Diversion of aircraft is done long, long before there is any actual danger of collision.

Radar will show where the mystery plane landed and from that everything about it can be known.

It only looks like. He seemed to be afraid 

The Oles Buzina media and literature prize is an important new Russian journalism award named after the popular pro-Russian Ukrainian journalist who was murdered in April 2015 in Kiev by neo-nazis in an effort to silence any dissent against the government in Kiev.

The prize is awarded jointly by the largest Russian news agency, Rossiya Segodnya, formerly known as RIA Novosti, and publisher of the Sputnik News website, and the Zinoviev Club, a Russian foundation whose mission is to popularize the ideas of the legendary 20th century Russian philosopher, Alexander Zinoviev, who along with Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were the top three most importortant Soviet dissidents and exiles.

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The prize is awarded in 8 categories, human rights, "civic courage", journalism and political analysis, literature, op-ed, TV journalism, war reporting, and internet publications and blogs.  The awards ceremony was held at the Rossiya Segodnya press center in Moscow on April 22.

Charles Bausman, the editor and founder of Russia Insider was awarded the prize for the journalism and political analysis category in recognition for his success in helping to create a successful new publication which has had significant influence around the world drawing attention to the dishonesty and moral failure of US and EU policy towards Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East, and more importantly, mainstream media's complicity in this.

Other recipients included the popular singer Iosif Kobzon, in recognition of his outspoken support of the Donbass, of which he is a native, and the many concerts he has performed there, landing him on the sanctions list, and Pavel Gubarev, the Donbass separatist military, political leader, and author in recognition for his book "Beacon of NovoRussia".

He is just as bad as all the previous oligarchs.

I can see him gone soon.

so? how is ukraine now? media got bored reporting about it apparently.

You personally have any visited in Ukraine? You write about the Nazis, it is strange but Ukrainian people do not see them in Ukraine. About them write only Russian bots Trolls.

Italy: The regional parliament of Veneto (with capital in Venice) will vote on May 18 whether to recognize Crimea as part of Russia: source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV36UE7O4gc

It also plans to insist that EU removes anti-Russian sanctions. If everything goes to plan, Veneto parliamentarians plan to take their votes to Italian parliament and to EU. Once the regional vote has passed and regardless of how it goes in the country and EU votes, Veneto province plans to unfreeze economic relations with Russia and begin doing business with its big interest, Crimea.

Veneto, one of Italy’s richest regions, loses 1 bln euros annually due to Russian sanctions, while all of Italy loses 3.2 bln annually.

Business contacts between Veneto and Crimea have already begun at the Spring 2016 Crimean Business Forum, which attracted first investments (if memory serves me, something to the tune of 90 bln rubles, which is good, considering sanctions). Italian businesses are some of the most active. Their primary interests are (of course) Crimean wines and tourism. German investors are also quite active – you’d think there were no sanctions whatsoever. Japanese investors are right up there, as well.

I recently wrote that French parliament voted to lift anti-Russian sanctions: French parliament votes to lift anti-Russian sanctions imposed by EU.

The French vote was non-binding. But the Veneto vote, should it pass, will be.

Below is a video interview with expert, Oleg Chagin, Director of the Institute of Social Anthropo-genesis (in Russian). To summarize, he talks about a dire situation in Ukrainian army. Some in the army still do believe the Kiev propaganda that Russia is the aggressor against whom poor Ukraine has been fighting for two hard years. But many don’t. Meanwhile, the army as a whole has been demoralized to the core. It has been lowered to the role of a terrorist organization, bombing civilians and country’s own citizens, to boot. Some in the army, perhaps without realizing it, are in fact sabotaging orders of their command.

Chagin goes on to say that it’s impossible to divide Russia from Ukraine and vice versa. The tragedy is that many of the officers would have friends and comrades on the other side, aka, in DNR and LNR, or in Russia. They don’t want to fight against those they consider their closest people. He says that 40% of Ukraine army officers have not passed the lie detector test and are now subject to dismissal.

Yes, you’ve heard me right: Ukraine army now administers a lie detector test to all its officers. The main question asked is – what do you think? – whether Russia is the enemy and whether they would fight Russia with all their might.

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‘Repeat after me: NATO loves Jamala and there was absolutely nothing political about her win’ (via @marcelsardo)

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Eurovision announced that the final result of the 2016 contest would be calculated based on two things: popular vote in each country and a secret judging panel of five in each country. The judging panel was not announced publicly and it met behind closed doors. This arrangement posed a lot of questions as to who were the judges, who named them, and who influenced their opinion. The unknown judges’ marks were pompously presented during the final TV vote as the marks of the country in question, which negated the system of public voting.

News-Front Agency, whose material I sometimes post on FT, has interviewed a member of the German judging panel, who said that they met and voted a day prior to the actual final performances. You decide what this means: that 5 judges times 40+ countries were all clairvoyant? Or, more plausibly, they were simply told how to vote?

