Ukrainian crisis

Putin warns U.S. not to supply Ukraine with defensive weapons

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that any decision by the United States to supply defensive weapons to Ukraine would fuel the conflict in eastern Ukraine and possibly prompt pro-Russian separatists to expand their campaign there.

On a visit to Kiev last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he was actively reviewing sending lethal weapons to Ukraine to help it defend itself, an option that previous U.S. president Barack Obama vetoed.

Ukraine and Russia are at loggerheads over a war in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces that has killed more than 10,000 people in three years. Kiev accuses Moscow of sending troops and heavy weapons to the region, which Russia denies.

Ukrainian crisis

Kremlin on possibility to recognize Donbass republics: It's up to Putin

The Russian president is authorized to outline foreign policy, Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked under what conditions Moscow could recognize the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR).

"I can tell you only one thing: according to the Constitution, the head of state, that is, the president is authorized to outline foreign policy," the Kremlin spokesman said.

Chairman of the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) Committee for CIS Affairs Leonid Kalashnikov said earlier that if the conflict in Donbass continued to escalate, then Russia could make any decision, even recognize DPR and LPR.

Ukrainian crisis

Trump Seems to Side With Russia in Comments on Ukraine

President Trump cast doubt on whether Moscow is backing separatists engaged in the recent escalation of fighting in eastern Ukraine, appearing to side with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has long denied involvement in the conflict despite evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Trump said he did not take offense at the outbreak of a lethal bout of fighting in Ukraine that came within a day of a phone conversation he had with Mr. Putin, saying of the recent clashes, “we don’t really know exactly what that is.”

Ukrainian crisis

More than ten killed and dozens injured in surge of violence in east Ukraine

The Russian and Ukrainian governments have traded blame over a surge in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists that has killed more than ten people and injured dozens more since the weekend.

The fighting is the first significant violence in the war zone since Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president and could be seen as a key test of new administration’s stance on the crisis, including whether it will prolong sanctions imposed against Russia over its role in the war.

Ukrainian crisis

Deadly Fighting Surges in Ukraine Despite Truce

A sudden surge in clashes between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels killed at least seven people on Monday despite a tattered truce in Ukraine's war-scarred east.

The overall death toll reported for the past two days rose to 12 after the bloodiest outburst of violence since the former Soviet republic and its foes last month agreed an "indefinite" ceasefire.

The fighting came as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to step up economic sanctions against Moscow, and fears grew in Kiev that US support could wane should President Donald Trump draws closer to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian crisis

New York Times admits Ukraine’s Yanukovich was right not to sign EU deal

Three years after the event, the establishment media is finally issuing mea culpas for its self-interested support of 'Euromaidan,' the Western-backed ‘regime change’ crusade which destroyed Ukraine.

I was wondering how long this would take. But now that it’s happened let's raise a Christmas glass to the New York Times and its reporter, Andrew Kramer. Because they’ve finally admitted that those of us who opposed Kiev’s ‘Euromaidan’ movement were right. Furthermore, America’s ‘newspaper of record’ has acknowledged how, despite its own fervent encouragement of the violent coup, former President Victor Yanukovich was correct not to sign a tightfisted free trade deal with the European Union.

The NYT uses the collapse of Ukraine’s once lucrative agriculture industry to illustrate its climbdown. Especially the poultry business, which due to miserly EU quotas, and the loss of the Russian market, has been decimated.

Ukrainian crisis

Is Ukraine Just About to Blow?

On Wednesday the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, declared that it had prevented “terrorist attacks” in Crimea over the weekend.

According to the security service, an FSB agent was killed in a firefight with saboteurs on Saturday night near Russian-occupied Armyansk, a town close to the frontier with mainland Ukraine. Several Russian and Ukrainian citizens were arrested, the report claims, and a cache of explosives and weapons was discovered.

According to the FSB, some of the weaponry, which included improvised explosive devices and magnetic mines, belongs to Ukrainian special forces units. A Ukrainian citizen from Zaporizhia, one Yevgeny Panov, allegedly an agent of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR), was detained and is supposedly confessing to his captors.

Ukrainian crisis

Kremlin: Russia to Be Happy If Ukraine's Association With EU Yields Success

Russia would be happy if the EU Association Agreement with Ukraine yielded any sort of success for Kiev, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.

“Of course Russia is interested that its neighbors are predictable, economically independent, and, I would say, stable and flourishing. If this agreement helps Ukraine to reach some sort of parameter in reaching its goals, then obviously we would only be happy,” Peskov told journalists.

However, if the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement has negative effects on Russia, Moscow will take necessary steps to balance the situation, Peskov said.

Ukrainian crisis

The Darkening of Color Revolutions: Maidan Regime Investigates Its Founders for Mass Murder

The neo-fascists among the demonstrators actually initiated and undertook most of the shootings — often with hunting rifles — firing first at police (hence, the some 20 officers shot at the time) and then at demonstrators. Only later in the morning did police begin to return fire and only after contacting the leaders of the demonstrations and the heavenly hundreds’ Parubiy. Some SP and RS members who were heavenly hundred fighters became snipers. These neo-fascist demonstrator-snipers are the SP and RS neo-fascists whom US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, numerous Obama administration pocket ‘analysts’, and Ukrainian neo-fascism apologists claim do not and did not exist and/or were not among the Maidan demonstrators.

