NATO/Canada's hired killers trying to take back Canadian Hospital in Aleppo, Syria

Yup! A Canadian hospital in Aleppo, Syria. A hospital for the hired killers.

A brief rant and then we will get to that news.

While the Canadian Government steals money from hardworking Canadians.....
Via taxes extracted.
And the public servants all lie. To us, the citizen. The humans resident in Canada.
 The taxpayer supported public servants say - these taxes are going to support the services you depend on everyday................ Even though these services are being reduced. Or gotten rid of entirely.
The talking heads and lying public servants call some of our services ‘entitlements’ as if they are something Canadians haven’t already paid for. Their entire lives
We have paid for everything, in Canada, via every single tax we have had extracted from us whether we want to pay or not. We have no choice.

Keeping in mind the money, picked clean from our pockets, is supposed to be used for our benefit. Can you imagine my disgust at reading this news?

A Canadian hospital, built for the hired mercenaries, taken over by SAA is now under siege as the rebels try to take the Canadian hospital building back.

That's right Canuckis while we are turned into impoverished persons en masse the public servants, who are supposed to serve us, are building hospitals for hired killers whose only job is to kill innocent Syrians en masse Don't it make you prouder than punch?

Smoke rises during an offensive by rebel fighters on the Canadian hospital building, which they say is being controlled by forces loyal to Syria's President Assad, in Aleppo

Rebel fighters take up position during an offensive on the Canadian hospital building, which they said is being controlled by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo, December 4, 2013. Picture taken December 4, 2013

Smoke rises after an offensive by rebel fighters on the Canadian hospital building, which they say is being controlled by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo December 4, 2013. Picture taken December 4, 2013

Images available here, here and here


Also-  All Syrian chemical weapons munitions destroyed

And remember that the US has extended a 'diplomatic' hand to the terrorists that Canada has built a hospital for. The US extends a diplomatic hand to Islamists in Syria. But, not the bad ones.

Black is White

Up is Down

Wrong is Right

WTF?

The US extends a diplomatic hand to Islamists in Syria. But, not the bad ones.

Seriously. The US and company would never hook up with terrorists.
That is the tripe the talking heads and state mouthpieces want you to believe.
If you do...???
You are being fooled again! Don't allow yourself to be a fool.
This is such blatant propaganda, obfuscation and bullshit I can't call it anything else.
U.S. extends diplomatic hand to Syria's Islamist rebels

The image provided with this article is an Islamist carrying the Al Queda flag.

The choice of image and the spin in the article leaves me with the impression that the reader is being ridiculed. Like its some inside joke being played on the public. And it is. It really is!
I'll highlight the nonsense, as always:

The United States has reached out to Islamist militias among the Syrian opposition as it seeks to reach a political solution to war in Syria, a U.S. official confirmed Wednesday.

But there have been no contacts with groups such as the Nusra Front that are blacklisted by Washington as terror organizations, deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf stressed.

“We engage with a broad cross-section of Syrian people and political and military leaders in the opposition, including a variety of Islamist groups,” she told reporters. “We do not engage with terrorists, with groups ... that are designated as terrorist organizations.”

You catch that? We do not engage with groups designated (by us) as terrorists groups. All other terrorist  groups are perfectly acceptable to deal with.

But she refused to specify with which groups her country was speaking, and stressed that* U.S. assistance was still only going to the Supreme Military Council *of the rebel Free Syrian Army, led by Gen. Salim Idriss.

NO contact with the Islamist brand labelled as ‘terror’. Yet, after issuing a disclaimer Harf, whose name rhymes with barf  which is what I feel like doing when I read these stinking lies,  will not tell us just which “Islamist group” is being met with.
Not very credible.

Harf spoke after The Wall Street Journal reported that a senior U.S. envoy had been sent to meet with key militias following the emergence of a new alliance in Syria last month.

US envoy met with "key militias" that formed an 'alliance' last month. (IMO wrong date, but we will get to that)  but not the  designated brand terror militias.  That is what you are supposed to believe. However, that is simply not credible or believable in any way, shape or form!

The seven-member (not seven members, but, we will get to that) Islamic Front is now Syria’s largest armed opposition group, although it continues to function as an alliance more than a single, cohesive rebel formation.

The alliance has said it wants to create an “Islamic state,” while insisting it would protect minorities and not create an “oppressive, authoritarian system.”

