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Politics and War in Ukraine (2 Viewers)

 


US deploying tanks, troops to Eastern Europe amid record high tensions with Russia


The United States is deploying troops to Poland, the Baltic states and Romania next month as part of raising the security of the region, Polish and U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.

Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz made the announcement following talks with the commander of U.S. land troops in Europe, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, in Zagan, western Poland. An Armored Brigade Combat Team from Fort Carson, Colorado will be deployed there early next month, while another U.S. force, a battalion, will be deployed April 1 to Orzysz, in the northeast.

Macierewicz said he was "very happy that a decision has been taken by the U.S. side for an earlier deployment."

But the U.S. Army told The Associated Press that the deployment was not accelerated and is taking place as had always been scheduled.

Hodges said the troops will arrive in the German port of Bremerhaven on Jan. 6 and will be immediately deployed to Poland, the Baltic states and Romania. Their transfer will be timed and treated as a test of "how fast the force can move from port to field," he said.

"I'm confident in the very powerful signal, the message it will send (that) the United States, along with the rest of NATO, is committed to deterrence," Hodges said.

He said the armored brigade has already moved out of its Colorado base and is loading on ships.

"I'm excited about what my country is doing and I'm excited about continuing to work with our ally, Poland," Hodges said.

In a separate decision, the members of NATO at a July summit in Warsaw approved the deployment of four multinational battalions to Poland and the Baltic states to deter Russia. Germany will lead a multinational battalion in Lithuania, with similar battalions to be led by the United States in Poland, Britain in Estonia and Canada in Latvia.

Poland and the Baltic nations have been uneasy about increased Russian military operations in the region, especially after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, and have requested U.S. and NATO troops on their soil as a deterrent. The alliance and the U.S. insist the troop presence is not aimed against anyone, but Russia has threatened measures in response.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/us-deploying-tanks-troops-to-eastern-europe-amid-record-high-tensions-with-russia-2016-12?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=referral

 
 


Top NATO Official: US Troops in Poland Is 'Proportionate'


VILNIUS, Lithuania  — A top NATO official says the deployment of US troops in Poland at Russia's doorstep is a "proportionate and measured" move.

In an interview published Friday by the Baltic News Service, NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller acknowledged that Russians "are concerned about what NATO is doing."

American soldiers rolled into Poland Thursday in the first deployment of U.S. troops since the fall of communism in 1989 as a deterrent against Russia, which annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The Baltic Sea region also feels threatened by Russia's recent nearby deployment of nuclear-capable missiles.

Gottemoeller says the alliance has "some interest in dialogue" with the Russians.

Gottemoeller was in Lithuania for a two-day informal security policy meeting.
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http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/01/13/top-nato-official-us-troops-poland-is-proportionate.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+militarydotcom%2Fdailynews+(Military.com+News)

 
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Weekend of Fighting in Eastern Ukraine



Assessing latest bloodshed near Avdiivka, including recent satellite imagery

...

This is a dramatic narrative of the events of January 28–29, with massive Ukrainian casualties, incompetence from friendly fire, and no mention of any separatist casualties other than Grek. How does this narrative match up with other accounts of the fighting, both from Ukrainian forces and journalists, and other separatist sources?

...

On Monday, a Ukrainian military spokesperson said that five Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another nine were wounded on January 29, and another two were killed and five injured on the 30th. The bulk of these casualties were in Avdiivka.

The Ukrainian Novoye Vremya (The New Times) news site compiled official and unofficial versions of the first and second day (January 29 and 30) of fighting in Avdiivka. Both versions agree with the primary narrative that separatist forces launched an attack to seize the Promzone early in the morning, but Ukraine’s 72nd Brigade repelled the attack. Per the official version of January 29, from Ukrainian officials, the following events took place:


At around 5am, the occupants [separatists] began intensive shelling in the area of the Avdiivka (Kamenka and Krutaya Balka) Promzone. Small arms, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades were used in the attack. After two hours, they decided to lead an assault to seize positions from the ATO forces. It should be noted that the exact same tactics of hybrid warfare were used in the Svilotdarsk Bulge [note: see previous DFRLab piece on this incident here], when they [separatists] suffered a crushing defeat.



