Global Sentsov campaign planned
Activists have announced a global campaign to demand the release of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who opposed Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and is now on hunger strike in a Russian prison. The Save Oleg Sentsov group said on Twitter late on May 22 that the campaign, dubbed #SaveOlegSentsov, is being organized for June 1-2, ahead of this summer’s World Cup soccer competition in Russia. Mr. Sentsov, who is a native of Crimea, is currently serving a 20-year prison term after being convicted on terrorism charges that he and human rights groups say were politically motivated. “In different cities around the world, we will show a red card to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s regime, which illegally holds people behind bars,” the group said. Separately, a demonstration is being planned for New York City’s Times Square on May 26 to protest against Mr. Sentsov’s detention, according to organizers who contacted RFE/RL. Mr. Sentsov, who is being held in the far-northern Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Region, said he began a hunger strike on May 14. He is demanding the release of 64 Ukrainian citizens that he considers to be political prisoners in Russia. Mr. Sentsov, 41, was arrested in May 2014 on suspicion of planning fire-bombings of pro-Russian organizations in Crimea. A Russian court convicted him on multiple terrorism charges in August 2014. Mr. Sentsov has denied all charges against him, saying that a “trial by occupiers cannot be fair by definition.” The prominent Russian human rights group Memorial has recognized Sentsov as a political prisoner, and international rights organizations have called for his release. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Ukraine showcases Javelin firepower
Ukraine has showcased the firepower of the Javelin anti-tank missile systems given to it by the United States last month in a performance President Petro Poroshenko called “a dream come true.” “Finally, this day has come – and today, on May 22, for the first time in Ukraine, a test of the third-generation Javelin antitank complex took place,” a grinning Mr. Poroshenko told his soldiers in a video of the closed test published on his Facebook page. “Thanks to them, the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have increased significantly.” RFE/RL was first to report the delivery of 37 Javelin launchers, including two spares, and 210 missiles to Kyiv in April. The U.S. State Department approved the sale of the Javelin systems to Ukraine at an estimated cost of $47 million in March. Mr. Poroshenko on May 22 personally thanked U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the U.S. Congress “for supporting Ukraine and adopting a decision to provide Javelin antitank missile systems.” He added, “Of course this is a defensive weapon and will be used only when there is an attack by the Russian Federation on positions of Ukrainian forces.” The special U.S. envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, has said that the Javelins are being stored in a secure facility far from the frontline of the conflict in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where government forces continue to fight Russia-backed separatists. The Javelin test came amid what international observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE-SMM) in Ukraine said on May 21 has been the deadliest week of the year in the conflict zone, with heavy weapons banned by a tenuous peace accord agreed in February 2015 used against populated areas. (Christopher Miller of RFE/RL)
Potential cyberattack linked to soccer final
Ukraine’s main security agency has warned of a potential Russian cyberattack ahead of this weekend’s final match of the Champions League soccer tournament. In a May 23 statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) gave few details, but it came just hours after global networking company Cisco Systems warned that hackers had infected at least 500,000 routers and storage devices in dozens of countries. There was no immediate comment from Russian officials to the SBU statement. Russia has previously denied allegations by Ukraine and the United States about its hacking efforts, which have allegedly included efforts to shut down parts of Ukraine’s electrical grid. “Security Service experts believe the infection of hardware in Ukraine is preparation for another act of cyber-aggression by the Russian Federation aimed at destabilizing the situation during the Champions League final,” the SBU said in its statement. The match will be played in Kyiv on May 26. Earlier on May 23, the cyberintelligence unit for Cisco Systems, called Talos, said that its researchers had high confidence that the Russian government was behind the malware campaign, which it called VPNFilter. VPNFilter could be used for espionage, to interfere with Internet communications, or launch destructive attacks on Ukraine, Talos said. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters)
Soccer clubs, officials accused of match fixing
Ukraine has accused 35 football clubs of involvement in a match-fixing operation that allegedly earned millions of dollars a year for the organizers. Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry said a special operation had uncovered that two-thirds of all the teams in top divisions of Ukrainian soccer took part in fixing the outcome of games. “Club presidents, former and current players, referees, trainers, and commercial organizations were involved,” Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on Facebook. He said the ministry has documented 320 people involved in 57 “proven cases” of match fixing, adding that five criminal groups organized the fixing of games. Mr. Avakov said the organizers had earned up to $5 million a year by betting in Asia on Ukrainian football matches in which the result was already predetermined. “Any methods were used to get the ‘right’ score in the match – from the bribing of players, referees, club owners, to intimidation and threats,” said Mr. Avakov. “The amount of ‘reward’ for the desired result – a victory or a draw – ranged from 30,000 ($1,150 U.S.) to 100,000 hrv ($3,840 U.S.).” Ukrainian Deputy Police Chief Ihor Kupranets told reporters, however, that no arrests had been made. He added that prosecutors would decide whether and when to bring charges against the suspects. Neither the names of the football clubs involved in the fixing nor the names of the people who allegedly took part were disclosed. Ukraine’s Football 24 online sports site reported that teams and players from the Premier League, First and Second Leagues, as well as the junior teams were suspected of being involved. The announcement comes four days before Kyiv hosts the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by AFP and Interfax-Ukraine)
