Atop the EU-Ukraine summit agenda
Ukraine and the European Union on July 9 opened a crucial summit, with Kyiv’s reform efforts and Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 and its backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine topping the agenda. This year’s summit in Brussels, which Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attended, was the first since an Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine came into force in September 2017, strengthening ties between the EU and Ukraine. A joint statement released July 9 mentioned Kyiv’s troubled efforts to crack down on rampant corruption and efforts to improve the country’s business climate. It also mentioned the conflict still ongoing in the eastern regions. The EU approved $1 billion in loans for a period of two and a half years in May, saying further disbursements would be contingent on “Ukraine respecting democratic mechanisms and the rule of law, and guaranteeing respect for human rights.” The EU also said it will reaffirm its support for the country’s “independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” in light of “ongoing Russian aggression and conflict in eastern Ukraine.” (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters, AP and DPA)
EU officially extends Russia sanctions
The European Union has officially extended until January 31, 2019, the economic sanctions first placed on Russia after its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine. The extension was finalized on July 5 and comes after EU leaders unanimously agreed to prolong the measures during the bloc’s summit in Brussels on June 29. The measures primarily hit Russia’s banking and energy sectors. At the EU summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron updated EU counterparts on the state of play of the implementation of the Minsk agreements, to which the sanctions are linked. The Minsk accords reached in 2014 and 2015 in the Belarusian capital aimed to resolve the conflict and called for a series of cease-fire deals in eastern Ukraine, but they have failed to hold. EU leaders will again consider whether to extend the sanctions when they meet in Brussels in December. (RFE/RL)
Huntsman on Russia’s ‘malign activity’
The U.S. ambassador to Russia has defended President Donald Trump’s decision to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and insisted that it was up to Moscow to reverse the downward spiral in relations with Washington. In a conference call with reporters on July 5, Jon Huntsman said President Trump will initially meet one-on-one with President Putin, followed by an expanded meeting to include top advisers. He also defended the notion of holding the meeting with Mr. Putin in the first place, something some experts and officials have questioned, given ongoing Russian actions in Ukraine, Syria, and persistent questions about Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “It is in the interest of America’s national security to determine if Russia is willing to make progress in our bilateral relations,” he said. The meeting, to be held in Helsinki on July 16, is the first major summit between the two leaders and comes as relations between Moscow and Washington have sunk to levels not seen since the Cold War. “The ball really is in Russia’s court and the president will continue to hold Russia accountable for its malign activity,” Ambassador Huntsman said. The issue of extending the New START arms treaty is expected to come up for discussion, as will the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, a landmark agreement that Washington has accused Moscow of violating repeatedly. Also looming over the summit is the question of Russia’s alleged interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Mr. Putin ordered a hacking-and-propaganda campaign aimed at swaying U.S. voters, and officials later said the Kremlin clearly intended to support Mr. Trump. Those findings were endorsed earlier by the Senate Intelligence Committee. However, Mr. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on those conclusions and suggested the various investigations into Russian meddling were political motivated. “We’re entering with our eyes wide open, but peace is always worth the effort,” Ambassador Huntsman said. The question of Ukraine is also expected to come up. Washington hit Moscow with economic sanctions in 2014 for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula and has criticized Russia for fueling the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. (Mike Eckel of RFE.RL)
Kremlin: Crimea not up for discussion
The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to searching for compromises with his U.S. counterpart on “all” issues except the status of Ukraine’s Crimea region, which Moscow claims is part of Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments on July 2, ahead of a planned summit between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Helsinki on July 16. Relations between Moscow and Washington have deteriorated to a post-Cold War low over issues including Russia’s seizure of Crimea in March 2014, its role in wars in Syria and eastern Ukraine, and its meddling into the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Mr. Peskov said on a conference call with reporters that Putin “stated multiple times and explained to his interlocutors that such an item as Crimea can never appear on the agenda, considering that Crimea is an integral part of Russia.” He added, “All the rest are matters [subject to] consensus, discussion, and a search for possible points of contact.” Mr. Trump, asked on June 29 whether reports about him dropping Washington’s opposition to the Russian annexation of Crimea were true, said, “We’re going to have to see.” White House national security adviser John Bolton, who met with Putin in Moscow on June 27, later ruled out the possibility of abandoning Washington’s opposition to the takeover. “That’s not the position of the United States,” he told CBS on July 1. He says that he discussed Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “President Putin was pretty clear with me about it and my response was we’re going to have to agree to disagree on Ukraine.” (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters and Interfax)
White House rejects Crimea annexation
