OFF THE WIRE
agingrebel.com
In case you’ve been stuck in the hole for the last month, the first thing you need to know is that there is a revolution in progress in the Ukraine, which is an independent country that used to be part of the Soviet Union.
One of the leaders of the revolution is Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight contender whose brother Wladimir is the current heavyweight champ. Wladimir, who is about six foot six, is also famous for dating the gaminesque American starlet Hayden Panettiere who is about four foot eleven.
President Obama is aware of the crisis. He has been petulantly frowning over it and throwing lukewarm words at it. The immediate danger to the United States and other Western nations is that the president might write a check with his mouth that American sons will then be compelled to try to cash.
The Ukraine is sandwiched between Russia on the north and east, the former Russian satellites Poland, Slovakia and Hungary on the west and the Black Sea on the South. The recently overthrown President of the Ukraine was widely considered to be a Russian puppet. The new government, if given the chance, will probably seek closer ties with the West. Russia is not enthusiastic about that idea. The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s home port is in Sevastopol on the Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The Crimea has a large population of ethnic Russians and is a strategic enough geographic feature that many wars have been fought there. Florence Nightingale became Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. The British Light Brigade charged and died there.
This morning the Night Wolves, the preeminent motorcycle club in Russia and the only motorcycle club in the world that enjoys official state support began rolling into the Ukraine with the goal is helping to put down the revolution.
The Surgeon Speaks
The Night Wolves maximum leader for life, Alexander “The Surgeon” Zaldostanov, is famous for being hug buddies with Russia’s maximum leader for life Vladimir Putin. Putin is the Night Wolves highest profile hang around and last year he gave Zaldostanova a medal for helping to restore a monument to Soviet War heroes during the Battle of Stalingrad. Zaldostanova sees himself as a Russian patriot. He also sees himself as a defender of Russia against incursions by Bandidos, Hells Angels and Mongols. (See the video below.)
Zaldostanov flew into the Crimea yesterday – apparently he trailered the bike – and he immediately held an informal press conference. “What’s happening right now in Ukraine is very big for me,” Zaldostanov said. He called the revolution a “humiliation of the Russia population.”
“I want to understand what people here really need to protect them from the fascists,” he continued. And he promised, “If needed to stay at the front, we (the Night Wolves) will be staying.” He promised that a column, not a pack but a column, of Night Wolves “will start at 8:00 a.m. and ride across the whole eastern part of Ukraine.”
“For me it’s one country,,” The Surgeon said. “Whoever cut it was traitors. It’s like you live in a flat and you decided to make the border between the kitchen and the bedroom. Then you must all the time to come to the kitchen to make the papers that you stamp, the visa. It is time to stop this shit.”
Meanwhile Dmitry Simichein, the President of the Sevastapol chapter of the Night Wolves, told a Russian news agency that local police were supporting the club. “People in Sevastopol are the most patriotic on the planet,” he said. “They don’t need organizing. They just come out to protect their country and their families.”