New 'Border Wall', Radical Nationalists In Action, Pressure On Orthodox Church And Other 'Ordinary News' From UkraineSouth Front

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A Ukrainian Member of Parliament – Alexander Dubinsky proposed building a wall on the border between Ukraine and the Donbass. According to him the move would help stop fighting between local forces (the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic) and Ukraine.

At the same time, it is a great idea, if there is also an attempt to steal some more funds.

The other wall border fence project – the “wall of Yatsenuk” in April 2019 had already cost taxpayers in Ukraine approximately $46 million and it was actually supposed to be ready in 2018, but various delays pushed the completion date back to 2021.

The project that would, in its completed form, separate Ukrainian territory from Russian one with a fence is expected to cost approximately $160 million.

Poroshenko – Always in the headlines

The State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) opened a case regarding the possible illegal transfer of persons across the border during a trip to the Maldives by former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, in January 2018.

From January 1 to 8, 2018 Poroshenko spent a Christmas holiday in the Maldives. He flew in a private plane with 7 passengers. Journalists assumed that these individuals did not pass passport control and traveled under other names.

In another one of Poroshenko’s misadventures, former Ukrainian MP and current host of the TV show “Crime and Punishment” on Ukrainian NewsOne channel – Andrii Portnov said that Panamanian law enforcement authorities have opened a criminal case on alleged money laundering by Petro Poroshenko.

According to him, at first the Panamanian authorities checked the information that Poroshenko and his entourage concealed “criminal proceeds, assets and property” in Panama, did not pay taxes to the Ukrainian budget and laundered stolen funds.

Then Portnov under oath, during a questioning told a Panamanian lawyer about the alleged crimes of the Ukrainian ex-president, and on this basis a criminal case was opened.

Ukrainian Healthcare

Strana.ua reported that the Ministry of Health, under minister Ulana Suprun was copying US medical protocols without any changes made to them.

That is, it doesn’t even come down to transferring treatment methods from the US to Ukraine, but about verbatim copying of internal American documents. Without the slightest attempt to localize them and still with links to US laws.

Suprun is a dual-citizen of the US and Ukraine, when she was assigned the post of Health Minister in 2016, she returned to Ukraine from Detroit, US.

It is rather unexpected that she would literally “translate” her experience in the US to Ukraine, by directly rendering the techniques from one language to the other and directly implementing them without any scrutiny.

Furthermore, Ukrainian doctors do not participate at all in the development of treatment protocols, according to which they work. And social networks started comparing healthcare in Ukraine to that of the native population in the time of the colonies.

Examples can be seen directly mentioning legislation in the US, with some pages having expressions such as “may vary in different states,” and so on.

Some mention the federal antidote stockpile, the US one.

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“Blowing up the regime from inside”

Nationalists in Ukraine are preparing to “blow up the regime from inside.” This was stated on July 28^th in the village of Pokrovsk in the Dnepropetrovsk region. The occasion was a meeting of the various Ukrainian “Volunteer” Battalions.

Former leader of the Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh, and others proposed a project for the creation of a connected system in every region.

According to the concept, in each region a regional training center for militants of territorial battalions who on “D-Day” at any time can orderly take up weapons should be created and show “resistance to the enemy”.

For this purpose, Dmitry Yarosh and co. suggested creating a general paramilitary organization called “Union of Defense of Ukraine” with a branched system of regional and district branches on the basis of which groups of militants-volunteers should be created.

The idea of creating voluntary paramilitary divisions is nothing new – after World War I in Germany “voluntary corps” – Freikorps, the members of which later formed the first units of “stormtroopers” of the Sturmabteilung (the military wing of Hitler’s Nazi party).

According to one “volunteer”, the main goal of the new organization, proposed by Dmitry Yarosh is the creation of a territorial radical nationalist base.

“We will blow up the regime from within.”

The commander of the 8th “Volunteer” Battalion “Aratta”, Andrey Gergert with the call sign “Cherven” was appointed as the head of the “Union of Defense of Ukraine.”

Previously, in 2018, Dmitry Yarosh prepared a bill for the creation of a “reserve army” based on the Volunteer Battalions. However, in July 2018 the presence of non-military personnel on the front in the Donbass was prohibited and Yarosh fell from grace.

Shuffle in Leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky replaced the commanders of the Combined Forces Operation in the Donbass and the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of the country.

“Dismiss Lieutenant General Sirsky Alexander Stanislavovich from the post of Commander of the Joint Forces … appoint Kravchenko Vladimir Anatolyevich,” the decree says.

At the same time, Zelensky appointed Sirsky to the post of commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine instead of Colonel-General Sergei Popka.

Sisrsky first headed Sector C when the armed conflict started in the easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in April 2014. Kyiv first called the deployment an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) and changed it to the JFO in the spring of 2018.

He was one of the commanders in the operation that proved devastating for the Ukrainian troops – the Debaltseve “kettle.”

On the other side, Kravchenko is accused of war crimes from various incidents during the fighting in the Donbass.

The fighting in the Donbass shows no sign of stopping. In July, according to official data the Ukrainian armed forces breached the ceasefire 14,200 times.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Archpriest Viktor Zemlyanoy, who was recently summoned to the SBU security service to be interrogated, was then summoned for another interrogation, which prompted a peaceful protest by followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).

Zemlyanoy is a priest of the Rovno diocese of the UOC-MP. Since March 2019 he has been taken in for interrogation by the Ukrainian security service several times.

Mostly because he actively tries to protect the rights of his believers from the actions of the Kiev-backed noncanonic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).

Separately, Metropolitan Anthony of Boryspil and Brovarsky, chancellor of the UOC-MP said that the tomos of autocephaly given to the OCU, mostly as a political play, was thought to solve many of the socio-economic issues in the country, but it has achieved no such thing.

He further answered accusations that the UOC-MP was “anti-Ukrainian.”

“We do not need to prove anything to anyone. Our very activity indicates that we are the Church of our people. Unlike politicians, we do not divide Ukrainians into “right” and “wrong”. And this allows us, without fear and without excusing ourselves, to simultaneously repair the hospital in Zaporozhye for the needs of wounded soldiers, and transfer humanitarian aid to the Donbass – ordinary people who suffer from the consequences of the confrontation. And insinuations are built on fakes. Many times, we came across information that we allegedly kept weapons, called for a change in the political system, and refused to funeral for ATO soldiers. However, whenever our side asked for specifics on these charges, our opponents suddenly fell silent. Unfortunately, a powerful information campaign was carried out against our Church, which was maintained at the highest echelons of power.

It is clear that to change something in such a situation is very difficult. But we continued to honestly serve people and our homeland, knowing that sooner or later the truth would triumph.

By the way, in this context I would like to recall one interesting historical aspect. In the XVII century, when Poland controlled part of the current Ukrainian lands, the Orthodox Church was also pressured, for which there were both religious and purely political reasons. How was this done? – Similar methods. Our Orthodox clergy were stigmatized by Turkish spies, because then our church was under the omophorion of the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was in Istanbul. Do not you think that this situation painfully recalls what was imputed to our Church just a year ago?”

Anthony further said that dialogue was possible for the church, but it had to be genuine one.

“Of course, we are not against dialogue and have publicly stated this more than once. But any full-fledged dialogue can be built only on trust and the lack of desire of one of the parties to break their opponents through the knee,” he said.

To potentially undermine and truthfulness, and to possibly coordinate some more questionable movements, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is to visit Turkey on August 7^th and 8^th. Among other meetings, he will meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

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