One sentenced in pro-Ukraine stunt
MOSCOW – A Moscow court on September 10 acquitted four people and found one guilty of hooliganism and vandalism for taking part in a pro-Ukraine stunt. The five, including two women, went on trial on August 17. They were accused of taking part in a stunt in which a Soviet red star atop a Stalin-era skyscraper was painted in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag. Four defendants were accused of drawing attention to the painted star and a Ukrainian flag hoisted from it by parachuting from the 176-meter building. The fifth defendant, Vladimir Podrezov, was sentenced to 27 months in jail. The court found Mr. Podrezov guilty of helping Ukrainian stunt daredevil Pavlo Ushyvets – known by the nickname Mustang Wanted – to paint the star and raise the flag. Mr. Ushyvets, who is in Ukraine, has announced on Facebook that he carried out the stunt alone. (RFE/RL’s Russian Service)
Expert: NATO’s deterrence ‘insufficient’
WASHINGTON – Writing on the Atlantic Council’s “New Atlanticist” blog, Stephen Blank, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, stated, “Since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, the world has seen precious little Western leadership when it comes to confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin[…] Even in the face of plans to send Poland heavy weapons in 2016 while beefing up Baltic defenses and organizing more frequent and larger NATO exercises, the fact remains that Russia – if it chose to do so – could occupy the Baltic states in two days, as Gen. Peter Pavel, the incoming chairman of NATO’s Defense Committee, recently warned. In other words, NATO’s conventional deterrent is still dramatically insufficient.” Mr. Blank also noted that “Baltic governments may feel reassured by Western announcements to date, but the people themselves do not; in one opinion survey, for example, Estonians said they felt abandoned rather than reassured. Furthermore, in 1994, the U.S. and British governments signed an agreement with Ukraine to protect its security and inviolability, a pact we abandoned the minute it was challenged. That encouraged Putin to believe he could invade Ukraine with impunity; even Russian media outlets expect a new offensive soon. This is clearly not leadership – whether from the front, behind, or anywhere else.” The expert added: “Unfortunately, President [Barack] Obama has not learned this lesson. He and his top policy-makers simply do not take the Russian threat seriously – and the idea that we can somehow elicit Moscow’s cooperation in the Middle East while Putin himself stokes the fires of war by allowing Russian terrorists to travel from Russia to Syria, is incredible. How, ultimately, can we be partners with a revanchist and terrorist-sponsoring state whose mantra is new rules or no rules?” (Ukrainian Canadian Congress)
Poroshenko: staying out of NATO ‘criminal’
KYIV – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that staying out of the NATO military alliance was a “criminal” policy that his government is ready to reverse. But Mr. Poroshenko said it will be up to a popular vote to decide on membership. Mr. Poroshenko was speaking on September 22 while chairing a meeting of Ukraine’s security council. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was in attendance at the meeting in Kyiv. NATO officials have said that Ukraine must carry out political, economic, and military reforms before the country can even be considered for membership. Stoltenberg told the meeting that “Ukraine can rely on NATO” and that “NATO provides Ukraine with political and practical support.” Ukraine has been fighting with separatist rebels in the east since April 2014 in a conflict that has resulted in the deaths of more than 7,900 people. Kyiv and Western governments accuse Moscow of directly backing the rebels, something the Kremlin denies. (RFE/RL, AP and Interfax)
NATO chief: Ukraine truce ‘encouraging’
LVIV – NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has called on Russia to withdraw heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine. Stoltenberg was speaking to reporters near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on September 21. He said the drop in fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed rebels since the start of September was encouraging, but described the situation as “very fragile.” “Russia continues to support the separatists and provide them with weapons, with different kinds of equipment, with training, with forces,” he said. Kyiv and the West say Russia has sent troops and weapons to fuel the separatist conflict that has killed more than 7,900 people in Ukraine’s east since April 2014. Russia denies the charges. Mr. Stoltenberg started a two-day visit on September 21, his first trip to Ukraine as NATO chief, in a show of support for Kyiv’s pro-Western government. (RFE/RL based on reporting by dpa, AFP and Reuters)
U.S. court dismisses Tymoshenko’s lawsuit
