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The Cause and Aims of the Ukraine War - Updated

Wed, 06/18/2014 - 04:26 — james

Update - Youtube video of Sergey Glazyev talking about the Ukranian situation and saying that to see Ukraine as it really is, it has to be seen as an American occupation of Ukraine and the longer Russia waits to intervene on behalf of the people of Donbas, who are experiencing genocide now, the worse it will be for Ukraine and Russia and even Europe.
"The Americans have gained from every war in Europe . . . . So we have to understand that the key to resolving the catastrophe of Ukraine is to be found in Washington. That is where Nazism has to be defeated" - Sergey Glazyev

Link was left in the comments by Anonymous. Thank you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWT5HM_NMlI

The following article is from Voice of Russia and it outlines exactly the game that is being played by US and European bankers at the cost of everyone else

Putin's aide proposes anti-dollar alliance to force US to end Ukraine's civil war

Sergey Glazyev, the economic aide of Vladimir Putin, published an article outlining a plan for "undermining the economic strength of the US" in order to force Washington to stop the civil war in Ukraine. Glazyev believes that the only way of making the US give up its plans on starting a new cold war is to crash the dollar system.

In his article, published by Argumenty Nedeli, Putin's economic aide and the mastermind behind the Eurasian Economic Union, argues that Washington is trying to provoke a Russian military intervention in Ukraine, using the junta in Kiev as bait. If fulfilled, the plan will give Washington a number of important benefits. Firstly, it will allow the US to introduce new sanctions against Russia, writing off Moscow's portfolio of US Treasury bills. More important is that a new wave of sanctions will create a situation in which Russian companies won't be able to service their debts to European banks.

According to Glazyev, the so-called "third phase" of sanctions against Russia will be a tremendous cost for the European Union. The total estimated losses will be higher than 1 trillion euros. Such losses will severely hurt the European economy, making the US the sole "safe haven" in the world. Harsh sanctions against Russia will also displace Gazprom from the European energy market, leaving it wide open for the much more expensive LNG from the US. Co-opting European countries in a new arms race and military operations against Russia will increase American political influence in Europe and will help the US force the European Union to accept the American version of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a trade agreement that will basically transform the EU into a big economic colony of the US. Glazyev believes that igniting a new war in Europe will only bring benefits for America and only problems for the European Union. Washington has repeatedly used global and regional wars for the benefit of the American economy and now the White House is trying to use the civil war in Ukraine as a pretext to repeat the old trick.

Glazyev's set of countermeasures specifically targets the core strength of the US war machine, i.e. the Fed's printing press. Putin's advisor proposes the creation of a "broad anti-dollar alliance" of countries willing and able to drop the dollar from their international trade. Members of the alliance would also refrain from keeping the currency reserves in dollar-denominated instruments. Glazyev advocates treating positions in dollar-denominated instruments like holdings of junk securities and believes that regulators should require full collateralization of such holdings. An anti-dollar coalition would be the first step for the creation of an anti-war coalition that can help stop the US' aggression. Unsurprisingly, Sergey Glazyev believes that the main role in the creation of such a political coalition is to be played by the European business community because America's attempts to ignite a war in Europe and a cold war against Russia are threatening the interests of big European business. Judging by the recent efforts to stop the sanctions against Russia, made by the German, French, Italian and Austrian business leaders, Putin's aide is right in his assessment. Somewhat surprisingly for Washington, the war for Ukraine may soon become the war for Europe's independence from the US and a war against the dollar.

Valentin Mândrăşescu

And by the same author comes the following prescient article from April earlier this year-


Time is running out for the US dollar

It is often speculated that some members of the US establishment are pushing Ukraine towards a military conflict with Russia. But why do it in such a hurry? A Russian economist claims t hat he know s the answer, alluding to the link between the latest international crisis and the fate of the US currency.