Ok the Islamic Front that is an alliance.... Who is the “Islamic Front” Which groups make up the “Islamic Front” that is an Alliance.
The Islamic Front is the same as the Islamic Alliance. And the Islamic Alliance has some very interesting groups within it.
This alliance formed in September of this year. September 2013

 Check this image. What groups are in this Alliance?

This image that accompanies this report
The Islamic Alliance Emerges

“A new coalition has formed among eleven Syrian rebel organizations, according to a statement that Liwa al-Tawhid released late on September 24. Liwa al-Tawhid has hitherto fallen under the *umbrella of the Syrian Military Council* The new Islamic alliance–which includes some of the most powerful factions from the FSA, the Syrian Islamic Front, and also Jabhat al-Nusra–aims to fight to establish an Islamic state under Shari’a law in Syria. It also rejects the Syrian National Coalition and the leadership of Ahmad Tohme–recently elected as the head of the Syrian opposition’s interim government–by name.  The signatories to the document claim to represent the following organizations:

Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid, Suqor al-Sham, Liwa al-Islam, Harakat Fajr al-Sham al-Islamiya, Harakat al-Noor al-Islamiya, Kata’ib Nour al-Din al-Zinki, Liwa al-Ansar, Tajam‘u Fastaqm Kamr Umrat & Al-Forqat al-Tisa‘a ‘Ashr”

Recall above the talk head stated that US funding was only going to those under the Supreme Military council. Look at the image, note the names in the alliance and ask yourself who is the US funding?

Just to be dam clear here. There are no moderate rebels in Syria. There are only western backed terrorists and mercenaries. They are paid to create terror and destroy nations.

Additional references to Syria's Islamic Alliance: wiki calling it a coalition

WP: American hopes of winning more influence over Syria’s fractious rebel movement faded Wednesday after 11 of the biggest armed factions repudiated the Western-backed opposition coalition and announced the formation of a new alliance dedicated to creating an Islamic state.
The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, is the lead signatory of the new group, which will further complicate fledgling U.S. efforts to provide lethal aid to “moderate” rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

We are supposed to believe this unification of state sponsored terror groups into one fighting force was problematic for the US. It wasn't. Here we are in December and the US is extending diplomacy to these same groups that were a "problem" just a couple of months back.
These terror groups were never a problem for the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar etc

WTO to India: Starve your poor as we demand

WTO: Just another elite organization that should be kicked to the curb.
Globalization is a fail. It serves the powers that shouldn’t be. It does not serve the people. In any nation. Anywhere on the globe.

 India on Thursday shrugged off mounting pressure to compromise in a global impasse over food security that has cast the future of the World Trade Organization into doubt.

New Delhi's insistence that it be allowed to stockpile and subsidise grain for its millions of hungry poor has emerged as a major stumbling block at a WTO conference of trade ministers in Bali.

The WTO has warned that failure to reach a compromise on that and other issues could be a death blow to the body's 12-year-old effort to remove trade barriers, which is at a stalemate.

"This is a fundamental issue. We will never compromise," Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma told reporters at the conference venue on the Indonesian resort island.

Washington and some other trading nations are said to feel the Indian position violates WTO limits on subsidies and fear stockpiled grain could end up on global markets, skewing prices.

 Skewing prices? The WTO  does exactly that! Skews prices. Which is why the WTO is demanding that India restrict grain for the poor. The poor in India can’t pay for basic grains? The WTO says to bad, you should all just starve and die.  

Trade ministers have issued stark warnings that a failure to close gaps in Bali would fatally wound the WTO's waning world influence.

Good riddance to the WTO. Good riddance to the global tyranny.

Radioactive load on truck, stolen in Mexico, causes concern.

UPDATED: News about the GPS- scroll down 
UPDATE #2 scroll down- Stolen radioactive material 'likely' recovered?

Dirty bomb seen as 'high probability, low consequence' with lower potential for large loss of life

Normally, I might have passed by this story. Except, I recalled the Israeli threat issued after the P5+ 1 agreement. Giving this news story a different context.
Recall?

“Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economic minister and key member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, said, “if a nuclear suitcase blows up in New York or Madrid five years from now, it will be because of the deal that was signed this morning.”