A White House spokeswoman said the United States continues to reject Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula, days after President Donald Trump cast doubt on that position. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on July 2 that the U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow following the 2014 annexation would remain until Moscow reversed its decision. “We do not recognize Russia’s attempt to annex Crimea,” Ms. Sanders said. “We agree to disagree and the sanctions against Russia remain in place until Russia returns the peninsula to the Ukraine.” News reports have cited European leaders as saying that Trump argued privately at a recent Group of Seven summit that Crimea should be part of Russia because, he said, most of the people there speak Russian as their primary language. (RFE/RL, with reporting by AP)
Balukh sentenced to five years
A pro-Ukrainian activist on the Russia-annexed peninsula of Crimea has been sentenced to five years in a penal colony in a verdict assailed by Ukraine as “absolutely arbitrary and illegal.” The prosecutor overseeing the second trial of Volodymyr Balukh on July 2 had asked the Russia-controlled Razdolnensky District Court for a four-year prison sentence for the activist, who is currently on hunger strike. The Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry immediately blasted the court decision, asking “our partners” to influence the Kremlin to release Mr. Balukh and all other “political prisoners.” Mr. Balukh was originally arrested in late 2016 and convicted on a weapons-and-explosives possession charge in August 2017. His conviction, and nearly four-year prison sentence, was reversed on appeal and returned to a lower court, which issued the same verdict and sentence in January. The new case against Mr. Balukh was started three months later, in March, after the warden of the penal facility where he is being held sued him, claiming that Mr. Balukh attacked him. Mr. Balukh, who started a hunger strike on March 19 to protest the new case, contends the prosecutions are politically motivated. He was arrested in December 2016, after the Russian security agents allegedly found explosives and ammunition in his house. The search was conducted shortly after Mr. Balukh planted a Ukrainian flag in his yard and affixed a sign to his house honoring those killed in Kyiv in 2013 and 2014 during the street protests that ousted the country’s pro-Russian president. (Crimea Desk, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Prosecutor seeks long term for Panov
A state prosecutor in Russian-controlled Crimea has asked a court to convict Ukrainian national Yevhen Panov of sabotage and sentence him to 10 and a half years in prison. Prosecutor Esvet Furmambetov made the sentencing request on July 9, and the judge said the verdict will be pronounced on July 13. Russian authorities arrested Mr. Panov and another Ukrainian national, Andriy Zakhtey, in August 2016, and accused them of being partners in a two-person “saboteur group” and plotting a series of attacks on the peninsula. Mr. Zakhtey, who made a plea deal, was tried in February and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. Mr. Panov’s trial started in April. He pleaded not guilty. Kyiv has rejected Russian charges against the two men and has called their arrests “a provocation.” (Crimea Desk, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Putin names regiments after foreign cities
Russian President Vladimir Putin has named several military units after cities or other places in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Germany, and Romania, a step that may be seen as provocative by people in those countries. The decrees – which give a number of regiments and divisions honorary names that hark back to World War II, when dictator Joseph Stalin was in power – were signed by Mr. Putin on June 30 and were made public on July 2. The decrees say that the names are intended “to preserve glorious military and historic traditions, and to nurture loyalty to the fatherland and military duty among the military personnel.” But the move may not go over well in the countries whose place names were used. Many in Poland, for example, see the Soviet Army less as a wartime liberator than as a post-war occupier, and there is resentment over decades of Soviet domination across Eastern Europe. According to the decrees, the 6th Tank Regiment of the Russian Army is now called the Lviv regiment, the 68th Tank Regiment – Zhytomyr-Berlin, the 163th Tank Regiment – Nizhyn. The decrees give the Russian spellings of the names of the Ukrainian cities of Lviv, Zhytomyr and Nizhyn. In 1944, Stalin named the 93rd Tank Brigade after Zhytomyr for its role in World War II. The brigade was later reformed into the 68th Tank Regiment, which was dissolved after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The regiment was reestablished last year. Under the decrees, the 933rd Missile Regiment is now called Upper Dnipro regiment, after the Dnipro River in Ukraine. In addition, Russian Army regiments were renamed after the Belarusian cities of Vitsebsk, Kobryn and Slonim, as well as Warsaw, Berlin and Romania’s Transylvania region. (RFE/RL)
General condemns renaming of units
A top Ukrainian military officer has condemned an order by Russian President Vladimir Putin to name several Russian military units after cities and other places in Ukraine. Gen. Viktor Muzhenko’s comments on July 3 were the latest in a growing number of critical responses to Mr. Putin’s decree, which gave a number of regiments and divisions in the Russian armed forces honorary names that hark back to World War II. Mr. Putin’s order was “a claim to the lands of other nations,” Gen. Muzhenko wrote on Facebook on July 3. “With these decisions Russians continue their old tradition – to steal others’ history and glory. That is a clear signal to the world that the aggressor does not plan to limit itself with Donbas [eastern Ukraine] and Crimea,” wrote the chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ General Staff. According to the Kremlin, the renaming decrees are intended “to preserve glorious military and historic traditions, and to nurture loyalty to the fatherland and military duty among the military personnel.” The Soviet victory in World War II has always been a venerated holiday, including after the Soviet break-up, and Ukraine, like Russia, has honored its war veterans and victims. But the Kremlin in recent years has embraced nostalgia of the war victory to a larger degree, using it in part to demonize Ukraine after the 2014 Euro-Maidan protests and to help justify the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula. (RFE/RL)
Soldiers die in training accident
Three Ukrainian soldiers have died and nine were wounded during a training accident on July 6, the Ukrainian military said in a statement. The soldiers were killed by a suspected mortar explosion during tactical exercises, the statement added. It said that there would be an official investigation. The accident happened in western Ukraine. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters and Interfax)