2014 Ukrainian Maidan Revolt: News, Views, Photos & Videos

SampanViking said:

Are you sure about the neighbour bit? Latvia is Baltic, while Montenegro is Balkan. Sounds similar, but geographically.......

Do you mean Moldova?

Click to expand...

SampanViking said:

Are you sure about the neighbour bit? Latvia is Baltic, while Montenegro is Balkan. Sounds similar, but geographically.......

Do you mean Moldova?

Click to expand...

TerraN_EmpirE said:

There are reports that the Russians presumably at the boarder line are using load speakers to blast the Ukrainians with propaganda, the Ukrainian response? They are bombarding the Russians With Cher. An Act I would demand War crime investigations for. but I am so not a Cher fan.

Click to expand...

Miragedriver said:

It saddens me to see all that military material not being maintained. In addition to that think of all the lost jobs in the maintenance factory that no longer exist. That knowhow will be lost and be unrecoverable in a few more years.

What a loss of national patrimony.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

The tanks appear to be T-64s

Click to expand...

Miragedriver said:

It saddens me to see all that military material not being maintained. In addition to that think of all the lost jobs in the maintenance factory that no longer exist. That knowhow will be lost and be unrecoverable in a few more years.

What a loss of national patrimony.

Click to expand...

12 March 2014 Last updated at 15:57 ET
G7 warns Russia on 'annexing' Crimea
Leaders of the G7 group of nations have called on Russia to stop all efforts to "annex" Ukraine's Crimea region.
They said if Russia took such a step they would "take further action, individually and collectively".
The G7 leaders also said they would not recognise the results of a referendum in Crimea this weekend on whether to split from Ukraine and join Russia.
Separately, the US president said they "will be forced to apply costs" if Russia does not change course.
Barack Obama was speaking after holding talks with Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in Washington.
Mr Yatsenyuk told reporters Ukraine "is and will be part of the Western world".
Earlier, Ukraine's national security chief Andriy Parubiy warned of a major Russian military build-up on Ukraine's borders.
He said Russian troops had not withdrawn since carrying out military exercises near Ukraine's eastern and southern frontiers last month, and were now "only two to three hours" from Kiev.
'Deeply flawed'
The Group of Seven industrial nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US - along with the European Union urged Russia to "cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea".
"In addition to its impact on the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea could have grave implications for the legal order that protects the unity and sovereignty of all states," they said in a statement released by the White House.
They said Sunday's referendum, asking the people of Crimea if they want to be a part of Russia or Ukraine, has "no legal effect" as it is in "direct violation" of Ukraine's constitution.
"Given the lack of adequate preparation and the intimidating presence of Russian troops, it would also be a deeply flawed process which would have no moral force," they added.
The G7 leaders repeated their calls for Russia to de-escalate the crisis by withdrawing its troops, talking directly with Kiev and using international mediators to "address any legitimate concerns it may have".
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he hoped EU countries would keep their "very united and firm position because we don't want to see, one century after the First World War, exactly the same kind of behaviour of countries annexing other countries".
Polish PM Donald Tusk said it may be time for the EU "to consider the possibility of having second phase sanctions" against Russia.
At a joint news conference with Mr Tusk, German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated the EU could sign the "political part" of a long-awaited agreement on closer ties with Ukraine later this month.
'Subversive agents'
But diplomatic efforts with Russia continue.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said he will travel to London for talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday, and present him "with a series of options" for resolving the crisis.
France's President Francois Hollande has spoken by telephone to Russia's President Vladimir Putin, and both agreed to "continue the discussion" on resolving the crisis.
Russian troops and pro-Russian gunmen moved in to seize key sites in Crimea - an autonomous region with a majority of ethnic Russians - after the fall of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych last month.
Andriy Parubiy said Russian troops had been seen massing on Ukraine's eastern and southern borders where he said there was a "critical situation".
He accused Moscow of sending "subversive agents" into those areas to try to create a pre-text to deploy troops in the same way it has done in Crimea.
Mr Parubiy said Kiev's parliament will vote on Thursday to establish a National Guard of 20,000 people - recruited from activists involved in the recent pro-Western protests as well as from military academies - to strengthen Ukraine's defences.
The National Guard, he said, would be deployed to "protect state borders, general security and prevent "terrorist activities".
President Yanukovych was forced from office after violence broke out between police and protesters in Kiev, in which more than 90 people were killed.
The protesters had taken over Kiev's Independence Square, calling for the government's resignation, after Mr Yanukovych rejected a deal with the EU in favour of a bail-out from Russia

Click to expand...

11 March 2014 Last updated at 20:47 ET
Ukraine crisis: Russians opposed to Putin
In an emotional speech in Kiev on Sunday, former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky - recently released from 10 years in jail - told the Maidan "there is another Russia", one opposed to military action in Ukraine. Russian writer and broadcaster Andrei Ostalski agrees but says it's a small and embattled community.
On 2 March, one day after the Upper Chamber of the Russian parliament passed a motion allowing President Putin to use Russia's armed forces anywhere on Ukrainian territory, a Muscovite decided to stage a one-man protest. He knew it was a rather risky affair as the streets were full of "patriotically" minded people rejoicing and celebrating the prospect of a quick victorious war against their neighbour.
Nevertheless, Alexei Sokirko found a place on the pavement on Nikolskaya Street and unfolded his "Stop the war" banner.
Russian law allows one-man pickets to be staged without prior permission or advance notification so the police didn't do anything at first. In fact, they didn't need to as Alexei immediately started getting harassed by angry passers-by. To begin with they called him "fascist" and "scum". Then a woman spat at him. A few men started threatening him, and finally one of them snatched the banner from his hands and tore it up.
A scuffle followed - that was when the police intervened to arrest Alexei for violating public order. It was probably just as well, as he could have been seriously beaten. A woman then offered to fabricate a more serious charge against him. "I can testify that he was beating up a child," she suggested, enthusiastically. The policemen decided not to take her up on it.
The episode described on Alexei Sokirko's Facebook page is poignantly symbolic. Russians opposed to the invasion of Crimea are a lonely minority, seemingly powerless to influence the mob that surrounds them.
According to one poll, about 70% of the population approves of Putin's policy towards Ukraine. Especially popular is the prospect of Crimea becoming part of Mother Russia - and all the indications are a majority wouldn't mind Russia sending tanks straight to Kiev. Dmitry Peskov, the president's press-secretary, claims Putin's ratings are at an all-time high.
It's become something of a mantra in Moscow to say that Russians are so pleased with the way their macho leader is "standing up to the West" and "defending compatriots abroad" that they are prepared "to forgive him everything" - from widespread poverty to endemic corruption and police brutality.
The popular Russian novelist and scriptwriter Tatiana Sotnikova (pen name Anna Byerseneva) agrees that most of her compatriots support the Kremlin's actions, for now at least - she thinks it could change if Russia's isolation causes living standards to fall. She attributes their bellicosity mostly to the incessant propaganda of the national TV channels. "A total xenophobic brainwashing has been going on relentlessly for the last 14 years," as she puts it.
She is one of a number of Russian writers who signed a letter expressing solidarity with their Ukrainian colleagues and protesting against Moscow's belligerent behaviour. The writers, all members of PEN International, are not entirely alone. One of the two Russian cinematographic unions joined in the condemnation. (It is a sign of the times that Moscow has another, more "patriotic" Union of Cinema Workers that would never dream of challenging the Kremlin line).
But the Russian Union of Writers announced its total support for any actions the president might undertake on Ukrainian territory, and echoed Kremlin rhetoric by calling the Maidan leaders "a bunch of fascists".
There have been others, too, who have carried out their own version of Sokirko's protest.
Andrei Zubov, a highly respected professor at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations, wrote an article in Vedomosti newspaper comparing a Russian annexation of Crimea to the German Anschluss of Austria in 1938. He was immediately told to resign or face the sack but the threat was retracted after colleagues rushed to his support.
One of the least expected objections came from a leader of the pro-Kremlin Spravedlivaya Rossiya party, Akexander Chuyev, writing on a liberal website.
Regardless of a person's political views and affiliations, supporting a war was immoral, he said, adding that he knew communists and nationalists who shared his view. "As a Russian and an Orthodox Christian I cannot support a decision which not only contradicts Russia's international obligations but can lead to a fratricidal war," he announced in a separate interview.
The editor of the influential Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Konstantin Remchukov, has meanwhile spoken out against the idea of holding an "illegal" referendum in Crimea. In a radio interview he also criticised, in no uncertain terms, the Russian establishment's apparent readiness to quarrel with the West. As he uttered those words listeners started calling in to brand him a "traitor" and worse.
One of Russia's most popular thriller writers, Boris Akunin, has also called on his compatriots to think again. "I want to ask the majority celebrating the annexation of Crimea: Do you have any idea about the price you will have to pay for this trophy?" he wrote on his Facebook page, predicting political and economic isolation.
"Thanks to his Crimea adventure, Mr Putin has guaranteed himself a life-term in office but I doubt that this term is going to be particularly long," he wrote. "In the absence of a legal mechanism for changing a bankrupt regime the mechanism of revolution switches on. And a revolution in a multi-ethnic country equipped with nuclear weapons is a truly frightening thing."
Akunin may well be proved right in the longer term, but at the moment there is little evidence of an anti-war movement spreading outside the thin layer of the Russian intelligentsia.
To some it is even invisible. Khodorkovsky's comment about "another Russia" was picked on by Matvey Ganapolsky, one of Russia's most popular political commentators (and a Ukrainian by birth). "He failed to explain why this 'other Russia' is invisible and silent," Ganapolsky wrote in his blog.
Last week small improvised protests were held in some Russian cities. In St Petersburg, 75-year-old Igor Andreyev was fined 10,000 roubles for holding a banner saying "Peace to the World".
In Moscow, hundreds of protesters were detained by police, many of them also later fined, though city authorities have now given permission for a bigger March of Peace, planned for Saturday.
So there is indeed another, thinking Russia, even if her inhabitants are not all that numerous. The worry is that if predictions of a further tightening of the screws by the Kremlin prove true, this important little community could be pushed into extinction.

Click to expand...

12 March 2014 Last updated at 09:51 ET
Ukraine hits back at Russian TV onslaught
By Stephen Ennis
BBC Monitoring
Ukraine's media regulator has ordered all cable providers to stop transmitting top Russian state-controlled TV channels, which have portrayed it as a country overrun by "neo-Nazis" and on the brink of chaos and collapse.
The Ukrainian National Council for TV and Radio Broadcasting instructed all cable operators on 11 March to stop transmitting a number of Russian channels, including the international versions of the main state-controlled stations Rossiya 1, Channel One and NTV, as well as news channel Rossiya 24.
It said it was acting in the interests of "information security". It was also responding to calls from the National Security and Defence Council, which on 6 March said the presence of Russian TV channels in Ukraine's "information space" represented a threat to "national security".
'Apocalyptic'
Russian TV's attacks on Ukraine have been relentless. As critic Yekaterina Bolotovskaya wrote on Russian website Gazeta.ru, they have been painting an "apocalyptic" picture of the country, embellished by "bellicose language" reminiscent of the height of the Cold War.
Writing for the American magazine Politico, journalist Leonid Ragozin said that Russian propaganda usually contained a "grain of truth", but this was then used in the service of a "big lie".
For example, he said, it was perfectly true that ultranationalists played a key role in the street clashes that led to the overthrow of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, but "all this is a far cry from Nazis taking over Kiev, an image now being stamped into the brains of Russian and East Ukrainian audiences 24 hours a day on Kremlin mouthpieces".
This message has been supplemented in recent days by a constant stream of reports backing Crimea's unification with Russia, ahead of a disputed referendum on the peninsula's future on 16 March.
"We have not stopped regarding Crimea as ours," a Rossiya 1 news presenter declared on 9 March.
Russian TV's role in the current crisis has been crucial because it has been widely watched in Ukraine, especially the mainly Russian-speaking east and south of the country.
In Crimea, Russian TV channels have now almost completely replaced Ukrainian ones.
Ukraine's media news website Telekrytyka has been at the forefront of efforts to confront what it calls the "manipulation of facts" and "overt lies" disseminated by Russian TV.
It pointed to a Rossiya 1 report from 1 March, which appeared to show a gun battle outside a government building in Crimea. "An analysis later showed the video was staged," Telekrytyka said.
Reports like this were used to justify Russia's stepping up its military presence in Crimea and supporting the separatist movement there.
Russian TV has also repeatedly alleged that Ukrainian "extremists" have been harassing and terrorising journalists, though until recently it had provided little actual evidence for this.
That is, until pro-Moscow journalist Sergey Rulev told several of Russia's leading TV channels how he had been set upon by a gang of nationalists who had punched and kicked him, and tried to rip out his fingernails. A report on Gazprom-Media's NTVon 6 March even showed YouTube footage of the alleged attack.
But, as Ukrainian blogger Pauluskp pointed out, the full video of the incident (which took place on or before 20 February) clearly shows that Rulev was attacked not by nationalists but by ex-President Yanukovych's hired heavies - the so-called titushki.
Activists at StopFake, a website set up by Ukrainian journalists to monitor media coverage of the current crisis, have compiled a whole dossier of what they call "distortions and propaganda"
Showing how Russian TV passed off disturbances in Kiev as violent clashes on the streets of the Crimean capital Simferopol
Highlighting evidence that contradicts Russian media claims of a mass exodus of refugees from Ukraine to escape the violence and chaos there
Collecting extensive photographic and video evidence that appears to show that parts of Crimea are occupied by Russian troops - something flatly denied by President Vladimir Putin and ignored by Russian TV
Evidence of Russian military activity in Crimea can also be found on the YouTube channel of Information Resistance, an impromptu news agency set up by Dmytro Tymchuk, head of the Ukrainian Centre for Military-Political Studies.
'Dictatorship'
The issue of how to respond to Russian TV's onslaught has been hotly debated in Ukraine in recent weeks.
Some MPs and media experts have been calling for a clampdown. But others, such as Telekrytyka's chief editor Nataliya Lihachova, have warned that this could be "senseless and harmful".
In a news conference on 4 March, she said that blocking Russian TV channels could have a similar effect to the Ukrainian parliament's annulment of the law on regional languages, which would have, among other things, lowered the status of Russian in Ukraine.
The annulment was vetoed by interim President Oleksandr Turchynov after a public outcry.
Russian nationalist MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky told a news conference at the State Duma on 12 March that the ban on Russian channels in Ukraine was an act of "dictatorship". Rossiya 1 said he spoke for MPs of all parties.
Russia has also reacted angrily to Ukraine stopping some Russian journalists from entering its territory. The Foreign Ministry accused the international community of turning a blind eye to "such manifestations of censorship".
Over half of Ukraine's cable operators have now stopped carrying the main Russian channels, according to the media regulator. The largest operator Volya has said it will follow suit in the next few days.
Viewers in Ukraine are also able to access Russian TV via satellite.

Click to expand...