#2
Poroshenko calls on EU leaders to give Ukraine prospect of EU membership

KYIV. April 27 (Interfax) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has called on the European Union to give Ukraine the prospect of EU membership.

"I am calling on the EU to admit that Ukraine, like any other European state that respects and is ready to defend common values, can become an EU member in the future, supporting ambitions for European integration by the people of Ukraine. Of course, provided that all criteria are reached," he said, opening a plenary session of the Ukraine-EU summit in Kyiv on Monday.

The president reiterated that Ukraine needs considerable and consistent support from the EU in the spirit of association and integration, as well as political and economic support as it carries out the necessary reforms in the current difficult situation.

"EU assistance should help strengthen the faith of the people of Ukraine in the irreversibility of the future of Ukraine in the EU and the need to go through a process of internal reforms, which is sometimes painful, but not super-difficult," Poroshenko said.
 

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 #3
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
April 27, 2015
TRADE BLOG: EU-Ukraine free trade talks with Russia likely to go nowhere
The likelihood of trilateral talks involving Ukraine, the EU and Russia over Ukraine's implementation of the free trade deal embedded in its Association Agreement with the EU - the deal that triggered the war - is low.
Iana Dreyer in Brussels

The likelihood of trilateral talks involving Ukraine, the EU and Russia over Ukraine's implementation of the deep and comprehensive free trade area (DCFTA) embedded in its Association Agreement with the EU - the deal that triggered the Ukraine crisis - is low.

The continuing Ukraine conflict as well as Russia and the EU's greater interest in securing the future of gas exports to Europe go a long way in explaining why the talks, which were revived in Brussels on April 20 ahead of an EU Ukraine Summit in Kyiv on April 27, have shown hardly any signs of progress.

They have clearly failed to satisfy the Russian government: Russian Minister of Economy Alexey Ulyukaev said during a visit to Turkey on April 21 that he did "not [see] enough goodwill" on the side of his counterparts and that Russian concerns remained unaddressed.

Various officials from EU institutions told bne IntelliNews that whereas at bureaucrat-level Russian officials signalled they might be interested in striking a compromise on some areas of the deal, there is not sufficient political support in Moscow. If at all, Commission officials close to the negotiations do not believe there can be any significant movement before the end of 2015, shortly before Ukraine is scheduled to implement the DCFTA.

The talks - stalled in late 2014 after it was decided that Ukraine should postpone implementation of the agreement until January 1, 2016 and as the conflict in East Ukraine intensified - were re-launched as part of a wider process to reinitiate a political dialogue with Russia in the wake of the second ceasefire agreement concluded in Minsk in February.

The fundamental disagreements over the deal between the EU and Ukraine on the one hand and Russia on the other remain. Russia wants changes to the DCFTA text, including the cancellation of a planned phase-out of Soviet-era technical and sanitary standards, and it wants import tariff eliminations in many industrial goods to be cancelled too.

Kyiv and Brussels for their part are ready to offer "confidence building measures" as the agreement comes into force to respond to Russian concerns that it could end up being flooded with cheap EU goods via Ukraine. The EU is also open to the idea of signing up to some flexibility in the deal's implementation to allay fears that Russia will lose market share in Ukraine.

Russia is threatening to suspend its 2011 free trade agreement with Ukraine if its demands are not met. This means Ukrainian exports could face higher Russian import tariffs.

Trade economists believe Russia's concerns are largely unjustified, as the DCFTA is not per se incompatible with Ukraine's current free trade deal with Russia. Russian concerns that the DCFTA could involve cheap EU products flooding its markets do not bear scrutiny, as rules of origin included in the existing bilateral free trade agreement between Ukraine and Russia are precisely designed to avoid trade deflection.

However, if Ukraine phases in EU technical standards and phases out so-called GOST standards as mandated in the DCFTA, some Russian products could indeed lose out on the Ukrainian market. A practical solution to overcome this problem would involve Ukraine signing a mutual recognition agreement with Russia on technical and sanitary standards, to minimise potential risks of trade diversion to the detriment of Russian exports. Another, more long-lasting solution would be to find an arrangement between the EU and Russia on trade 'from Lisbon to Vladivostok'. But this is an unrealistic prospect in the foreseeable future.

Detailed reading of the DCFTA shows that there is in practice a lot of in-built flexibility for Ukraine in how, and when, it implements EU standards. What is more, legally binding commitments, with hard deadlines, to introduce industrial standards are limited to about 30 sectors. Brussels and Kyiv see this room for flexible implementation as a basis for negotiation with Russia. The EU has recently signalled it is open to the idea of Ukraine and Russia engaging in mutual recognition arrangements.

The deeper question, though, is whether the negotiations will lead anywhere at all.

Economic incentives between Ukraine and Russia to strike a deal have never been so low. Ukraine and Russia's foreign trade collapsed in 2014 as both countries faced recession and currency depreciation. Russian food import bans, the disruption of trade linkages between the Ukrainian and Russian military industries inherited from the Soviet era, and the war-induced collapse of production in the Donbas region also contributed to this sharp drop.

In 2014 Ukraine's goods exports fell by 13.5%, and its imports by 28.3%. Trade with Russia declined most dramatically: Ukrainian imports from the neighbouring country with which it is at war fell by 45%, and exports by 35%. As the political standoff between the two countries becomes entrenched, trade relations are not likely recover soon. This means that if Russia were to reinstate import tariffs on its trade with Ukraine, the pain inflicted on Ukraine would be relatively small.

Ukraine itself has signalled it now wants the agreement to be implemented in full, and is not ready to delay the deal yet again. Ukraine is under political pressure from Western financial donors to show it is committed to economic reform, and applying the DCFTA would send a strong signal in that direction. What is more, Kyiv is not in a mood to cave in to Russia. There are indications that Ukraine has balked at EU suggestions it might seek an arrangement with Russia on the standards issue. This means the government in Kyiv is ready to pay the political price of having Russia cancel its trade deal.

Finally, both Russia and the EU are more interested in achieving a deal on other ongoing trilateral discussions, those concerning the gas trade and the gas transited to the EU via Ukraine. Russia is sending signals that it is willing to strike some compromise on this trade area, which is vital to its stagnant economy and to a Gazprom embattled by low oil prices, by its failure to build the South Stream pipeline through Southeast Europe, and by Brussels' antitrust charges filed on April 22. The EU's own interest is to ensure Russia continues to supply gas via Ukraine. Failing to secure a deal on the DCFTA is a minor price to pay for this.

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#4
Kyiv Post
April 23, 2015
Editorial
Striking distance

If the West is right, Russians are not only well inside Ukraine with thousands of soldiers and sophisticated military equipment, they are poised to deliver a crushing strike in the eastern Donbas if Vladimir Putin so chooses.

Meanwhile, in western Ukraine, a modest number of American trainers are starting to help Ukrainian troops improve their ability to defend themselvs and the nation.

Where this is heading is anybody's guess. We're back to Kremlin watching or, more specifically, Vladimir Putin-watching.

Stephen Sestanovich, a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, finds reason for optimism in Putin's annual call-in program earlier this month. He thought Putin struck a more conciliatory tone. He wrote: "No one should think Russian pressure on Ukraine is over, nor that Russian lying has ended...But Mr. Putin presents himself as someone more satisfied with the status quo, more ready to discourage new separatist offensives, more inclined to deflate Russia's nationalist hysteria just a little."

But, as Sestanovich writes, the West may find an outwardly more conciliatory Putin harder to combat than an openly hostile one.

Our position stands: Ukraine needs to stay on a perpetual war footing while fighting corruption. The West needs to give aid and military assistance contingent on a genuine uprooting of graft and oligarchic interests that have kept Ukraine impoverished. This is a marathon over values, not a sprint over tactics.

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 #5
The Economist
April 24, 2015
America's Ukrainian mission
All latest updates
Training wheels
Russia objects to American military trainers, but Ukraine's army has a long way to go

WITH American boots on the ground in Ukraine, Russia could not remain quiet. When American paratroopers began a training mission in western Ukraine earlier this week, the Kremlin said it could "destabilize the situation". Then the Russian defence ministry accused America of deploying the trainers to the conflict's front lines, and the foreign ministry declared that the peace process has hit a "dead end". American officials, in turn, claim that Russia is building up its forces along the border with Ukraine and increasing supplies to its separatist proxies, perhaps in preparation for a fresh offensive. A recent uptick in violence, especially near the prized port city of Mariupol, has already jangled Ukrainian nerves. While Russia may refrain from further action until after the European Union votes on whether to renew sanctions in July, few now expect the Minsk peace deal to endure.