Oh yes, before I forget, according to rules, the songs must not be political. After all, Eurovision is all about ‘cooperation and building bridges,’ right? The winner of this year’s Eurovision outright broke this rule with her openly political song.

Another rule: countries cannot vote for their own singers; they must vote for other countries. And so they did.

According to Eurovision’s own tally, the all-European popular vote across the board was given to the Russian performer Sergey Lazarev. However, for some ‘strange and unexplainable’ reason Lazarev across the board received extremely low scores from the national judging panels. For example, in Ukraine popular vote gave him 12 – maximum, while judges gave him 0.

The video above (watch from 3:55 onward) gives a list of strange disparity between the popular and judge vote in various countries when it came to judging the Russian singer’s performance. On the list: Armenia gave Russia: popular vote – 12, judges – 2; Estonia 12 vs 0, Ukraine 12 vs 0; Czechia: 10 vs 0; Georgia: 8 vs 0; Germany and Serbia both: 12 vs 1.

Belarus, Azerbaijan, Greece and Cyprus gave Russia the highest score, 12 points, on both sides.

Meanwhile, the judges routinely gave their highest score to a participant from… Australia. I haven’t listened myself, but I am sure the charming Korean girl from Australia deserved such high score and her performance was lovely… That said, I must have missed the Great Earth Shift in the past few weeks. Did Australian continent suddenly move from its usual place is southern hemisphere and somehow became co-joined with Europe? After all, Eurovision, as so many Europeans like to insist, is a EUROPEAN contest.

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But let’s get back to the judging results. So, Russian singer gets the popular vote and Australian singer gets the judges preference. Now, a wild guess who actually won? That’s right, Jamala, a Crimean Tartar singer from Ukraine. Australian singer was second and Russian Sergey Lazarev ended up third.

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The song Jamala sang was called ‘1944.’ It talked about tragic experiences of Crimean Tartars during WWII, when the entire tribe was deported to Central Asia. Let me again point out that political songs are not allowed at this competition, yet this rule is routinely broken. I think next time Russian singers should sing about the 27 million Russians/Soviets killed in WWII, or about Mongol-Tartar invasion and the devastation Crimean Tartars inflicted on Russians throughout history; Brits should sing about bombings by German aviation of Coventry and London, while Germans should sing how US/UK bombed to the ground Dresden. Serbs should sing how NATO bombed their country; Czechs – how Germany and Poland invaded them and tore the country apart; Greeks, how Ottoman Turks invaded and killed them, and so on. If some can do it, why can’t others? It’s a democracy and same rules apply to all, don’t they?

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But because the real history was so severely re-written or silenced due to West’s relentless desire to malign everything Russian, let me say a few words for clarity’s sake. The gruesome truth is that when Crimea fell to Hitler and German Nazis in 1941, Crimean Tartar leadership greeted the invaders with great enthusiasm. Under occupation, many Crimean Tartars served as snitches, concentration camp guards and executors of Russians and Ukrainians. The situation in Crimea was quite similar to western Ukraine and Bandera ukro-nazis. Many, many Russians were tortured and executed by, or with the help of, Crimean Tartars.

When Red Army returned in 1944, local witnesses told stories of the brutal genocide Crimean Tartars inflicted together with Hitler’s troops. When volumes and volumes of evidence were collected, the decision was made to relocate all Crimean Tartars to Central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan, partly for their own safety, because Crimeans might have torn them apart if they remained. Let’s recall, it was still the middle of WWII and parts of Soviet territory were not liberated yet. Russians could hardly spare many resources for such a massive endeavour. They acted in the best possible way with the information and capacities they had at the time. Also, considering the brutal invasion Russia/USSR was still under, 27 million dead, cities and infrastructure destroyed, the overwhelming tragedy and devastation, just look at the humanity with which it was handled!

The relocation destination was not the cold Siberia or Kazakhstan, but the warm and sunny Uzbekistan, where there is plentiful food that grows all year round and the climate similar to Crimean. Plus Uzbeks are Muslims, with similar enough customs to the Crimean Tartars, so it was reasonable to assume they would get along.

Granted, just like in the case of Western Ukrainians, not every Crimean Tartar was a snitch or war criminal/mass murderer, but it was the middle of the most brutal war Russia has ever known. There was no possibility to investigate who was who and who did what. It was known that many were and many more supported it. Was it cruel to relocate people so suddenly? Yes, it absolutely was. Now let’s ask ourselves: how would you react if you found out that these people caused thousands of your people to be executed, if you knew many of them looted the homes and buildings retreating Russians were forced to abandon, thus preying on the common tragedy? How would you react if your family was dead because of them? How does the deportation look compared to that inhumanity and cruelty?

