Ukraine Crisis: The Battle for SlavyanskTony Cartalucci The citys defenders have downed several helicopters and have been clashing with regime forces throughout the day. By the time of publishing, it appears that regime forces are still mired in the outskirts of the city, unable to advance inward due to both armed defenders, and human chains of unarmed civilians. Elsewhere across Ukraine, the regimes Neo-Nazi supporters have once again taken to the streets, assaulting anti-regime protesters and attempting to dislodge protesters from government buildings they have recently taken. Claims across the Western media and within the regime in Kiev itself that seizing government buildings is equivalent to terrorism ring hollow as the regime itself came to power through just such tactics. Meanwhile, the West continues to support both the unelected regime in Kiev, and the ongoing assaults being carried out across the nations restive regions support affirmed after both a series of visits from Western leaders seemed to green light the operations in the first place, and NATO officers turning up at the edge of targeted towns just before the assaults began. It should be remembered that the United States in particular has already approved of supplying the regimes military forces with rations and has been considering expanded aid. Thus the ongoing and increasingly transparent atrocities being carried out by the regime in Kiev, are the atrocities of the West, who is on record supporting them in both political and material terms. The Responsibility to Protect Of course, President Obama was not referring to the Ukrainian city of Slavyansk, where indeed regime forces battle on the outskirts and a massacre looms that will surely reverberate across the region and stain the conscience of the world. He was instead referring to the terrorist capital of North Africa Benghazi Libyathe epicenter of Al Qaedas franchise, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a US State Department designated terrorist organization. It was in Benghazi that the United States and its regional collaborators had armed and funded terrorists to begin the violent overthrow of the Libyan government, just as they had tried many times before. The United States and its European partners in NATO invoked the responsibility to protect (R2P), in order to save its terrorist proxies from being overwhelmed by Tripolis sweeping counteroffensive. NATO would prevail, and Libya would predictably be plunged into the darkness that could only have resulted by arming and putting into power sectarian extremists. Entire cities were starved, brutalized, and exterminated in reality, just as the West had claimed in fiction Tripoli had been doing in the run up to NATOs military intervention. In other words, the West used R2P as cover to militarily intervene and execute long-planned regime change in Libya. It went as far as fabricating a narrative amid violence it itself had triggered and intentionally perpetuated. Now in Ukraine, the West is attempting to do precisely the opposite. It has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe upon Ukraine across multiple fronts. It has destabilized it politically with foreign-funded subversion, resulting most recently in the ousting of an elected government and its replacement by a violent, unelected regime composed of Nazis, racists, bigots, and anti-Semites. It has also set Ukraine up for economic collapse, with its IMF imposing crippling austerity upon the Ukrainian population as American and European corporations begin wrapping their tentacles around the resources rightfully belonging to the Ukrainian people. And militarily, NATO is backing the regime in its attempts to crush widening protests against the illegitimate regime and the myriad of disastrous policies and abuses of power it has already demonstrated. All while doing this, the West is attempting to sabotage calls from Russia to deescalate the crisis and to protect protesters in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, who by all accounts, have every right to be both upset and up in arms. While the West has crutched its meddling around the world upon the tenuous excuse of promoting democracy and Western values, it is now propping up an unelected regime composed of leaders who diametrically oppose these so-called Western values. The responsibility to protect, if ever there was a time to invoke it, falls upon Russia and others, and must be applied against a military campaign being executed by a regime that is neither elected nor supported by the people of Ukraine. Were it, the regime would not have to conscript soldiers to participate in a campaign clearly none want any part in. Tony Cartaluccis articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg. Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here. 