Yes, I did then and still do now see that as a threat of false flag terror. Created by Israel to frame Iran.
And why would Israel wait five years to create such a situation? They wouldn't. Israel has made their agenda very clear. Simply considering Israel’s continuing belligerence to the deal and intention to “produce”  a smoking gun to crash the agreement......

 “In the report, the British newspaper quoted an Israeli intelligence source as saying: "It's clear that if a smoking gun is produced, (the interim agreement) will tumble like a house of cards."

......the missing radioactive material report takes on a whole new meaning.

Thieves have made off with a truck in Mexico carrying a dangerous radioactive material used in medical treatments, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the Vienna-based UN nuclear body, didn't give details on how much of the radioactive source, cobalt-60, was in the truck at the time.

Cobalt-60 can potentially also be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb," where conventional explosives are used to disperse radiation from a radioactive source. But the IAEA made no mention of this in its statement.

The IAEA said it had been informed by Mexican authorities that the truck, which was taking cobalt-60 from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage centre, was stolen in Tepojaco near Mexico City on Monday.

"At the time the truck was stolen, the (radioactive) source was properly shielded. However, the source could be extremely dangerous to a person if removed from the shielding, or if it was damaged," the IAEA statement said.

The IAEA has offered to assist Mexican authorities, who it said were searching for the material and had alerted the public.

Don't these trucks have GPS tracking?

At a nuclear security summit in 2012, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano specifically singled out cobalt-60 among radioactive sources that could be used for such bombs.

"These materials, such as cobalt-60, could be used along with conventional explosives to make so-called dirty bombs. A dirty bomb detonated in a major city could cause mass panic, as well as serious economic and environmental consequences," Amano said

ht freethinker!

Flashback to one of the most absurd contrived attempts at stirring up fear/hatred and worse against Iran

The allegations of an Iranian plot met with a stream of disbelief from a number of foreign officials and analysts. Senior U.S. officials struggled to explain why the Quds Force would attempt such a delicate plot in such an unskilled style

Iran assassination plot: Terrorists join forces with Mexican drug cartels?

 It's doubtful, experts say, despite reports that Iranian plotters tried to hire members of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in Washington.

Iran's alleged Mexican hitman was US drugs informant


Update 1: My question answered- Mexico: Stolen truck with radioactive material had inactive GPS locator

The truck has a GPS locator but it wasn't active at the time of the theft, Eibenschutz said. Mexican customs officials are on alert, Eibenschutz said, to prevent the truck from crossing the border. He said the material could not be used to make a nuclear bomb, but could be used in a dirty bomb, a conventional explosive that disseminates radioactive material.

All of the U.S. ports of entry have radiation detectors in place, and trucks crossing the border are routinely screened for radiation.

 Why would the GPS locator been inactive? Seems odd.

Update 2: Stolen radioactive material found

 Mexican authorities said they found the stolen truck and recovered likely all of the radioactive cobalt Wednesday in a remote area about 40 km (25 miles) away from where it was taken.

 The container holding cobalt was found about a kilometer away from the truck and had been opened, said Juan Eibenschutz Hartman, head of Mexico's National Commission for Nuclear Security and Safeguards.

Chechens drawn south to fight in Syria

Last one for a couple of days-
Following up on- Meet the Rebel Commander in Syria That Assad, Russia and the U.S. All Fear

The BBC article mentions the feared Commander, ethnic Chechen, Georgian Army/Covert Operative- Tarkhan Batirashvili or U/Omar al-Shishani

Omar Shishani (centre) has urged Muslims to support the "jihad" against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Chechens in Syria

On the flight from Istanbul to Tbilisi, I had a conversation with a former employee of the UN's refugee agency who had worked with Chechens living in the Pankisi Gorge.

The remote area in north-eastern Georgia had been "forgotten", because "the pro-Russian regime in Chechnya led by Ramzan Kadyrov does not want the valley's Chechens, the Georgian government cannot support them, and Russia - of course - does not care about them", the former UN official said.

I went to the Pankisi Gorge to find out why many young Chechens from there have travelled to Syria to fight alongside rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad.

One of the most prominent, Omar Shishani, is the leader of Jaysh al-Muhajirin wa al-Ansar (Army of the Emigrants and Helpers), an al-Qaeda-aligned jihadist group comprising hundreds of mostly foreign fighters, many of them from the North Caucasus.

Omar/Umar Shishani is the most feared rebel commander (WSJ) of ISIS. Previous post linked above.