For Ukraine, the training mission is more of a consolation than a prize. Kiev has long been lobbying, to no avail, for more robust Western military aid, including sophisticated weapons systems to counter the Russian-backed separatists. The American mission, dubbed Operation Fearless Guardian, will in fact do little to shift the balance of power on Ukraine's eastern front. Mr Poroshenko optimistically called the operation proof that the West is now ready to help defend Ukraine. "We are not alone," he said at the mission's opening ceremony, as torrential rain drenched the soldiers in attendance. But the trainers are not a harbinger of weapons to come, says Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

So far America has pledged only non-lethal aid, including armoured humvees and counter-mortar radar systems, and even that has been slow to arrive. "Were any of us to provide weapons to Ukraine, Russia could match that and then double that and triple that and quadruple that," Antony Blinken, an American deputy secretary of state, told German media last month. European leaders have been similarly cautious. Britain has dispatched trainers of its own, and Canada and Poland have promised similar missions. Officials in Washington have downplayed the training's importance, noting that America has trained Ukrainian troops in the past.

Nonetheless, the geopolitical context of the current mission is not lost on those on the ground. The training mission comes on the heels of America's Operation Dragoon Ride, which sent American armoured vehicles across NATO's eastern member states in response to Russia's presence in Ukraine.   "We knew the issues Ukraine is going through," said Capt. Matthew Carpenter of America's 173rd Airborne Brigade. Nearly 300 American paratroopers will work with some 900 Ukrainian national guardsmen over a six-month stretch, building up from individual weapons skills to company-level command and control. The training will also familiarise Ukraine with Western military mores. "We still do everything by the Soviet model," said Lt Col Sergei Moskalenko, commander of the Cheetah Battalion, an elite Ukrainian National Guard unit. "It will be interesting to see how it's done in the USA."

When Russia's "little green men" appeared in Crimea last spring, the Ukrainian government had only 6,000 battle-ready troops. For the first time in the country's post-Soviet history, defence suddenly became a top priority. Volunteer fighters, many fresh from the revolutionary clashes, enlisted in hastily-formed battalions. While the volunteers' enthusiasm has proved invaluable at the front, their independence carries its own risks. Some worry that the troops could act as private armies for their oligarchic backers. Other battalions have been condemned by Amnesty International for human rights abuses. Concern about control over the battalions is another reason Western leaders have resisted calls to arm Ukraine.

In response, the Ukrainian government has pushed to incorporate the volunteers into official structures. Most battalions now fall under the auspices of the Ministry of Defence or the Ministry of Interior. Volunteer fighters from the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and from Right Sector, a far-right nationalist group, have left their frontline positions. Dmitry Yarosh, the controversial leader of Right Sector, was recently made an advisor to the chief of Ukraine's general staff. The role of the battalions is "taking on a more civilised character," says Serhiy Zhurets of Defence Express, a Kiev-based military consultancy.

Yet integration is an ongoing process. Nominally belonging to the national guard or the army does not mean being fully under the government's control, notes Leonid Polyakov, a former deputy minister of defence. Front-line commanders still distrust the generals in Kiev, and many soldiers still depend on volunteer networks for their supplies. Despite the Kremlin's protests over America's training mission, the balance of forces remains firmly in Russia's favour.

 #6
Ukraine's President Says Martial Law Ready If Troops Attacked
April 24, 2015

(Bloomberg) -- President Petro Poroshenko said he's ready to place Ukraine under martial law if his army is attacked in the embattled eastern part of the country.

"If Ukrainian troops are attacked, we can do everything to introduce martial law," Poroshenko said in an interview with the Ukraina television channel on Friday. "I will submit to parliament a corresponding bill and the country will very quickly move to a military footing."

Poroshenko also said that international military drills in Ukraine in no way violate the Minsk cease-fire agreement.

Earlier, Ukraine urged its allies to send it weapons and accused rebels of persistent cease-fire violations as NATO warned about an increase in Russian troop movement both near and across the border.

Russia said it was concerned about U.S. plans to supply modern weaponry directly or indirectly to Ukraine and accused the government in Kiev of keeping an economic blockade of the rebel-held territories in the Donbas region. The yearlong separatist conflict is fueling diplomatic tensions as Ukraine and its allies in the European Union and the U.S. blame Russia for stocking the insurgency with supplies of arms, fighters and money. Leaders in Moscow deny any involvement.

"The Ukrainian army needs weapons to defend Ukraine," Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told lawmakers in Kiev on Friday. "And our western partners must hear: now the Ukrainian army is struggling not just for itself, but we are fighting for peace and stability in the EU."

Russia is staging a "substantial build-up" of forces near and in eastern Ukraine, which is undermining the cease-fire agreement signed in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said late on Thursday.

There's a "rising concern" about violence in eastern Ukraine and the presence of U.S. military instructors is "adding fuel to fire," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told reporters in Moscow.

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#7
Ukrainian presidential adviser suggests dissolving parliament, holding snap election

KIEV, April 24. /TASS/. Ukrainian presidential adviser Nikolay Tomenko has suggested Friday dissolving the parliament and holding snap elections.

"Verkhovna Rada is not working, there was no quorum yesterday to open a plenary session. Today, we see the same picture," Tomenko, who is an MP from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, said. "There are two ways - we either work or hold snap election in autumn," he stressed.

"There are deputies who have not appeared in the session hall for a year. Let those people do business, and be replaced with professional politicians," Tomenko suggested, adding that the number of parliament seats should be reduced from 450 to 300.

Opposition Bloc party has also spoken in favor of holding snap election. Similar suggestions were voiced by Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna party and Oleh Lyashko's Radical Party
 

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 #8
Washington Post
April 26, 2015
Ukraine's military mobilization undermined by draft dodgers
By Karoun Demirjian

KIEV, Ukraine - As the country's eastern conflict drags into a second year, Ukraine's military leaders are trying to learn from past mistakes.

They are trying to be better trained and prepared, because no one knows when the warm weather might push this frozen conflict with pro-Russian separatists into all-out war again. And they are calling up the able-bodied men of Ukraine in droves to turn the military that had only 6,000 battle-ready troops before the start of this conflict into a standing force a quarter-million strong.

But not everyone is heeding the call to arms.

"I decided a long time ago that I wouldn't respond to the order," said Igor, a 25-year-old worker with a nongovernmental organization within Kiev, who received a draft summons in February. "I am not at all interested in participating in such a conflict. They should have been acting much more effectively to have fewer victims - I don't want to end up on the victim list myself."

The prospective soldiers in this article spoke on the condition that their last names be withheld because of the risk of penalties if they were to be identified as draft dodgers.

Igor is, by most measures, a shoo-in for the service. He's a reserve officer, a radio specialist, and he participated in the 2013-2014 protests on Kiev's Independence Square.

But between one-third and one-half of the more than 6,000 deaths in the Ukrainian conflict were in the military, and Igor cites systemic problems - such as draft commanders who ask for bribes, and commanders, including the president, who maintain Russian business ties while asking soldiers to die for Ukraine - as reasons why he and many others cannot bring themselves to serve.

"We do have some problems in the mobilization," acknowledged military spokesman Vladislav Seleznev, when asked about cases like Igor's. "That's why we are trying to strike a balance: From one side, the government provides benefits to those defending the country; from the other, there are very harsh criminal penalties for draft dodgers."

Rank-and-file soldiers can make upwards of $200 a month, with commanders eligible for far more. But those who shirk the call to duty - or go AWOL, as about 13,000 have - risk fines and years of jail time. In one recent case, a journalist speaking out publicly against the draft was charged with treason.

But that isn't enough to scare many potential draftees from dodging.

"I would rather sit in prison for three years - and be fed and secure - than serve," said Andrey, 26, a metal plant worker who was drafted in March. "After a whole year of this government, we still have to work for two days to buy a loaf of bread. I don't want to go fight for that kind of government."

Andrey is from Slovyansk, an eastern Ukrainian city that came under heavy assault last summer, with troops eventually wresting the city from pro-Russian rebels. But the local population's sympathies are still divided, and of the approximately 40 people Andrey knows who recently received draft orders, he says only one is actually responding.

"We were fighting for autonomy, for the right to live and work in our own region. When the army came, they just bombarded us for two months in a row," Andrey said. "And now I'm supposed to go and fight for them? I don't think so."

Though penalties for draft dodging are steep, the process is fairly straightforward. Summons are sent to the city where one is registered - normally a birthplace or place of work. But if one has moved or has a job that is not officially registered, it is easy to hide in plain sight, as Andrey and Igor are doing.

