Asad Babil Redux

There was a dour atmosphere in the air around the Kremlin in the years between 1990 - 1993, as sanctions and looming economic collapse haunt the imagination Soviet Union Premier Yanayev and his inner circle, there have been calls to slowly follow the Chinese example of limited economic investment areas as the Moscow leadership begins to court Latin American, Indian and Mediterranean investors not participating in sanctions to try and salvage the economy, though the same hard liners so against leaving the satellite states of Eastern Europe are also trying to curtail the development of capitalism in the Soviet Union. Eventually, though it will begin to halt the decline, the quality of life in the Soviet Union will dramatically decline during this period as only the lives of a new class of oligarchs benefit from the limited reforms, leading to more protests and demonstrations and in turn more repressive backlashes.
In Kiev, General Aleksandyr Lebed leads the forces of the Kiev Military district as it brutally cracks down on the opponent's of Ukrainian SSR leader Stanislav Hurenko as the leaders of the republics nationalist movements become increasingly of the opinion that they should succede from the Soviet Union. What alarms the Politbureau is the resurgence of neo-fascist movements amongst the Baltic states and the Ukraine. Around Kiev the Red Army fights a series of running battles against Banderite separatists.
But a major breakthrough would occur in June 1992 when Premier Yanayev manages to cut a back room deal with President Bush brokered by KGB General Vladimir Putin through one of his agents known only as "Sweetpea" whereby the USSR and China will abstain for a UN resolution, thereby allowing the creation of "No Fly Zones" over Kuwait, Shi'ite and Kurdish majority areas of Iraq and allow for limited US bombing without either side losing face in return for a removal of sanctions on non military goods and investment and a commitment to end the crisis without a fullscale invasion of Iraq. General V.V. Putin would also advise Western leaders to great effect that the Red Army will leave the satellite states, it's a foregone conclusion, so there's no point exasperating the situation within the Soviet Union.
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KGB General Vladimir Putin, the man who most likely averted a Third World War in 1992, his biography The Handler would become a world best seller in 2001, he would be played by Christoph Waltz, with "Sweetpea" being played by Abbie Cornish.
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May 1992, Red Army artillery batteries shelling nationalist positions on the approached to Kiev.
 
Looking out from the high bell tower of an abandoned Orthodox Monastery in southern Lebanon, on a hot night in June of 1992, US Marines sniper and Lance Corporal Gabriel S. Macht slams his last magazine into his rifle, it had been a long night since Hezbollah had downed their extraction team's helicopter and the subsequent waves of Hezbollah fighters trying to storm the monastery and free the high value target that Macht's force had captured, showed no signs of abating as the hour of the wolf was near.
To Macht's surprise an explosion ten metres from the wall burns half a dozen terrorists in a fiery ball of pure hell. At first he thinks the enemy have brought up artillery or rockets but no. He looks into his night vision binoculars and sees the unmistakable shilouette of Israeli Merkava tanks.
Lieutenant Mili Avital of the Israeli Defence Force presence in southern Lebanon had intercepted Christian militia chatter about moving to assist a pinned down American force and earlier Mossad had advised her and other IDF officers that Americans had been raiding Lebanon and one by one capturing those responisble for the hostage massacres in what would be known as "Operation Tribune". On her own initiative Lieutenant Avital had taken her Platoon into the militia controlled zone, picking up some SLA fighters along the way for infantry support.
A great cheer rises from the American position as Lieutenant Avital offers to take them to the Israeli zone after a combination of 105mm high explosive fire and heavy machineguns finally demoralise and break the Hezbollah fighters. Lance Corporal Macht is one of the last in, he enters Lt. Avital's tank where he shares the compartment with their capitive, Abdullah Harriri, the leader of the men who exceuted the American, British and German hostages,
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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as USMC LC Gabriel S. Macht in the 2000 award winning block buster Hour of the Wolf, about Macht's exploits that night at the monastary and the events leading up to it, with Eric Bana as Captain Arthur Kavannagh, Oded Fehr as Abdullah Harriri and Rachel Weisz as Mili Avital.
 
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Swedish power metal band Sabaton playing their famous "Decade of Fire" album in Berlin in 2012. It includes most of their most famous songs like "Tribune" about the American rescue operation in Southern Lebanon, "Anonymous" about Agent Sweetpea stopping a nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union over Iraq, "Overrun" about the last hours of a unit of Soviet Conscripts that were part of a Soviet force in Herat when the seige turned into a slaughter, "72 Hours" about the last stand of the Muslims in Sarajevo against the Yugoslav Federal Army, "Daggers in the Dark" about Anglo-American commandoes taking out Iraq's SCUDS, "One Man" about the lone East German Molotov cocktail thrower pictured by TIME Magazine fighting Soviet occupiers, "The people's Will" about a Greek popular demonstration to stop a pro-US coup in Athens after Papandreas' election and "Death or Glory" about the doomed Kurdish and Shi'ite combined mass uprisings and the massacre of Karbala.
 
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