Azov Quotes

For twenty years, Peter had been playing with soldiers; first toys, then boys, then grown men. His games had grown from drills involving a few hundred idle stable boys and falconers to 30,000 men involved in the assault and defense of the river fort of Pressburg. Now, seeking the excitement of real combat, he looked for a fortress to besiege, and Azov, isolated at the bottom of the Ukrainian steppe, suited admirably.

Caffa was a strategically privileged location in this regard. Through the Genoese, the Mongols could control the nearby strait of Kerch, which connects the Black and Azov seas. Whoever controlled the strait controlled Black Sea access to the Horde.

The Iranians were also novices in modern torture techniques, and so, as we shall soon see, after the coup against Mossadegh, the CIA helped train the Iranian security services in torture techniques—techniques borrowed, as in the case of Pinochet’s Chile, from the experts on such subjects -- the Nazis. And again, this type of alliance is not a thing of the past. The best example of this today is in Ukraine where, as Max Blumenthal writes, “Massive torchlit rallies pour out into the streets of Kiev on regular occasions, showcasing columns of Azov members rallying beneath the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel banner that serves as the militia’s symbol.”53 As Blumenthal explains, Azov is a militia now incorporated into the Ukranian National Guard, and, despite its openly pro-Nazi ideology, including violent anti-Semitism, this militia has obtained heavy US weaponry transfers “right under the nose of the US State Department,” while “U.S. trainers and U.S. volunteers have been working closely with this battalion.

During the same time, it was faced with the first series of wars with Russia, as the new Tsar, Peter the Great implemented a new policy of “access to the sea.” This prevented the Ottoman’s Crimean allies, who usually sent cavalry reinforcements to fight alongside regular Ottoman troops, from supporting Ottoman forces in central Europe. Despite several Russian defeats, the conflict ended with the capture of Azov, the Ottoman’s stronghold in Crimea in 1696, and was a sign of the growing threat Russia posed to the Ottomans. Russia increasingly saw the Ottoman Empire as its objective rival in its quest to assert control over the Black Sea.

Our friend, Gor – he’s the bony, old one, by the tallboy – has been suffering strange occurrences, spirit.

Ooh, a mystery!’ the old lady squealed, briefly looking half alive.

the army quickly denuded the meager countryside around Azov.

Upon arriving in the Azov steppes, the Welshman and his party established themselves in the homestead of Ovechii, a small settlement founded by Zaporozhian Cossacks back in the seventeenth century. But Hughes was hardly interested in the Cossack past of the region. He had bought the land and come to Ovechii for one simple reason—four years earlier, Russian engineers had designated that area as an ideal site for a future metal works, with iron ore, coal, and water all in close proximity. The government had tried to build a plant in that area but failed, lacking expertise in constructing and running metal works. Hughes provided proficiency in both. In January 1872, his newly built iron works produced its first pig iron. In the course of the 1870s, he added more blast furnaces. The works employed close to 1,800 people, becoming the largest metal producer in the empire. The place where the workers lived became known as Yuzivka after the founder’s surname (“Hughesivka”). The steel and mining town would be renamed Staline in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961.

The annexation of Crimea showed how Russia is prepared for military action to defend what it sees as its interests in what it calls its ‘near abroad’. It took a rational gamble that outside powers would not intervene, and Crimea was ‘doable’. It is close to Russia, could be supplied across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and could rely on internal support from large sections of the population of the peninsula.

Sea of Azov, the navy of the Ottoman Empire was in control; in the Baltic, Sweden was dominant.

The Ottomans lost Dalmatia and the Morea to Venice, western Ukraine and Podolia to Poland, Azov to Russia,

knew, for it allowed the valiant Black Knight (in the guise of her father and tutor) to leap to the front over the heads of the other pieces, and take charge. After a daring Queen sacrifice that brought murmurs from the crowd and gave her the center board, it appeared that Solarin’s fearlessly aggressive little warrior would –at the very least –go over the Reichenbach Falls and take young Professor Azov with her in a deathlike embrace. But it wasn’t to be. There was a name for

She would employ her teaching skills to ensure the conversation with the spirit world was orderly. She flexed her hands and cracked her knuckles.

He shrugged. “You won’t find anyone who can make a well-founded accusation against me. What have I done? I’ve grown and sold tobacco; I’ve been a stoker on the Sea of Azov; fisherman on the Black Sea; I’ve traded in bricks and watermelons, going up and down the Dnieper; I’ve been a clown in a circus; I was an actor. Now? I deal in trifles. Indispensable objects—because they’re unnecessary. Men don’t always need bread, but they always need someone to make them marvel. A little paper flower, which opens as if by magic…