някакъв Пю институт от САЩ

И главен злодей след Флинт, началник на "спецназа".

Amnesty International says that it has gathered "graphic and compelling evidence of savage beatings and other torture" by pro-Russian separatist groups in eastern Ukraine.

The human rights group says that protesters and journalists have been targeted over the last three months.

An Amnesty report, Abductions and Torture in Eastern Ukraine, says that hundreds of people have been abducted.

Pro-government forces also committed a smaller number of abuses, Amnesty says.

US Loses Patience with Europe: Washington Wants Tough Russia Sanctions
By Gregor Peter Schmitz in Brussels AFP

Running out of patience: US President Barack Obama says the downing in Ukraine of a Malaysia Airlines flight should serve as a "wakeup call" for Europe on Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Following the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight in eastern Ukraine, calls are growing in Washington for tough sanctions against Moscow. Many European governments are still hesitating, paving the way for the next big trans-Atlantic row.

Usually, it takes quite an effort for the ambassador of a European Union member state in Washington to raise the attention of the American government. But lately, it hasn't been difficult at all. "The calls and requests just don't stop," said one European diplomat in the US capital.

The shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 over eastern Ukraine, presumably by pro-Russian separatists, is considered to be a game changer in Washington -- an event of such magnitude that the status quo is no longer possible. All 298 passengers on board the Boeing 777 perished in the crash.

Washington officials have been clear with the Europeans about the lessons it has learned from the disaster, namely that EU members should adopt a tougher stance in its dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even prior to the Flight MH 17 disaster, pressure for additional sanctions in Washington had been growing. Bloomberg reported that Deputy National Security Advisor Anthony Blinken held a closed-door meeting a week ago with EU ambassadors to inform them of the actions Washington would like to see Europe take.

The Americans are proposing an end to EU weapons deliveries to Russia. With orders on the books for two Mistral-class amphibious assault ships for Russia worth €1.2 billion ($1.6 billion), that move could hit France particularly hard. The White House also says it would like to see further restrictions placed on Russia's access to money and capital markets.

Washington Doesn't Want Further Excuses

The US government's message is clear: Impatience is growing over the constant excuse given by the Europeans that they can't afford to isolate Russia for economic and energy policy reasons. Public statements given by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are getting brisker, with both speaking in unison of a "wakeup call for Europe."

On Sunday, Kerry told ABC News there was "powerful" evidence suggesting that the Russians had provided both training and weapons to the rebels.

In US government circles, many believe the Europeans will go along with sanctions this time. "This tragedy is so enormous, and above all so palpable for European countries like the Netherlands, that the Europeans will finally have to move decisively against Putin," says Jack Janes of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington. Some 189 of the passengers who perished on board Flight MH 17 were Dutch citizens.

Will the Europeans be swayed this time? Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and his Polish colleague Radoslaw Sikorski have both called for tougher sanctions against Moscow. And British Defense Minister Michael Fallon has accused Russia of "sponsored terrorism".

Although they threatened there would be "consequences" for Moscow over the weekend, EU members Italy, Germany and France have remained hesitant about applying further sanctions.

Many EU leaders believe that sufficient action was taken at a summit last week in which they expanded current sanctions that are largely focused on banning travel and blocking the foreign bank accounts of oligarch billionaires who support Russian decision-makers.

Hesitance in Europe

It remains uncertain whether EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday will go beyond a general discussion of the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines flight to actually agree on further punitive measures. The French government is also opposed to British calls to penalize the entire Russian defense sector.

Cameron is now considering an alternative embargo applying only to new weapons deals with Russia, which would exclude the French Mistral sale. That deal was approved by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2011.

His successor, François Hollande, said earlier this week that the first helicopter carrier is nearly complete and would be delivered as planned in October. However, he said delivery of a second ship would depend on Russia's attitude in the Ukraine crisis.

Obama's government is expected to wait until after the EU foreign ministers meet on Tuesday, but administration officials are already preparing the next steps, with measures aimed at Russia's financial sector. Officials are also considering an export ban on dual-use technologies that can be used for both civil or military applications.

Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, believes trans-Atlantic relations could be put to the test again if the United States and Europe don't pull together. "The Americans know that sanctions again Russia will only work if the Europeans take part," she says. "After all, the EU has far greater trade with Russia than the Americans do."

Trans-Atlantic policy expert Janes says that expectations are accordingly high. "People here are following very closely just how prepared EU member states are for sanctions -- especially Germany, which is so strong economically," he says.

.....
In a damning report dated Aug 3, headlined “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts”, Associated Press reporter Robert Parry said “some US intelligence sources had concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame”.

This new revelation was posted on GlobalResearch, an independent research and media organisation.

In a statement released by the Ukrainian embassy on Tuesday, Kiev denied that its fighters were airborne during the time MH17 was shot down. This follows a statement released by the Russian Defence Ministry that its air traffic control had detected Ukrainian Air Force activity in the area on the same day.

They also denied all allegations made by the Russian government and said the country’s core interest was in ensuring an immediate, comprehensive, transparent and unbiased international investigation into the tragedy by establishing a state commission comprising experts from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and Eurocontrol.

“We have evidence that the plane was downed by Russian-backed terrorist with a BUK-M1 SAM system (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation reporting name SA-11) which, together with the crew, had been supplied from Russia. This was all confirmed by our intelligence, intercepted telephone conversations of the terrorists and satellite pictures.

“At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have never used any anti-aircraft missiles since the anti-terrorist operations started in early April,” the statement read.


Yesterday, the New Straits Times quoted experts who had said that photographs of the blast fragmentation patterns on the fuselage of the airliner showed two distinct shapes — the shredding pattern associated with a warhead packed with “flechettes”, and the more uniform, round-type penetration holes consistent with that of cannon rounds.

Parry’s conclusion also stemmed from the fact that despite assertions from the Obama administration, there has not been a shred of tangible evidence to support the conclusion that Russia supplied the rebels with the BUK-M1 anti-aircraft missile system that would be needed to hit a civilian jetliner flying at 33,000 feet.

Parry also cited a July 29 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview with Michael Bociurkiw, one of the first Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) investigators to arrive at the scene of the disaster, near Donetsk.

Bociurkiw is a Ukrainian-Canadian monitor with OSCE who, along with another colleague, were the first international monitors to reach the wreckage after flight MH17 was brought down over eastern Ukraine.

In the CBC interview, the reporter in the video preceded it with: “The wreckage was still smouldering when a small team from the OSCE got there. No other officials arrived for days”.

“There have been two or three pieces of fuselage that have been really pockmarked with what almost looks like machinegun fire; very, very strong machinegun fire,” Bociurkiw said in the interview.

Parry had said that Bociurkiw’s testimony is “as close to virgin, untouched evidence and testimony as we’ll ever get. Unlike a black-box interpretation-analysis long afterward by the Russian, British or Ukrainian governments, each of which has a horse in this race, this testimony from Bociurkiw is raw, independent and comes from one of the two earliest witnesses to the physical evidence.

“That’s powerfully authoritative testimony. Bociurkiw arrived there fast because he negotiated with the locals for the rest of the OSCE team, who were organising to come later,” Parry had said.

Retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko had also weighed in on the new shootdown theory with Parry and pointed to the entry and exit holes centred around the cockpit.
“You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likely that of a 30mm caliber projectile.

“The edge of the other, the larger and slightly frayed exit holes, show shreds of metal pointing produced by the same caliber projectiles. Moreover, it is evident that these exit holes of the outer layer of the double aluminum reinforced structure are shredded or bent — outwardly.”

He deduced that in order to have some of those holes fraying inwardly, and the others fraying outwardly, there had to have been a second fighter firing into the cockpit from the airliner’s starboard side. This is critical, as no surface-fired missile (or shrapnel) hitting the airliner could possibly punch holes into the cockpit from both sides of the plane.

“It had to have been a hail of bullets from both sides that brought the plane down. This is Haisenko’s main discovery. You can’t have projectiles going in both directions — into the left-hand-side fuselage panel from both its left and right sides — unless they are coming at the panel from different directions.

“Nobody before Haisenko had noticed that the projectiles had ripped through that panel from both its left side and its right side. This is what rules out any ground-fired missile,” Parry had said.