Russia halts talks on MH17
Russia says it has decided to halt consultations with Australia and the Netherlands on the downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger flight over eastern Ukraine more than six years ago, after the Dutch government took Russia to court in July for its alleged role in the tragedy. “Such unfriendly moves by the Netherlands make further trilateral consultations and our participation in them senseless,” Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement on October 15. Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said in a tweet that the Netherlands “greatly regrets this decision. It is extremely painful for the survivors.” MH17 was shot down on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile fired from territory controlled by Moscow-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine. Nearly two-thirds of the 298 victims were Dutch nationals. Following a six-year international investigation, prosecutors argued that the aircraft was shot down by a Buk system fired by Russia-backed militants who had acquired it from a Russian military base on the border between the two countries. The findings have been corroborated or supported by evidence gathered by journalists and independent investigators, such as the British-based group Bellingcat. The four suspects – Russians Sergei Dubinsky, Oleg Pulatov and Igor Girkin, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko – are being tried in absentia by court in The Hague for involvement in the tragedy. The relatives of at least 65 Dutch victims in 2018 filed a complaint at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry announced on July 10 that the government had filed a complaint against Russia with the Strasbourg-based court in a bid to offer “maximum support to these individual cases.” In its statement, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said Moscow agreed in 2018 to hold trilateral consultations to “help establish… the true causes” of the crash. “However, in all likelihood, Australia and the Netherlands did not seek to understand what actually happened… but were only aimed at getting Russia to plead guilty and receive compensation for the relatives of the victims.” (RFE/RL’s Russian Service, with reporting by Reuters)
Iran, Ukraine in new round of talks
Iran is hosting officials from Ukraine in a second round of talks over compensation for a Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed shortly after takeoff in Tehran in January after being struck by two missiles, killing 176 people. Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yevhen Yenin and his Iranian counterpart, Mohsen Baharwand, met in Tehran on October 19 at the start of the two-day talks. Mr. Baharwand said Iran “has nothing to hide about this tragedy” and was ready to “honestly inform the Ukrainian people and delegation about the details” of the crash, according to a statement by the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry. Mr. Yenin also held talks with Foreign Affairs Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who described the first round of talks in Kyiv in July as “positive and constructive” and hoped that those in Tehran achieve their desired results. In a statement by Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, Mr. Yenin welcomed “Iran’s decision to take full responsibility for the downing of the Ukrainian plane, as well as its readiness to provide equal compensation to the relatives of all victims, regardless of their citizenship.” He also emphasized the “need for an unbiased and objective investigation of the circumstances of the air disaster and called on the Iranian side to ensure access” to all of its elements. Following the Kyiv talks in July, Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba had said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the process. Iranian officials have said that the country’s forces accidentally shot down the Kyiv-bound Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 on January 8. A misaligned missile battery and miscommunication between soldiers and superior officers were to blame for incident, according to Iran’s aviation authorities. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, with reporting by AFP, TASS and IRNA)
Zelenskyy on international support for Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the international coalition of Ukraine’s support continues to exist and even reaches a new level. “No matter how someone persuades and tries, the international coalition continues to support Ukraine, moreover, it is reaching a new level. We have retained the bicameral support of the United States. Ukraine and Great Britain have officially become strategic partners. Relations between Ukraine and Turkey have reached an unprecedented level. Canada remains a reliable partner for us,” he said in the president’s annual statement to the Verkhovna Rada on October 20. Mr. Zelenskyy said that, according to experts, the recent Ukraine-EU summit and the joint statement following it, for the first time, highlight the partnership between Ukraine and the European Union. “They note our successes, in particular, the tangible progress in the implementation of the Association Agreement, all the prerequisites for ‘industrial visa-free travel,’ the Agreement on Common Aviation Space with the EU, deeper integration of Ukrainian markets with European ones, as well as a clear message that the visa-free regime between Ukraine and Europe is not in danger. Whoever tells you anything. This also applies to cooperation with the IMF, which we continue, as well as with the World Bank and EBRD,” he said. The president also said that today Ukraine is actually recreating a constructive dialogue and good-neighborly relations with Hungary, Romania and Poland. Along with Poland and Lithuania, the Lublin Triangle was founded as a platform for political, economic and social interaction. “I consider another fact to be an imperceptible, but really important victory on the world arena: the phrase ‘The world is tired of Ukraine’ has disappeared at the international level. We have given the image of our state a new content. They started to look at Ukraine in a new way, to perceive as constructive, reliable and, therefore, an equal player; as a country that appreciates any support, but hopes, first of all, for itself. Since it understands that no one will embody transformations for us, no one will create a successful country for us,” he said. Mr. Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine has become proactive on the international stage. In particular, it took the initiative to create in Kyiv the headquarters of the International Office for Counteracting Disinformation and Propaganda. (Interfax Ukraine)
