News on impending abolition of the visa regime between Ukraine and the EU was the top topic of the separatist media. There appeared analytical and not very analytical materials with sharp-tongued headlines and content on the Internet.
In the first hours after the news that the European Commission finally took the sixth report on Ukraine's implementation of the requirements for visa liberalization on Friday December 18th, News Front news agency published fairly neutral news but flavored it with the following headline: "The visa-free regime in the EU for Ukraine, either donkey or sultan will die".
"The visa-free regime for Ukraine and Georgia will be valid in a few months after the European Commission prepares legislative initiatives in its administration. This was announced by the European Commissioner for Migration, Internal Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos at the press conference in Brussels. Answering the question when the visa regime will come into force and when Ukrainians will be able to travel to the EU without visas, Dimitris Avramopoulos said that the European Commission would propose to the European Parliament and the Council legislative initiatives on the introduction of the visa-free regime in early 2016. After that, according to the European Commissioner, it will take several months until the final decision on the abolition of visas,"- writes News Front.
The journalist Arina Matveyeva talks about the words of Poroshenko that the visa-free regime with the EU will help to return the occupied territories of Donbass and Crimea toUkraine in her article for the Novorossia news agency.
"While the visa-free regime between Ukraine and Europe is in a state of empty talks, Poroshenko is trying in all imaginable and unimaginable ways to assure one and all that the long-awaited dream has come true, that the people have won, they have managed, jumped would be a more appropriate word here, to get their bright European future, they strived for. And while Ukrainians cross borders of European countries according to the old rules, Poroshenko, a born strategist, decided to trick, although it is worth to warn that Poroshenko’s trick is enough to make a cat laugh.
During a year and a half of killing the residents of Donbass, destroying their homes, making their lives unbearable, Poroshenko decided that if he promised Luhansk and Donetsk residents the visa-free regime, then all the faults would be forgotten like a bad dream, and Ukraine would become a happy sovereign state. But that happens only in fairy tales and even then not in all. To agree to some kind of a visa-free regime with the countries which have provided Ukraine with arms all the time, given money to continue the genocide of Donbass – what for? Why would they need it? Did thousands of civilians, women, young children die for the visa-free regime? Of course not, it would be absurd to suppose so. But the absurdity for the Ukrainian authorities has become something normal and commonplace for a long time. Undoubtedly, the visa-free regime will not return Donbass or Crimea, if it is ever introduced. In addition, Poroshenko realizes that. At the same time he needs some unthinkable way to stay in his chair as long as possible, so he pretends that he does something, struggles to return lost territory", - said Matveyeva.
In her turn, blogger Lena Mirro wrote an emotional text, in which she predicted the fate of the Ukrainians following Lithuanians who are allegedly just "licking the toilets". I wonder how old this "blogger" is? ...
"I am very fond of old Europe. Everything is beautiful, doll-like, fabulous. Especially at Christmas, because there are no other holidays for aborigines there. They work all year, clean streets with shampoos, collect cars and live like bees in the hive. Well, it is about, I repeat, indigenous inhabitants. But apparently, at some point they were bored and they let migrants from the third world countries come. While Europeans work hard, migrants sit back on their taxes. This is called multiculturalism (...)
Together with migrants, Europe has decided to undergo degradation. To castrate, in our opinion. Children began to be given to the gay family, which are now officially recorded. It is clear that with this approach there will be nobody to clean the toilets. Europeans are busy, it is disgusting for migrants from Africa and gays to clean toilets. Tajiks sweep our streets but in the civilized European Union it’s fucking hard to make migrants work. So, they had to attach Lithuania to Europe.
After the terrorist attacks in France, I hoped that Europe would realize everything. However, it happens - one girl liked to cut the wrist until she cut not across but along. She barely survived and stopped doing that. She recovered from masochism. But Europe has chosen a different path and started talking about the visa-free regime with Ukraine. It is a diagnosis.
In my opinion, we urgently need to enclose somehow from all of them. We need a fence, dogs and more border guards. Now they are hurting themselves, cutting off parts but then they can hurt us,"- supposed the "advanced blogger".
On December 22nd there appeared "an opinion poll" of Gorlovka residents on visa-free regime between Ukraine and EU, as well as about whether Gorlovka residents agree to "return to Ukraine" on one of the separatist YouTube-channels. The poll turned out to be clearly unrepresentative because no one else was presented apart from women of about the same age. Video is accompanied by the following description: "Poroshenko thinks that after nearly two years of killing civilians in the DPR and LPR, they can deny their beliefs and return toUkraine in exchange for visa-free regime with Europe. What do you think about it? Residents of Gorlovka answered that question for us".
No less aggressive was the preface to this video, which was posted on the Russian Spring website.