The enemy attacked with two groups of 25–30 people. Ukrainian soldiers conducted a counterattack, and did not only stop the attack on Avdiivka, but also took important, strategic positions. However, this did not completely stop the fighters: the continued shelling, however they dared not attack.



At 1:45pm after the shelling of the Ukrainian positions from rocket-propelled grenades of various caliber, the occupants [separatists] made a fresh attempt to drive out the ATO forces from the positions in the Avdiivka area (Butovka Mine from the Spartak direction). But yet again, the assault turned out unsuccessful for the fighters. The enemy was forced to retreat.


In sum, the battles lasted about 19 hours on January 29. Furthermore, one Ukrainian official claims that nine separatist fighters were killed, one was taken prisoner, and about twenty-four were wounded (seven seriously). Another official from the “Anti-Terrorist Operation” (ATO) claims that 15 were killed, 24 wounded.

The unofficial version gathered by Novoe Vremya is not too different than the official one, but provides additional details, including that the battle was between the 100th Brigade of the DNR (which Grek led a battalion for) and Ukraine’s 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade.

For the second day (January 30) of fighting, less information is available. Novoe Vremya reported that separatists continued their attack against Ukrainian positions in the Promzone with 120mm and 152mm artillery, firing from south (near the village of Spartak) and southeast (Yakovlevka) of Avdiivka.

In sum, Ukrainian officials reported that separatists began an assault to seize the Promzone at around 5am on Sunday (January 29) morning, leading to seven deaths among Ukrainian soldiers, and between nine to fifteen for separatists.

... According to a Ukrainian official, Avdiivka is currently without water, power, or heating.
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https://medium.com/@DFRLab/weekend-of-fighting-in-eastern-ukraine-3696042720f1#.1htdphf24

- So there has been another Russian/Separtist advance.

- The town of Adveeka is about 30,000 in size, apparently Russia/separatist alliance told the citizens to immediately get out or face being shelled and killed. This is the method used in Aleppo.

- The call sheet from the Trump/Putin call from a couple days ago gives no indication that the Ukraine War was discussed (or sanctions).

 
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‘Moscow will get the message’: US flexes muscles with largest ever deployment to Poland


In January, a US Army brigade of nearly 3,500 troops and 2,700 pieces of heavy equipment arrived in Poland in the largest deployments of US troops and armor to that country.

The brigade came with a simple mission — integrate with the Polish army and deter Russia on all fronts.

"Russian aggression takes many forms," Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of the US Army in Europe, told NBC News.

"Cyber, misinformation, threatening other countries, Russian snap exercises. We're serious — this is not just a training exercise. It's to demonstrate a strategic message that you cannot violate the sovereignty of members of NATO ... Moscow will get the message — I'm confident of it. "

The combine US and Polish forces immediately started training with tanks, artillery, and helicopters in an overt show of force.

Meanwhile, US soldiers in Lithuania had just finished a similar exercise. Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary will all also see US troops deployed on a rotational basis.

But the US assurance to vulnerable NATO states in the Baltics comes after a years-long Russian military buildup. Current and former US generals have expressed doubts about NATO's ability to deter or stop an outright attack from Russia, and a report from the think tank RAND Corp predicts that Russia could seize control of the Baltic States within 36 hours of a blitz-like invasion. 

However, experts around the world have noted Russian aggression via softer hybrid means like cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns could also be used against NATO nations in Eastern Europe.

Additionally, Donald Trump has criticized NATO as being ineffectual and obsolete, sowing doubts among European leaders of whether or not the US would come to the aid of embattled European allies.

For now, US forces will train, eat, and sleep alongside their European allies, meaning that a Russian attack of any sort on the Baltics will draw an immediate reaction from the US.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/moscow-will-get-the-message-us-flexes-muscles-with-largest-ever-deployment-to-poland-2017-1?r=UK&IR=T

 
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The Ukrainian foreign ministry expressed deep concern on Monday night (30 January) over the “intensification of the Russian-terrorist forces in Donbas”. Other reports, however, speak of a “creeping offensive” of Ukrainian forces in an attempt to create “new facts on the ground”.