Russian diplomats have repeatedly criticized the US for not trying to restrain their Ukrainian underlings in order to make them respect the agreement reached during the recent Geneva meeting. US-sponsored Ukrainian junta is trying to provoke Russia to intervene in Ukraine in order to protect ethnic Russians and supporters of federalization. There can be only two results for such policy. Ukraine will either become the battleground for a long and bloody civil war or will become the target for a Russian military intervention. From the American point of view it is a win-win situation. If there is a civil war, the delivery of natural gas to Europe will be disrupted hurting both the European and the Russian economy. If Moscow decides that it has to intervene in Ukraine, Washington will ignore the ethic Russians killed by the US-sponsored junta and will claim that Russia is an aggressor. Such a strategy will give Washington a chance to force the EU to institute hard economic sanctions against Russia, but such sanctions will hurt the EU even more than Russia . According to Sergey Glazyev, economic advisor to President Putin, European Union stands to lose 1 trillion euro, if hard economic sanctions against Russia are enacted .

Mikhail Khazin, the president of Neokon economic advisory company, believes that the US is trying to preemptively hurt the regional currencies and their associated economies before the US dollar loses its status as the main global currency:

“ The US doesn't have that much time in order to prepare for a serious weakening of the US dollar on the global stage and, conversely, for a serious strengthening of regional currencies' role. The maximum amount of time they can count on is 18 months. During this period they must prepare for a situation in which their main instrument of global control, i.e. the control of the circulation of the main global reserve and trade currency, will become seriously weakened,” he wrote in a recent blogpost cited by the Russian media outlets.

During Obama's second term, the relations between the US and most global players including China, Russia, India and, to a certain extent, the EU have reached new low points. This situation is somewhat similar to the situation before WWII and WWI when America benefited from global conflicts that destroyed the economies of America's competitors. It is said that third time is charm, but the rest of the world would be better off if Washington can't pull the same trick for a third time in a row. The era in which Washington was the main beneficiary of global instability and regional conflicts must come to an end.
Valentin Mândrăşescu

Comments

Wed, 06/18/2014 - 23:44 — McJ
McJ's picture

You right

You were right! : D

Sat, 06/21/2014 - 07:38 — Anonymous (not verified)

On YT

US is militarizing Ukraine to invade Russia. Sergei Glazyev
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWT5HM_NMlI

Tue, 06/24/2014 - 00:35 — McJ
McJ's picture

An interesting analysis

An interesting analysis by Alexander Mercouris (don't know who he is) that was posted by one of my FB friends.