The Pankisi Gorge sits in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.

Pankisi Gorge: It has about 15,000 ethnic Chechen residents, whose ancestors migrated there in the 18th Century.

The population suffers from relatively high rates of poverty and pensions form the primary source of income for most of the families there, according to the Georgian government.
Pankisi Gorge The Pankisi Gorge has about 15,000 ethnic Chechen residents

What type of pensions? 

During the two wars between Russian government forces and separatist rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s, the Pankisi Gorge's Chechen population expanded.

The valley became a refuge for those wanting to flee the fighting and, as the Russian state re-established control, rebel fighters seeking protection from attack.

Many of the rebels were ultraconservative Islamists, or Salafists, who wanted to create an Islamic state in the North Caucasus.

 As their numbers increased, their ideology - which calls for a return to the political and moral practice of the first Muslims - became increasingly popular among young people in the Muslim majority valley.   

It appears that Pankisi has been intentionally populated with extremists... which is odd and interesting and causes much tension between ethnic Chechens because...............

Ayoub Borchashvili (left, with our reporter) says Chechens believe they must help "protect oppressed people" in Syria

This caused tension between the ethnic Chechens, who traditionally are Sufis.

Ethnic Chechens are Sufis and these transplanted fighters appear to be neither ethnic Chechens or Sufis?

But Ayoub Borchashvili, (photo above with BBC journalist)a Salafist imam in the village of Jokolo, was keen to play down the disagreements, because they also share tribal and familial ties.

The Salafists, he said, were only "aiming to live according to the Quran and Sunnah".

In the past, many young Salafists from the Pankisi Gorge travelled north to fight in Chechnya, or in the neighbouring Russian republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, where there are also Islamist insurgencies.

Pankisi Valley

 They tended to fight under the banner of the Caucasus Emirate, an Islamist militant umbrella group led by the Chechen separatist warlord Doku Umarov.

Doku Umarov- a name that has been mentioned here previously

Doku Umarov

But since the uprising in Syria began in March 2011, an increasing number of Chechens have ignored the call of the Caucasus Emirate and instead travelled south to help the predominantly Sunni rebels seeking to topple President Assad.

Umar Idigov, a senior figure in Georgia's Chechen community, believes there are currently about 200 Chechens fighting in Syria, something he opposes.

Doku Umarov initially expressed reservations about the exodus of Chechen fighters to Syria, saying that they ought to be helping the cause of the Caucasus Emirate.

But he later extended his support, saying that the flow of volunteers was the result of the Caucasus Emirate's refusal to accept more youth into its ranks.

The last word I had seen from Doku Umarov, he had called for fighters to come back and attack Russia at the Sochi Olympics

A source close to the Chechen fighters in Syria also told the BBC: "There are no training camps in the North Caucasus like there are in Syria and not enough resources.

"We feel ashamed of our presence in Syria while the Caucasus are still occupied, but young people are returning after being trained here. One of my comrades returned directly to the mountains after receiving training in explosives.

"In that sense, [the Caucasus Emirate] is benefiting from us being here; they will have trained and ready fighters," the source added.

Yah, a three post day. No posts for a couple of days, but, I will let through comments.
And hopefully respond? 
Post 1- Ukraine's EU Snub? It's the Economy, Stupid!

 Quite frankly, Ukraine looks to be another colour revolution of some unnamed, not yet chosen colour.  No way are the people wanting to hook up with the dead weight of the EU and pay double the gas prices and likely a big increase in taxes
 
Post 2:  Canada to file claim to dramatically extend Arctic boundaries

Canada to file claim to dramatically extend Arctic boundaries

This article is interesting for a number of reasons, but, I will focus on three of them-
Feel free to comment on what ever it is you think about this move.

1st: Looking at the map, I would almost wonder why the US didn't make this claim?
Or is Canada making this claim as an expansion of the NAU?

2nd: I will highlight the fact that all this Arctic ice had to be dealt with to undertake this mapping. In direct contrast to all the AGW spin informing us that the Arctic is devoid of ice. Yet, whenever one reads an article that is not pushing the AGW perception management, lo and behold the Arctic has ice and a lot of it!

3rd: Is this claim to dramatically extend Canada's Arctic boundaries part of the encirclement of Russia agenda? As part of the NATO war machine?

