STAMFORD BRIDGE – Chelsea remain five points clear at the top despite lots of City pressure in the second half. United are ten points behind the leaders at third, although Southampton who play tomorrow could move back into that place.
BELARUS, Minsk – Rebel leaders of self proclaimed independent Donetsk and Luhansk are not present for today’s peace talks. The rebels have continued their offensive in eastern Ukraine targeting key strategic towns of Debaltseve and Vuhleshirsk. Water and electricity have been cut off with rebels surrounding government soldiers in the towns. 15 civilians have been reported killed in Donetsk, with Kiev losing 12 soldiers during fighting in the last 24 hours. Rebels say they have lost 13.
DISTANT ECHOES – Reminders from The Template Website
TEMPLATE ANALYSIS
Last night’s BBC documentary Putin, Russia and The West contained perhaps the most powerful and disturbing footage broadcast on terrestrial television yet.
A boy from a village in Chechnya is dragged out of his home by Russian soldiers, he is heard screaming for his life – ‘hy-aa Allah’ – and the narrator tells us that his body was found much later buried in a Russian base.
The pictures which were shot before the Moscow Theatre siege, and of course much earlier than Beslan, are perhaps also the first hard proof of what Russia’s soldiers were doing as they attempted to reconquer Chechnya for their president, Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s military doctrine when it comes to conquering and reconquering its restive Muslim provinces has been simple – the harder you hit them, the less likely they are to come back again.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, there was bloodshed, perhaps not as much as feared, but it was still awful with wars following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the attempt by the people of the Caucasus to finally rid themselves of the long bondage of Moscow that resulted in bloody failure.
One of the first European nations to emerge free of the old Soviet bonds was of course Poland. And the pictures on our television screens of protesters in Kiev clashing with police, armed with riot gear using live ammunition to disperse the crowds, suggests that that other European nation to a share a border with Russia, called Ukraine, is once again playing out its long struggle for freedom. Of course, Vladimir Putin for whom the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical disaster of the end of the last century is not going to…
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