"POROSHENKO'S U TURN
After refusing to negotiate with the resistance Poroshenko has done just that. The result is that following the bogus "unilateral ceasefire" we now have an actual genuine mutually agreed ceasefire.
A number of points:
1. It is no coincidence that the ceasefire happened on the same day as a telephone conversation between Poroshenko and Merkel.
2. Poroshenko has previously consistently refused to enter into any talks with the resistance. When he purported to announce his ceasefire a few days ago he did it unilaterally. In his conversation with Merkel and Hollande yesterday Putin however insisted that negotiations with the resistance were an essential element of any peace process. There is no hint either in the Kremlin's report of this telephone conversation or in any statement from Germany or France that has been made since that conversation that either Merkel or Hollande disputed Putin's demand.
http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/22525
3. I would add that Putin made the same point in the two Kremlin statements I discussed previously (see below on this page) and on the occasion of his visit yesterday to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/22523
4. The same points have of course also been made by Lavrov in even more forceful language. It is interesting how Lavrov plays hard cop to Putin's soft cop (Molotov and Stalin played the same game). This should fool no one. Their positions are the same.
5. As I discussed in a thread to a comment of Mark Sleboda's on his Facebook page, Merkel and Hollande boxed themselves into a corner by committing Germany and France to sectoral sanctions on Russia in the event of escalation of the crisis in the Ukraine. Merkel and Hollande made that commitment at a time when US and European leaders claimed to be concerned about the threat of a Russian invasion of the eastern Ukraine. That threat had no reality as Merkel and Hollande would have known in light of the assurances Putin would have given them over the course of the numerous telephone conversations he had with both of them (Merkel especially). Merkel and Hollande therefore made the commitment in the belief that they would never be required to honour it. What they never anticipated any more than any other western leader did was the popular uprising in the Donbas. When it became clear that the US would demand sectoral sanctions if the conflict in the Donbas was not brought to a stop the pressure was on Merkel and Hollande to bring the conflict to a stop so as to avoid having to impose sectoral sanctions on Russia that would have badly damaged the German and French economies. Given Putin's insistence that direct talks between the parties was the only way of bringing the conflict to a stop that made it all but inevitable that they would force Poroshenko to agree to such talks.
6. In other words the threat of sectoral sanctions has ended up working to Russia's diplomatic advantage once it became clear that Russia's terms were the only ones upon which the conflict could be brought to a stop.
7. The talks that took place today in Donetsk have therefore been externally imposed. Left to itself the junta would never have agreed to them as shown by Poroshenko's outright refusal to agree to direct talks and his fantastic demand that the resistance disarm and flee to Russia when he unveiled his "peace plan" a few days ago. A sign of how politically difficult and embarrassing for Poroshenko today's talks are is his decision to use Leonid Kuchma (a former President, Yanukovitch's patron and a hate figure for the Maidan movement at the time of the Orange Revolution) as his representative in the talks in an obvious ruse to distance himself from them and to deflect criticism inside the junta from himself (see Vladimir Suchan on the sort of person Kuchma is).
8. The fact that the talks have taken place at all and that the ceasefire that Russia has been demanding for weeks is now in place must be considered a success for Russian diplomacy. It will have been particularly humiliating for Obama to be informed of all of this by Putin in a telephone conversation the two of them had today.
http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/22535
9. The biggest credit however must go to the people of the Donbas whose uprising and resistance in the face of frightening odds has fought the junta to a standstill and forced the junta contrary to its wishes to the negotiating table on however tenuous a basis.
10. It is important however to stress that the talks that took place today are purely exploratory, they are in no sense a constitutional negotiation of the sort the Russians have been insisting upon and that the only outcome of today's talks is a brief ceasefire that is due to end on Friday. It is absolutely clear that the junta remains as fundamentally opposed to serious constitutional negotiations as ever. The greatest possible pressure will have to be maintained on the junta to ensure that constitutional talks take place and the same pressure will be needed to ensure that those talks do not end in deadlock but actually go somewhere. Disarmament in this situation for the resistance is not an option. Far from this being the end of the conflict it is arguably for the resistance the moment of greatest danger when they will have to convert the advantage their courage on the battlefield and Russian diplomacy have won for them into concrete political gains. To those (Vladimir Suchan, Mark Sleboda) who are concerned that the resistance may be sold down the river by a Russian government intent on pursuing its own interests, this is the moment when the greatest vigilance is needed.
8. There are some hopeful signs:
(1) a key factor in today's agreement is that the junta has been forced to agree to the presence of Russian ceasefire monitors in the Donbas alongside those from the OSCE. A few days ago the White House was insisting that the US would oppose a Russian military presence in the Ukraine under any circumstances. It is now happening in the form of ceasefire monitors (who will of course be military officials) and the junta itself has been forced to agree to it. The numbers are of course nominal but the mere fact of their presence on the ground fundamentally alters the political calculus.,
(2) The Russians were directly involved in today's talks in the person of Zubarov the (incompetent) Russian ambassador. Importantly no representative of any of the western powers is reported to have participated. The OSCE was represented by the Swiss lawyer/diplomat Heidi Tagliavini who some years ago wrote an EU commissioned report that clearly identified Saakashvili (currently serving as the junta's adviser) as the initiator of the 2008 South Ossetia war.
More importantly the Kremlin released today a statement that identified Viktor Medvedchuk (a Ukrainian businessman and politician on the US/EU sanctions list) who participated in the talks as a person in whom it has confidence.
http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/22526
This may mean that it was Medvedchuk (who is believed to be personally close to Putin) who was the true representative of the Kremlin at today's talks. The Kremlin statement significantly commends Medvedchuk's support for the Ukraine's federalisation, which suggests that this remains the Kremlin's objective and that the resistance can continue to rely on the Kremlin's support in pursuing it.
(3) Though nothing is guaranteed the mere fact that the junta has been forced into direct talks with the resistance even if only on the subject of the ceasefire means that diplomatic pressure is likely to continue from Russia and Europe for the junta to enter into substantive constitutional negotiations. The same political imperative that obliged Merkel and Hollande to push Poroshenko into today's talks will surely require them to continue to push him into constitutional negotiations. This provides some assurance that these negotiations will begin soon. The time frame however is desperately short with the ceasefire due to end as soon as Friday. The immediate pressure will be to extend it.
However, against all this there are the following worrying counter signs
(1) Federalisation may no longer correspond with the Donbas's aspirations. It probably would have commanded majority support in March. After the murder and mayhem of the "anti terrorist operation" it is no longer clear that it does. Realistically it may be the best that is on offer given that Russia remains committed to the preservation of the Ukraine's formal unity. However the extent to which federalisation will be seen in the Donbas as a victory commensurate with the suffering of recent weeks probably depends on what precisely "federalisation" in the end actually means. A Swiss style canton like system allowing individual regions very broad autonomy and rights to pursue their own commercial relations independently of each other might suit the Donbas. The kind of relationship Russian regions have with Moscow almost certainly would not. The devil will be in the detail and here if negotiations start the resistance would be unwise to rely on Russia to do its work for them.
(2) I am frankly worried about the presence of Medvedchuk and Tsariev in the talks. Neither has compromised with the junta, both have been the subject of threats and both are on the US/EU sanctions list. However both are former PoR politicians. Moscow's biggest mistake in its handling of the Ukraine has been its decision to limit its contacts to a PoR establishment that proved corrupt and incompetent and which is now completely discredited. I hope this pattern is not repeating itself and that we are not seeing a situation where the Kremlin is choosing the political leadership of the resistance for it.
(3) a federalised Ukraine risks leaving the fascist junta in Kiev still in place (see Vladimir Suchan about this). In itself that is dangerous. However it is also arguably something of an abandonment of the rest of the Ukraine. At the very least it is essential that Russia is made guarantor of any federal structure to prevent the junta at some point in the future from going back on whatever it is obliged to concede. In saying this however I must also say that federalisation amounting to the effective partition of the Ukraine would be such a massive blow to the junta and to the whole Maidan movement that I think it would be unlikely to survive in power for very long. A comparison might turn out to be with Saakashvili who clung on for a while after his defeat in the 2008 South Ossetia war but whose political credibility in the end was so damaged by it that it eventually caused his fall.
In summary, Russia has wrested back the diplomatic initiative after the political defeat it suffered as a result of coup in February. However the interests of Russia and of the resistance in the Donbas though they overlap are not identical. A small but important battle has been won but the struggle is far from over. The most difficult part of the struggle is still ahead and the outcome is still in doubt. It is a good sign that the resistance continues to insist that the Ukrainian military entirely withdraw from the Donbas as a condition of getting constitutional talks to start. Political pressure should now be brought to bear to secure this."
*************

I have to note that Putin has ordered a surprise drill for the Russian military forces that will run concurrent with the cease fire, June 21 - 28. Coincidence? smiling

Tue, 06/24/2014 - 00:47 — McJ
McJ's picture

And this from Vladimir Suchan

This was posted earlier today to FB by Vladimir Suchan. I don't know how much truth there is in this but thought I would add it FYI. (My emphasis below.)

"Interesting article on what might have also contributed to today's sudden direct talk of the Kiev junta with the People's Republics of the Donbass. Novorossiya's emerging army got a number of tanks from a seized large depot just a few days ago and the junta leaders thought for a while that Russian invasion and Russian tanks are already coming in and they were close to fleeing to Poland. Reportedly, this happened on June 20. And the junta suddenly became much more reasonable and sensitive to imperatives of peace.

This is, at least, in a nutshell what this story says and I would say that, while much remains uncertain, the old proverb that for any smoke there must be some fire seems to apply here.

Translated by google (so not exactly smooth or everywhere accurate):

June 20 brave Ukrainian government was ready to pack your [their] bags and flee to Poland after the Ukrainian media reported that Russian tanks entered the territory of Ukraine.

It all started with the fact that well-planned operation militia DNR Artemovsk led to the seizure of a / h A-2730, which is located more than 200 tanks, 183 infantry fighting vehicles and 288 armored personnel carriers. Current number of military equipment is enough to collect a mechanized brigade. Enough to patch up some samples and find ammunition. The biggest problem remains the lack of a sufficient number of tankers, especially engineers and gunners-minders, so it was decided to implement the technique in parts, as people search and Manning, the site says "anti-fascist" referring to the blogger from Sevastopol Boris Rozhina.

This failure under Ukrainian law enforcers Artem so frightened the country's leadership that the Ukrainian president and prime Poroshenko Yatsenyuk within a few hours were knocked down.

Further aggravated the situation and rumors that Russia invaded the Ukrainian territory. Was even convened an urgent meeting of the NSDC, conducted training helicopters to evacuate the country's leaders. At 15.00 local time acting Defense Minister Mykhailo Koval had to give a press conference to the media on which it is going to make a statement about the beginning of the Russian occupation. After received intelligence talked about allegedly raised the Russian flag on the tanks.

According to witnesses of what is happening in the Cabinet and on the street. Banked, where many government buildings, the situation is very resemblance to what happened in Georgia, when its president, Mikheil Saakashvili, said that the Russian tanks came within 90 km from Tbilisi. With fright he began to chew your wardrobe items.

This situation suggests that the Ukrainian army, as such, are almost nonexistent. Broken and hungry conscripts, whose thugs oligarch Igor Kolomoisky driven to slaughter, will not last long. All this brings the whole sentence Ukrainian government elite that understands that it seized power temporarily." http://therussiantimes.com/news/11442.html

He also posted later: "Well, there is no ceasefire. The Ukrainian army has been pounding towns of the Donbass and positions of the antifascist militia whole night with heavy guns." https://vk.com/strelkov_info

Tue, 06/24/2014 - 01:35 — james

Alexander Mercouris is

Alexander Mercouris is sometimes on RT's Crosstalk. I have found him very insightful and his comments always to the point. I have a lot of time for him.

Thanks for posting these comments, McJ. THey are very thoughtful analysis. These two guys make all the other paid pundits in the west look like high school students.

Thu, 07/03/2014 - 01:59 — McJ
McJ's picture

Another Mercouris comment

Here is another interesting FB comment by Alexander Mercouris in conversation with Mark Sleboda and Vladimir Suchan.

Alexander Mercouris -
"Dear Mark, There are some points where I agree with you. As you know I don't share at all the criticism of people in the south eastern Ukraine. On the contrary the resistance and not just in the Donbas has been far greater than anyone that I know expected. Also, I too think that any idea that the Ukraine will simply return to the fold of its own accord chastened by its own experience after a few years is complacent. Does anybody seriously imagine that people like Poroshenko - not to mention Kolomoisky, Tyagnibok, Parubiy, Yarosh and Lyaskho - are the sort of people likely to change their minds on an issue like that? Does anybody seriously imagine that alternative views will be permitted a fair hearing with people like that around. I also think that most Russians today not only support intervention but actively want it. As you know I was struck by the unanimity for that which I saw in St. Petersburg. Lastly I also think it is through Russian intervention and only through Russian intervention that this crisis will eventually end. That is not only your view but also Vladimir Suchan's view and importantly it is also Strelkov's view. However there are two points where I do not agree with you.

(1) I do not think that the Kremlin is playing some sort of long game if by that you mean a game extended over many years or that it has any particular trust in the Europeans. On the contrary I think the Kremlin is working to a time frame of months at most if not weeks and that it has no confidence or trust in the Europeans at all especially after the debacle of the 21st February 2014 agreement which let us not forget the EU brokered. Having seen Putin in person in action the irony he uses when he uses the word "partners" to refer to the Europeans is perfectly obvious. Also -

(2) I don't think - in fact I am absolutely sure - that the Kremlin has not given up on the Ukraine and certainly not on the eastern Ukraine at all. On the contrary Putin endlessly harps on the fact that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and I have no doubt he believes it. However the difficult fact we all must face is that Russia though unquestionably a powerful country is simply not in a position to act unilaterally in the way that the US can do. It must take into account the opinion of its allies who unlike the allies of the US are real allies and not just vassals and given the threat of sectoral sanctions it must also ensure that Russian domestic opinion is not only solid but will remain solid over the long term.

On the subject of Russia's allies, they support Russia because it is a predictable and reliable partner in international relations that abides by international law. On the subject of Russian domestic opinion, if sectoral sanctions are introduced and the Russian economy is placed under siege then the Russian government must be confident that it will hold firm over the long term despite the inevitable dip in living standards there will be if only for a short time. That means that Russia must try in earnest to secure a diplomatic solution to this conflict however distant the prospects of that may be so that it can show both to its allies and its people that any resort to force is as required by international law done absolutely as a last resort. That unfortunately means negotiating with the Europeans and with people like Poroshenko. That means that when Russian intervention happens (which I suspect will initially at least take the form of arms supplies rather than of overt military action) Russia can be sure that both its allies and Russian opinion at home will support it and will continue to do so over the long term in face of the inevitable pressure from the west.