Some time this week, Canada is expected to make its case to the world to dramatically expand its boundaries by an area equivalent to the size of all three Prairie provinces.

Canada's deadline is Friday to apply to a United Nations commission for exclusive rights to what is likely to be another 1.7 million square kilometres of Arctic seafloor. The application under the Convention on the Law of the Sea will be the culmination of a decade of work and more than $200 million in public money.

The lines on the map will have been drawn by scores of scientists working everywhere from Ottawa labs to ice camps off the northern shores of Ellesmere Island, peering under the stormy black waters to discern the shape and composition of sea floor thousands of metres below.

The effort required more than a dozen icebreaker voyages, as well as trips by helicopters, airplanes and an unmanned, remote-controlled submarine that spent days under the ice.

 A dozen icebreakers. Days spent under the ice.

With the co-operation of three Arctic neighbours — Denmark, Russia and the United States — more than 18,000 kilometres of sea-floor data was collected from a part of the globe less familiar than the surface of the moon.

"It was a huge effort and enormously challenging," said Michael Byers, an expert on Arctic and international law at the University of British Columbia.

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea governs which nations exert what kinds of controls over their surrounding waters. In addition to the 22-kilometre territorial waters and the 370-kilometre exclusive economic zones, coastal countries are allowed to claim additional sea floor if they can show their continental shelf extends beyond the economic zone.

Canada has previously released maps on the likely boundaries of its claim. Russia filed its claim in 2002 and Denmark released its last week.

The U.S. has not signed the convention, but has agreed to follow most of its articles. Its boundary dispute with Canada involves the exclusive economic zone and doesn't directly impact Friday's claim.

Conflicts are likely to be few. One calculation puts the amount of overlap between claims at a mere 75,000 square kilometres out of millions and millions.

Rob Huebert, an Arctic expert at the University of Calgary, will be watching to see if Canada stretches its claim past the North Pole. The geologic justification — an undersea mountain range called the Lomonosov Ridge that stretches north from Ellesmere Island — is there, he said.

"I don't think there's something magical that stops (the claim) at the North Pole," he said.

Canadian officials have acknowledged mapping flights over the top of the world and into Russia's claim, which does stop at the pole.

But Byers said there's no evidence that Canada has collected the kind of data it would need to challenge Russia.

Perhaps Canada was collecting other evidence? Or data?

"We may have some small overlaps in the middle, but for the most part there will not be any overlap between the Russian submission on the one side and the Canadian and Danish submissions on the other," he said.

It all depends on how valuable Canadian officials think that real estate is, said Huebert.

"Maybe it's simply not worth it. Maybe we said, 'You know what, for the sake of international peace and stability, it's not important. We'll only do our science up to that and that will be the basis of our claim.'

"(But) it means we didn't go as far as we could."

Whether or not Canada will claim the North Pole, a decision on its fate is still probably 20 years off. Just checking the science on Canada's claim will likely take five years, said Huebert.

And there isn't any particular rush, said Byers. These claims cover some of the remotest and harshest points on the planet and commercial exploitation of resources is a long ways off.

But just getting to the point where countries have filed claims is a triumph, he said.

"In this former Cold War frontier we have an agreed set of rules. That has a huge payoff."

Don't miss the earlier post

Ukraine's EU Snub? It's the Economy, Stupid!

Ukraine's EU Snub? It's the Economy, Stupid!

If Viktor Yanukovych were to sign the EU agreements as they stand, the economy would suffer and he would probably lose to whichever rival candidate arch-foe Yulia Tymoshenko gives her backing in 2015.

Seems so strange that a small number of Ukrainian citizens would go out and protest for something that is going to further harm them? Before we talk economy just an observation on the protests- Strange that the western msm media is giving this all so much coverage? Well over 1,000 articles at Google news today? Even though the protests really do not appear that vast.Keeping in mind the Ukraine has a population of  more then 45 million
  Can't help but notice the wide variations in reported numbers of protestors?  From thousands to10,000 to 100,000 up to 300,000. Looked at a bunch of pics and am not buying the 100,000 and up amounts. 
These protests have such a familiarity... Iconic locations.  Lot of flags. 

 “The Russians are now spectators to what is going on,” said Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Kiev and now an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “It’s something that’ll take place between the street and Yanukovych.

Digression out of the way, on with the news!

