(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Daryna Krasnolutska and Anton Doroshev – September 11, 2015) Russia said the deadline to implement a peace accord between Ukraine and the Kremlin-backed separatists it’s battling may be extended, as the conflict’s first day in 18 months without shelling raised hopes of progress. The suggestion contradicted the message from Ukrainian officials as President Petro Poroshenko and […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, September 9, 2015) Vladimir Putin not only doesn’t want to annex the Donbas but can’t do so, according to Yevgeny Ikhlov; and that means the region will become another edition of Transdniestria, creating ongoing problems for both Russian and Ukraine but opening the possibility Kyiv will be able to follow the Baltic […]
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(opendemocracy.net – By Oleg Kashin – September 1, 2015) The devastation of eastern Ukraine has woken Russians up to the reality of war for the first time since 1945. Sergei Loiko is an Russian-American journalist who has spent the last year covering the war in Ukraine. He’s also a friend, and has now written Airport, a novel about the battle […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, September 2, 2015) Many people, horrified by the actions of pro-Moscow forces in Crimea and the Donbas or unwilling to continue to resist Russian aggression, have concluded that the rest of Ukraine would be better off without those two regions and could move forward by sacrificing them to Vladimir Putin. “If only […]
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Ukraine’s parliament took a first step toward granting powers to rebel regions. But deadly clashes in the capital show the depth of resistance to such changes.
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – August 31, 2015) A police officer was killed during a protest in Kiev on Monday. It was the first such fatality since Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity” last year. Radical nationalists, some with weapons, gathered to protest a constitutional amendment proposed by President Petro Poroshenko that would make it possible to reintegrate separatist areas […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – KYIV BLOG: Ben Aris in Moscow – August 31, 2015) A grenade thrown by nationalists at police outside Ukraine’s parliament may only be the beginning of troubles for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is facing a stark choice between enraging violent nationalists or condemning his country to further military destabilisation by Russia. The grenade […]
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(RIA Novosti – Moscow, August 31, 2015) Denis Pushilin [Ukrainian: Denys Pushylin], plenipotentiary representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR/DNR], considers the first reading of draft constitutional amendments passed by the Supreme Council to be Ukraine’s internal affair which has little to do with the Minsk Agreement but which could be an interim step towards constitutional reform harmonized with […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, September 1, 2015) Having failed to find the number of backers for the Russian world in Ukraine it expected, Moscow in the opinion of many in Kyiv is seeking to use Ukrainian radicals in the pursuit of its goal of destabilizing Kyiv to the point that Ukraine will fall back into Russia’s […]
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Subject: ON TREATING UKRAINE LIKE GEORGIA – A REPLY TO PAUL SAUNDERS Date: Sun, 30 Aug 201 From: Kirk Bennett <kirkbennett7@yahoo.com> ON TREATING UKRAINE LIKE GEORGIA – A REPLY TO PAUL SAUNDERS By Kirk Bennett Kirk Bennett was the Senior Georgia Desk Officer at the State Department from 2007-09. Kudos to Paul Saunders for his spot-on exposition of U.S. policy […]
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(Interfax – August 29, 2015) Russian nationalist politician Eduard Limonov, leader of the banned National Bolshevik party (whose members make up most of the Other Russia party), says his members are continuing to fight with the separatist militias in southeast Ukraine, despite not being allowed to lead units or engage in political activity there, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported […]
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DONETSK. Aug 27 (Interfax) – The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic allows for the possibility of carrying out a new prisoner swap with Ukraine next week. “According to the official data, 450-460 prisoners of war are being held by the other side in addition to civilians. These are those who have been reported,” Viktor Anosov, a representative of the DPR military […]
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A meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk with representatives from the Donetsk and Lugansk “people’s republics” has ended with the parties agreeing to a ceasefire effective from Sept. 1. However, experts are not convinced this a breakthrough on the path to peace. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Eekaterina Sinelschikova, RBTH – August 27, 2015) The participants of […]
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[DJ: Nataliya Vasilyeva (AP Moscow correspondent) tweets: 2 day of Western officials retweeting a Forbes report quoting a Ukrainian web-site quoting a non-existent Russia news web-site re Ukraine. The main problem here is, of course, where was the Forbes online editor when the story was published, why nobody bothered to check sources? The ease of spreading rumors in the digital […]
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Recent talks between the Ukrainian, French and German leaders on the implementation of the Minsk peace agreements in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region saw Paris and Berlin express their continued support for Kiev, but Russian analysts say Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is under pressure to make compromises. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Gevorg Mirzayan, special to RBTH – August […]
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DONETSK. Aug 26 (Interfax) – The Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has observed 30 incidents of shelling from the Ukrainian side over the past day, a ministry representative said on Wednesday. “The Ukrainian army has committed 30 ceasefire violations over the past day. Some 113 82mm and 120mm mines, 85 152mm artillery shells and 15 tank […]
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The Washington Times reports on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and prospects for Russian annexation of eastern Ukraine. … increased violence in East Ukraine between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russia rebels of the Donetsk People’s Republic … comes with reports of an increased Russian military presence on the border … * * * … Xinhau, the Chinese state news agency, reported that […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Irina Reznik, Stepan Kravchenko – August 19, 2015) Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who’s formed a government-in-exile to try to regain power, said his country is ripe for more regime change. Amid economic crisis and conflict in the country’s east, Ukrainians are disillusioned with the pro-European policies of President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy […]
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Both Ukraine’s government and its rebel provinces have rebuilt their militaries, raising the stakes should the latest violence turn into all out combat.