It would be an utter disaster for Russia to intervene instead in a unilateral way without its allies on board or opinion solid at home only to see the Eurasian Union unravel, China start to doubt the value of its strategic relationship with Russia and Russian domestic turn against the government as living standards fall. All of this is of course infuriating as we have to watch day after day people being tortured and killed. That however is the price (and it is a high price) for eventual success (of which I have no doubt). A good historical parallel is with Stalin's diplomacy in the two years that preceded the German attack in 1941. It too involved making deals with Hitler and it remains bitterly divisive and controversial to this day. However it ensured that when war came the Russian people were under no doubt that they were the victims of aggression and were united in resisting the aggressor, which undoubtedly steeled them for the sacrifices ahead, whilst ensuring that the USSR both had allies (Britain and the US) at the same time as its enemies (Germany and Japan) were at odds with each other.

In politics as Machiavelli once said one has sometimes to be a lion and sometimes a fox. At the moment Russia has to be a fox. The time for it to be a lion will in my opinion come soon enough. Changing the metaphor, I suspect some time in the autumn the pot will boil over."

Thu, 07/03/2014 - 05:54 — james

Great comment

Thanks McJ. Alexander nails it, as he often does. I have a slightly differing view on his points 1 & 2, though, but they are not major differences.

In Point 1, Alexander indicates that Putin does not trust the European politicians after the betrayal of the Feb 21st agreement that was brokered by them. My view is that the France and Germany were betrayed, too, by Poland in the person of Sikorsky on behalf of the London and New York bankers. Even so, it was a bad deal for Ukraine and France and Germany I'm sure did not win favour fromPutin for the deal they actually made. However, from Putin's viewpoint, it was a deal which gave Yanukovich (and Russia) some time.

The bankers, through the agency of their pet, Yats, promptly stole Ukraine's gold and foreign reserves which was the whole idea of installing Yats in the first place; he being a jewish banker and all and being 'with the programme'. (The bankers need physical gold to make good on demands for delivery of Gold they have stolen from depositors). They also couldn't allow Yunakovich the time to effect an economic rescue through Russian help. But they weren't about to make the European politicians privy to all that.

So my guess is that Putin is using this previous betrayal of the Europeans to lever them away from the bankers and is having some success with that evidenced by their siding with Putin against Poroshenko re the ceasefire extension.

In Point 2, Alexander says Russia is not in a powerful enough position to act unilaterally as the US does. He indicates that Putin is constrained by Europe in that he needs their alliance to act. I disagree. Putin has the power, militarily and economically, to act unilaterally but his larger plan works much better with Europe's participation which Alexander goes on to elaborate on very well. He needs to stray within legal bounds for the purposes of his own strategy but this does not mean he can't act otherwise.

So, if Putin does not get help from Europe, he will act unilaterally if it comes down to a choice of intervention or sitting back and watching the complete destruction of Ukraine. He does not need Europe to do that. He needs legal justification only and as Alexander points out really well, Putin is building that justification. Having Poroshenko go against the advice of France and Germany and not renew the ceasefire (not that it ever existed) puts Poroshenko in a weak position legally.

Alexander Mercouris is a lawyer and so is Putin. Putin has shown a committment to acting legally and so it is very valuable for us to get a lawyer's view on Putin's tactics.

Wed, 07/02/2014 - 01:18 — McJ
McJ's picture

Russians airforce helping Lugansk resistance

Some interesting comments from "Sergei" interviewed at a Lugansk barricade. He is reporting Russian planes which appear to be taking off from Russia, intervening to stop Ukranian bombing runs over their checkpoint and other areas of Lugansk. Watch from 9:30 - 10:30 min - sounds like the beginnings of a No Fly Zone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egPPMUWBQbI

Wed, 07/02/2014 - 20:15 — james

Excellent find, McJ

I can't verify anything in the video, of course, but I'm inclined to think "Sergei" is describing what he saw.

A commenter at Saker's pointed out that the video (without subtitles) was posted two weeks ago on the 20th June. So there have been Ukrainian flights since then I think. This indicates that a "no fly zone" might be premature but not that the Russians didn't intervene.

There seems to be a pattern of Russian military moves in Russia and covert interventions in Ukraine together with intelligence leaks thsat have the overall effect of drastically slowing down the progress of the Kiev assault on the East.

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