Ukraine remembers Crimean deportation
Ukraine commemorated the victims of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s mass deportation of Crimean Tatars from their homeland in 1944, and authorities on the Russian-controlled peninsula briefly detained dozens of people there. A minute of silence was observed at noon on May 18 across the country – except in Crimea, which Russia seized in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum boycotted by many Crimean Tatars. An RFE/RL correspondent reported from the Crimean capital, Symferopol, that the Russian-imposed police briefly detained dozens of Crimean Tatars who tried to commemorate victims of the deportation early in the morning. Later in the day, several dozen Crimean Tatars held another commemoration event next to a stone erected in a park in Symferopol to honor the deportation victims. Dozens of riot police officers monitored the event. In Kyiv, by contrast, bells at Orthodox Christian churches tolled for a minute to pay tribute to the victims of the deportation. “The pain of the Crimean Tatar people is our common pain. It is the pain of tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars who never made it back to their native Crimea,” President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Facebook. “We will never forget the cynical crime of the Soviet regime, the crime against an entire ethnic group, against humanity,” he wrote. “I am confident that these days’ criminals will also face punishment for occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, and the Ukrainian Crimea will be free again.” (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Deadly spike in fighting reported
Monitoring officials say clashes between Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine have escalated in recent days to some of the fiercest fighting of 2018. Alexander Hug, the deputy chief of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s monitoring mission in Ukraine (OSCE-SMM), said it had confirmed that two civilians were killed and another three were injured last week, adding that “we have many more cases pending.” At a briefing in Kyiv on May 21, Mr. Hug said, “Last week was in many ways the worst we have seen so far this year. In total, we recorded 7,700 ceasefire violations.” Ukrainian officials said two soldiers were killed and another four were wounded in fighting near the village of Yuzhnoye early on May 21. The militants in the Donetsk region accused Ukraine of using heavy artillery and tanks to shell residential areas. They said four civilians were killed and another four were wounded in Ukrainian shelling last week. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by AP and Interfax-Ukraine)
Duda asks for peacekeepers for Donbas
Poland’s president has asked the U.N. Security Council to deploy a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine throughout the zone of conflict with Russia-backed separatists and along the border with Russia. “We are advocating the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping mission,” Andrzej Duda told a news conference in New York late on May 17 after delivering a similar plea before the U.N. Security Council, where Poland holds the rotating presidency for the month of May. “First, those forces should be deployed along the internationally recognized border between Ukraine and Russia,” he said. “I also stressed in the strongest terms that if that happened, those forces should deploy across all territory which today is in the hands of separatists,” he said. Ukraine has supported the introduction of United Nations peacekeepers as long as they are placed along the border with Russia to monitor and ensure Russian troops and weapons do not come over the border to aid the separatists. As president of the council this month, Poland’s U.N. representative may bring Warsaw’s proposal up for debate. But it could face a veto from Russia, which has strongly opposed placing armed U.N. peacekeepers along its border with Ukraine. (RFE/RL, with reporting by AP and AFP)
Belarusian court jails Ukrainian reporter
Media reports say a Belarusian court has sentenced a Ukrainian reporter to more than eight years in prison after convicting him of espionage. The Ukrainian ambassador to Belarus, Ihor Kizim, was quoted by the Belarusian news site Tut.by and Reuters as saying that the trial of Pavlo Sharoyko took place behind closed doors, but he didn’t specify when the Supreme Court issued his sentence. Mr. Kizim also said he had visited Mr. Sharoyko in a KGB detention center, and that his detention conditions were acceptable. Mr. Sharoyko was detained in October 2017 by Belarus’s KGB, accused of being part of a spy ring working for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. Ambassador Kizim also said Mr. Sharoyko had pleaded guilty to the charges, but said that the Embassy did not believe the reports. Ukraine and Belarus expelled each other’s diplomats after Mr. Sharoyko’s arrest. (RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, with reporting by Tut.by and Reuters)
Duma adopts countersanctions bill
The lower chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, has approved in its third and final reading a bill that provides for countermeasures against the United States and other countries that imposed sanctions against Russia. The bill is expected to be adopted by the upper chamber of Russia’s Parliament, the Federation Council, before going to President Vladimir Putin to be signed into law. The proposed legislation would give the Russian government the authority to ban trade in certain items with countries that “implement unfriendly moves towards Russia.” Under the bill, the decision about what products or services would be affected by the restrictions would be made by the government following a decision by Mr. Putin to impose restrictions against a country. The proposed legislation is seen as an effort by Moscow to respond to the asset freezes and financial restrictions on Russian officials, tycoons, and companies associated with Mr. Putin imposed by the U.S. government in April. Those sanctions, the latest in a series of measures taken by the United States, the European Union, and other countries since Russia seized Crimea and began backing armed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014, were meant to punish Moscow for alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and other “malign activity around the globe.” (Current Time TV)