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Volodymyr Verbyany, Aliaksandr Kudrytski – August 18, 2015) Ukraine said attacks by pro-Russian insurgents in its easternmost regions abated for the first time in eight days, allaying concern that a six-month-old peace accord is unraveling. Ukrainian officials said they saw a drop in the use of heavy weaponry and reported no new civilian deaths overnight after […]
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Twenty-five years ago, my family was stuck in then-Soviet Ukraine. We had nothing, and the West, including the United States, helped us and hundreds of thousands of other refugees even though we were technically “Soviet puppets,” born on the wrong side of the line. Today is a different story. Isolating a region for geopolitical considerations is one thing; withholding life-saving […]
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Experts note that assistance of mental health professionals provided in due time can prevent the irretrievable act.
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 11, 2015) Up to now, Ukraine has made “a serious error” by trying to negotiate with Russia about the Donbas, Bogdan Yeremenko says. What it should be doing is devoting all its efforts to isolating Russia internationally. That will have far more impact on Moscow’s behavior than any talks Ukraine might […]
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(Interfax – August 12, 2015) The international group of investigators conducting the criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Malaysian Boeing crash in Donbas does not confirm finding fragments of a surface-to-air missile Buk on the crash site in Donbass, the Dutch National Public Prosecutor’s Office reported. It is now too early to draw conclusions that the found fragments are […]
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(Interfax – August 11, 2015) Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev has said that Ukraine’s national security strategy for the period until 2020 is directed at a long-term confrontation with Russia, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax reported on 11 August. “According to our specialists, the Ukrainian national security strategy is directed at a long-term confrontation with Russia, which cannot fail […]
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(Interfax – August 12, 2015) Andriy Purhin (Andrey Purgin), the deputy speaker of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) people’s council, has said that the Malaysian Boeing is likely to have been downed by a Ukrainian Buk air defence system, privately-owned Russian news agency Interfax quoted him as saying on 12 August. “Certainly, a Buk [missile] is more likely [to […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Daryna Krasnolutska – August 12, 2015) Ukraine said pro-Russian militants intensified attacks on government troops overnight in a bid to win ground, a sign the recent surge in fighting is worsening. Tensions in the 16-month conflict rose this week as the army reported renewed assaults on a village in the Donetsk region, an accusation the separatists […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 4, 2015) To overcome the stalemate on the ground and to get itself out of the diplomatic corner it has painted itself into by vetoing the UN Security Council resolution on the Malaysian airliner tribunal, Moscow appears to be planning an act of “nuclear provocation” against Ukraine so as to turn […]
» Read moreMOSCOW. Aug 13 (Interfax) – The Ukrainian Armed Forces have fired heavy weapons against the town of Horlivka, the Donetsk news agency reported on Thursday, citing the information and analytical department of the town’s administration. “The shelling began at 10:30 p.m. Some heavy [weapons] were fired. Shells dropped near the village of Oksenivka,” it said. According to the local authorities, […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Daryna Krasnolutska – August 11, 2015) Ukraine returned heavy artillery to the front line of its more-than-yearlong conflict with pro-Russian rebels after reporting shelling at levels not seen in weeks. Weapons, pulled back as part of a February truce, were sent back to a village in the Donetsk region on Monday after separatists stormed it, the […]
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(The Washington Quarterly – twq.elliott.gwu.edu – Kimberly Marten – Summer 2015) [article also appeared at http://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/putin%E2%80%99s-choices-explaining-russian-foreign-policy-and-intervention-ukraine] Kimberly Marten is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, and a faculty member of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. She is also Director of […]
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LUHANSK. Aug 7 (Interfax) – The leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), Igor Plotnitsky, has said that the local government elections scheduled for November 1, 2015, will be held regardless of Kyiv’s stance on the matter. “We declared them [the elections] and we will hold them whether Ukraine wants it or not,” he told members of the LPR […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Henry Kirby in London – August 5, 2015) [Charts here bne.eu/content/story/bnechart-half-russians-favour-mh17-tribunal] Nearly half of all Russians would support the creation of a UN international tribunal to investigate who was responsible for last year’s MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine, according to a poll by Russia’s Levada Centre. This is in stark contrast to the clear […]
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The Times reports on Ukrainian intelligence findings about Russia-bombed rebels working with Russian scientists to develop conventional bombs laced with radioactive material to maximize their impact. Rebels in Ukraine are working to develop a radioactive dirty bomb with the help of Russian nuclear scientists, according to a Ukrainian security service dossier obtained by The Times. The report draws on hacked emails […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Brian Whitmore – July 28, 2015) f you believe all the talk out there lately, Vladimir Putin is not only duplicitous and hypocritical — he’s also been pretty damn busy lately. Busy cutting secret deals with the same Europeans and Americans he has been vilifying for years. And if you believe the rumors, the Europeans and Americans have […]
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The Kviy Post covers political violence erupting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Special forces were deployed along with police negotiators on Aug. 3 when a rally in Kharkiv erupted into violent clashes, with pro-Ukrainian activists driving supporters of the Opposition Bloc into a building in a scene frighteningly reminiscent of the May 2 Odesa massacre. Kharkiv has been […]
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(RIA Novosti – August 1, 2015) Documents provided by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which have been mentioned by the foreign mass media and which allegedly contain information about development of a “dirty nuclear bomb” by members of the militia, are Kiev’s “yet another lie” and attempt to discredit the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), RIA Novosti (part of […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – bne:Chart: Henry Kirby in London – August 3, 2015) [Charts here http://www.bne.eu/content/story/bnechart-more-6-10-ukrainians-would-leave-country-poll-finds] More than 6 in 10 urban Ukrainians would like to live in another country, according to a recent survey by international pollster TNS Global. After a year of conflict in Ukraine’s eastern regions, residents appear to be considering emigration as the resultant […]
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