Russian Airliner With 224 on Board Crashes in Egypt

Earlier on Saturday Egyptian air traffic control said they lost contact with the Russian airliner en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg.

Egypt's prime minister said Saturday a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai Peninsula. A Metrojet/Kogalymavia A321 en route from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, crashed near el-Arish in the north of Sinai.

According to a security official at the scene, the Russian airliner is completely destroyed and all of its passengers are most probably dead.

The plane went down in a mountainous area in central Sinai and poor weather conditions have made it difficult for rescue crews to get to the scene, the officer said. Survivors and bodies of those on board will be flown to Cairo, he told Reuters.

An Egyptian Health Ministry official said 45 ambulances were sent to central Sinai's Al-Hasana City, adding that an "emergency status" was declared.

A source in Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsia) told RIA Novosti the Kogalymavia Flight 9268 carrying 217 passengers and 7 crew took off from Sharm El-Sheikh at 3:31 GMT and went off radar after 23 minutes of flight. Most of the passengers are said to be Russian tourists, including 17 children.

The Russian A321 captain informed air-traffic controller of technical faults after take-off and asked for route change, a source in the Sharm el-Sheikh airport told RIA Novosti.

MENA news agency reported that Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail canceled all his scheduled visits on Saturday following the aircrash. A statement from the prime minister's office said Ismail had formed a cabinet level crisis committee to deal with the crash.

There were no indications that the Russian Airbus was shot down, Egyptian security sources said. Egypt's North Sinai is home to a two-year-old Islamist insurgency and militants affiliated to Islamic State have killed hundreds of soldiers and police.

Initial reports about the fate of the airliner were conflicting, with the head of Egypt's central air traffic accident authority saying the plane was safe and heading for Turkey.

Source: Sputnik News 31-10-2015

Russia reviving pioneer and Komsomol movements?

A national children and youth organization to assist in the socialization of children and adolescents is to appear in Russia. 

President Putin has signed the decree to create the organization called "The Russian Movement of School-Children", the purpose of which is to improve the state policy in the field of education of young people, as well as form citizen personality on the basis of Russian values ​​. The founder of the organization on behalf of the Russian Federation is the Federal Agency for Affairs of the Youth.  

The movement will be coordinated with the executive branch and local government agencies with the mediation of the Russian Youth Center at the Federal Agency for Affairs of the Youth.

Noteworthy, on the 97th anniversary of the Komsomol party, Communists of Russia announced the revival of the youth organization with the historic name of the Russian Leninist Young Communist League, known for the Russian initials as VLKSM. According to party leader Maxim Suraikin, this name carries great positive energy.

The congress to bring the now-defunct organization back to life was held on October 29 in Moscow. Activists from more than 40 regions of Russia, as well as representatives of friendly organizations from the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, from Hungary, Sri Lanka and South Africa took part in the meeting. 

The congress adopted the resolution, the most important objective of which is "to  struggle against imperialism" and support the anti-fascist movement of the people of the Donbass and the Syrian government.

Maxim Suraikin, who asked to be addressed to as "Comrade Maxim", told Pravda.Ru why Communists of Russia decided to revive the Komsomol. 

"We believe that this is a historical name that carries huge positive energy. During  Soviet years, Komsomol was like school of life for millions of Soviet people. In general, Komsomol, or the Young Communist League, played a crucial role in the fate of the country ever since the Civil War, when young communists were fighting for freedom and independence of the Soviet state. During the Great Patriotic War, Komsomol members were dying for freedom and independence of our country, for freedom from fascism around the world. Think about all those grand Komsomol construction projects - all of that still lives in people's memory," Comrade Maxim told Pravda.Ru. 

"Our people understand that they need to restore this organization to make it a full-fledged and massively popular movement that in turn will help them with their problems, social issues, issues of professional growth, employment issues and all  other problems that young people face today," said Maxim Suraikin.

"Young people must know their country's history, they need to learn to love their country. We can see what has been happening in Ukraine, when young people learn the new history of their country that American historians wrote for them. As a result, fascism is rising in Ukraine, the state is collapsing. All this, including the tragedy in the south-east of Ukraine, is happening because there is no organization in Ukraine that deals with the patriotic education of young people."

Pravda.Ru

Source: English Pravda 30-10-2015

'Revolution of Dignity' Ends With Ukraine Facing Years of Dependence on Aid

Ukraine will be unable to make do without US and European financial support in the future, according to the Associated Press.

