Putin taps minister as envoy to Ukraine
MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed Dmitry Livanov as the president’s envoy on trade and economic ties with Ukraine. Mr. Putin accepted Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal to appoint Mr. Livanov at a working meeting at Belbek Airport in Sevastopol, on the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, on August 19. Mr. Livanov had served since 2012 as education minister. Mr. Putin also agreed with Mr. Medvedev to appoint Olga Vasilyeva as Russia’s new education minister. Ms. Vasilyeva was deputy chief of the presidential directorate for public projects. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by RIA Novosti and Interfax)
Party will not campaign in Crimea
KYIV – Russia’s opposition PARNAS party will not campaign for Russia’s upcoming legislative elections in the annexed region of Crimea because the Ukrainian government has denied permission for it to do so. “We will follow Ukraine’s decision and act in accordance with international law,” the PARNAS branch in Krasnodar region wrote on the VKontakte social network on August 18. Oleksiy Makeyev, the director of Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s department for policy and communications, told RFE/RL on August 18 that Kyiv cannot officially allow a Russian political party to conduct any activities on Ukraine’s “occupied territories.” PARNAS leader and former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told RFE/RL in March that his party considers Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea illegal and that he would return control of the peninsula to Ukraine. On August 18, Ukraine complained to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) about the Russia-dominated organization’s plan to send election monitors to the peninsula. The parliamentary elections in Russia are scheduled for September 18. (Crimean Desk, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Putin criticizes Kyiv at Crimea meeting
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine – Russian President Vladimir Putin has chaired a session of the Russian Security Council in Crimea, the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014. Mr. Putin told the August 19 gathering in Sevastopol that Ukraine attempted to carry out sabotage attacks in Crimea because Kyiv is “reluctant or unable” to implement the Minsk Accords. He was referring to Moscow’s claim earlier this month that it had thwarted a Ukrainian plot to carry out sabotage in the region. Kyiv has denied the existence of any such plot and Western officials say Moscow has failed to produce convincing evidence of one. On August 17, European Union President Donald Tusk said Russia’s account of the events was “unreliable.” Mr. Putin told the Security Council that “it looks like our partners in Kyiv have made a decision to aggravate tensions.” Nonetheless, Mr. Putin said Russia was not planning to cut off diplomatic relations with Ukraine “despite the unwillingness of… Kyiv to have full-fledged diplomatic relations at the level of ambassadors.” Russia was holding a military exercise in Crimea as Mr. Putin was speaking, training the logistics of bringing troops, armor and equipment from Russia to Ukraine. Mr. Putin was also to address the Tavrida youth forum, an event that has been held annually since the annexation that assembles “young professionals” from across Russia. This was Mr. Putin’s fifth visit to the region since it was annexed. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by AFP, RIA-Novosti and Interfax)
Russia holds military exercises In Crimea
MOSCOW – Russian military forces are carrying out “logistical exercises” in and around the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. Russia’s state RIA-Novosti agency announced the August 18 drills. The point of the exercise is to train moving troops, armor and other equipment from Russia to Crimea. Some 2,500 troops, 350 armored vehicles, a large landing ship, a submarine and other units are participating. The current exercises are the forerunner of a much larger war-games exercise planned in the region for September. The Defense Ministry said Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu observed part of the exercise on August 17 in the Russian port city of Novorossiysk. Tensions have been high in the region since Moscow earlier this month accused Ukraine of plotting “sabotage” attacks in Crimea. Kyiv denies any such plots. Recent weeks have also seen a noticeable increase in shelling and other violence in eastern Ukraine, where Kyiv is battling against Russia-back separatists. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on August 17 warned that he does not rule out “a full-scale Russian invasion” and said that if the situation in the east and around Crimea continues to deteriorate, “we will have to impose martial law and order mobilization.” (RFE/RL, based on reporting by RIA-Novosti, Reuters and AFP)
Feygin barred from leaving Russia