WASHINGTON – A U.S. court judge has dismissed a lawsuit by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko accusing her political opponents of running a U.S.-based racketeering enterprise that led to her imprisonment. The court said Ms. Tymoshenko failed to show that industrialist Dmytro Firtash laundered money in the United States to help pay Ukrainian prosecutors and supporters of Viktor Yanukovych, who in 2010 narrowly defeated Ms. Tymoshenko to become Ukraine’s president. Ms. Tymoshenko claimed that Mr. Firtash, who partially owns Ukrainian energy company RosUkrEnergo, “skimmed” millions of dollars from natural gas contracts and laundered them through bogus Manhattan real estate transactions. She said the campaign was payback for her 2009 agreement with Russia to eliminate RosUkrEnergo as an intermediary in natural gas sales. In dismissing the complaint, the court said Ms. Tymoshenko failed to establish a direct relationship between Mr. Firtash’s conduct and the harm she suffered. Ms. Tymoshenko had sought punitive damages for her imprisonment and harm to her reputation. Ms. Tymoshenko was convicted in October 2011 and sentenced to seven years in prison for abusing her power in connection with the 2009 gas transaction. She was freed in February 2014 after Mr. Yanukovych was ousted as president. (RFE/RL, Reuters and Courhouse News Service)
NATO chief to visit to Ukraine next week
BRUSSELS – NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will next week make his first visit to Ukraine to hold talks with top officials and launch a joint disaster-management exercise, the alliance says. He will travel to Lviv and Kyiv on September 21 and September 22 to hold talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and the Parliament speaker. He will also attend a meeting of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. Ukraine is a key Western partner, but not a member of the 28-nation military alliance. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said last week that “a number of strategic documents” would be approved, notably paving the way for NATO to open an embassy in Ukraine. The “Ukraine 2015” exercise will be based on “a technological disaster scenario, which will also affect the civil population and critical infrastructure elements” throughout Ukraine, NATO said on September 18. NATO has responded sharply to the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea by increasing its readiness posture and rotating troops and equipment through its ex-communist eastern members to ease their fears that Moscow might encroach on them. (RFE/RL, AFP and dpa)
EU reporters removed from sanctions list
KYIV – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed an order to revoke a ban on several journalists of British, Spanish, and German citizenship. The journalists include BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg and producer Emma Wells, both British, as well as German reporter Michael Rutz, who writes for Die Zeit. Two Spanish journalists, Antonio Pampliega and Angel Sastre, who disappeared in Syria in July and are believed kidnapped by the Islamic State group, were also taken off the ban list on September 18. Mr. Poroshenko on September 16 had signed a decree to ban about 400 people, including dozens of foreign journalists, from entering Ukraine on the grounds that they posed a threat to national security. Most of the journalists on the list were Russian, and the measure was widely seen as a response to coverage of pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, whom the government has outlawed as terrorists. The BBC called the measure a “shameful attack on media freedom.” Mr. Poroshenko had assured British Ambassador Judith Gough in a meeting on September 17 that he would remove the BBC journalists from the list. (RFE/RL, dpa, Interfax, and TASS)
Probe for Putin, Berlusconi wine drinking
KYIV – Ukrainian prosecutors are prepared to file charges against the director of a winery in Russian-occupied Crimea for uncorking a 240-year old bottle for Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Messrs. Putin and Berlusconi spent last weekend in Crimea, touring ancient ruins and visiting the peninsula’s prized Massandra winery. Massandra, which was nationalized following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, has rare wine and sherry dating back more than 200 years in its collection. Russian television showed Berlusconi examining a bottle of 1775 Jerez de la Frontera wine from the cellars and asking the director –Yanina Pavlenko – if he could try it, and she uncorked the bottle for him and President Putin. Ukrainian media quoted Ukraine’s Deputy Prosecutor-General for Crimea, Nazar Kholodnytskiy, as saying embezzlement charges against Pavlenko will be filed soon. Massandra winery had five bottles of 1775 Jerez de la Frontera wine before the annexation. Two other bottles of that wine were sold at Sotheby’s auction in 1990 and 2001. One bottle of the wine costs $100,000-$150,000. (RFE/RL, AP, UNIAN and Investigator.com.ua)
Russian hackers found spying on U.S., Europe