The military says it has completed about three-quarters of the planned mobilization, now in its fifth wave, with a sixth already proposed. Response rates vary widely across the country, however: Igor's home region of Kharkiv, for example, has the most abysmal turnout, with only about 17 percent of those receiving draft orders responding. Meanwhile Lviv, in the far west, reportedly boasts the highest response rate, with near full turnout.

But even with the majority of draftees turning up for medical checks, the military is worried. Rotating soldiers off the battlefield, they expect only 15-20 percent to return voluntarily. New soldiers get only 26 days of general training, plus a week or two to practice their specialization. So without a steady stream of recruits, they worry that the quality of soldiers could drop. Only 1 in 8 troops is a volunteer, not nearly enough to make up the recruitment gap.

"The more people that will respond to the mobilization, the better chance we have of sending the most prepared, motivated and best soldiers to the ATO zone," Seleznev said, referring to the combat zone. "It's not right that some go to defend the motherland and others hide in bushes, living their lives and not defending the country."

But military experts say the recruitment system suffers most from bad management; the legacy of years of post-Soviet decimation.

"We don't understand what we are fighting for, and the government does not inform people about the goals of this war," said Aleksey Arestovich, a military expert based in Kiev, who added that after a year of hostilities, the conflict is still not officially a "war." Despite the databases the administration is building of soldiers, their skills and their defections, Arestovich pointed out that specialists are often ignored in favor of funneling more people to the front line, and families of slain soldiers often must fight to get their promised benefits.

As the Interior Ministry starts to prosecute no-shows, human rights advocates are also speaking in defense of the dodgers.

"We can't win only by the numbers, we have to win by the quality of our soldiers," said Oleksandra Matviychuk of the Center for Civil Rights in Kiev, arguing that the military should offer more draftees noncombat roles. "I don't believe people forced to be in the army can effectively defend the population."

Maxim, 23, who was drafted in the fall, is a Seventh-day Adventist, and thus, a pacifist. But he is also a competitive athletic fighter, which he fears will make a military review board skeptical of his religious convictions.

More pressingly though, Maxim doesn't want to go to war because his wife is five months pregnant with their first child. If he has to, he said, he would try to get a Romanian passport, for which he is eligible as a resident of a border town.

"You know, I would go serve as something like a medical worker," Maxim said. "But I don't have that education. And after the physical exam, I know where they would send me - straight to the infantry."

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 #9
Ukrainian Army commanders asking Donbass self-defence to open fire at Azov battalion

MOSCOW, April 25. /TASS/. Ukrainian Armed Forces' officers use open communication lines to make contacts with the officers of self-defence forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, in the course of which they ask to open fire at the highly controversial Azov 'volunteer' battalions, Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the DPR Defence Ministry said.

They accompany their requests by references to the battalion's total uncontrollability.

"Commanders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to provoke our servicemen for violations of the ceasefire regime," Basurin said. "These army men are asking the officers of the DPR defence forces to open mortar or artillery fire at the positions of the Azov battalion under the pretext that Azov is uncontrollable and mistreats the local population aggressively."

Self-defence units have ignored these provocative appeals until now and continue ignoring them, he indicated.

"It's highly advisable for the Ukrainian Armed Forces to put things into order within their formations with the aid of their own means and capabilities," Basurin told the Donetsk News Agency.

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 #10
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
April 25, 2015
The fourth wave of mobilization in Ukraine is ready for war
Yurasumy [http://yurasumy.livejournal.com/504843.html]
Translated from Russian by Kristina Rus

Following the visit of Poroshenko to the landfill near Nikolayev.

Poroshenko visited in Nikolayevshchina (Nkolaev region), where he watched UAF exercises:

"The Ukrainian army today is one of the most battle-ready, said President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko during his visit to the Nikolaev region, reported the press-service of the head of state.

"'The lion's share of military personnel is from the fourth wave of mobilization. Look what a high level was achieved in just two months', - said Poroshenko.

"'We are preparing for the defense of our country. On the territory of Ukraine there is now an aggressor, the enemy and we must do everything possible on our end in order to ensure effective defense. Those who participated in these exercises clearly demonstrated a high level ... the Ukrainian army today is one of the most battle-ready,' concluded the President."

A basic report which is notable for three interesting points:

"The Ukrainian army is today one of the most battle-ready"

 Apparently it is supposed to sound like a threat, but those who were assessing UAF in the summer of 2014 and today will say that now we see only pitiful remnants of what was once - the armed forces. Equipment, morale, procurement - everything fell so low that it cannot be compensated by any  increase in numbers. And whoever claims that the UAF is one of the most powerful armed forces (even in Europe) is either a liar or an optimist.

"The lion's share of military personnel is from the fourth wave of mobilization"

 Seems like these were the final exercises, which means that in a few weeks the fourth wave will be at the front. Practically the military off season will be over. Wounds licked. But according to reports the army of the summer of 2015 will be even less morally fit than the army of the winter 2014-2015. It appears that by this time all the units of NAF will also be prepared. And the war will become possible.

"We are preparing for the defense of our country".

The campaign has been proclaimed. In the summer Poroshenko spoke about the restoration of constitutional order. Now about defense. Actually, all the recent reforms of UAF point to preparations for defense.

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#11
No Non-Military Solution to Russian-Ukrainian War Possible, Illarionov Says
Paul Goble

Staunton, April 27 - Yesterday, Yuri Lutsenko, the leader of the Poroshenko Bloc in the Verkhova Rada, said that the probability of the renewal of military actions in eastern Ukraine was "more than 80 percent," a statement that underscores analyst Andrey Illarionov's argument in Tallinn that "there is no non-military solution" for the war now going on in Ukraine.

Speaking on Inter television, Lutsenko said that pro-Moscow forces in eastern Ukraine were now at the highest level of readiness for an attack they had ever been since Vladimir Putin launched his intervention in Ukraine and that it seems clear that "the fighters are preparing for an attack (pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2015/04/26/7065949/).

eanwhile, speaking at the Lennart Meri Conference in the Estonian capital, Illarionov argued that the war in Ukraine will end only as the result of the use of force: either more by Russia or by Ukraine backed by the West (rus.postimees.ee/3169319/illarionov-v-voennom-rossijsko-ukrainskom-protivostojanii-net-nevoennogo-reshenija).

In support of his argument, the Russian analyst pointed to the very different outcomes in Putin's war against Georgia in 2008 and his current aggression against Ukraine. In August 2008, US President George W. Bush moved American forces toward Georgia, a step that "helped stop the Georgian war."

But, he continued, "President Barack Obama on February 27-28, 2014, excluded the use of force when Russia began the seizure of Crimea." That constituted "a clear signal" to Putin that the West would not act and that he could continue to pursue with impunity his aggression against Ukraine more generally.

According to Illarionov, "Putinis seeking to restore the war established in 1945 in Yalta and Potsdam," a world in which the big powers can "ignore small states" and act according to a system in which whatever any one of the great powers can act in the same way that another great power does.

"If the US does something," in this view, "then Russia immediately acquires the right to do the same thing. If the US uses military force, Russia can use it as well. If the West recognizes Kosovo, then Russia gains the right to recognize Abkhazia and South Osetia" - and so on, Illarionov suggests.

In his remarks, the Russian analyst made two additional points worthy of note. On the one hand, he said, "Putin is dividing Europe in two: the Anglo-Saxon countries and the so-called front line states (the Baltics, Romania and Poland) who are enemies which must be subordinated, and the countries of continental Europe who are friends."

And on the other hand, Illarionov said, "there is no other leader who has been using so any different means" to achieve his ends: military, economic, information, terrorist and so on. Putin has combined the all and with great success: By offering deals to the Europeans, he has succeeded in creating a situation in which almost no one talks about Crimea anymore.

In today's "Yezhednevny zhurnal," Aleksandr Golts suggests that the discussions at the Lennart Meri Conference may point to dramatic changes in the West's response to Russia's actions in Ukraine, changes that Moscow has brought on itself by its actions and will have no one but itself to blame (ej.ru/?a=note&id=27603).

The Russian analyst noted that at the conference there were repeated calls for NATO to immediately make Ukraine a member of the alliance as "the only chance to stop Russian aggression." Given that Moscow moved in Ukraine to prevent that from happening, "this nightmare" of the Kremlin is "becoming a reality."

And that is hardly the only place where the participants in the Lennart Meri Conference pointed to more changes ahead.  NATO has already agreed to put NATO forces in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on a rotating basis. At the conference, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves argued that having permanent NATO bases there should follow.

Those who think that the NATO-Russia treaty precludes this, Ilves said, are misinterpreting that agreement.  And Golts said that he "suspects that the time when the alliance will agree" with President Ilves' interpretation is "not far distant," another way in which Moscow has produced by its actions exactly what it said it was taking them to prevent.

"Finally," Golts writes, "in the course of the conference were expressed some truly revolutionary ideas. For example, about depriving the permanent members of the UN Security Council of a veto when they are involved in direct aggression and thus to create the possibility for their punishment."

"Of course," the Moscow author says, "it is quite easy to ignore all that was said at the conference in Tallinn. [NB: He spelled the Estonian capital with two N's, not one, as Russians typically do.] What won't these arrant Russophobes from the Baltics say! Only I suspect," Golts continues, "this is the first attempt to respond to Russia's actions in Ukraine." [NB: Here he uses "na" as Putin prefers rather than "v" as Ukrainians do.]

Note: The author of these lines presented the Lennart Meri lecture to this conference via Skype. It was entitled "Restoring or Renewing the Post-1991 Order: What are the Prospects?" I will be happy to send a copy to anyone who requests one by writing me at paul.goble@gmail.com.
 

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 #12
RFE/RL
April 26, 2015
'Men Return Completely Changed': Ukraine Conflict Fueling Surge In Domestic Violence

A Ukrainian group helping victims of domestic abuse says the conflict in eastern Ukraine has led to a dramatic upsurge in violence against women across the country.

Aliona Zubchenko, the spokeswoman for the Kyiv-based International Women's Rights Center La Strada, spoke to RFE/RL's Claire Bigg.

RFE/RL: La Strada says the number of women calling its hotline for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, and gender discrimination has spiked in recent months. How big is this increase?

Aliona Zubchenko: We took a total of 7,000 calls in 2014, 80 percent of which related to domestic violence. This year, the figure has risen more than twofold. In the first three months of this year, we had more than 2,600 calls.

RFE/RL: Your group blames mounting domestic violence on the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. How are the two connected?

Zubchenko: Women call and tell us that they were married for 15 years, that they had a good family, and that their husbands were never violent, never hit or insulted them. Then they left for the war and returned completely changed. They are violent. They beat the children. They beat their wives and drink. These women don't know what to do because they don't recognize the husbands they had before the war in these men.

RFE/RL: How do La Strada's psychologists explain this change of behavior in men who return from the fighting in eastern Ukraine? Can we talk about posttraumatic stress disorder?

Zubchenko: We are talking about posttraumatic stress disorder -- 100 percent. We are talking about psychological trauma, when people there resort to violence for several months because it's the only way to survive, and then come back home. They have become used to violence and consider it normal, so they continue to display this behavior, this time with their families.

There are situations when men come back disabled after being held captive. We have cases where men were castrated. This is a massive blow for men. We have calls from parents whose 20-year-old sons committed suicide after being held captive and castrated, because they could no longer live with this. But there are other situations when men who have lost their sexuality try to compensate by being violent.

Very often, domestic violence is connected to the fact that men start abusing alcohol after returning. This is a big problem.

RFE/RL: Do soldiers and fighters seek psychological help, too, or are they reluctant to do so?

Zubchenko: There is a stereotype in Ukrainian society that real men do not consult psychologists, that the best psychologists are a friend and a bottle of vodka. Men think this will make them feel better, which is a huge mistake. When they are drunk, they can become violent.

RFE/RL: The problems you mention concern the families of men who returned from eastern Ukraine. What about local men who fought, or are still fighting, on the side of the insurgents? Do you receive any calls from eastern Ukraine?

Zubchenko: We get some calls from occupied territories, but not enough to understand whether we are dealing with isolated cases or with a widespread problem. In addition, neither we nor Ukrainian authorities have access to the occupied territories, so we can only guess what is happening there.

We have, however, received calls from women who were subjected to sexual violence in the occupied territories. They say separatists seize women, lock them up in basements, and sexually abuse them. Unfortunately, we can only listen to these calls. Our psychologists can offer counseling to these women, but we cannot turn to law-enforcement authorities because they don't have access to these areas.

RFE/RL: Has your hotline received many such calls?

Zubchenko: About 15, but not everyone is able to get in touch with us. Our hotline is a nationwide Ukrainian hotline, but not all operators work in the Luhansk and the Donetsk regions. Out of Ukraine's three main operators, two don't work there. In Crimea, Ukrainian operators don't work at all. So Crimean women cannot call to tell us what is happening there.

RFE/RL: Psychological help aside, are there enough shelters in Ukraine for women who flee severe domestic violence?

Zubchenko: We have a network of shelters for victims of domestic violence. There are shelters in every region, but on average they can each accommodate about 30 women and children. The problem is that there is usually only one shelter per region, and some regions have 10 million residents. So 30 beds, of course, are completely inadequate for a population of 10 million.

RFE/RL: What are your thoughts about the recent surge in domestic violence? In your opinion, is it a temporary byproduct of the conflict or will it have long-lasting effects on Ukrainian society?

Zubchenko: We are very worried about the women who call us, but also about those who don't call us. While the women who call us receive some kind of support, those who either are unable to call us or don't know where to seek help remain alone with their problems. This is very dangerous.

We can assume that the number of suicides or murders will rise, because what begins as minor violence against women often grows into murder. The war in eastern Ukraine continues. The number of displaced people and soldiers who fought there will continue to grow. The consequences of what is now taking place in our country will be felt for decades.

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#13
Fort Russ
http://fortruss.blogspot.com
April 26, 2015
Lutsenko: In Western Ukraine People are Talking About the Need to Divide the Country
Rusvesna - Translation - Joaquin Flores

Ordinary people living in Western Ukraine, are now seriously discussing the need to divide the country.

This was stated by the former head of the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, one of the closest associates of Yulia Tymoshenko, Yuriy Lutsenko.

"This weekend I was in Western Ukraine - in Ternopil, Lviv, in Lutsk, and Rivne. I saw the situation among the people. I was mostly in bookstores and talking with sellers. With intensity I heard the question numerous times: 'Isn't it time already to divide the country?' - I've never heard of," he said, according to "Regnum".

"Today, they begin to say that the country they can not go on living together - or put up with each other, or resolve things. God forbid that politicians would talk about it, but it has begun to be spoken of among the common people "- also added Lutsenko
 

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#14
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
April 24, 2015
"Hybrid Warfare" Means Never Having to Provide Any Evidence
The claim Russia is not waging conventional war in Ukraine but a new type of "hybrid war" comes in very handy to western propagandists who can therefore establish Russian aggression without having to prove it
By Mark Chapman
[Links here http://russia-insider.com/en/who-you-gonna-believe-nato-or-your-lyin-eyes/6035]

The western media is abuzz with a new term that seems to be on the lips of every State Department staffer, every western journalist, every compliant NATO puppet and cheerleader abroad and, of course, in Kiev, ground zero for Russian hatred on the planet: Hybrid Warfare.

This, we are told, is how Russia is managing the battle in the east of Ukraine so that the Ukrainian capital - despite its highly professional, well-equipped and motivated army - cannot work its will on the easterners and bring them to heel as productive and happy contributors to a new European Union state and aspirant to NATO membership.

It must strike the thinkers among the greater public - and there are some - that "hybrid warfare" is an awfully convenient term which allows the west to prance about and yell that Russia is in the war up to its eyes...without ever having to offer any proof. What? Of course we don't have any pictures, you dolt: it's hybrid warfare, ever hear of it? Well, then - pay attention to current events, try and keep up, and don't be such a Kremlin apologist.

The big-forehead types do not tell us how Russia can be foiling the Forces of Love and Understanding in Kiev so that they cannot crush the east - through hybrid warfare, naturally, in which their troops remain invisible - but does not take advantage of pivotal decisive defeats like Ilovaisk and Debaltseve to push the eastern salient to the doorstep of Kiev itself.

God knows a flock of armored budgies would be as effective at stopping them as the Ukrainian army if they chose to commit their allegedly limitless Russian reserves, and you would think an invisible army would be quite a useful asset. Yet for some reason, they choose to fight only when attacked.

It would probably not require much of a strategic imagination to proffer a solution whereby the Ukrainian army stopped attacking, and it seems reasonable to conclude that this would result in fewer deaths.

Now, I had a point when I came in here....Oh, yes. Hybrid warfare. This concept was discussed at length in a clip one of the readers posted (thanks, Warren), which is a recording of a presentation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington.

It is moderated by Paul Schwartz, a Senior Associate in the organization's Russia and Eurasia Program. Mr. Schwartz is well-known in Washington circles, having been employed at various high-level IT positions in the Defense Department, including the F-22 program, and an attorney with the international law firm Hogan & Hartson.

His guest needs no introduction - co-author of the Clark-Karber Report, purveyor of fake photos of advancing Russian tank columns to the Senate Armed Services Committee and author of research on China's nuclear weapons capability in 2011 that has been referred to alternately as a "goat rodeo" and "lazy and incompetent" which was apparently traced to an article plagiarized by a student from a single posting on a Usenet forum in 1995.

I would not want to create the impression that Dr. Karber is some kind of pompous nut, while Mr. Schwartz is a more or less sensible fellow who just got dragged along by the undertow. Both are zealots for American dominance of every corner of the globe, and each is as nutty as a pistachio plantation.

Listen, perhaps with your mouth agape in awe at the sheer effrontery, as Paul Schwartz - under the guise of "providing context"- reels off a laundry list of Russian crimes.

Russia, he tells us, is challenging the west in Eastern Ukraine with a "bewildering mix of military and non-military tactics".

Russia, he says, launched a "stealth campaign" in Crimea. Uh huh; it's called "polling".

Russia determined through opinion polls that a great majority of Crimeans wished to rejoin the Russian Federation and provided some forces to ensure the process of declaring independence, conducting a referendum and making application for acceptance into the Russian Federation was conducted peacefully, as Kiev demonstrably would have attempted to prevent the transition by military force. Russia did not have to teleport any troops in, as many were already stationed at Sevastopol, and an agreement between the two countries permitted Russia to quarter 20,000 troops. Nothing like that number was used, while the Crimeans have an indigenous defense force as well whose participation, if any, was not accounted for.

He acknowledges the presence of volunteers from Russia in Eastern Ukraine, but slips in that they are "dispatched" to Donbas, thereby implying they are not volunteers at all but are being sent on orders from their government. No evidence has been provided at all of a regular Russian army presence, none.

The USA boasts of a worldwide communications snooping network that renders secrecy obsolete, yet cannot provide any communication intercepts which prove the presence of regular Russian forces - not unit callsigns, military brevity codewords or operation names - nothing, while the clumsy attempts of the Ukrainians to cobble together incriminating conversations between the rebels, such as those admitting to having shot down MH-17, are frankly embarrassing.

That this is so is witnessed by their having been quietly dropped and never formally introduced as evidence other than the occasional trial balloon by Jen Psaki in State Department briefings.

The USA has a photo-reconnaissance satellite capability which is able to deliver astonishingly detailed photographic evidence of whatever was seen by the satellite - frankly ludicrous "evidence" introduced by U.S Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt came from Digital Globe and was released on his Twitter account.

The attempt to cement them as hard evidence in the minds of the public, attempted as usual by Jen Psaki in the comedy roadshow that has evolved from what used to be State Department pressers, had to be seen to be believed. Well, anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature would not believe it, but I guess I should have said it had to be seen to be appreciated.

What else you got, Paul? Oh, yes, this one was my favourite - Russia is using "economic measures", such as threatening to cut off oil and gas to Ukraine and western Europe, as well as denying its markets to the flow of Ukrainian goods.

At the same time as Russia is under siege by the west in the form of sanctions which are designed to wreck its economy, Moscow is despicable for threatening to cut off oil and gas to Ukraine and Western Europe. Ukraine flatly refused to pay for oil and gas; Russia bent over backward to accommodate it and never threatened Western Europe with a gas shutoff at all, not ever. Show me.

Russia warned Western Europe that if it continued to support Ukraine's shenanigans in the negotiation process, it could not answer for the reliability of gas flows through its chosen transit country, and Brussels' response was to kick up such a big stink about South Stream that Russia was forced to cancel it. We're not imbeciles; we haven't forgotten already.

Washington and the west said not a word against Kiev shutting off water and electricity to Crimea and Eastern Ukrainian cities. I wouldn't be surprised if it were a western idea.

Regarding denying Ukrainian industry access to its markets, yes, there was one that made me laugh out loud. After Yanukovych broaching the possibility of Ukraine striking some sort of trade deal which would allow it to be a bridge between the European Union and the Eurasian Union and being flatly told by Brussels "It's us or them" - after volumes of information being made available that warned Russia was not going to be trapped into a position whereby it had to finance the birth of Ukraine as an exclusively European partner, after clear studies that showed not only Russia's importance as a trade partner but the manifest unwillingness of the EU to buy more Ukrainian goods, it is now dastardly behavior on Russia's part to close its markets to trade with a country whose government has identified Russia as its existential enemy, put together Maidan rah-rah beat poetry that insists the two countries cannot be allies and vowed to put up a wall along the entire common border. Then to approving noises from the USA, playing the part of the Roman audience in the stadium, watching gladiators tear each other to pieces for its amusement. Announced by a stuffed-shirt know-nothing from a U.S. think tank, which apparently does not know or care that cutting off a civilian population from its water supply is a direct violation of international humanitarian law.

Last, but not least, Russia attempts to throw sand in the gears with "endless ceasefire negotiations". At just about that point, Schwartz's tongue should have erupted in boils, torn itself out of his mouth and run away yelping. What a piece of grotesquerie, laying bare for all to see the martial juggernaut the USA has become, that prefers war to the death to any form of negotiation. When its surrogates are winning, of course - the USA was all about negotiation when the hapless Ukrainian conscripts and pressed men, many with barely any training, were "cauldroned" at Ilovaisk and Debaltseve.

I'm not even going to get into that silliness about Russia launching cyber-attacks against Ukrainian government sites; not only does the USA offer no proof of Russia being the originator of such an attack, it does not even offer any proof that such attacks occurred and has picked up the lazy habit of simply repeating verbatim whatever Kiev tells it.

I am likewise not going to cover "Doctor" Karber's contribution in any detail; suffice it to say, he is as incurious a fool, as a researcher, as the most staggeringly obtuse display by the pride of The Guardian's stable, Shaun Walker or Luke Harding. But they are only reporters; they're supposed to report what they discover, and it's up to you what to make of it. Karber is supposed to be an academic and an expert, and he is regularly called upon to provide assessments upon which U.S. foreign policy turns.

If a reporter made a complete nonsense of determining the number of nuclear weapons held by China, for example, inflating the actual total by a factor of 10, he would just be laughed at. In the case of analysis, though, the USA might unnecessarily spend billions countering a threat that was never there, based on the advice of a partisan hack, and there is nothing funny about that.

It's also worth repeating that the Clark-Karber Report, co-authored by Karber, recommended that NATO allies immediately start shunting ex-Soviet military equipment in their inventories - such as MiG fighters and T-72 tanks - on the down-low to Kiev as of April 8th (the date of the report), when the Donbas had only declared itself independent the day prior. So much for negotiation.

Mind you, the U.S. government wants to be fooled, provided that being tricked lets it do what it wants, so that it can afterward ruefully admit it should not have done what it did; ah, well, no use crying over spilt milk, what? All water under the bridge now.

Symptomatic of this is the blather by "scholars" in "research papers" like the one Tony Blair used to substantiate the urgency of the UK's joining with the USA in the invasion of Iraq.

This one, for example, is authored by Alexander Golts and Heidi Reisinger. Alexander Golts is an "independent military expert" who specializes in sneering at and mocking every piece of military hardware Russia makes, snickering that it is built by alcoholics and pseudo-engineers with fake diplomas. Heidi Resinger needs no introduction other than the previous research papers she has written or co-written for NATO, such as "Ukraine and its Neighbor - How to Deal with Aggressive Russia". Right up front, they drag out the popular trope:

    "The successor states of the Soviet Union are sovereign countries that have developed differently and therefore no longer have much in common.

    'Some of them are members of the European Union and NATO, while others are desperately trying to achieve this goal.

    'Contrary to what Professor John Mearsheimer may suggest. In his article, "Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's Fault" he argues that NATO has expanded too far to the East, "into Russia's back yard" against Moscow's declared will, and therefore carries responsibility for recent events; however, this seems to ignore that NATO was not hunting for new members, but found them knocking at its door."

Just like a puppy that followed NATO home - who can resist a puppy? Everybody who's not in NATO wants to be in NATO, and we have to take them in if they ask. Except we don't.

Article 10 is quite specific on the subject, and I'll repeat it so you can judge for yourself;

    "The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty.

    "Any State so invited may become a Party to the Treaty by depositing its instrument of accession with the Government of the United States of America.

    "The Government of the United States of America will inform each of the Parties of the deposit of each such instrument of accession."

It says you have to be invited, and by unanimous consent. Knock on the door all you like. Russia indicated it was interested in joining NATO and was told not in your wildest dreams, not ever.

Despite the arguments that it was a massive military power which, with its military weight thrown behind NATO, would have ensured the security of the North Atlantic area one hell of a lot more than Latvia, with its 1,250 soldiers, 3 tanks and zero aircraft. Not to mention Russia's material wealth and bountiful resources. Latvia, welcome aboard; Russia, beat it.

It seems to me broadly apparent that the Baltic states were not admitted to NATO under any apprehension that they would contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area, and in fact Europe now wrings its hands day in and day out over what a liability they are, and how it is helpless to protect them unless it immediately embarks upon a massive rearmament program costing billions upon billions.

That notwithstanding, NATO announced - apparently with a straight face - that it was satisfied the admission of Latvia would enhance the security of the North Atlantic area. I'd like to know how. That wasn't a very sensible decision, was it? Whose idea was that?

Bill Cinton's. In 1999, Johanna Granville, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Clenmson University, wrote an article entitled, "The Many Paradoxes of NATO Enlargement"; it was a pros-and-cons piece which made clear, among other things, that on April 30th, 1998, the United States Senate ratified the Clinton Administration's decision to enlarge NATO by a vote of 80 to 19.

Please note this was not a vote by all the NATO states, but a vote by the U.S. Senate, and please further note it took place in 1999, and the Baltic States did not join NATO until 2003. In case it is not clear to even the least perceptive, the argument that NATO must admit states who are knocking at the door and is in no way hunting for new members is just one more lie in a veritable tapestry of lies.

Ms. Granville's article points out, significantly, that deliberately antagonizing a nation which possesses a dangerous ability to project military power far beyond its own borders "violates a key strategic principle, which is that one should never take on more enemies than necessary at any given moment".

As if that were not enough, there were wide discrepancies between the polling conducted by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and national polls. A USIA poll found that 60% of the Czech Republic's population supported NATO membership, while a Czech poll reported only 50.1%, well outside the margin of error, were supportive.

Poland joined NATO near the end of 1997, but the USA was conducting polling of the electorate in 1996. This found that 83% supported membership in NATO. But support dropped off precipitously when specific questions - such as "Would you be willing to spend more money on the military in order to meet NATO standards" - were asked; in that instance, 74% said "No" compared to 16% "Yes".

And the Poles were the warriors of the bunch; in Hungary 87% said "No" to 9% "Yes", and in the Czech Republic it was 84 to 11. It was abundantly clear that, just as in the more recent case of Ukraine, people wanted to join the European Union, not NATO, and their reasons were almost entirely motivated by a desire for economic stability and well-being.

    "The idea to expand NATO arose perhaps more from the threat of extinction than from the need to counter a significant, identifiable adversary. NATO planners realized that if they did not find some larger raison d'etre in this post-cold war era, they might lose their jobs; "expand or die" was the slogan. But NATO may very well expand and die."

Russia's role, consequently, is to play the threat, the bogeyman; it's the perennial whipping boy used by NATO to harangue its member states to spend more and more on defense budgets to buy more and more tanks and planes and artillery pieces.

Russia will never be regarded as anything but an adversary by NATO because it is too big and powerful for NATO to control; and in the end, all NATO members serve the will of Washington and Brussels.

Russia might even agree to do that, but the point is that Washington and Brussels could not force it if it did not agree to comply. The present feeble posturing over sanctions is a ringing testimony to that reality.

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 #15
Kyiv Post
April 27, 2015
Ukraine-EU Summit starts in Kyiv as Russian forces in east show readiness for combat
by Mark Rachkevych

Combined Russian-separatist forces are at their "highest level" of combat readiness while Ukraine faces mounting pressure to cede more power to regional governments in the east as a summit with the European Union starts in Kyiv.

Citing Western and domestic intelligence, pro-presidential lawmaker Yuriy Lutsenko said that separatist forces are at their "maximum level of readiness to launch an offensive," according to an interview on Inter TV channel on April 26.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe the same day noted the "most intense shelling in Shyryokyne since fighting began in the area in mid-February." Shryrokyne is only 10 kilometers east of the strategic, government-controlled Azov Sea port city of Mariupol with 500,000 residents.

OSCE monitors saw 11 tanks and four armored personnel carriers with infantry moving through separatist-controlled territory 15 kilometers north of the Shyrokyne hotspot. Over the last three days the OSCE observed "17 tanks, three self-propelled howitzers and 60 armored personnel carriers in the (self-proclaimed) Donetsk People's Republic-controlled area 50 kilometers north of Shyrokyne."

One Ukrainian soldier was killed and seven wounded in the last 24 hours, according to the military's Facebook page on the morning of April 27. Pro-Kyiv forces faced 12 attacks from 120-millimeter mortars, seven from 122-millimeter mortars, and five from 152-millimeter mortars in the past 48 hours.

Combined Russian-separatist forces used Grad rocket launchers twice on Ukrainian positions near Hranitne in Donetsk Oblast, Col. Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said at a briefing in Kyiv on April 26.

The escalation coincides with news that diplomats from key EU countries are urging Kyiv to transfer more authority to regional governments during the April 27 summit with the 28-nation political bloc.

Officials in the United Kingdom, France and Germany want Kyiv to implement the political clauses of the Feb. 12 cease-fire agreement, in particular, decentralization of power to the regions that include areas controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists.

"German officials are talking to both sides, but especially to the Ukrainians because if they don't do what's necessary, the Russians will always have the possibility of renewing the conflict," the Financial Times reported, citing Stefan Meister of Berlin's DGAP foreign policy think tank.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called the demands "perfect hypocrisy," according to the Financial Times.

Earlier on April 21, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry accused Russia of not meeting any clause of the February truce brokered in Minsk, Belarus.

Kyiv accused Russian military and mercenaries of pulling the trigger every day, of not pulling back heavy weapons, of not giving OSCE monitors unfettered access to territory not controlled by the Ukrainian government, of bolstering its forces and of illegally sending over vehicle convoys into the country, Yevhen Perebiynis, foreign ministry spokesman, said at a briefing last week.

The EU's stance caused some experts to question whether Brussels actually has a long-term policy strategy on Ukraine. The country hasn't been stable, especially in the war-torn easternmost oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, since Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.

"The EU must actually ask itself...whether it is dealing with Ukraine through a prism of Russia or dealing with a sovereign Ukraine taken on its own merits," Judy Dempsey, non-resident senior associate at Carnegie Europe, told the Kyiv Post by phone. "If Brussels doesn't understand the nature and the huge dynamic of the crisis (in Ukraine) then why hold the summit in Kyiv - Ukraine is a huge existential, strategic and security issue for all of Europe."

Kyiv, according to experts, doesn't want to lose control of the provinces by moving ahead quickly with decentralization. Although Ukraine doesn't object to decentralization, and the Minsk truce agreement doesn't stipulate whether the measure should take place before or after local and regional elections take place, "pressure will likely be exerted in Kyiv this week for further compromise - whether (President Petro) Poroshenko can deliver on this without destabilizing Ukrainian domestic politics is open to question," Timothy Ash, head of emerging markets research at Standard Bank, said in an emailed statement.

Dempsey of Carnegie Europe said that Kyiv and Brussels "must be frank with each other" at the summit: "It's good for Kyiv to ask the EU what its long-term intention is."

At the summit in Kyiv, both sides are also expected to discuss Ukraine's progress in implementing reforms, including in energy, the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement that is supposed to fully go into effect on Jan. 1, 2016, and prospects for visa-free travel to the EU.

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 #16
Sputnik
April 27, 2015
EU is Critical of Ukraine's Unwillingness to Implement Minsk Agreement

The Kiev government constantly delays the implementation of the Minsk Agreement, causing disapproval among European countries.

Critical voices are increasingly heard among the EU countries regarding the unwillingness of the Ukrainian government to implement provisions of the Minsk Agreement, "Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten" reported.

It particularly concerns Ukraine's attempts to delay its implementation and reluctance to realize the decentralization agreed in Minsk.

Moscow is not in favor of reviewing or amending the Minsk agreements on Ukraine reconciliation that has already been agreed upon by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

German Foreign Ministry Walter Steinmeier called on the EU to involve Russia in the negotiation of the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement in order to show "the necessary flexibility" and to improve the political climate.

However, this move is rejected by Kiev as the Ukrainian government claims that Russia has no right to participate in the discussion of an agreement between the sovereign Ukraine and the EU, the German media source reported.

In February, foreign ministers of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, negotiated a ceasefire deal for the warring sides in Minsk, Belarus. The agreement stipulates full restoration of social and economic system in the country and implies decentralization of power in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

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#17
Business New Europe
www.bne.eu
April 27, 2015
COMMENT: It's just business for Ukraine creditors
Creditors trying to force Ukraine to honour its debts aren't doing Vladimir Putin's bidding, they're doing their job.
Mark Adomanis in Philadelphia

The Financial Times' normally outstanding "beyondbrics" blog published an extremely curious article the other day titled "Ukraine's creditors are pushing it towards default", written by David Clark, the chair of the Russia Foundation.

Now it shouldn't come as a shock that Ukraine and its creditors are having a disagreement: as the country's economy and finances have collapsed over the past year (output is down by roughly 10% while the hryvnia has lost more than 50% of its value versus the dollar), it has become increasingly likely that some sort of default was forthcoming.

By this point, in fact, some form of default (or "restructuring" if you prefer the parlance of the International Monetary Fund) is essentially inevitable. If you look at what Ukraine owes its creditors versus what its shrunken economy is able to generate in tax revenue, there's just no politically realistic way to reconcile the two. The fact that a lot of the debt in question is denominated in foreign currencies also does not help matters.

Creditors can tell all the world about the importance of honouring previous agreements, but Ukraine simply is not going to spend the majority of its government revenue servicing past foreign borrowing. Principal haircuts or delays in coupon payments are coming, whether the creditors like it or not.

But precisely what the coming default restructuring will look like is not an open and shut case. Obviously the creditors would prefer to change nothing, but when it comes to default restructuring there's a huge spectrum of possibilities running all the way from "the creditors get nothing", to "the creditors will eventually get all of their money, they will just have to wait a little while longer."

And, as the FT story makes clear, Ukraine's creditors are playing hardball (why they would be playing any game other than hardball is never made clear), coming into the negotiations with the position that there shouldn't be any restructuring at all. This, of course, is a negotiating tactic. Everyone (especially the creditors!) knows that Ukraine can't make all of the payments coming due. But by opening with that demand their position is clear: the restructuring of Ukraine's debt should be extremely modest.

Ukraine's government has other ideas. Some of the details are a little dicey, but based on media reports it sounds as if the new government in Kyiv is banking on $15.3bn in debt relief over four years. This "debt relief" is a large, but frequently unacknowledged, part of the IMF's "$40bn bailout," though the exact amount that was anticipated through restructuring has fluctuated. When you compare Kyiv's expectations of $15bn in relief versus the $19bn in interest and principal payments due over the same timeframe, you see just how far apart the two sides are.

Different banks have different estimates about precisely how large the haircuts would need to be to restore Ukraine to fiscal health. But the really interesting thing is that the FT article lambasted Ukraine's creditors as Putin's allies simply for doing their job. Does that sound too harsh? Well here is what the article said:

"Instead of trying to hold Ukraine's feet to the fire in the pursuit of short-term gain, creditors should recognise their long-term interest in helping it to achieve financial sustainability. Tomorrow's meeting should therefore be an opportunity for the IMF to inject some realism into this debate by making it clear that the only person who stands to gain from further uncertainty is Putin [my italics]".

This is a remarkable misunderstanding of the role of Ukraine's creditors. There is a suggestion that the creditors have some kind of interest in a prosperous, happy, "sustainable" Ukraine. They don't. The creditors have an interest in Ukraine paying its debts on time to the greatest extent possible. That's it. That's what a creditor is. The people who own Ukrainian bonds didn't buy those bonds for charity - they bought them because they calculated that they would be profitable investments. They have every right to try to make sure that that is the case! Rare indeed is it for the Financial Times to publish an attack on financial firms for having the temerity to try and make a profit.

Additionally, purely as a factual matter, there are plenty of people in addition to Putin who stand to gain from a deal that gives Ukraine very little relief on its debt obligations, namely the hedge funds who have been gobbling up Ukrainian bonds on the cheap. These funds are making a quite explicit bet that they will, in fact, be able to force Ukraine to honour its debts. Personally, I'm not sure I'd make that bet, but seeing the success that other, similar, funds have had with Argentina after its own default I can understand why it is a very attractive proposition.

Ukraine's government needs to nurture as much goodwill as it can among Western financiers since its survival, to a large extent, depends on that goodwill. Inaccurately calling them Putinist stooges is a really poor way to start.

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 #18
Interfax-Ukraine
April 23, 2015
Nationwide referendum will decide if Ukraine joins NATO - Poroshenko
 
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that Ukrainian membership of NATO will be decided by a nationwide referendum.

"The issue of Ukraine joining NATO is a fundamental one, I'll hold a referendum, let the people decide," the Twitter page of iTele French TV quotes Poroshenko as saying in an interview on Wednesday.

He said that Ukrainian membership of the European Union is the priority as Ukraine is a European country and "Europe can't be complete without Ukraine."

While discussing the aggression being waged against Ukraine, Poroshenko said that "today, the postwar peace and system of agreements [is being] let down."

Poroshenko said that the bloodshed continues in Donbas despite the ceasefire, adding that "the mechanisms to separate the opposing sides should be found to prevent shooting."

He went on to say that it was important to restore Ukraine's control over the state border and the lost territories, adding that Ukraine is a free and independent state and it will defend itself.

"Crimea will always be Ukrainian, it is an integral [part] of Ukraine," Poroshenko said, adding that he believes Ukraine will emerge victorious in the end.

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 #19
AFP
April 26, 2015
Ukraine marks 29 years since Chernobyl disaster

Slavutych (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukrainians on Sunday marked 29 years since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, placing wreaths and candles near the plant where work to lay a new seal over the reactor site has been delayed.

The explosion of reactor number four on April 26, 1986, spewed poisonous radiation over large parts of Europe, particularly Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

At 1:23 am (2223 GMT Saturday), the exact time of the explosion, hundreds of people placed flowers and candles in the dark at the foot of a monument in Slavutych, a town 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the plant.

Slavutych was built to rehouse Chernobyl workers who had lived near the plant and were forced to move further away after the disaster.

At the site of the plant itself, around 100 kilometres from Kiev, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko laid a wreath at a monument to the victims.

The human toll of the disaster is still disputed.

United Nations experts officially recognised 31 deaths among plant workers and firefighters directly linked to the blast.

But environmental group Greenpeace has suggested there would be around 100,000 additional cancer deaths caused by the disaster.

The Soviet authorities of the time dispatched hundreds of thousands of people to put out the fire and clean the site, without proper protection.

They hastily laid over the reactor site a concrete cover dubbed "the sarcophagus", which is now cracking and must be replaced.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in statement: "We stand in solidarity with the millions who have been traumatised by lingering fears about their health and livelihoods".

The UN Action Plan on Chernobyl will come to an end on December 31 and so UN officials have initiated a series of consultations "to define the vision for post-2016 international cooperation", it added.

Ban called for "a forward-looking strategy designed to further help the recovery of the affected areas and to work together for greater nuclear safety worldwide."

Poroshenko on Sunday inspected ongoing work on a new 20,000-tonne steel cover -- a project estimated to cost more than two billion euros ($2.2 billion).

It is financed by international donations managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The structure will contain technology that will act beneath the cover to decontaminate the area once the steel layer is in place. Officials say the new cover will last for 100 years.

The work is being done by Novarka, a joint venture by French companies Vinci and Bouygues.

Poroshenko said the new cover would "protect forever" against radiation from the site.

The work had been scheduled for completion by the end of this year but the EBRD said last year technical problems would delay it until late 2017.

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#20
Counterpunch.org
April 23, 2015
Cranking Up The Rhetoric
Weaponizing Information
by JOYCE NELSON
Joyce Nelson is an award-winning Canadian freelance writer/researcher and the author of five books.
[Footnotes here http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/23/weaponizing-information/]

In mid-April, hundreds of U.S. paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade arrived in western Ukraine to provide training for government troops. The UK had already started its troop-training mission there, sending 75 troops to Kiev in March. [1] On April 14, the Canadian government announced that Canada will send 200 soldiers to Kiev, contributing to a military build-up on Russia's doorstep while a fragile truce is in place in eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Embassy in Ottawa called the decision "counterproductive and deplorable," stating that the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine have "called for enhanced intra-Ukrainian political dialogue," as agreed upon in the Minsk-2 accords in February, and that it would be "much more reasonable to concentrate on diplomacy..." [2]

That viewpoint is shared by many, especially in Europe where few are eager for a "hot" war in the region. Nor are most people enamoured of the fact that more billions are being spent on a new arms-race, while "austerity" is preached by the 1 Per Cent.

