Simon Shuster has written a worrying piece for "Time" magazine on a recent history conference in Moscow and how some Russian scholars seem to be playing fast and loose with the facts:
Even without the simultaneous translations provided for the foreign guests, they would have gotten the political message. The photographs shown by several of the Russian speakers put the atrocities of the Nazi SS right alongside pictures from the current war in eastern Ukraine. There is not much difference, the Russian historians suggested, between the actions of the Ukrainian military in its war against separatist rebels and the atrocities that Hitler’s forces committed during World War II.
"Right now, fascism is again raising its head," declared Yaroslav Trifankov, a senior researcher at the state historical museum in the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders Ukraine. "Right now,” he said from the podium, “our brother Slavs in Ukraine have been so thoroughly duped and brainwashed by their puppet government, which answers only to the U.S. State Department, that they truly have come to see themselves as a superior race."
This rhetoric—calling it an argument would overstate its relation to facts—has recently come into vogue among Russian historians. Under their interpretation of history, the struggle that began with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 continues for Russia today, in a direct line through the generations, with the conflict in Ukraine. That is the connection President Vladimir Putin first presented to the Russian people in March, when he sent his troops to invade and annex the Ukrainian region of Crimea. The Russian-speaking residents of that peninsula, he said in a speech on the day of the annexation, need Russia’s protection from Ukraine’s new leaders, whom he referred to as “neo-Nazis and anti-Semites.” Ukraine’s ensuing war to prevent Russia from seizing any more of its territory has likewise been branded a fascist campaign against ethnic Russians.
Practically every arm of the Russian state, from the education system to the national police, has since taken up this message. The state media have consistently painted Ukrainian authorities as “fascists” in the service of the U.S. government. In late September, Russia’s main investigative body even opened a criminal probe accusing Ukraine’s leaders of committing “genocide” against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. But the more recent involvement of the nation’s historians has marked a worrying turn in this endeavor.
Read the entire article here
Good morning. We'll get today's live blog rolling with this item from RFE/RL's news desk on gas talks in Brussels:
Russia and Ukraine are continuing EU-brokered talks in Brussels over their natural gas dispute.
The new round of talks, which started on October 29, is being hosted by EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger and involves Ukrainian and Russian energy ministers Yuriy Prodan and Aleksandr Novak, respectively.
The talks come after an inconclusive first round of talks on October 21.
An evening news conference scheduled for October 29 at which the EU had hoped to announce a deal after months of negotiation was canceled.
The European Commission said in a statement, "Negotiations are ongoing and likely to continue until late in the evening. In case of agreement, the press conference is envisaged to take place tomorrow morning [October 30] at 8:30 a.m."
Novak was later quoted by the Russian news agency TASS as saying that the talks would continue on October 30.
Oettinger said on October 29 that hurdles include bills that Ukraine has not paid for gas at higher prices demanded by Russia since the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russian government earlier this year.
Russia is also demanding advance payment for new deliveries.
(AFP, AP, TASS)
This ends our live-blogging for October 29. Be sure to check back tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
NATO reports "unusual" Russian flight activity:
NATO says that it tracked and intercepted four groups of Russian warplanes “conducting significant military maneuvers” in international airspace close to the borders of the European Union during the previous 24 hours.
NATO’s SHAPE military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, said, "These sizeable Russian flights represent an unusual level of air activity over European airspace."
It said the planes included strategic bombers, fighters, and tanker aircraft.
They were detected over the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Black Sea on October 28 and 29.
Russian bombers flew south all the way to international airspace west of Portugal and Spain.
Norwegian, British, Portuguese, German, Danish, and Turkish fighters were scrambled to intercept and identify the Russian planes.
Planes from the non-NATO nations of Finland and Sweden also responded.
Since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, tensions between NATO and Russia have risen to the highest level since the Cold War. (AP and AFP)