Ukrainian crisis

$1.8 bln IMF Ukraine Bailout Funds Discovered in Kolomoyskyi's Cyprus Kitty

A huge chunk of the $17 billion in bailout money the IMF granted to Ukraine in April 2014 has been discovered in a bank account in Cyprus controlled by exiled Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the German newspaper Deutsche Wirtshafts Nachrichten [DWN] reported on Thursday.

In April last year $3.2 billion was immediately disbursed to Ukraine, and over the following five months, another $4.5 billion was disbursed to the Ukrainian Central Bank in order to stabilize the country's financial system.

Ukrainian crisis

Ukraine Debt: Putin’s Trump Card

The problems compound a perfect storm, which includes a collapsed currency—the third worst performing in the world. Inflation is now around 55.3 percent. Ukraine’s average monthly salary has plummeted to $186. Pensions have been cut and taxes raised. While earning exceedingly less, Ukrainians are paying 450 percent more on household energy bills. The poverty rate hovers around 33 percent. What’s more, a fifth of the country’s productive capacity has been ravaged by the war and Russian trade sanctions.  

Ukrainian crisis

American Paratroopers in Ukraine Have Putin Rattled

The Ukrainians brought stories from the front about the enemy, the arms, and the firepower used against Ukrainian troops. For American soldiers, listening to these members of former Soviet forces talking about their adversaries, also from the former Soviet army, this has been an education. It has given them a chance to study in granular detail a great deal about the evolution of Russian combat forces in the last quarter-century.

Ukrainian crisis

Former president of Georgia seeks to free Ukraine from Moscow’s orbit

In Ukraine’s last-ditch battle to stamp out official thievery and wrest the nation from Russia’s orbit, an unlikely leader is heading the charge. Mikheil Saakashvili, the crusading ex-president of Georgia, is trying to upend Ukraine’s most lawless region as the new governor of the smuggling stronghold of Odessa. A man who led his tiny nation into war with mighty Russia has taken up a new fight in a high-profile appointment in a fellow post-Soviet state that was a slap at the Kremlin.

Ukrainian crisis

To Defeat Russia, Ukraine Creates Muslim Military Unit Made Up Of Crimean Tatars

Ukraine will create a unit of Muslim soldiers to protect the Crimean border and monitor imports and exports amid an increasingly violent battle with pro-Russian rebels, a Ukraine leader said Monday. The Muslim battalion will be formed of Crimean Tatars, Kazan Tatars, Uzbeks, Chechens, Azeris, Meskhetian Turks and other Muslim groups, said Mustafa Abdülcemil Kırımoğlu, leader of Crimean Tatars, according to local media reports.

Ukrainian crisis

How to Make a Country Vanish: A Journey Inside Eastern Ukraine

Deep in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) on Ukraine’s eastern fringe, crumbling statues of Lenin were guarding a century-old coal mine, testifying to a former master who had begun encroaching again. A high-pitched bell sounded, signaling the end of the night shift, and a precarious cage brought exhausted, soot-faced workers to the surface. 

Ukrainian crisis

The Agreement That Will Save Ukraine

Despite the Minsk-II ceasefire agreement signed in February, the civil war currently being waged in eastern Ukraine between government forces and separatist rebels is all but frozen. In a pattern akin to the gradual collapse of the earlier Minsk-I Protocol, small-scale skirmishes have been frequent occurrences over the past five months, while more-recent battles foreshadow a return to larger, conventional military confrontations.

Ukrainian crisis

And Then There Were Five: The Plight of Ukraine’s Oligarchs

In March 2014, Forbes estimated that Ukraine had nine billionaires (measured in in U.S. dollars). This year, that number has dropped to five. The war has caused social and economic dislocations across Ukraine, making many ordinary Ukrainians poorer than before. It follows naturally that Ukraine’s wealthiest citizens would not be immune to asset loss, even if their plight remains much better than the bulk of their compatriots.  

Ukrainian crisis

Putin the uniter

MIKHAIL ZABRODSKY, the broad-shouldered commander of Ukraine’s airborne troops, came of age in the Soviet Union. After the Soviet collapse he even served in the Russian army. When he moved home to Ukraine he stayed in touch. “We were all friends,” he says, shaking his head. When Russia turned its guns on Ukraine last year, Mr Zabrodsky “couldn’t believe it.” He was not alone.

Ukrainian crisis

Why Arming Ukraine Is a Really Bad Idea

Renewed fighting in Ukraine has in turn renewed calls to arm Ukraine, including in the United States Congress. Yet there is an enormous and largely unacknowledged flaw in the argument to provide the Kiev government with lethal weapons.

Ukrainian crisis

US lawmakers ban aid to Ukraine neo-Nazis

The House of Representatives unanimously adopted amendments to the US 2016 defense budget proposal, outlawing training and arming of Ukraine’s notorious paramilitary “Azov” battalion. Russia hailed the decision as “better late than never.”Proposed by John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), the amendments to HR 2685, the “Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2015, refer to “Azov” battalion as an “openly neo-Nazi” and “fascist,” and prohibit US instructors from training or arming the controversial unit.