The Cease Fire in Ukraine

Heavy fighting broke out Sunday between Ukrainian and rebel forces on the north side of Donetsk, killing at least six people in one of the most serious clashes since the 10-day-old cease-fire came into force. The airport, where Ukrainian troops are almost surrounded, was on fire, billowing black smoke, and a house and a city market burned just off the main boulevard inside the city.

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In a residential area just off the main boulevard, hospital workers collected bodies from the sidewalks and homes hit hours earlier. They took at least six, most of them of older adults who appeared to have been walking home from the market, and a rebel policeman who had been trying to guide people to cover when he was hit.

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The two sides have shelled each other almost daily since the cease-fire agreement was signed Sept. 5, each blaming the other for violations, but generally the intense, large-scale battles of recent months have ceased. Sunday’s action was, however, a marked escalation, suggesting that one side or the other was on the attack.

  NYT

Military exercises involving some 1,300 personnel from 15 nations have begun in western Ukraine.

The Pentagon has said 200 U.S. soldiers are participating in the annual exercise, called Rapid Trident.

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On September 14, Ukrainian Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey said unspecified NATO countries are now deliverying arms to Ukraine to equip it to fight pro-Russian separatists and "stop" Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  Radio Free Europe

Involvement of Western nations. That should help.

Earlier this month, a senior Ukrainian official said Kyiv had agreed on the provision of weapons and military advisers from several members of the U.S.-led alliance.

Four of the five countries named, including the United States, denied this.

Of course they did.

Sixty foreign leaders and dozens of diplomats and defense officials from around the globe will convene at [a NATO summit] this week and are expected to approve a plan that calls for assembling a 4,000-strong “spearhead” force to counter “Russia's aggressive behavior,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday, in the wake of the release of satellite images purported to show the advancement of at least 1,000 Russian troops and artillery into eastern Ukraine.

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According to the group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, the evidence produced by NATO from the Ukrainian-Russian border is on par with the “same dubious, politically ‘fixed’ kind used 12 years ago to ‘justify’ the US-led attack on Iraq.”

“We saw no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq then; we see no credible evidence of a Russian invasion now,” reads an excerpt from the memo signed by the VIPS steering group — a coalition composed of former National Security Agency analyst William Binney, retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright and others — published online over the weekend and addressed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“Photos can be worth a thousand words; they can also deceive. We have considerable experience collecting, analyzing and reporting on all kinds of satellite and other imagery, as well as other kinds of intelligence. Suffice it to say that the images released by NATO on August 28 provide a very flimsy basis on which to charge Russia with invading Ukraine,” the group added.

  RT