MOSCOW – Prominent Russian human rights lawyer Mark Feygin has been barred from leaving Russia in a move he says is aimed at preventing him from defending Crimean Tatars at an Organization for Security and Cooperation event in Warsaw. Mr. Feygin posted a photograph of the order barring him from leaving on Twitter on August 18 and said it also is intended “to block my visits to Ukraine.” Mr. Feygin was one of the main defense lawyers for Ukrainian military aviator Nadiya Savchenko, who spent nearly two years in Russian custody after being captured in Ukraine. The document that Mr. Feygin posted indicates that Russian court bailiffs ordered the travel ban because he is a “debtor from the Russian Federation.” Mr. Feygin did not comment on the nature of the purported debt. (RFE/RL)
Kyiv protests CIS election monitors in Crimea
KYIV – Ukraine has protested to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) over the organization’s plans to send monitors to the Russian State Duma elections in the region of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry on August 18 published a statement saying the CIS “has been formally notified about the Ukrainian stance regarding the Russian intention to spread [the elections] into the temporarily occupied territory” of Crimea and the Crimean city of Sevastopol. It noted that the elections “will not have any legal consequence” and added that any monitoring of the “farce election will be seen as an unfriendly move.” The CIS is an organization of some former Soviet republics. Nine of them – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – are full members, while Turkmenistan and Ukraine are associate states. Georgia withdrew from the CIS after the war against Russia in 2008. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Interfax and RIA Novosti)
Two Ukrainian Olympians fail doping retest
BUDAPEST – Eleven Olympic weightlifting medalists will be stripped of their medals after failing retests of their doping samples from the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said the 11 athletes tested positive for a range of banned substances. They have all been provisionally suspended until the doping cases are decided. The IWF said in a statement on August 24 that Chinese gold medalists Cao Lei, Liu Chunhong, and Chen Xiexia all tested positive for GHRP-2, which stimulates growth hormone production. The IWF said the other eight medalists, including current world-record holder Andrei Rybakou of Belarus who won silver in 2008, all tested positive for various anabolic steroids. The other medalists are Belarus’s Anastasia Novikova, Kazakhstan’s Maria Grabovetskaya and Irina Nekrasova, Russia’s Khadzhimurat Akkaev and Dmitry Lapikov, and Ukraine’s Natalya Davydova and Olha Korobka. (Based on reporting by AP and Interfax)
Russia, Ukraine target military leaders
KYIV – Russia and Ukraine traded salvos this week with dueling criminal investigations against each other’s top military brass, a new front in the ongoing conflict between the two countries. Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko launched the opening legal hand grenade on August 22, announcing a probe into Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and 19 other Russian military and civilian officials. Mr. Lutsenko said the officials are suspected of “committing especially serious crimes against the foundations of Ukraine’s national and civil security, peace, and international law and order,” adding that Kyiv plans to seek international warrants for their arrests. Not be outdone, Russia’s Investigative Committee returned fire on August 24, saying that a criminal investigation had been opened into Mr. Shoigu’s Ukrainian counterpart, Stepan Poltorak, and other military officials. They are accused of war crimes and violations of a 2015 cease-fire in the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas, according to a statement from the agency, Russia’s top investigative body. Fighting in parts of the Donbas has surged in recent weeks, with Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists exchanging mortar, artillery, and gunfire. Tensions there spiked earlier this month after Moscow said it had detained a group of Ukrainian saboteurs in Crimea, and large columns of military equipment were seen moving around the Ukrainian peninsula, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014. Kyiv rejects Russian accusations of “provocations” in Crimea and war-torn eastern Ukraine. The likelihood of either country putting the accused top officials on trial is virtually nil, though both nations allow for trials in absentia. A lawmaker in Russia’s upper house of parliament, meanwhile, suggested one way to further tweak Kyiv: by staging criminal proceedings against Ukrainian officials in areas of the Donbas territory controlled by separatist forces. More than 9,500 people have been killed in the fighting, according to international observers, and tens of thousands have been displaced. (RFE/RL)
Trump aides fought release of Tymoshenko
WASHINGTON – U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign aides in 2012 reportedly fought the release of Ukrainian political leader Yulia Tymoshenko when she was in jail. The Associated Press reports that a consulting firm run by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates was working for Ukraine’s Party of Regions and directed a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort between 2012 and 2014 that undercut U.S. public support for Ms. Tymoshenko, though she was considered a political prisoner by the United States and European governments at the time. Mr. Manafort resigned from the Trump campaign last week amid revelations about his undisclosed lobbying for the Ukrainian party and Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by a popular uprising in 2014. Gates continues to serve as Trump’s campaign liaison with the Republican National Committee. Ms. Tymoshenko, who was Ukraine’s prime minister from 2007 to 2010, was jailed on embezzlement charges following her government’s defeat by Mr. Yanukovych in 2010. (Based on reporting by AP)
Germany, Russia, France discuss eastern Ukraine
MOSCOW – The Kremlin has announced that the leaders of Russia, Germany, and France will meet on the sidelines of an upcoming G20 summit to discuss the situation in eastern Ukraine. A recent upsurge in fighting in eastern Ukraine, where government forces are fighting Russia-backed separatists, plus fresh tensions in Crimea are raising concerns that a fragile cease-fire agreed in Minsk in February 2015 could collapse. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in eastern Ukraine during a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on August 23. The Kremlin said the three will meet on the sidelines of a summit for the Group of 20 (G20) group of major economies, which is being held in China on September 4-5. A German government spokesman said the three leaders shared concern about cease-fire breaches in eastern Ukraine and that Ms. Merkel and Mr. Hollande had urged Mr. Putin to do what he could to calm the situation. Mr. Putin earlier this month accused Kyiv of plotting “sabotage” attacks in Crimea while Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko warned of a possible “full-scale” Russian invasion. (Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP)
Sentsov urges not to fight for his release
PRAGUE – Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who is behind bars in Russia, has called on Ukrainians not to fight for his release “at any price, as it would not bring the victory nearer.” In a letter obtained by RFE/RL on August 22, Sentsov wrote that the only thing he and others Ukraine considers political prisoners jailed in Russia can do for their homeland is “to hold on.” “Be aware that we are not your weak point. If our destiny is to become nails in the lid of the tyrant’s coffin, then yes, I would like to be such a nail. Just remember, that nail will never bend,” wrote Mr. Sentsov, whose case has become a cause celebre in Ukraine. Crimea’s Russia-backed authorities convicted Mr. Sentsov of conspiring to commit terrorism on the annexed Ukrainian peninsula. Mr. Sentsov, who has said he was unfairly prosecuted by what he called the “occupiers” of Crimea, was sentenced to a 20-year sentence last August following a trial that Amnesty International described as “fatally flawed.” (RFE/RL Crimean Desk, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Austrian court rejects Firtash’s appeal
VIENNA – Austria’s Constitutional Court has refused to consider an appeal by Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash in an attempt to fight his extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on corruption charges. Mr. Firtash had petitioned the court to recognize the U.S.-Austrian extradition agreement as unconstitutional. The court’s rejection of his case, reported by Deutsche Welle on August 19, allows an appeal by the Vienna prosecutor’s office of a court ruling prohibiting Mr. Firtash from being extradited to the United States to be considered. U.S. officials are seeking Mr. Firtash’s extradition in the case of some $18.5 million in bribes being paid for a permit to mine titanium in India. Mr. Firtash, 51, is a co-owner along with Gazprom of RosUkrEnergo, a Swiss-registered company that exports natural gas from Turkmenistan to Eastern Europe. He also controls a large part of the titanium business in Ukraine and is one of that country’s richest men. Austrian officials arrested Mr. Firtash at the request of U.S. law enforcement agencies in March 2014. He was released from detention shortly afterwards when he posted bail of 125 million euros ($172 million), a record amount in Austria. Mr. Firtash rejects the charges against him as “absurd and unfounded.” (Based on reporting by Interfax-Ukraine, ibtimes.co.uk, and Deutsche Welle)
Turkey won’t recognize Crimea as Russian
ANKARA – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reassured his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko that Ankara will continue to recognize the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia, as Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian presidential press service said on August 20 that Mr. Erdogan told Mr. Poroshenko via telephone that Turkey has not changed its “unwavering position regarding its support of Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity in the country’s internationally recognized borders.” Mr. Erdogan added that Ankara would not recognize “Crimea’s occupation” and would continue to support “the Crimean Tatars in every possible way.” The Poroshenko-Erdogan conversation comes less than two weeks after an Mr. Erdogan visit to Russia restored Ankara’s relations with the Kremlin that had reached a low point following last year’s shooting down of a Russian warplane by Turkish fighter jets. The two leaders also discussed bilateral energy-sector cooperation and the recent terrorist bomb attacks in eastern Turkey. (Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax)