RT video)
Few of the village residents were left unharmed by the shelling. One of ‘the lucky ones,’ Andrey, said his family was not home when the shelling started. However, his property was badly damaged. He showed RT the holes from the shells in the fence.
“What do I think? ‘Thank you, Ukrainian Air Force’,” he said, adding that his family would have died had they been there when the attack hit.
Stunned residents ask why the government is targeting their peaceful village. Kiev troops claimed they were killing ‘terrorists’, although here that term would include women, children and the elderly.
“Why? There was nobody here – only peaceful civilians, poor people who worked from dawn till dusk,” says a local woman.
“We are peaceful. We don’t mind Poroshenko being in office,” says Irina Stasyuk, a local resident, “But don’t kill us. There are 12 people here.”
Yury, a veteran military pilot, had his own opinion on why the troops targeted the village. He said the aircraft targeted a self-defense base, but either missed or intentionally fired on civilian dwellings.
“The first time the aircraft pilot got it right – there is a self-defense base 3km from here. He hit it,” said Yury. “But the second time, he pulled the trigger a few seconds late – either by mistake, or he received an order to target this village. I don’t know.”
The streets of Kondrashovka devastated by Kiev troops (Still from RT video)
In the meantime, pro-Kiev Azov Battalion deputy commander admitted that the bombardment of Kondrashovka might have been the result of “pilot error.”
“I think there was both pilot error and shelling from outside,” Igor Mosyichuk told Ukraine’s 112 Channel, adding that Kondrashovka turned out to be “between a rock and a hard place” – people’s self-defense forces and Kiev troops.
Even after the attack, the rest of the village is not safe, as during the interviews the cannonade can be distinctly heard.
The village of Kondrashovka destroyed by Kiev troops (Still from RT video)
RT crew visited the local hospital where there was no water and electricity since the local power station was hit in another air raid.
“We received 13 people – four of them are already dead, including a five-year-old, a boy,” Maksim Pavlov from the central hospital told RT.
Among the injured is Ivan Mironenko, a father of Aleksandr, a local resident who earlier spoke to RT.
After Ivan lost his wife in the attack, he doesn’t want to live anymore, saying he sees no point.
“Why was she killed? Why not me? Why is God punishing me like this?” exclaims Ivan, sobbing.
Russian authorities strongly condemned the attacks of eastern Ukrainian civilians by Kiev forces.
Moscow demands that Ukrainian authorities stop shelling civilian objects in the country in order to save the lives of local people, said Russian FM Sergey Lavrov at a press conference with his Moroccan counterpart.
“The Western countries should urge Kiev to follow the declaration approved in Berlin which calls for the formation of a special contact group aiming at establishing a truce in Ukraine,” he added.
A roadmap of measures that will point a way out of the Ukrainian crisis has been agreed during four-way talks between the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine on July 2.
The regions of eastern Ukraine have been continuously targeted by Kiev troops in recent months. On Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said that 279 people have died in the nearby Donetsk Region since the start of fighting this spring – 160 of them civilians. Figures for Lugansk Region have not been revealed.
Fearing a deepening of the crisis, scores of refugees have left the country. The number of Ukrainian refugees in Russia has reached 110,000 people, the UN’s refugee department stated on June 27.
Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine have been showing their latest captives to reporters.
Separatists holding the trio in Slovyansk say the men are officers from the state security service in Kyiv, sent on a spying mission to the east.
Russian TV images showed the men blindfolded, gagged, handcuffed and tied to chairs.
Like European military observers seized earlier, a prisoner exchange with detained pro-Russian activists is being demanded for their release.
Pro-Russian rebel commander Igor Strel…
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2014/04/27/uk…
This says a lot about the american involvement in Ukraine:
http://rt.com/op-edge/ukraine-blackwater-mercenaries-russia-794/
|
ΣΚΗΝΕΣ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΚΡΑΤΙΚΟ ΚΑΝΑΛΙ ΤΗΣ ΟΥΚΡΑΝΙΑΣ |
|
ΤΟΝ ΒΡΙΣΚΕΤΕ ΣΤΟ FACEBOOK ΣΤΗΝ ΔΙΕΥΘΥΝΣΗ: https://www.facebook.com/olexandr.aronets Μπορείτε να τον σιχτιρίσετε ελεύθερα… Новая правящая элита Украины, депутаты от партии Свобода (фашисты) захватывают Телевидение. Покажут ли такое западные СМИ? Поделитесь максимально этим видео! Take a look at how new ruling class of Ukraine, members of parlament from “Svoboda” party (fascists), are seizing Ukrainian television. Will this be shown by Western media? Το Video δείχνει αρκετά Видео показывает совсем Video is showing enough
|
Indulge- Travel, Adventure, & New Experiences
The Art and Craft of Blogging
Discovering art in everything
Freedom & Ηappiness
The latest news on WordPress.com and the WordPress community.
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ 