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Nine Dead as Mayhem Grips Ukrainian Capital - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 18 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Mayhem gripped the center of the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday evening as riot police officers tried to drive two armored personnel carriers through stone-reinforced barriers in Independence Square, the focal point of more than two months of protests against President Viktor F. Yanukovych.
  • In the course of wild day of parries and thrusts by the protesters and the police, the authorities in Kiev reported nine people killed, including two police officers. It was the bloodiest day of violence since President Yanukovych spurned a trade deal with Europe in November and set of protests that began peacefully but have since involved occasional spasms of deadly violence.
  • A phalanx of riot police officers, backed by a water cannon, pushed through protesters’ barricades near the Ukraina Hotel and fired tear gas as they advanced toward the center of the square. People covered in blood staggered to a medical center set up in the protest encampment.
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  • The police advance followed hours of street battles that destroyed hopes of an early political settlement, stirred in recent days by an amnesty deal. The resumption of violence underscored the volatility of a political crisis that has not only aroused fear of civil war in Ukraine but has also dragged Russia and the West into a geopolitical struggle redolent of the Cold War.
  • News agencies quoted antigovernment activists as saying three protesters had been killed, but there was no immediate confirmation of casualties. Olga Bogomolets, a doctor, told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper that three activists had died at a medical unit in the Officers’ House on Kriposniy Lane. She said that they had died from gunshot wounds to the head and heart and that tens of other people had suffered injuries.
  • Protesters reported that the police were using live ammunition, but this could not be confirmed. Cartridges scattered on the street suggested that most, if not all, of the firing from police lines involved rubber bullets.
  • “Kiev stand up! Kiev stand up!,” screamed a speaker on a stage in the square that, since late November, has been occupied by protesters.
  • “Extremists from opposition have crossed the line” and bought chaos to the center of Kiev, said the statement. “We warn hot irresponsible heads of the opposition — the government has forces to restore order.”
  • The 6 p.m. deadline passed with no sign of a push into Independence Square by Ukraine’s feared anti-riot force, known as Berkut. With the night sky darkened further by clouds of black smoke from burning rubber tires, police officers hammered their shields for several minutes as if Roman centurions preparing for battle. But they did not move forward.
  • “There should have been a resolution,” he said. “But they did not even put it up for a vote.”
  • The Russian aid signaled confidence from the Kremlin that important votes in Parliament expected this week to amend the Constitution and form a new cabinet will go in Russia’s favor. It also highlighted the absence of any clear promise of financial aid from the European Union or the United States, which have supported the opposition in Ukraine.
  • Mr. Yanukovych negotiated a $15 billion loan with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in December, and Ukraine received a first segment of this soon afterward when Russia purchased Ukrainian bonds worth $3 billion. But Russia suspended further payments last month after violent clashes broke out in Kiev and the pro-Russian prime minister resigned.Germany, which on Monday hosted a visit to Berlin by two of President Yanuvoych’s most ardent opponents, called for all sides to seek a peaceful solution to the explosive political confrontation.
  • “We call on the Foreign States and International Organizations to be objective and unbiased in assessing the internal developments in Ukraine,” the statement said. “We also expect that they will strongly condemn the unlawful activities of the radical forces.”
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Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history' | World news | T... - 0 views

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shared by Javier E on 22 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • google_ad_client = 'ca-guardian_js'; google_ad_channel = 'worldnews'; google_max_num_ads = '3'; // Comments Click here to join the discussion. We can't load the discussion on theguardian.com because you don't have JavaScript enabled. if (!!window.postMessage) { jQuery.getScript('http://discussion.theguardian.com/embed.js') } else { jQuery('#d2-root').removeClass('hd').html( '' + 'Comments' + 'Click here to join the discussion.We can\'t load the ' + 'discussion on theguardian.com ' + 'because your web browser does not support all the features that we ' + 'need. If you cannot upgrade your browser to a newer version, you can ' + 'access the discussion ' + 'here.' ); } comp
  • Britain could have lived with a German victory in the first world war, and should have stayed out of the conflict in 1914, according to the historian Niall Ferguson, who described the intervention as "the biggest error in modern history".
  • Britain could indeed have lived with a German victory. What's more, it would have been in Britain's interests to stay out in 1914,
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  • "Even if Germany had defeated France and Russia, it would have had a pretty massive challenge on its hands trying to run the new German-dominated Europe and would have remained significantly weaker than the British empire in naval and financial terms. Given the resources that Britain had available in 1914, a better strategy would have been to wait and deal with the German challenge later when Britain could respond on its own terms, taking advantage of its much greater naval and financial capability."
  • "Creating an army more or less from scratch and then sending it into combat against the Germans was a recipe for disastrous losses. And if one asks whether this was the best way for Britain to deal with the challenge posed by imperial Germany, my answer is no.
  • He continued: "The cost, let me emphasise, of the first world war to Britain was catastrophic, and it left the British empire at the end of it all in a much weakened state … It had accumulated a vast debt, the cost of which really limited Britain's military capability throughout the interwar period. Then there was the manpower loss – not just all those aristocratic officers, but the many, many, many skilled workers who died or were permanently incapacitated in the war.
  • He concedes that if Britain had stood back in 1914, it would have reneged on commitments to uphold Belgian neutrality. "But guess what? Realism in foreign policy has a long and distinguished tradition, not least in Britain – otherwise the French would never complain about 'perfidious Albion'. For Britain it would ultimately have been far better to have thought in terms of the national interest rather than in terms of a dated treaty."
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Converts Join With Militants in Kiev Clash - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The sotni, as the units are called, take their name from a traditional form of Cossack cavalry division. Activists estimate at least 32 such groups are in Kiev now, with more forming all the time.
  • Mr. Chontorog said that he had been in the square many times as a protester, but that after the violence on Thursday wanted to commit himself to the fight, which meant following orders from the commander of his hundred.
  • Thursday, a few antigovernment protesters could be seen carrying weapons. But with reports that the police have killed more than 70 demonstrators, most of the gunfire clearly came from the other side of the barricades. The interior minister reported that 29 police officers had been taken to the hospital and 67 had been captured by the protesters.
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  • Across Kiev and beyond, personal barriers that once defined the limits of behavior are crumbling, pushing this fractured but, until a few weeks ago, proudly peaceful nation into a spiral of chaos.
  • “What have humanism and pacifism ever brought to any nation?” he asked, clutching a battered metal shield and a metal rod, his soot-blackened face covered by a brown balaclava. “Revolutions are violent.”
  • “Nationalism is what I believe in,” said the man, who gave his name only as Nikolo. “The nation is my religion.”
  • But while the ranks of the protesters are diverse, the young men like Nikolo are the foot soldiers in a deepening civil conflict, the steel that refuses to bend under the pressure of thousands of riot police officers, volleys of live ammunition, snipers on rooftops and the looming threat of martial law.
  • The sotni provide a quasi-military discipline to the opposition’s street muscle. The commanders of the hundreds meet with other leaders of bands of young men under the umbrella of the Maidan Self Defense organization, which is led by Andri Parubi, a member of the opposition party Fatherland, though his control over some of the right-wing street groups appears tenuous at times.
  • But if these groups, whose members are far outnumbered by nonviolent protesters and also by the police, were the only ones driving Ukraine’s opposition to Mr. Yanukovych, the president could easily have defeated them weeks ago. Behind them stands a mass of others who recoil at pugnacious nationalism and scenes of mayhem but who now stand shoulder to shoulder with outfits like Right Sector, enraged that security forces resorted to violence to crack down on what had been a mostly peaceful protest in the mold of the Orange Revolution of 2004.
  • “We have a genetic memory of fascism here,” said Anatoly Skripnik, a businessman in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk.
  • Many protesters played down the role that the quasi-military nationalist groups, and history, are playing in the confrontation. “Some from the west are nationalists,” said Nikolai Visinski, an artist, standing on a barricade Thursday evening. “But we are all united in wanting a change of government. You don’t hear people yelling about Stepan Bandera. People just want to live in a free country.”
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In Ukraine's West, a Jumping-Off Point for Volunteers Heading to Kiev - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • This rebellious city in western Ukraine, which basically declared itself autonomous as the nation’s political crisis escalated into deadly violence this week, is the recruiting center for volunteers to staff the bloodied protester ramparts in the capital, Kiev, 330 miles to the east.
  • The deadly violence in Kiev energized the residents of Lviv, whose cultural and historic ties to
  • oland are strong and where a rugged nationalism has long been a dominant spirit
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  • As evening turned toward night, several hundred people assembled in the city center, on what they call their Maidan, watching broadcasts from Kiev. Hundreds of candles burned at makeshift memorials to people who had died in the violence.
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BBC News - Ukraine president warns Kiev protesters amid clashes - 0 views

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shared by B Mannke on 21 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has warned that the country's stability is threatened by continuing clashes between police and anti-government protesters in the capital Kiev.
  • The authorities say police have the right to use firearms in self-defence.
  • "now, when peaceful actions are turning into mass unrest, accompanied by riots and arson attacks, the use of violence, I am convinced that such phenomena are a threat not only to Kiev but to the whole of Ukraine".
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  • At least 30 people have been arrested in the clashes, and about 100 injured, including dozens of police officers.
  • Former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who was injured in clashes earlier this month, is among four representatives of the opposition who will be taking part in the talks with the authorities, according to the website for Ukraine's Fatherland Party.
  • The police have been firing plastic bullets, tear gas canisters and stun grenades, and even throwing back the cobblestones, he reports. EU foreign ministers also released a statement on Monday expressing "deep concern" about the new legislation, which they said was passed under "doubtful procedural circumstances".
  • A ban on the unauthorised installation of tents, stages or amplifiers in public places Provision to arrest protesters wearing masks or helmets A ban on protests involving more than five vehicles in convoy Hefty fines or jail for breaches of law
  • The group is not thought to support the idea of Ukraine joining the EU, but is against the government and sees the current unrest as an opportunity "to destroy the state skeleton", according to the BBC's Ukrainian Service.
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Ukraine Leader Says Tentative Accord Reached With Protesters - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych announced a tentative resolution on Friday to a crisis that has brought days of bloodshed to Ukraine. The agreement, which has yet to be signed, was announced after all-night talks with opposition leaders, Russian representatives and the foreign ministers of Germany, Poland and France.
  • Any deal that does not include the president’s departure, however, is unlikely to get very far with protesters and it was uncertain whether, in the event of a final deal, the protest movement’s political leadership could deliver the support of an angry base comprising many different groups and factions.
  • revious settlements and truces have broken down several times, though those previous deals were not reached with the high-level involvement of European Union and Russian mediators, as was the case in the overnight talks Friday. The statement from Mr. Yanukovych’s office said the talks had been “very difficu
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  • In one indication of a possible window for negotiations, the Ukrainian Finance Ministry formally canceled plans to issue the latest tranche of below-market-rate Eurobonds to the Russian government, the form of financial aid that the Kremlin had been providing.
  • The reported political agreement that could end the violence came after the bloodiest day in the three-month-old confrontation. On Thursday, security forces fired on masses of antigovernment demonstrators in the capital, Kiev, in a drastic escalation that left dozens dead and Ukraine reeling from the most lethal day of violence since Soviet times.
  • Many observers noted that Mr. Yanukovych’s office had announced an agreement but there was no immediate corroboration from the opposition.
  • The shootings followed a quickly shattered truce, with enraged protesters parading dozens of captured police officers through Kiev’s central square. Despite a frenzy of East-West diplomacy and negotiations, there was little sign that tensions were easing.
  • There were signs late Thursday that Mr. Yanukovych might be moving closer to compromise, apparently expressing willingness to hold presidential and parliamentary elections this year, as the opposition has demanded. But given the hostility and mistrust on both sides, aggravated by the deadly mayhem that has engulfed central Kiev, the prospects of any agreement seemed remote — particularly now that many of the president’s adversaries say they will settle for nothing less than his resignation.
  • Opposition leaders convened a session of Parliament late Thursday, and together with defectors from the pro-government party they passed a resolution obliging Interior Ministry troops to return to their barracks and the police to their usual posts, and prohibiting the use of firearms against protesters. It also asserted that only lawmakers, rather than the president, could declare a state of emergency. Perhaps more than these assertions, the vote was significant for signaling that Mr. Yanukovych had lost control of a majority in Parliament.
  • “A state of emergency means the beginning of war,” she said. “We cannot let that happen.”
  • By noon, 11 corpses had been laid out in a makeshift outdoor morgue under a Coca-Cola umbrella at the end of Independence Square. Other bodies were taken elsewhere.
  • The demonstrators captured more than 60 police officers, who were marched, dazed and bloodied, toward the center of the square through a crowd of men who heckled and shoved them.
  • With Mr. Yanukovych’s allies in Parliament still resisting changes to the Constitution demanded by the opposition that would reduce the powers of the president, there were intense talks underway in Kiev in hopes of ending the violence.
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Kerry, Arriving in Kiev, Offers $1 Billion in Loan Guarantees to Ukraine - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 04 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • n a demonstration of support for Ukraine’s fledgling government, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here on Tuesday with an offer of $1 billion in American loan guarantees and pledges of technical assistance, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.
  • The United States will also send technical experts to help Ukraine’s national bank and finance ministry, provide advice on how to fight corruption and train election monitors to help establish the legitimacy of Ukraine’s coming election.
  • Economic sanctions to punish Russia for its military intervention in Crimea, the senior official said, are likely to be imposed within days.
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  • And Mr. Kerry will pay homage to the protest movement by visiting the Shrine to the Fallen, a memorial to protesters who died in the tumultuous events on Feb. 20 that ultimately led to the ouster of Mr. Yanukovych.
  • The Obama administration has been pursuing a two-track strategy of ratcheting up the economic pressure on Moscow even as it has offered Russia a so-called off-ramp by suggesting that international monitors might be sent to Ukraine to ensure that the rights of the Russian-speaking population are protected while Russian troops returned to their barracks.
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Russian journalist and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko shot dead in Kiev | World news |... - 0 views

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shared by krystalxu on 31 May 18 - No Cached
  • A dissident Russian journalist has been shot at his apartment in Kiev in a high-profile murder that police said may have been tied to his reporting.
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Arkady Babchenko, 'murdered' Russian journalist, appears on Ukrainian TV - CNN - 0 views

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shared by cdavistinnell on 30 May 18 - No Cached
  • Russian journalist and critic of the Kremlin, reported to have been shot dead in Ukraine, showed up alive at a press conference on Wednesday to declare that his murder was faked by Ukrainian security services in an effort to foil an assassination plot against him.
  • In a stunning development, Arkady Babchenko, 41, walked into a room of journalists in Kiev who had been expecting to get an update on his murder.
  • Ukrainian officials offered a jaw-dropping explanation for his so-called death -- to expose a Russian plot against him.
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  • He said Ukranian officials first told him about the threat against him -- and their elaborate plan to thwart it -- a month ago. He said he was told that $40,000 had already been transferred for the alleged assassination attempt.
  • Babchenko said he became convinced that Russian government agencies were involved in the alleged murder plot when he was shown his passport photo and personal documents that he said could have been accessed by Russian special services.
  • News of the apparent murder had stunned Kiev on Tuesday. Shortly after Babchenko's death was announced, Moscow and Kiev began blaming each other for the killing of the journalist, who is a vocal critic of the Kremlin and left Russia in 2017, saying he no longer felt safe.
  • Babchenko called Russia an aggressor, and accused the country of killing children in its air support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
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Ukraine's Acting Government Issues Warrant for Yanukovych's Arrest - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 24 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Since Saturday, a series of bureaucratic steps — a session of Parliament and the continued running of government institutions — seemed to pull the country back from the brink. As Parliament acted, even Mr. Yanukovych’s party denounced him for the deadly crackdown on protesters. And the military vowed to support the new government rather than rallying to the ousted president’s side.
  • In its emergency session on Sunday, the Parliament granted expanded powers to its new speaker, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, who now has the authority to carry out the duties of the president of Ukraine as well.
  • There were still some signs of unease on Sunday. The whereabouts of Mr. Yanukovych, who insisted in a statement on Saturday that he was still president, remained unknown. In several cities in eastern Ukraine, including Donetsk, which is Mr. Yanukovych’s hometown, and Kharkiv, pro-Russian demonstrators took to the streets to denounce the developments in Kiev.
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  • But in a broader sense, there was still an easing of fears that a deepening schism could fracture Ukraine between the Russian-leaning east and south and the pro-European West.
  • Former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who was jailed by Mr. Yanukovych after losing the 2010 presidential election and was freed on Saturday, issued a statement saying she did not want to be considered for the premier’s post. Still, it left open the possibility that she will run for president.
  • The center of Kiev is scorched and scarred. The streets are blackened from fires set during clashes with the police. On Sunday, people placed flowers and candles at makeshift shrines memorializing the dead. Outside the Cabinet of Ministers building, parents had their small children pose for photographs with victorious antigovernment fighters who are still armed with clubs and wearing helmets, but now stand guard over the government headquarters. Many had flowers attached to their metal shields.
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Putin, Flashing Disdain, Defends Action in Crimea - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 05 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • He displayed flashes of sardonic wit, anger and palpable disdain, especially toward the Americans and Europeans but also toward the leaders of a country, Ukraine, he made clear was a political neophyte, unable to govern itself.
  • paramount leader for more than 14 years, at last broke his studied silence on the political upheaval in Ukraine on Tuesday during a 66-minute news conference that sought to justify Russia’s actions and policies.
  • “The only thing we had to do, and we did it, was to enhance the defense of our military facilities because they were constantly receiving threats and we were aware of the armed nationalists moving in,”
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  • He described the former leader, President Viktor F. Yanukovych, as the legitimate president of Ukraine, despite the Parliament’s impeachment-like vote to strip him of his powers after he fled Kiev last month.
  • e seemed eager to assure a wary population in Russia — as well as nervous markets that plunged on Monday — that he did not intend to go to war with Ukraine, a country with deep historical, cultural, social and familial ties with many Russians.
  • He went on to recount one grisly story on the mob violence that in his view has dragged Ukraine into nightmarish chaos: the humiliation of the recently appointed governor of the western region of the Volyn region, Oleksandr Bashkalenko. On the night of Feb. 20, he was handcuffed by protesters, doused with water, “locked up in a cellar and tortured.”
  • Gleb Pavlovksy, a political consultant who worked with the Kremlin in the past, described the news conference as “eclectic.” He said: “I expected him to prepare a message, a thesis, ideological or strategic, but it was more explanatory and defensive. It contained contradictions, which spoke to the fact it was not prepared. It explained something about his motives, but they were various.”
  • He brushed aside concerns about President Obama’s threat of sanctions and dismissed the suspension of preparations for the Group of 8 summit meeting scheduled in Sochi, where Mr. Putin hosted the Olympics after a reconstruction effort that cost more than $50 billion.
  • At the same time he suggested that Ukraine hold a referendum to adopt a new constitution, presumably addressing the status of Crimea and other regions with large Russian populations, and then hold elections for a new president and Parliament.
  • Mr. Putin, surprisingly, expressed some understanding for the protesters who massed on Independence Square in Kiev with a pointed rebuke of Ukraine’s political system as an immature, corrupted one. He said they wanted “radical change rather than some cosmetic remodeling of power.” Continue reading the main story 156 Comments
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BBC News - Huge Ukraine rally over EU agreement delay - 0 views

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  • More than 100,000 people in the Ukrainian capital Kiev are protesting against the government's move to delay an association deal with the EU under pressure from Russia.
  • Kiev police said they had fired tear gas after protesters threw a smoke grenade at officers in an attempt to break into the Cabinet of Ministers building.
  • The Ukrainian government says it is now looking into setting up a joint commission to promote ties between Ukraine, Russia and the EU.
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  • People arrived at the rally, on European Square, with families and children, many holding banners with slogans like "I want to live in Europe" or "Ukraine is part of Europe".
  • Ukraine depends on imports of Russian gas, but recently the supplier, Gazprom, complained that Ukraine had fallen behind in payments. Pipelines transiting Ukraine pump Russian gas to many EU member states.
  • It had been planned for the run-up to the key "Eastern Partnership" summit between the EU and several ex-Soviet states, which will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, on 28 and 29 November.
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Ukraine Moves to Disarm Paramilitary Groups - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 01 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Ukraine’s Parliament on Tuesday ordered law enforcement agencies to immediately disarm the country’s unofficial paramilitary groups, signaling growing resolve in the interim government to confront nationalists and other vigilantes who played a key role in the overthrow of Viktor F. Yanukovych, the country’s deposed president.
  • The passage of the bill comes as tensions in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, have grown between nationalist groups who continue to patrol the main squares of the city and Arsen Avakov, the country’s new interior minister.
  • e group’s headquarters at a downtown hotel and began negotiations. Just after dawn on Tuesday morning, members of the group, many in military fatigues and balaclavas, boarded buses and left for a “training ground” outside the city, according to local news and video reports.
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  • As Kiev attempted to further consolidate its control domestically, Moscow delivered yet another blow to the fledgling government on Tuesday as Gazprom, the Russian state gas giant, said it would raise the price of natural gas sold in Ukraine by more than 40 percent.
  • Alexei Miller, the head of Gazprom, said that Russia would revoke a discount on gas prices granted as part of a financial lifeline granted to Mr. Yanukovych in December, raising the price to $385.50 per thousand cubic meters from $268.50 per thousand cubic meters.
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Russia Is Quick to Bend Truth About Ukraine - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 16 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • “Blood has been spilled in Ukraine again,” wrote Mr. Medvedev, once favored in the West for playing good cop to the hard-boiled president, Vladimir V. Putin. “The threat of civil war looms.”
  • It is an extraordinary propaganda campaign that political analysts say reflects a new brazenness on the part of Russian officials. And in recent days, it has largely succeeded — at least for Russia’s domestic audience — in painting a picture of chaos and danger in eastern Ukraine, although it was pro-Russian forces themselves who created it by seizing public buildings and setting up roadblocks.
  • In a report released Tuesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that threats to ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, cited repeatedly by Russian officials and in the Russian news media as a potential rationale for Russian military action, were exaggerated and that some participants in the protests in the region came from Russia.
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  • . “The Russia leadership doesn’t care about how it’s being perceived in the outside world, in the world of communication, in the world where we have plurality of information and where information can be confirmed and checked. This is a radical change in attitude toward the West.”
  • Adding to the public frenzy about imminent Kiev-ordered violence, Life News, a pro-Kremlin tabloid television station, offered a bounty of 15,000 rubles, or slightly more than $400, for video of Ukrainian military forces mobilizing in eastern Ukraine — suggesting that such activity was secretly underway.
  • Russia has flatly denied any role in the unrest in eastern Ukraine, and the Russian Foreign Ministry, which normally champions the authority of the United Nations, dismissed the new humans rights report as biased. In a statement, Aleksandr Lukashevich, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called it “one-sided, politicized and unobjective.”
  • Still, he said the propaganda was strikingly effective in Crimea, throwing the West off-balance and buying Russian forces just enough time to solidify their control over the peninsula.
  • Mr. Putin said in a phone call Tuesday with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, that Ukraine was on the brink of civil war, a point Mr. Medvedev also made at a news conference later in Moscow, adding that the government in Kiev was to blame. Mr. Medvedev also repeated the Kremlin’s frequent assertion that Russian speakers were under threat in Ukraine — the very claim United Nations officials rejected in their report.“The only way to preserve Ukraine and calm the situation,” Mr. Medvedev said, requires “recognizing that Russian citizens are the same as Ukrainians and, therefore, can use their own language in everyday life.”
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Yanukovych Says He Was 'Wrong' on Crimea - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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shared by julia rhodes on 02 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • n his first interview since fleeing to Russia, Ukraine's ousted president said Wednesday that he was "wrong" to have invited Russian troops into Crimea and vowed to try to persuade Russia to return the coveted Black Sea peninsula.
  • Yanukovych denied the allegations of corruption, saying he built his palatial residence outside of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, with his own money. He also denied responsibility for the sniper deaths of about 80 protesters in Kiev in February, for which he has been charged by Ukraine's interim government.
  • While Russia can hardly be expected to roll back its annexation, Yanukovych's statement could widen Putin's options in the talks on settling the Ukrainian crisis by creating an impression that Moscow could be open for discussions on Crimea's status in the future.
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  • "I was wrong," he said. "I acted on my emotions."
  • Yanukovych did not answer several questions about whether he would support Russia — which has deployed tens of thousands of troops near the Ukrainian border — moving into Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians, the justification Putin used to take Crimea.Continue reading the main story Why movie streaming sites so fail to satisfy Also in Tech » Apple's war on Samsung has Google in crossfire At Mozilla, a chief's support of gay marriage ban causes conflict Continue reading the main story Advertisement (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
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Ukraine Ban on Russian Symbols Fuels Fight Over National Identity - The New York Times - 0 views

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shared by Alex Trudel on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • SEMYONOVKA, Ukraine
  • Semyonovka stood accused of being a “de-communization” scofflaw.
  • Mr. Papchenko, the local Communist Party chief, refused to concede that anything was remotely amiss.
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  • Instead, Semyonovka’s 12-foot, silver-colored Lenin with his right arm extended had been propped back up on a plinth in a discreet, leafy park. “We want to preserve this small corner of Soviet history,” said Mr. Papchenko, 67, a stout former school principal whose multiple gold molars attested to his own life in the U.S.S.R.
  • Vladimir Vyatrovich, 38, a historian and the head of Ukraine’s National Memory Institute, predicted somewhat rashly that if the effort succeeded in Ukraine, it would cause fateful reverberations next door.
  • The laws dumped the Soviet traditions for commemorating World War II, opened up what K.G.B. secret police archives remained in Ukraine and sought to rehabilitate certain Ukrainian independence fighters whom Moscow had long pilloried as Nazi collaborators.
  • A fight has emerged over the Communist symbols, however, not unlike that between supporters and opponents of the Confederate battle flag in the southern United States.
  • Ukrainians want to instill in the next generation.
  • “They behave like Bolsheviks: ‘We have to wipe out the past!’ ” said Georgiy V. Kasyanov, a historian and education reform activist. “They think the Soviet legacy can be destroyed by destroying statues of Lenin or by renaming streets, which is false. They are wrestling with ghosts.”
  • By the time of the Maidan uprising in Kiev that toppled the pro-Russian government in February 2014, Ukraine was down to about 1,300 Lenins, he says. Another 500 have come crashing down since
  • Some efforts proved more successful than others. One of the largest Lenin statues in Ukraine, in the city of Kharkiv, was dismembered.
  • Apart from the statues, 910 cities and towns need new names, as do tens of thousands of streets.
  • Each City Hall has until Nov. 21 to make the changes. If they do not, Parliament will do it for them by Feb. 21.
  • In Kiev, a television comedy show suggested the modern, landmark Moscow Bridge be renamed the Not Moscow Bridge.
  • And continue to. A woman wearing a navy blue bathrobe, hearing why foreigners were visiting recently, came bowling over, shaking her fist.
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Ukraine blames Russia for shooting of journalist Arkady Babchenko - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-44299741 attack journalism Ukraine Russia crisis
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  • Babchenko, 41, was found bleeding at the entrance to his block of flats by his wife and died in an ambulance. He was reportedly shot several times in the back.Ukrainian lawmaker Anton Herashchenko said the journalist had gone out to buy some bread, and that the killer was waiting for him.
  • Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement: "We demand that the Ukrainian authorities make every effort to promptly investigate."
  • Kiev has in recent years seen a number of deadly attacks on high-profile figures, including journalists and politicians. Most of them were vocal critics of the Kremlin.
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  • Another car bomb killed Ukrainian military intelligence officer Col Maxim Shapoval in June 2017 in what the Ukrainian authorities called a terrorist act. In March of the same year, former Russian MP Denis Voronenkov was shot dead outside a hotel in Kiev.
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Poland - Poland in the 20th century | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...Poland-in-the-20th-century Treaty of Versailles Riga Russia Germany Rebirth Poland
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  • A Polish uprising in Poznania led to a partial seizure of the province, but the fate of Prussian Poland lay in the hands of the peacemakers, who had also the last word about the territorial settlement.
  • The borders drawn under the Treaty of Versailles (June 1919) roughly corresponded to Polish-German frontiers before the partitions, except that Gdańsk became the free city of Danzig, and plebiscites were held in parts of East Prussia and Upper Silesia to determine which nation these regions wished to join. The East Prussian plebiscite of July 1920 (at the height of the Russo-Polish War) was won by Germany.
  • Final recognition of Polish sovereignty came only in 1923, the delay being due to the Russian situation.
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  • An armed struggle between the Bolsheviks and Poland resulted from Russian attempts to carry the revolution westward and from Piłsudski’s federalist policy.
  • Except for an alliance in April 1920 with the Ukrainian leader Symon Petlyura, whose troops accompanied the Poles as they captured Kiev in May, Poland fought in isolation.
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Sigismund II Augustus | king of Poland | Britannica.com - 1 views

www.britannica.com/...Sigismund-II-Augustus Sigismund II Augustus Poland Union of Lublin
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  • The only son of Sigismund I the Old and Bona Sforza, Sigismund II was elected and crowned coruler with his father in 1530.
  • In 1559, when the Livonian Order (a branch of the Teutonic Knights) became too weak to protect itself from Muscovite attacks, it sought and obtained Sigismund’s previously offered protection. The Polish king intervened
  • The subsequent war (see Livonian War) with Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible over Livonia compelled Sigismund to strengthen his position by constitutionally uniting all the lands attached to the Polish crown. Supported by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry, Sigismund ceded his hereditary rights in Lithuania to Poland (1564), thus placing the two states in constitutional equality but not in a complete union. In 1569 he formally incorporated Podlasie, Volhynia, and Kiev provinces into the Polish kingdom, thereby giving their representatives seats in the Sejm; the enlarged Sejm then enacted the Union of Lublin (1569), uniting Poland and Lithuania as well as their respective dependencies.
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  • last Jagiellon king of Poland, who united Livonia and the duchy of Lithuania with Poland
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