On top of it, there was another reason for deportation: as Red Army continued advancing to chase Hitler out of the country, it was legitimately feared that Crimean Tartars may betray again and strike from behind. With no possibility of keeping enough forces to guard Crimea, when all resources were necessary in the advancing western front, when it was impossible to investigate which of them were implicated in treason and which weren’t, the most humane and expedient way to solve the problem was to relocate the entire tribe far from the danger zone. Note also that this way families weren’t separated (which would occur if males, who potentially presented more risk as combatants, were placed in concentration camps till further investigation) and were able to continue living a normal life after relocation.

I’ll just add that during medieval Mongol-Tartar invasion, the nomadic Tartars invaded Russian steppes from Asia. Some of them took over Crimea and settled there, thus becoming ‘Crimean’ Tartars, as opposed to other Tartars living in Russia, such as Volga Tartars. Crimean Tartar Khanate, ruled by a war lord referred to as ‘khan,’ made a living by periodically invading Russian cities (they went as far as the rich Kiev and Moscow). They would loot, kill, burn down cities and kidnap as many Russians as they could, to sell them as highly prized slaves in the Middle East. There is much more to the story, and books could be filled with sordid details.

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A few closing notes and news:

There is a petition (could be more than one), started by an Armenian, which demands that Eurovision 2016 results be annulled. This petition as of yesterday gathered over 100,000 signatures.

Winner Ukraine is supposed to host next year’s Eurovision. Hosting Eurovision 2017 in Ukraine, a country in a state of civil war and rapidly falling apart? Why not, after all they did have presidential elections during civil war.

Jamala has hardly won, but Ukraine already announced that only those Russian singers would be allowed to participate in Eurovision 2017, who are ‘against Russia’s annexation of Crimea and who support this Kiev regime.’ This is in direct violation of Eurovision rules.

It is universally known that Ukraine has absolutely no funds to host Eurovision next year – a very expensive undertaking. All this was predictable and goes to show how little the Eurovision organizers are actually concerned about the quality and success of their competition. Looks like they are much more concerned about humiliating Russia.

Incidentally, in my personal opinion, Russia should stop participating in Eurovision and spend that million euros annually, or whatever the current fee is, on something useful.

They don't have any choice but to join EU. They can't stand their own against Russia.

As May 9 approaches, you can take a digital plunge into Russia’s V-Day preparations from across the world. RT online reporters and cameras are just about everywhere, be it in the skies or on the ground.

French veterans of the events against the Nazi occupation arrived in Odessa to honor the memory of the victims of the tragedy in the House of Trade Unions. To their surprise, the Ukrainian border guards subjected them to torture instead of a rosy reception.

The veterans, without any explanation, were detained all night at the airport and had to sleep on railway benches. The relatives accompanying were obliged to sleep on the floor. The worst thing is that the French were not even given a piece of bread...

"When we arrived at the airport, we were very happy. But when I gave my passport to control, the border guards did not even look at the passport, they turned me back. We thought they knew we were coming, because they never even looked in our passports. We were asked why we came to Ukraine, we answered that we were invited, that we are awaiting, we explained all of this to them. We showed them all the documents, it lasted a very long time.

 In the end, we were told that we have no good reason to visit Ukraine. It was very hard to hear, because we have a very good reason. We were not invited by friends, it was important. We spent the whole night at the airport, and eventually we were forced back. It was very cold, we slept on cold benches. My mother is too old to sleep on the bench. Every time I tried to go to the toilet, behind me was a man in uniform. After that mom said she didn't want anything in common with Ukraine. We wanted to understand the reason, but they have not explained anything," said the daughter of a veteran of the liberation movement in France.

The most suspicious thing is that there is any reason for refusing entry. People were not even explained the reasons why. This is, apparently, one of the ways of retaining an information blockade, otherwise it is difficult to imagine the reason served for the refusal.

A similar incident cannot be called anything other than torture, because the age of the veterans is far beyond 70, it is obvious that such an adventure is unlikely to leave a warm trace in the soul of the European liberators from fascism. In Odessa airport, they met one more manifestation of it.

Connivance, arbitrariness? What else can it be called? I'm afraid that the reason is not in the organization of the work of border services, there are blatant elements of information deterrence and "nationalist patriotism", which does not allow to look at the whole Ukrainian picture from another angle - the angle where all France is situated.

Russian military is powerful enough to invade one of the west country, maybe the west thought that it will be a good idea to invade first before Russia finish the preparation

This felt like posturing more than anything,why go through all the trouble of helicopter escorts with closed roads to get to the event?
Its a classic example of showing power and nothing much more than that.

Following the concert, however, the American journal Foreign Policy, which is close to US conservative circles, called Valery Gergiev “Putin’s conductor of propaganda.”