*Russia imports more goods from Ukraine than the entirety of Europe, according to the Ukrainian government, while supplying almost two-thirds of gas that Ukraine consumes. Many of these goods are produced in eastern Ukraine, which together with Crimea, represents the power base for Yanukovych and his supporters.

Russia has already made it painfully clear that the billions that the Ukrainian economy has already lost because of recent trade restrictions introduced by Moscow will only be the beginning if Kiev signs the AA and DCFTA.

EU officials claim Russian officials told Ukraine that introducing EU requirements would have cost as much as $100 billion, while Russia cutting off trade and imposing other restrictions on Ukraine would have hurt the country to the tune $500 billion, Reuters has reported.

And even though the EU knows Russia would punish Ukraine economically, it has shied away from offering a comprehensive package to compensate for Kiev’s potential losses.

As former Clinton administration adviser Andrew Weiss has rightly put it, “What the EU has come up with is a kind of partnership on the cheap.”

But suppose Moscow didn't act on its national interest in anchoring its post-Soviet neighbours. Let's also imagine that Moscow would for some reason keep in place trade perks favouring Kiev, even though that would mean its producers being exposed to EU goods re-exported onto the Russian market through Ukraine.

Even then Ukraine could still not afford westward integration on the terms the EU is offering.

By Yanukovych’s assessment, Ukraine needs $160 billion to shift to European standards by 2017, as required by the proposed agreements with EU. Yanukovych is most probably exaggerating, but even if the cost was 10 times smaller, it would still be a hefty sum for a nation that is set to run a budget deficit of more than $6.5 billion this year. On top of that, the IMF is reportedly refusing to issue the loan that Ukraine needs to prop up its economy, unless Kiev doubles gas prices for consumers.

So, why are some Ukranians protesting? Because they want to pay double the prices for gas?
Does that make sense? Are they protesting because they want to become debt slaves worse then they already are? I don't get it?

One has to ask, would leaders in the EU double gas prices for their population and divert billions of dollars needed to pay pensioners and public servants to spend on reaching somebody else’s expectations only a little more than one year before an election?

I doubt EU leaders would take these actions prior to an election.

Loss at the February 2015 presidential elections for Yanukovych would not just mean an end to his tenure, but also the loss of his and his allies’ business assets and possible jail time. After all, that’s what he has subjected former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to. Why should  the next leader of Ukraine treat him any differently?

If Yanukovych were to sign the EU agreements as they stand, the economy would suffer and he would probably lose to whichever rival candidate arch-foe Tymoshenko gives her backing in 2015.
Having lost part of his core supporters over the pain inflicted on Ukraine's economy and budget by a combination of Russia's punitive measures and costs incurred by bringing Ukraine's standards in line with EU's, the incumbent would still fail to win enough voters among the pro-Western crowd, who largely hate his guts.

In short, the Ukrainian president’s decision to suspend the EU drive is the rational choice of a politician concerned with his own survival.

In contrast, if Yanukovych were to enter Ukraine into the Russian-led Customs Union, he could at least count on enough loans and gas discounts from Russia to prop the economy up long enough to win the 2015 election.

I think the citizens would be pleased with less debt and taxes and lower gas prices?

And yet Yanukovych knows from experience that siding with Russia, which seeks to anchor Ukraine to itself, has its disadvantages. Upon his inauguration in February 2010, Yanukovych undertook a number of steps to accommodate Russia.
These included cancellation of his predecessor’s campaign for recognition of the Holodomor famine of the early 1930s, suspension of Ukraine’s drive for NATO membership and an agreement to extend the stay of Russia’s Black Sea fleet until 2042.

The overtures made to Russian leaders early in Yanukovych's presidency have achieved little, in the opinion of his aides, other than a modest discount for gas. The perceived failure to re-ignite the relationship prompted Ukraine’s deputy Prime Minister Valery Khroshkovsky to quip that “it all started as light flirtation, but ended in hardcore porn.”

Yanukovych is therefore most likely to continue balancing between EU and Russia – a policy his mentor and former president Leonid Kuchma described with the Russian saying about “a smart calf sucking milk from two cows.”

His hope for now must be that the trilateral talks between EU, Russia and Ukraine that he has proposed will allow him to somehow integrate into the Western European economic space while preserving the perks of trading with Russia.

Whether, however, EU and Russia will continue put up with Yanukovych playing them off one another is another matter.

 Zbigniew Brzezinski: "without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire."