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Russia Is Using Mobile Crematoriums to Hide Ukraine's Dead

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Russia Is Using Mobile Crematoriums to Hide Ukraine's Dead - Bloomberg View
May 26, 2015 6:00 AM EDT
By Josh Rogin

Russia is so desperate to hide its military involvement in Ukraine that it has brought in mobile crematoriums to destroy the bodies of its war dead, say U.S. lawmakers who traveled to the war-torn country this spring.

The U.S. and NATO have long maintained that thousands of Russian troops are fighting alongside separatists inside eastern Ukraine, and that the Russian government is obscuring not only the presence but also the deaths of its soldiers there. In March, NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow told a conference, "Russian leaders are less and less able to conceal the fact that Russian soldiers are fighting -- and dying -- in large numbers in eastern Ukraine."

Hence the extreme measures to get rid of the evidence. “The Russians are trying to hide their casualties by taking mobile crematoriums with them,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry told me. “They are trying to hide not only from the world but from the Russian people their involvement.”

Thornberry said he had seen evidence of the crematoriums from both U.S. and Ukrainian sources. He said he could not disclose details of classified information, but insisted that he believed the reports. “What we have heard from the Ukrainians, they are largely supported by U.S. intelligence and others,” he said.

Representative Seth Moulton, a former Marine Corps officer and a Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, was with Thornberry on the Ukraine trip in late March. He tweeted about the mobile crematoriums at the time, but didn’t reveal his sources. He told me this week the information didn’t come just from Ukrainian officials, whose record of providing war intelligence to U.S. lawmakers isn’t stellar.

“We heard this from a variety of sources over there, enough that I was confident in the veracity of the information,” Moulton said, also being careful not to disclose classified U.S. intelligence.

Both Thornberry and Moulton agreed with Vershbow's assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin was struggling to keep up the ruse that he has no soldiers fighting inside Ukraine. Moulton said the mounting evidence of dead Russian soldiers is causing a domestic backlash for Putin. Russian and Ukrainian bloggers and activists have been compiling lists of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, including details of their service and circumstances of their deaths. New organizations in Russia representing soldiers’ families have sprung up to publicly challenge Putin's narrative.

“Russia is clearly having a problem with their home front and the casualties they are taking from the war,” Moulton said. “The fact that they would resort to burning the bodies of their own soldiers is horrific and shameful.”

There had been unconfirmed reports of Russia using mobile crematoriums in Ukraine for months, including leaked videos purporting to show them. But never before have U.S. lawmakers confirmed that American officials also believe the claims.

The head of Ukraine’s security service, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, said in January that seven truck-mounted crematoriums crossed into his country over a four-day period. "Each of these crematoriums burns 8-10 bodies per day," he said.

The next month, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko held up the passports of several Russian soldiers and intelligence officers he said were captured or killed in Ukraine, rejecting the Russian assertions that these troops had accidentally wandered over the border.

For many in Washington, the Russian casualties represent a rare vulnerability for Putin -- one that should be exploited through providing weapons to the Ukrainian military. This is a position held by the top U.S. military commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, Secretary of State John Kerryand many top lawmakers in both parties.

Yet, in the face of European resistance, President Barack Obama said in March that he was still pondering providing defensive arms to Ukraine. More than two months later, he has yet to make a decision. The result has been a de facto policy of limiting U.S. assistance to Kiev to non-military items. Even that assistance has been delivered late, or in many cases not at all.

Thornberry said arming the Ukrainians would raise the price Putin pays for his aggression. As long as Putin feels the cost of his Ukraine policy is manageable, Russian fueled instability will continue, he said.

The recently passed House version of next year’s national defense authorization act contains explicit authorization for appropriations to support Ukraine’s military and provide it with defensive lethal weapons. This goes further than the action Congress took last year in passing the Ukrainian Freedom Support Act, which Obama signed but still has not acted on with regard to lethal support for Ukraine. The new legislation would set aside money specifically for the arms, and provide for increased production of items the Ukrainians want including Javelin anti-tank missiles.

“We’re doing anything we can possibly think of to get at legislatively forcing it to happen. How do we force the president to provide weapons to a country if he doesn’t want to?" Thornberry said. "I can’t find anyone who is against this except for President Obama.”

Moulton said that the West has a moral obligation to help the Ukrainians, and under current conditions, the Ukrainian military simply can’t face down the heavy weapons Russia continues to pour into Ukraine. He also said that if Putin isn’t confronted now, he will only become more aggressive later. “When a bear comes out of hibernation, he doesn’t have a few blueberries and go back to sleep. He is hungry for more,” said Moulton.

The Obama administration is understandably concerned that giving the Ukrainians arms will fuel the fire and risk a retaliatory Russian escalation. But if that’s the decision, Obama should let the Ukrainians and the American public know it. He then must come up with an alternative to the current, failing approach to stopping Putin’s murderous mischief.
 
Ukraine's bullets suck. 1970s bullets. Don't even fire anymore.

Thornberry said arming the Ukrainians would raise the price Putin pays for his aggression. As long as Putin feels the cost of his Ukraine policy is manageable, Russian fueled instability will continue, he said.


The only way to drive Russian invaders out of Ukraine is to kill 50 million Russian soldiers. Caesar failed to do that. Napoleon failed to do that. Hitler failed to do that.
 
Russia using mobile crematoriums in Ukraine - Business Insider

Russia is using crematoriums on wheels to burn the bodies of its soldiers who die fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, Bloomberg's Josh Rogin reports.

“The Russians are trying to hide their casualties by taking mobile crematoriums with them,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry told Rogin. “They are trying to hide not only from the world but from the Russian people their involvement.”

The mobile crematoriums — which burn about eight to 10 bodies a day, according to Ukraine security service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko — reveal how far Russia is willing to go to hide its military presence in the war.

"Every day, the hotline of the Security Service of Ukraine records a great of number of calls from dozens of Russian citizens who are looking for their relatives or Russian soldiers who have been sent to the territory of Ukraine," Nalyvaichenko said in January.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in Ukraine ever since Russian special forces occupied the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in February 2014.

"Russian leaders are less and less able to conceal the fact that Russian soldiers are fighting — and dying — in large numbers in eastern Ukraine," NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow told a conference in Latvia in March.

The Russian public has become increasingly disillusioned with the country's incursion into Ukraine, especially as reports continue to emerge about "secret funerals" of Russian soldiers killed in the war the Kremlin denies, Anna Nemstova reported in Newsweek in September.

“I never volunteered for this; but any attempts to quit would be useless," a young Russian officer told Newsweek. "They are sending us back to the meat grinder tomorrow; if somebody told me earlier about the truth, none of us would have signed up for $1,000 a month to get fried alive in Ukraine."

Russia has reportedly resorted to burning the bodies of Russian military personnel on the spot to quell suspicion and avoid any scrutiny that might come with shipping the soldiers' corpses back to a country that has denied deploying them in the first place.

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by24.orgA video produced by an independent media organization in Belarus purports to show the kind of crematorium being used by Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine to burn the bodies of Russian soldiers.

The only way to drive Russian invaders out of Ukraine is to kill 50 million Russian soldiers. Caesar failed to do that. Napoleon failed to do that. Hitler failed to do that.

So you are trying to say that it can be a repeat of 1917 era ?

Russian military is strong but Russian military have to fight on many fronts and if from one side NATO alliance would be able to penetrate then that can change the whole war.

Russian Military can be weak in Far East..
 
When SAA and Hezbollah battled Al Qaeda terroritsts in Qusayr back in summer 2013, they reported Al Qaeda terrorists strangely burning their dead at night.
 
Putin makes troop deaths in peacetime operations a state secret | Zee News
Last Updated: Thursday, May 28, 2015 - 20:08


Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday banned revealing information about troop deaths in "special operations" during peacetime, as the Kremlin continues to rebuff accusations its soldiers are fighting in Ukraine.


The strongman signed an amendment adding to what Russia classifies as "state secrets" any "information revealing losses of personnel... in peacetime during special operations."

The addition means that those who disclose details about the deaths of soldiers sent on operations during peacetime could be prosecuted.

The decree gives no details of what exactly is meant by a "special operation". Revealing state secrets, when it does not involve handing them to a foreign state, is a criminal offence that can be punished by up to four years in jail.

Analysts said the legal change was aimed at stamping out any leaks on Russian military losses in Ukraine after activists released a string of evidence pointing to the deaths of government soldiers across the border in the former Soviet state.

"The reason is not to reveal losses in Donbass," said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, referring to the war zone in eastern Ukraine, adding that the legal move was designed to "imprison or scare people".

"I`ve never heard a legal definition of the concept of a special operation," said Felgenhauer. "That means you could classify anything you like as this."The Kremlin decree came as reports have pointed to a massing of Russian equipment close to the Ukraine border.

An AFP photographer in recent days saw Russian military vehicles loaded on a freight train in the southern Rostov region, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

The photographer also saw Russian military vehicles at a training camp some 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the border.

The Kremlin has consistently denied government soldiers are fighting in Ukraine and claimed those fighting alongside rebels are there as volunteers.

Ukraine and the West insist Russia has not only armed and equipped the rebels but also sent in troops to spearhead fighting against Kiev`s forces.

NATO has said rebels are using a lull in the fighting due to a shaky truce to bolster their forces ahead of possible new offensive.

The presence of Russian troops in east Ukraine has been backed up by reports from activists of hushed-up funerals, interviews with soldiers in the Russian media, and information gathered from relatives and social networking sites.

US-based think tank Atlantic Council released a report Wednesday detailing "irrefutable evidence of direct Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine" that researchers gathered from open sources.The tightening of the state secrets act prompted an outraged reaction from Kremlin critics.

"Now the activity of looking for victims of `special operations` in Ukraine will be a breach of state secrets," warned opposition leader and lawyer Alexei Navalny on his blog.

"Let the soldiers die and their relatives keep quiet. Those who don`t agree, we`ll jail for espionage."

Rights lawyer Nikolai Polozov wrote on Twitter: "If you want, you needn`t bother giving relatives an insurance payout and a pension, and they won`t tell anyone."

According to the latest survey by independent polling agency Levada published on May 5, only 20 percent of Russians believe government forces are fighting in Ukraine.

Forty-eight percent said they believed Russians were serving there as volunteers.

AFP
 
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