I-Spy Vienna. The Russian War Memorial

One of Stalin's priorities at the end of World War Two was to get Soviet war memorials erected sharpish in what would become Western European countries. One went up in 1945 just inside what became West Berlin by the Tiergarten just inside the Brandenburg Gate. 

The one in central Vienna also went up in 1945 within months of the end of the war. Locals refer to it rather unkindly as the 'Monument to the Unknown Looter'. The memorials gave the Russians a useful foothold in the West, with guards stationed by the one in Berlin, while Putin was a regular visitor to Vienna's. If he goes back now, he'll find the huge wall at the back has been painted in the colours of Ukraine.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE. Leaked letter from UK to the Kremlin

Someone has just leaked me this extraordinary letter. It appears to be addressed to President Putin at the Kremlin, but who can it be from?

Dear Vladimir,

I’m sorry about the delay in getting the trade war with the EU underway, but now we’re motoring. I’m as keen as you are to destroy the EU. I know perfectly well how embarrassing it is to have neighbours who are more prosperous, more efficient and more democratic.

Of course I am aware that without your money, bots, lies, dirty tricks, etc. I would never have got my job, but you have to understand I’m in a very tight corner. Even some of the foolish people who voted for Brexit have begun to see through my lies! So, apologies once again that it has taken so long.

And I appreciate you invading Ukraine so the mendacious right wing press and my stupid MPs could trot out the line about: ‘We can’t change prime minister! There’s a war on!’

And I can understand that you’re cross about me sending weapons to Ukraine, but you have to see it from my point of view. This has got to look good! If too many people start to think I am in your pay and in your pocket, the outlook for me could be really bleak.

Onwards and upwards!

Your friend in the FUK (Former United Kingdom) 

Mystery of another civil airliner shot down over Ukraine

We are still no nearer to knowing exactly who shot down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine (see my blog of July 20), and perhaps we never will be, but it was not the first civil airliner to be shot down over the country.

On October 4, 2001, a Siberia Airlines Tupelov Tu-154 (similar pictured) was hit by what was believed to be a Ukrainian missile while en route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Russia, and crashed into the Black Sea. None of the 78 people on board survived.

With the crash coming so soon after 9/11, the favourite explanation at first was terrorism, but Ukraine eventually admitted the aircraft had been hit by one of its missiles that had gone astray during a military exercise, and paid compensation to victims’ families.

Subsequently, though, the Ukrainian government denied responsibility for the disaster, and a claim against it by Siberia Airlines remains unresolved. 

Civilian airliners shot down by the military

From their frantic attempts to conceal and remove evidence from the crash site, it now seems clear that it was pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine who shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing all 298 people aboard the Boeing 777. What is not yet clear is how deep was the involvement of President Putin of Russia.

In 1983, a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 en route from Alaska to Seoul in south Korea was shot down by a Soviet fighter close to Sakhalin Island. All 269 people on board died. The aircraft had been passing through forbidden Soviet air space around the time of a US reconnaissance mission.

At first the Soviet Union denied shooting down the aircraft, then later admitted it, claiming the jumbo was on a spying mission. It took many years and the collapse of the Soviet regime before the flight data recorders were released.

In 1988, a US warship shot down an Iran Air Airbus A-300 over the Straits of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board, in the apparent belief that it was an Iranian warplane. The US denied responsibility for the act, but in 1996, it paid more than $130m in compensation after Iran took a case to the International Court of Justice.

Joseph Stalin - unhappy birthday

On this day........134 years ago, Joseph Stalin was born. The Russian Communist dictator went on to be one of the greatest mass murderers in history, being responsible for the deaths of perhaps 30 million people.

In 1928, he embarked on a forced collectivisation of Soviet agriculture, but millions of peasants would have nothing to do with it, often slaughtering their animals rather than hand them over to the state. Hundreds of thousands of villagers died as they were marched off to Siberia.

Even when famine swept through the Ukraine in 1932, the government carried on seizing grain from farmers. How many died? ‘No one was counting’, shrugged Khrushchev, then one of Stalin’s aides. An official estimate in 1990 put the number at four million, but many believe it was far more.

Then came the purges - intellectuals, artists, engineers, army officers, police chiefs, communist officials, people who had made an unwise comment.  Millions were sent to the gulags, where the commandants were given a quota of inmates - 28% - who had to be shot or otherwise punished for anti-state agitation.

For more, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Cold kills dozens in India

We tend to think of excessive heat as the main weather hazard in India, but every winter, people die of the cold.    This year the death toll is believed to have passed 170.

Most of the victims – at least 114 - have been in Uttar Pradesh, with others in Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand.    As usual, the old and the homeless are most at risk, with many of the dead found in parks or on the street.  

Last week, Delhi had its coldest day for 44 years.   Night shelters in the city are overcrowded, and those who cannot get in, have been lighting fires in the street to try to keep warm.

Meanwhile in the Ukraine, at least 37 people have perished from the cold.   (See also my blogs of 4 January, 2010 and 3 January, 2011.)

*Canadian review of new paperback edition of my book Disaster! - http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51986

Containing Chernobyl

Twenty-six years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster, work has begun on a huge new metal shelter to cover the Chernobyl reactor.    The structure, which is so big you could put the Statue of Liberty inside, should be finished by 2015.

After the disaster on April 26, 1986, a concrete ‘sarcophagus’ was hastily erected, but for years it has been crumbling, allowing radiation to leak out.    Once the new structure has been finished, the delicate and dangerous task of dismantling the reactor and clearing up vast amounts of radioactive waste around it can begin.

The Ukraine government has received more than £600m in donations from other countries to enable the work to proceed.    One donor, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said there was no room ‘for delay, for errors or for poor performance.’

All those things were evident in the original disaster, the contamination from which, according to some estimates, has cost up to 200,000 lives and damaged the health of a further 2m people.   (See also my blogs of April 14, 2009 and March 14, 2011.)

Snowstorms

More than 80 people have died in Europe because of the snowstorms of the last few days. More than 40 – mainly homeless – have frozen to death in Poland, and 27 in the Ukraine.

A restaurant owner in Krakow provided free hot meals for homeless people in the town’s beautiful main square as temperatures dropped to -20 in some places. Across the Atlantic at least five people have died as Washington’s Reagan National Airport was buried under a record 16 inches (40cm) of snow.

Two of America’s worst ever blizzards struck in 1888. In January, more than 230 people perished across the Great Plains (see my blog of Jan 12). Two months later, New York City was hit in the middle of what had been its mildest winter for 17 years.

What became known as the “Great White Hurricane” paralysed the east coast of the United States from Chesapeake Bay to Maine. Up to 60 inches (150 cm) of snow fell in some places, and winds of 50 mph (80 kph) created drifts up to 50 feet (125 cm) deep. An estimated 400 people died, including 100 in New York City. For the full story see A Disastrous History of the World.

The final trial?

What may turn out to be the last war crimes trial of World War Two is due to open today in Munich. 89 year old retired US car worker John Demjanjuk is accused of helping to murder more than 27,000 Jews at the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in what is now Poland.

Demnjanjuk, who was born in the Ukraine, was captured by the Nazis while fighting against them in the Soviet army. He denies even being at Sobibor. In the 1980’s he was accused of being “Ivan the Terrible” – a notorious guard at the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, and sentenced to death in Israel, but the conviction was overturned as unsafe by the Israeli supreme court.

The first World War Two war crimes trials started as early as 1943 when the tide of war in the east turned, and the Soviets began to drive back the German army. The Allies set up a War Crimes Commission in October of that year hoping that it might cause the Nazis to hesitate over their mass murder project, but it did not.

The most famous of the war crimes trials began at Nuremberg in November 1945. Goering managed to cheat the hangman by swallowing poison in his cell, but another ten defendants were executed.