But in the Anglo-American corridors of power (also called the Atlantic Alliance), such views are seen to be the result of diabolical propaganda spread through the Internet by Russia's "secret army." On April 15, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Ed Royce (R-Calif.), held a hearing entitled "Confronting Russia's Weaponization of Information," with Royce claiming that Russian propaganda threatens "to destabilize NATO members, impacting our security commitments." [3]

The Committee heard from three witnesses: Elizabeth Wahl, former anchor for the news agency Russia Today (RT) who gained her moment of fame by resigning on camera in March 2014; Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute (a right-wing UK think-tank); and Helle C. Dale, Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy at The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing U.S. think-tank. [4] The Foreign Affairs Committee website contains video clips of the first two witnesses - well worth watching if you enjoy Orwellian rhetoric passionately delivered.

The day before the hearing, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Royce wrote, "Vladimir Putin has a secret army. It's an army of thousands of 'trolls,' TV anchors and others who work day and night spreading anti-American propaganda on the Internet, airwaves and newspapers throughout Russia and the world. Mr. Putin uses these misinformation warriors to destabilize his neighbors and control parts of Ukraine. This force may be more dangerous than any military, because no artillery can stop their lies from spreading and undermining U.S. security interests in Europe." [5]

In her formal (printed) submission, Ms. Wahl referred to the Internet's "population of paranoid skeptics" and wrote: "The paranoia extends to believing that Western media is not only complicit, but instrumental in ensuring Western dominance."

Helle C. Dale warned of "a new kind of propaganda, aimed at sowing doubt about anything having to do with the U.S. and the West, and in a number of countries, unsophisticated audiences are eating it up."

Peter Pomerantsev claimed that Russia's goal is "to trash the information space with so much disinformation so that a conversation based on actual facts would become impossible." He added, "Throughout Europe conspiracy theories are on the rise and in the US trust in the media has declined. The Kremlin may not always have initiated these phenomena, but it is fanning them...Democracies are singularly ill equipped to deal with this type of warfare. For all of its military might, NATO cannot fight an information war. The openness of democracies, the very quality that is meant to make them more competitive than authoritarian models, becomes a vulnerability."

Chairman Royce called for "clarifying" the mission of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. federal agency whose networks include Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa), Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio and TV Marti). [6]

The BBG is apparently in disarray. According to Helle Dale's submission, on March 4, 2015, Andrew Lack, the newly hired CEO of BBG's International Broadcasting, left the position after only six weeks on the job. On April 7, the Director of Voice of America, David Ensor, announced that he was leaving.

Andrew Lack was formerly the president of NBC News. As Paul Craig Roberts has recently noted, Lack's first official statement as CEO of the BBG "compared RT, Russia Today, the Russian-based news agency, with the Islamic State and Boko Haram. In other words, Mr. Lack brands RT as a terrorist organization. The purpose of Andrew Lack's absurd comparison is to strike fear at RT that the news organization will be expelled from US media markets. Andrew Lack's message to RT is: 'lie for us or we are going to expel you from our air waves.' The British already did this to Iran's Press TV. In the United States the attack on Internet independent media is proceeding on several fronts." [7]

Ironically, however, it's likely that one of the biggest threats (especially in Europe) to Anglo-American media credibility about Ukraine and other issues is coming from a very old-fashioned medium - a book.
Udo Ulfkotte's bestseller Bought Journalists has been a sensation in Germany since its publication last autumn. The journalist and former editor of one of Germany's largest newspapers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, revealed that he was for years secretly on the payroll of the CIA and was spinning the news to favour U.S. interests. Moreover he alleges that some major media are nothing more than propaganda outlets for international think-tanks, intelligence agencies, and corporate high-finance. "We're talking about puppets on a string," he says, "journalists who write or say whatever their masters tell them to say or write. If you see how the mainstream media is reporting about the Ukraine conflict and if you know what's really going on, you get the picture. The masters in the background are pushing for war with Russia and western journalists are putting on their helmets." [8]

In another interview, Ulfkotte said: "The German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia. This is a point of no return, and I am going to stand up and say...it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do, and have done in the past, because they are bribed to betray the people not only in Germany, all over Europe." [9]

With the credibility of the corporate media tanking, Eric Zuesse recently wrote, "Since Germany is central to the Western Alliance - and especially to the American aristocracy's control over the European Union, over the IMF, over the World Bank, and over NATO - such a turn away from the American Government [narrative] threatens the dominance of America's aristocrats (who control our Government). A breakup of America's [Atlantic] 'Alliance' might be in the offing, if Germans continue to turn away from being just America's richest 'banana republic'." [10]

No wonder the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on April 15 had such urgent rhetoric, especially from Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the Legatum Institute - a London-based international think-tank whose motto is "Prosperity Through Revitalizing Capitalism and Democracy" and whose stated mission is "promoting prosperity through individual liberty, free enterprise and entrepreneurship, character and values."

At the end of March, Conservative London mayor Boris Johnson (named as a potential successor to David Cameron) helped launch the Legatum Institute's "Vision of Capitalism" speakers' series, whose rallying cry is "It's time for friends of capitalism to fight back." [11] The sponsor of the event was the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA), whose membership comprises "more than 500 influential firms, including over 230 private equity and venture capital houses, as well as institutional investors, professional advisers, service providers and international associations." It is not clear whether the BVCA is also sponsoring the Legatum Institute's "Vision of Capitalism" series.

The Legatum Institute was founded by billionaire Christopher Chandler's Legatum Ltd. - a private investment firm headquartered in Dubai. According to The Legatum Institute's website, its executives and fellows write for an impressive number of major media outlets, including the Washington Post, Slate, the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, New Republic, the Daily Telegraph, The Times, the London Review of Books, the Atlantic, and the Financial Times.

Nonetheless, the Legatum Institute's Peter Pomeranzev told the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs that "Russia has launched an information war against the West - and we are losing."
Chairperson Ed Royce noted during the hearing that if certain things are repeated over and over, a "conspiracy theory" takes on momentum and a life of its own.

Pomeranzev said the Kremlin is "pushing out more conspiracy" and he explained, "What is conspiracy - sort of a linguistic sabotage on the infrastructure of reason. I mean you can't have a reality-based discussion when everything becomes conspiracy. In Russia, the whole discourse is conspiracy. Everything is conspiracy." He added, "Our global order is based on reality-based politics. If that reality base is destroyed, then you can't have international institutions, international dialogue." Lying, he said, "makes a reality-based politics impossible" and he called it "a very insidious trend."

Apparently, Pomeranzev has forgotten that important October 2004 article by Ron Suskind published in the New York Times Magazine during the second war in Iraq (which, like the first, was based on a widely disseminated lie). Suskind quoted one of George W. Bush's aides (probably Karl Rove): "The aide said that guys like me [journalists, writers, historians] were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality...That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'." [12]

It's a rather succinct description of Orwellian spin and secrecy in a media-saturated Empire, where discerning the truth becomes ever more difficult.

That is why people believe someone like Udo Ulfkotte, who is physically ill, says he has only a few years left to live, and told an interviewer, "I am very fearful of a new war in Europe, and I don't like to have this situation again, because war is never coming from itself, there is always people who push for war, and this is not only politicians, it is journalists too...We have betrayed our readers, just to push for war...I don't want this anymore, I'm fed up with this propaganda. We live in a banana republic and not in a democratic country where we have press freedom..." [13]

Recently, as Mike Whitney has pointed out in CounterPunch (March 10), Germany's newsmagazine Der Spiegel dared to challenge the fabrications of NATO's top commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, for spreading "dangerous propaganda" that is misleading the public about Russian "troop advances" and making "flat-out inaccurate statements" about Russian aggression.

Whitney asks, "Why this sudden willingness to share the truth? It's because they no longer support Washington's policy, that's why. No one in Europe wants the US to arm and train the Ukrainian army. No wants them to deploy 600 paratroopers to Kiev and increase U.S. logistical support. No one wants further escalation, because no wants a war with Russia. It's that simple." [14] Whitney argued that "the real purpose of the Spiegel piece is to warn Washington that EU leaders will not support a policy of military confrontation with Moscow."

So now we know the reason for the timing of the April 15 U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, "Confronting Russia's Weaponization of Information." Literally while U.S. paratroopers were en route to Kiev, the hawks in Washington (and London) knew it was time to crank up the rhetoric. The three witnesses were most eager to oblige.
 

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