"What do people think in Gorlovka about return to Ukraine for visa-free regime with Europe? President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko told the whole world that he knew how to return Donbass and Crimea to Ukraine a few days ago. According to him, when his country gets the desired visa-free regime with Europe, residents of Donbass and Crimea will want to come back. But what do Gorlovka residents think about it? According to Poroshenko, Ukrainian will get the right to visit Europe without a visa in 2016 that will have an impact on the position of the citizens living in Crimea and Donbass. We decided to ask the residents of Gorlovka whether they were ready to forgive all - war victims, destruction, their suffering and hardships for nearly two years, only to get biometric passports and travel freely in Europe. Answers of Gorlovka residents did not even surprise us ... Such things are just not forgiven and forgotten.
The question was as follows: Ukraine believes that after almost two years of killing civilians in the DPR and LPR, they may deny their beliefs and return to Ukraine in exchange for the visa-free regime with Europe"- writes Russian Spring.
Let’s eliminate nonexistent borders
While Ukraine is negotiating with the EU on simplification of the border crossing regime, the self-proclaimed "republics" of Donbass are not far behind – they stated that there would be no border control and customs between the DPR and LPR in 2016. Luhansk Information Center was the first to write that the "republics" abolish fake borders.
"The authorities of the LPR and DPR abolish customs and border control on the border between the republics within the framework of the unified tax field as of 2016. The chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) of the LPR Oleg Akimov announced this today at the meeting with leaders of the mines and union representatives.
"It is an important political decision that has already been made that there will be no customs with the DPR as of the new year," - he said.
Akimov said that the step was possible due to unified tax legislation of the LPR and DPR which came into force as of January 2916,"- noted LITS.
The news of the "borderless" life of the "republics" was very positively pereceived by well-known separatist journalists and bloggers. Boris Rozhin was very optimistic. He argues that the abolition of the so-called border control will reduce the prices of goods in the "republics" and revives the "Novorossia".
"Hallelujah. Finally, the internal customs between the DPR and LPR will be abolished as of 2016, which among other things was the reason for higher prices within the republics. On the whole, the initiative with the internal customs looked, frankly speaking, wrecking.
... As previously reported by Ruskiy Dialog, the authorities of the self-proclaimed DPR intend to establish coal supplies to Europe, bypassing Ukraine, and the Middle East.
P.S. In general, it’s quite positive news. It eliminates the artificial division between the DPR and LPR and there is some hope that the price will decrease a little.
There is another point, when building an unrecognized state, it is easier to build one rather than two parallel projects, so the unification of legislation of the republics and removal of internal barriers between them make state-building in Novorossia more rational, as Russia doesn’t take them, and there is no way to push them to Ukraine,"- writes Rozhin happily.
Another article in Antifascist says that Russia may soon recognize the "republics" or at least begin to issue passports to their residents.
"Of course, the fact of the abolition of customs does not automatically make the DPR and LPR a single state, as there are many examples when the there is no border-crossing of neighborly customs control but the state remain separate territorial and administrative units. The example of Russia and Belarus is the most revealing.
But one tax law is much more serious. In fact, this step can be considered only in this context that the DPR and LPR chose single way of their economy development.
Moreover, there is implicit evidence showing the readiness of Russia to recognize the sovereignty of the DPR and LPR very soon, or, at least, to provide the citizens of the unrecognized republics with Russian passports. Thus, according to our source, that represents one of the Russian non-governmental organizations, a KAMAZ full of passports with double-headed eagle arrived in Luhansk. There is no official confirmation of this information by the authorities of the LPR yet, but as you know, there is no smoke without fire," - said the author.
Plotnitsky and Harry Potter
The leader of the LPR Igor Plotnitsky hopes to be protected as described in the Harry Potter books. He stated this in an interview with the court reporter of militants Graham Phillips.
The interview video with this Plotnitsky appeared on Phillips’ personal YouTube-channel.
"The best protection for any person who heads the republic or country, perhaps, is the respect and love of his/her own people. And, probably, it is the love of beloved ones. Your compatriot Joanna ... in her book about Harry Potter just wrote about the fact when love of family was the best body armor in the defense against the dark forces,"- said Plotnitsky.
"So, we also hope that the love of our families in the same way will protect us from all the adversities," - added he.
In addition, after this interview the leader of "LPR" awarded the British journalist with the medal "For merits» II degree for his "contribution to the process of telling the truth about the situation in tDonbass". This was announced by the LuganskInformTsentr separatist website.
"Meeting of Plotnitsky and Phillips was part of the interview, which the British did for his popular Internet blog. Questions regarding the life of the Republic and entire Donbass as a whole were raised during the forty-minute conversation. At the end of the meeting the head of the LPR noted the contribution of the British journalist in the process of telling the truth about the situation in Donbass, expressed interest in further cooperation and gave him a republican state award - the medal "For Merits" II degree,"- said the statement.
Later Phillips said at the meeting with students:
"It's nice but it does not affect my work. I'm still going to ask hard questions and continue to work as objectively as possible",- said Phillips.
In addition, the British pathetically said that the main reward for him was the gratitude of the people. True, he did not say of what people...
Review prepared by Ruslan Biryukov