Last Thursday, The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France ended their peace talks in Minsk, Belarus with a ceasefire agreement that would pull back heavy weaponry and hold off fighting in the interim starting Sunday, February 15. Despite this hopeful outcome, both sides managed to announce threatening statements if the deal reached were to be broken. With eight Ukrainian soldiers dead, several more wounded, and new shelling in Donetsk and Luhansk during the interim, one can only assume that the Minsk deal will be used as a pretext to further escalate the current crisis. This troubling assumption makes sense since the previous Minsk ceasefire agreement in September 2014 that was supposed to lead to negotiations achieved none of its intended goals. Moreover, propaganda and misinformation from Kiev, Washington, and Moscow distorted any attempts at discovering who the agitators were, serving only to perpetuate more violence. Today, the United...
Cuts through the political and media-driven rhetoric that keeps attacks on democratic and civil ideals out of the public consciousness.