Zelenskyy on Ukraine in NATO
Ukraine is moving towards full membership in the North Atlantic Alliance, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with the BBC’s “HARDtalk” on October 12. “Today we have become a NATO partner with enhanced opportunities. We are heading to NATO,” the president said. “NATO is security in our region. We understand that,” he added. He noted that Ukraine has a powerful army of 200,000 servicemen, and that the material and technical provision of the Ukrainian army is constantly updated. “I tell the United States, the countries of the European Union, I tell everyone: if you do not want to lose Ukraine, you must support it. And NATO membership is a very important signal to the Russian Federation and it is the most important support,” he said. To the BBC host’s remark that some European high-ranking officials consider Ukraine’s membership in NATO and the European Union a fantasy, Mr. Zelenskyy replied that the war between Ukraine and Russia was once considered a fantasy as well. (Presidential Office of Ukraine)
Russia urged to stop violations in Crimea
The European Union has denounced forced military conscription of residents in the Russian-occupied Crimea region and called on Moscow to “stop all violations of international law” on the peninsula. “This is part of continued efforts to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, with further attempts to forcibly integrate the illegally annexed Crimea and Sevastopol into Russia,” a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on October 15. The spokesman, Peter Stano, said the EU “does not, and will not” recognize the annexation and expects Russia to “stop all violations of international law” on the peninsula. Russia occupied and seized Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 and threw its support behind militants in Ukraine’s east, where some 13,200 people have been killed in the ongoing conflict. The EU has imposed several rounds of sanctions on individuals and entities accused of undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. (RFE/RL)
Biden rejects unverified report
Election campaign officials for former Vice-President Joe Biden have dismissed a report in The New York Post that he met a senior official from a Ukrainian energy firm at the center of a controversy over the dismissal of a prosecutor investigating the company. The Post did not give evidence the meeting had taken place, but based its October 14 report on unverified e-mails it said it had received from Trump surrogates. Social-media platforms Facebook and Twitter restricted sharing of the article pending third-party fact-checking over concerns of misinformation with just three weeks left until the November 3 election. “Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by The New York Post, ever took place,” Mr. Bates said. The Post article alleges Hunter Biden used his influence to introduce an executive at the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma, where Hunter Biden was a paid board member, to his father, who at the time was leading U.S. policy toward Ukraine as vice-president. The Post said an e-mail sent from Vadym Pozharskyi, a top executive at Burisma, to Hunter Biden in April 2015 revealed a meeting between the Ukrainian and the former vice-president about a year after Hunter Biden joined the Burisma board despite having no experience in the natural gas sector. “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to D.C. and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the e-mail reads according to the newspaper. Another unverified e-mail from May 2014 allegedly shows Mr. Pozharskyi asking Hunter Biden for “advice on how you could use your influence” on Burisma’s behalf. The e-mails, if true, would contradict Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” Donald Trump, who is trailing Mr. Biden in most polls heading into the November 3 election, has repeatedly drawn attention to Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine, including an unproven allegation that his father, the former vice-president, pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, in an attempt to block an investigation into Burisma. Mr. Trump blasted the social-media platforms for restricting access to what he called the “smoking gun” e-mails, while White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused them of censorship. “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation,” said Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone. Twitter said it was limiting the article’s spread due to questions about “the origins of the materials” included in the article. The Post reported it had obtained the e-mails from the owner of a computer repair shop in Delaware, who said a customer had dropped off a computer in April 2019 and never picked it up. The storeowner could not identify the customer as Hunter Biden, but said the laptop had a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother. The shop owner reportedly notified federal authorities about the computer, which was said to have been seized by the FBI in December. The Post said that before turning over the hard drive, the shop owner made a copy of it and gave it to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is Trump’s personal lawyer. The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee confirmed the panel is probing e-mails released in the report. Mr. Giuliani has been involved in finding compromising information on Mr. Biden, including engaging with a Ukrainian politician the U.S. government says is “an active Russian agent” seeking to undermine U.S. elections. These issues came to the fore briefly again in late September with a controversial report by Republican senators focusing on the older and younger Bidens’ activities in Ukraine and when the two candidates sparred over the same matters in their first presidential candidate debate on September 29. (RFE/RL, with reporting by AFP, DPA, The Hill, Fox News and The New York Post)
6,719 coronavirus cases in 24 hours
Ukraine has registered a record 6,719 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, it was reported on October 21, bringing the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 309,107, according to the interactive map of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. As many as 141 patients have died from COVID-19, and 2,686 have recovered in the country over the past 24 hours. In total, 5,927 deaths and 132,219 recoveries have been recorded in Ukraine since the beginning of the pandemic. A total of 5,469 COVID-19 cases were recorded in Ukraine on October 19. (Ukrinform)