Washington's dreams of Ukraine rebuilding its tattered economy in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan 'revolution' and subsequent regime change may never come true and the next few years may see Kiev continuing to depend on European and US financial aid, the Associated Press reported.

It referred to US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker's visit to Ukraine, where she discussed ways in which Kiev could be weaned from Western aid.

Her visit came amid the US's announcement that it would give Ukraine another one billion dollars in loan guarantees on the condition that the country undergo a series of reforms.

The money will be allocated on top of a 17.5-billion-dollar aid program from the International Monetary Fund.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Pritzker touted Washington's decision on the loan guarantee as a "vote of confidence" in Ukraine's efforts to resolve the economic deadlock.

In this regard, the Associated Press specifically pointed to a "freefall" in Ukraine's trade ties with Russia, which had long been Kiev's biggest commercial partner.

Ukraine's goods exports to Russia in the past eight months were reportedly less than half what they were a year earlier, "and replacing that lost trade will be hard", the Associated Press said.

The news agency also cited a substantial decrease in Ukraine's exports to the US and the EU, with China's investments in Ukraine's agriculture being the only silver lining.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko has made it plain that restoring Russian trade to pre-conflict levels is not on the government's agenda. According to her, the focus will be placed on Ukraine's wider European and global integration.

Kiev and its European and North American allies have repeatedly accused Russia of meddling in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, where government troops have carried out so-called anti-terrorist operations against supporters of the Donbass region's independence since April 2014. Moscow vehemently denies these allegations.

 
Source: Sputnik News 29-10-2015

Ukraine's Local Elections Expose Poroshenko's Weakening Grip

Victories of Opposition Bloc in the east and Svoboda in the west and poor showing of the 'mainstream' Maidan parties confirms growing disenchantment and polarisation

Alexander Mercouris

The Western media has barely reported them but local elections took place in Ukraine on Sunday.

The elections took place in conditions of economic crisis, defeat in the Donbass and political violence.

Though the OSCE has, with some reservations but predictably enough, given the elections a fairly clean bill of health, it is impossible to call them free or fair.

The Communist Party, Ukraine’s oldest political party and once its biggest party, which was a serious contender for power as recently as the Presidential elections of 2000, has been banned.

Attempts were made to ban the only remaining legal anti-Maidan party, the Opposition Bloc, which is banned in parts of Western Ukraine, from contesting the elections in Kharkov.

Elections did not take place in two towns in eastern Ukraine - Krasnoarmeysk and the key port city of Mariupol - in the case of Mariupol supposedly because of a dispute with the local oligarch Rinat Akhmatov, but in reality almost certainly because the Opposition Bloc would have won a sweeping victory there.

In Kiev the biggest opposition newspaper was closed after months of relentless harassment, an event which follows closely upon a series of murders of opposition politicians and journalists.

Meanwhile Right Sector continues its rampage, and ultra-right groups have now taken to protesting violently - and regularly - in Kiev near to the parliament building.

Needless to say, scarcely any of this is reported in the West.

The elections took place against this backdrop and though they cannot because of it be considered an accurate reflection of opinion in Ukraine, they do nonetheless provide some information about the state of opinion there.

Firstly it is clear that despite regular claims of a political consolidation around the Maidan movement, opinion in those parts of southern and eastern Ukraine that formerly voted for Yanukovych and the Party of the Regions remains unchanged and continues to oppose Maidan.

The Opposition Bloc, made up largely of politicians who previously belonged to the Party of the Regions, won sweeping victories in those parts of southern and eastern Ukraine where the elections took place.  It claims to have won majorities in 17 regions including Odessa, Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk.

The election also demonstrates the collapse of support for what might be called Ukraine’s official government parties.

The party headed by Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk declined to take part in the elections at all. With Yatsenyuk’s support in low single figures, it obviously feared a wipe-out. 

As we have discussed previously, the only thing keeping Yatsenyuk in office appears to be the fact the US still supports him. 

Batkivshchyna, the party of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, once a leading contender for power, seems to have done dreadfully - confirming that her popularity has collapsed.

The collapse of support for Yatsenyuk and Tymoshenko might once have been expected to work to Poroshenko’s advantage.  Instead support for his party nationally seems to have fallen to just 18%.  

