BALTIMORE, Maryland May 4, 2014: The cauldron that is Ukraine is now boiling. If there is anything at all that can stop it from boiling completely over, those on the ground do not know what it is. This Sunday morning, the BBC says 42 are dead in Odessa after a deadly riot swept through the City. Ukraine's troops have completely surrounded Slovyansk in Eastern Ukraine. Inside Slovyansk, Separatists beligerently hold Ukraine Government Buildings, which they have fortified to withstand the expected attack. Russia says it has nothing to do with the impending conflagration, but nobody believes that is true, and Separatist Leaders openly brag about the help the Russian military is giving them. In the United States, a spokesman for Lockeed Martin, one of the biggest defense contractors on the face of the Earth, candidly told the influential German weekly "Die Welt" that it expects orders for its mobile missle defense system to increase because of Russia's incursions into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
About the only shred of good news is the claim in the Moscow Times that the Separatists have released the remaining OSCE hostages it was holding in Slovyansk. And, well, Die Welt's editorial staff thought it was comforting that President Obama - despite all of his problems, which, according to the German publication include his terrible poll numbers, the NSA controversy (a very touchy issue in Germany because of the admissions by the Obama administration that German Chancellor Angela Merkle's cell phone was tapped by the NSA), and the pummeling he has personally taken in the Ukraine crisis - was still able to steal the show at the annual Media Banquet in Washington last night with his self-deprecating humor. As long as he can laugh at himself...
In Odessa, the BBC says that Pro-Russian Separatists attacked a police headquarters building Sunday morning, two days after some 42 people were killed during fighting between police and separatists. Most of the dead were caught in a barricaded Government Building that caught fire, the BBC said. That incident happened on Friday.
Unlike other cities caught up in fighting between pro-Russian separatists and the Kiev Government, which have been confined to the far eastern sector of Ukraine, not far from the border the nation shares with Russia, Odessa is in the southwestern part of Ukraine. The acting Prime Minister blamed the riot on the police, who he said were ill-prepared. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the BBC and other reporters that "These security forces [in Odessa] are inefficient and violated the law" in the way they fought with the separatists. Yatsenyuk visited Odessa, located on the Black Sea, on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, said in a statement on his Facebook page that a new assault to reclaim control over Kramatorsk by the National Guard and armed forces began at dawn on Sunday. With one Ukraine military force currently involved with separatists at Slovyansk, the sprawling Eastern European nation has now opened a second front. Russia has blamed these efforts to free Ukraine Cities from Separatist control a provocation. In the past, Russia has used such incidents as an excuse to invade a nation that has a significant ethnic Russian population. Often times these ethnic Russian populations were placed there by previous leaders of the Soviet Union.
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