HELSINKI – Russia has been cyberspying extensively on the United States and countries throughout Europe and Asia for seven years, Finnish data security firm F-Secure said in a report published September 17. The report warns that a large and “well resourced” hacking group known as “the Dukes” is spying for the Russian government and outlines the wide-ranging attacks the group has made in the last seven years. The hackers use a family of unique malware tools that steal information by infiltrating computer networks and sending the data back to the attackers, it said. Some of the target organizations listed in the report include the former Georgian Information Center on NATO, Georgia’s Defense Ministry, the foreign ministries of Turkey, Ukraine and Poland, and other government institutions and political think tanks in the United States, Europe and Central Asia. “All the signs point back to Russian state sponsorship,” said Artturi Lehtio, F-Secure’s researcher heading the investigation. Other reports have also found the Kremlin behind cyberespionage attacks in recent years. A report by the U.S. security firm FireEye last year said a long-running effort to hack into U.S. defense contractors, Eastern European governments, and European security organizations was “likely sponsored by the Russian government.” U.S. security firm Symantec reported in 2014 the discovery of a highly sophisticated cyberspying tool called the Regin, which had been used since 2008 to steal information from governments and businesses. The largest number of Regin infections – 28 percent – were discovered in Russia, with Saudi Arabia the next highest with 24 percent. The Dukes hacking group is likely run by professional software developers, is based in Moscow, and works on behalf of the Russian Federation, F-Secure said. Patrik Maldre, a junior research fellow with the International Center for Defense and Security in Estonia, said the report showed that Russia has invested “heavily” in cyber-capabilities and views those capabilities as “an important component in advancing its strategic interests.” “The connections identified in the report have significant international security implications, particularly for states in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus,” he said. “Smaller countries, such as Sweden and Finland, are particularly vulnerable to this kind of espionage,” said Mika Aaltola, a program director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “Nordic and Baltic countries are always trying to balance Russian and western interests, and Russia uses its cyberattack capabilities to find ways to tip the balance in its favor.” (RFE/RL, AFP, Computing and ComputerWeekly.com)
Rada backs debt restructuring deal
KYIV – The Ukrainian Parliament has given its backing to a debt restructuring deal that aims to save Kyiv billions of dollars and bolster its financial stability. The speaker of Parliament, Volodymyr Groisman, called it a “victory for Ukraine,” after lawmakers approved three laws needed to pass the deal. There was heated debate before the vote on September 17, but in the end the bills passed with more than 300 “yes” votes for each law compared with the 226 minimum needed. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told Parliament that a “yes” vote meant a vote for “economic growth, foreign investment, increasing the number of jobs, and a rise in social standards.” Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko – who led negotiations with Ukraine’s commercial leaders to secure the deal – also addressed parliament ahead of the vote. She later tweeted that Greece – also facing debt negotiations with creditors – “could only dream of such a deal.” However, some Ukrainian lawmakers voiced dissatisfaction with the deal, which aims to cut Ukraine’s debt to 71 percent of annual economic output by 2020 from an estimated 100 percent now. “We have to vote for this disgrace through tears,” former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said. (RFE/RL, AFP and Interfax)
Kremlin condemns media sanctions
MOSCOW – The Kremlin says Ukraine’s decision to sanction many media representatives is “totally unacceptable.” Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on September 17 that Moscow strongly condemned the move, saying “it does not correspond with the principles of freedom.” On September 16, Ukraine barred a few dozen reporters, including three BBC journalists, from entering the country as an unspecified security threat. The media representatives were part of a sanctions list signed by President Petro Poroshenko barring nearly 400 individuals from entering Ukraine, including BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg and producer Emma Wells, both British, and Russian cameraman Anton Chicherov. Also on the list of banned journalists are Antonio Pampliega and Angel Sastre, two Spanish reporters who disappeared in Syria in July and are believed to have been kidnapped by the Islamic State militant group, and two reporters for Russian news agencies in South Africa and Turkey with no clear links to Ukraine. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement that it was “dismayed” by Mr. Poroshenko’s actions. “While the government may not like or agree with the coverage, labeling journalists a potential threat to national security is not an appropriate response,” said the committee’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, Nina Ognianova. (RFE/RL, Interfax and Reuters)
Blockade of food, goods flow to Crimea
KYIV – Crimean Tatars say they will start blocking Ukrainian shipments of food and other goods to the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed from Ukraine by Russia in March 2014. The head of the Crimean Tatars’ self-governing body, the Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, who is also a Ukrainian lawmaker, said in the Ukrainian Parliament on September 16 that the “long-term blockade” will start at noon on September 20. He called on other Ukrainian citizens to join the move. Mr. Chubarov said that trucks carrying food and other goods will not be allowed to enter Crimea, while individuals and private vehicles will not be stopped. Mr. Chubarov said the blockade will be coordinated from the town of Chonhar, which lies close to Crimea, and that three major roads will be targeted. Ukrainian authorities have not commented on the Crimean Tatar initiative. The de facto head of annexed Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that the planned blockade will be counterproductive. (RFE/RL)
Russia to analyze Ukrainian sanctions
MOSCOW – A Russian official says Moscow will analyze the possible consequences of new sanctions introduced by Ukraine. Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich made the comment to the RIA news agency on September 17. Ukraine extended or applied sanctions on more than 400 individuals and 90 legal entities on September 16 in response to a decision by separatist rebels in the east to set a date for “illegal elections.” Donetsk separatist leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko signed a decree to hold the elections starting on October 18. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the rebels’ action threatened the Minsk peace agreement signed in February. Ukraine is set to hold local elections on October 25. Under the Minsk agreement, local elections were meant to be held in separatist regions in the east along with the rest of the country. The list of sanctioned individuals posted on the Ukrainian presidential website mentions members of Russia’s Parliament and senior rebel figures. Companies affected include Russian airline Aeroflot, security company Kaspersky Lab, and banks Gazprombank and Bank of Moscow. (RFE/RL, Reuters, TASS)
Jail sentence for pro-Ukraine graffiti
NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia – A Russian court has sentenced two young men to two years in prison for painting Soviet statues in the colors of the Ukrainian flag and daubing them with pro-Ukraine graffiti. The pair – Kirill Korzhavin and Vladislav Shipovalov – were among four men found guilty of smearing a statue of Vladimir Lenin in the Siberian city Novosibirsk with Ukraine’s national blue and yellow colors and writing “Glory to Ukraine” on it. Novosibirsk’s Leninsky District Court said on September 16 that the men also vandalized the local offices of the pro-Kremlin United Russia and Communist parties, along with a World War II monument. The two monuments were found painted in December 2014. Vandals had also written “Azov,” the name of a volunteer battalion fighting on the side of Kyiv in eastern Ukraine, and spray-painted Azov’s Wolfsangel symbol. For vandalism and desecration of a monument, Mr. Korzhavin was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in a penal colony and Mr. Shipovalov to two years. Two other defendants, Sergei Belov and Ivan Kollektsionerov, who was a minor at the time of the crime, were not given jail sentences but instead subjected to tight restrictions on their movements. (RFE/RL, AFP, International Business Times)
Separatists plan their own elections
DONETSK, Ukraine – The self-proclaimed leader of Ukraine’s breakaway Donetsk region, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, has signed a decree that schedules elections for local self-government bodies on October 18. Elections in territory under the control of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk region are planned for November 1. The scheduled dates do not coincide with elections scheduled in parts of Ukraine. Ukrainian government officials in Kyiv have indicated that holding the votes on a different date than local elections in the rest of the country would be considered a violation of the Minsk peace agreements. Denis Pushilin, the separatist Donetsk region’s envoy to the so-called Contact Group on Ukraine’s crisis, said on September 16 that the Minsk agreement calls on Kyiv to coordinate with separatist leaders about elections in eastern Ukraine. He said the separatists decided on “yet another unilateral implementation of the Complex of Measures [for Fulfilment of the Minsk agreement]” because Kyiv has never coordinated on the issue. Voting for representatives of other local self-government bodies in Ukraine are scheduled for October 25. (RFE/RL, Interfax and Rossiya 24)