In Odessa the candidate for mayor backed by former Georgian President Saakachvili - the man Poroshenko appointed to run the place - was conclusively defeated.

In Kiev Poroshenko’s ally Klitschko - once widely expected to be the Maidan movement’s candidate for the Presidency - has been forced into a run-off in the elections for mayor.

By contrast in Kharkov, Gennady Kernes, a former Party of the Regions politician with an uneasy relationship with Poroshenko and the central government, retained the mayoralty by a landslide.

In Dnepropetrovsk neither of the two politicians who will compete in the run-off in the elections for mayor is a known ally of Poroshenko’s.

Most worrying for Poroshenko is that such support as he still retains seems to be increasingly concentrated in the small towns and regions of central Ukraine. In the politically crucial region of western Ukraine support for him seems to be collapsing.

In Lviv the ultra-nationalist - in fact neo-fascist - party Svoboda, which is increasingly defining itself in opposition to Poroshenko and the government, came first in the region and second in the city. 

Svoboda also seems to have won a substantial share of the vote in Kiev, though the vote there has come under particular criticism for electoral rigging from the Opposition Bloc, and may not be fully representative of opinion there.

Taken together this means that what passes in Ukraine for the political “centre” - Poroshenko’s Bloc, Yatsenyuk’s party and Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna - is not holding.   Both in the east and the west it is being repudiated, by the anti-Maidan Opposition Bloc in the east, and by the growth of right wing ultra nationalist 
parties in the west.

Two facts, perhaps more than any others, show the degree to which Ukrainians are recoiling from mainstream politics.

Officially the turnout was 46.6% - a figure which, as Leonid Bershidsky rightly says, might appear respectable in Europe but is scarcely so in a country that is supposed to be in the grip of a revolution.  

Yanukovych’s former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, currently in exile in Moscow, has however cast doubt even on this figure, claiming that actual turnout may have been only half that.

Whilst Azarov is hardly a reliable source, the state of politics in Ukraine today means he may even be right.

Even more indicate of the general disenchantment is the election to a seat on Odessa’s council of an individual who calls himself “the Emperor Palpitane” - one of a group of individuals that includes people who call themselves names like Darth Vader and Chewbacca. 

This is hardly serious politics, and the fact people who call themselves by such names are actually in places getting elected speaks volumes of what many people in Ukraine think their politics have become.

Where does Ukraine go from here?

There is a certain tendency to write-off the Opposition Bloc as a bunch of oligarchs and political has-beens.  

That underestimates the risk in today’s Ukraine of associating oneself with such a party. Standing as a candidate for the Opposition Bloc when Right Sector is on the rampage takes courage, and it seems there are people in Ukraine who have it.

The Opposition Bloc is however hardly in a position to challenge the government. It simply lacks access to the necessary levers of power to mount such a challenge, and it would face violent repression if it tried.

No government in Kiev has to date been overthrown by protests in the country’s east, and the Opposition Bloc is in no position to change this.

What the Opposition Bloc’s success shows is that the people of southern and eastern Ukraine remain as distanced from the aims of the Maidan movement as ever. When given the option, they vote overwhelmingly for whatever anti-Maidan party is on offer.

In light of this one can say with reasonable confidence that opinion polls that purport to show that only 8% of Ukrainians favour rapprochement with Russia are almost certainly wrong. 

Given the strength of anti-Maidan feeling on the ground, in the event of a government crisis in Kiev, the centre’s ability to control Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions and to prevent them going their own way must now be in doubt.

It is however from the ultra-nationalist ultra-right forces that any challenge to the government is more likely to come.  

As support for the government crumbles, it is the ultra-nationalist and ultra-right neo fascist parties who are gaining support in the west of the country and in Kiev - the places where protests have traditionally led to Ukrainian governments being overthrown.

These forces are already in de facto opposition to the government. They make no secret of their hostility to many of its politics, and of course they staunchly oppose the peace plan agreed in Minsk.

The government’s failure to crack down on Right Sector shows how precarious its grip on the security situation has become, whilst the violence of some of the recent ultra-right protests in Kiev shows how willing to use violence the ultra-right forces are.

As Ukraine’s economic situation deteriorates, and as the conflict in eastern Ukraine remains deadlocked, the political situation in Ukraine is becoming increasingly volatile and unstable.

Source: Russia Insider 28-10-2015