Escalating Ukraine crisis could blow gold sky high – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – July 23, 2014)

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Conflicting aggressive rhetoric from both Russia and the West could be precipitating us into a new Cold War and the ensuing financial dangers could see gold skyrocket.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – Far from coming to an end the Ukraine crisis could be far from over and as the West and Russia are embroiled in accusation and counter-accusation over the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, the potential for escalation is perhaps getting more serious by the day.

It has brought a safe-haven focus back into the gold market which is probably likely to remain given Ukraine is not the only major flashpoint of worry with Syrian, Iraqi and Israeli/Gaza (Hamas) conflicts all raging and building up deep-rooted concerns and polarisation amongst those affected. Violence may well not offer solutions to these deep-seated problems but can only intensify hatreds amongst those innocents affected.

And it is difficult nowadays to know who or what to trust in terms of media reporting. We in the West are programmed to believe the spin put on things by the majority of our media, despite that this version of events is in turn spun to the media by the various governments involved. Meanwhile in Russia, and Russian-leaning countries the populations are being fed completely different interpretations of what is going on.

Most of us in the West don’t trust or believe anything which comes out of Russia, assuming it just to be propaganda, while in Russia, no doubt, the reverse is true – and there are few media outlets nowadays which can be relied upon to give a totally impartial view on major geopolitical events (and that includes supposedly trusted sources like the UK’s BBC). The much maligned (in the U.S.) Al Jazeera news organisation may be the best place to turn nowadays for perhaps more impartial coverage of Ukrainian geopolitics, although it perhaps may not be the best for impartial coverage of Middle Eastern conflict!

What we are seeing at the moment is a concerted effort by Western governments to put the blame for the whole Ukraine crisis, including the shooting down of MH17, at the feet of the Russian bear. True the most logical explanation for the downing of the Malaysian airlines flight would be that it was brought down by the Eastern Ukrainian separatists (probably in a serious error of judgement by a Bok missile launch operator if they did indeed have such a weapon), but it is not the only theory out there while there seems to be little logic in either the Ukrainian government forces or the Russians for doing so unless there is some much deeper game to play which most rational people would just not understand or contemplate. But nowadays logic sometimes is difficult to be brought to bear on all kinds of events.

Be this all as it may, the potential escalation now is getting to the stage that even more serious conflict may materialise. The West is escalating sanctions against Russia and it may shortly get to the stage where President Putin – who has a serious ‘strong man’ image to maintain in his own country – feels he thus has nothing to lose anyway should he take things a step forward and offer overt support to the Ukrainian rebels, rather than the assumed, but unproven, covert support which is currently believed to be the case in the West.

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