According to a statement, for the last two days, Russian forces carried out massive attacks across the contact line using all available weapons, including Grad rockets, 122 mm and 152 mm artillery, 82 and 120mm mortars, and tanks, all of which are prohibited by the Minsk agreements. The Russian weapons killed 8 Ukrainian soldiers and have left 26 wounded, the statement adds.

Civilians threatened

Reports indicate that residential areas have been shelled.

“Two civilians have been wounded. The cities of Yasinovata and Avdiyivka were fully cut off from electricity by shelling. More than 400,000 peaceful civilians in the region have no access to water, electricity and heating. Given the harsh weather conditions and the continuing shelling by the militants, the humanitarian situation in the area continues to deteriorate,” the statement says.
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http://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/military-situation-in-eastern-ukraine-worsens/

 
Danish Intelligence Report Warns NATO Members of New Russian Cyberattacks


Russia has the willingness and capacity to launch serial cyberattacks against Denmark and any neighboring Nordic or Baltic state
that it regards as too close to NATO or an imminent threat according to security intelligence aggregated by Danish defense intelligence services....
 


The Danish warnings about possible cyberthreats from state-backed Russian quarters are contained in a new long-term intelligence risk assessment report collated by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS)....



"Russia is conducting a military buildup and modernization in western Russia. The Baltic Sea region has become a major area of friction between Russia and NATO. Russia’s distrust of NATO and its willingness to take risks increases the danger of misunderstandings and miscalculations," according to the DDIS report....



In response to the threat assessment, Denmark’s defense minister, Claus Hjort Frederiksen, said the Defence Ministry is looking for extra government funding to scale up and strengthen the country’s national security infrastructure and defensive cyberwarfare capabilities....



Cyberattacks against Denmark’s security, power supply and medical center installations have materialized as a "serious" and ever-present threat, said Frederiksen....



There is also visible unease among both Nordic and Baltic-rim states to Russia’s increasing unpredictability in the region, and Moscow’s action to reinforce its missile strike capability from its Kaliningrad enclave....



"The new missiles being installed by Russia in Kaliningrad have the ability to reach Danish cities like Copenhagen. The future threats we face are now both cyber- and missiles-based," Frederiksen said.
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http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/new-danish-intelligence-report-warns-nato-members-of-new-russian-cyberattacks



 

 
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Rockets Fly As Donetsk Returns To Darkest Days Of War


Major fighting around an industrial city in Donetsk has everyone asking if Putin is up to something big, or just testing the resolve of a new Trump administration.

Why is the war in Ukraine suddenly going from frozen conflict to scorcher? Is this Vladimir Putin’s way of testing Donald Trump, not two full weeks into his job as U.S. president, or is it just another provocation designed to keep Kiev weak and insecure after three years of invasion, annexation and occupation?
True, fighting has continued more or less constantly in east Ukraine, the industrial heartland known as the Donbass, ever since the fighting was meant to have stopped as a result of not one but two cease-fire agreements. But this week it escalated in a dramatic fashion, and with clear signs of Kremlin support. Into the fray on the pro-Russian separatists’ side have come heavy-duty armaments such as Grad rockets and the Buk missile system which shot down MH17. (And there’s only one place where the separatists can get this stuff). Also, Ukrainian soldiers are receiving ominous text messages on their cell phones, redolent of the kind of cyber-ops used against them before in the war, the technology and operators of which have been linked to Russian military intelligence hacking of the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s emails.
According to Ukrainian official reports, at least 12 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 57 wounded since Sunday, along with civilian killed and five wounded. The Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk report at least nine of their fighters and five civilians dead, though it must always be cautioned that the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic has form for exaggerating or even outright fabricating reports of civilian casualties. Nevertheless the fighting is the worst seen in an urban area in well over a year.
Avdiivka is of key economic importance to the Donetsk region, housing the vast Avdiivka coke and Chemical Plant, the biggest coke producer in Ukraine and one of the largest in Europe. The plant forms a key part of the metallurgy industry in the Donbass, the backbone of the region’s economy, providing coke for steel works in Mariupol, another government-held city threatened by Russia-backed forces down on the Azov coast.
Since the fall of Donetsk Airport to Russia-backed forces in January, 2015, Avdiivka has borne the brunt of fighting in the Donetsk area, and has been the scene of daily attacks since. Violence has remained at a relatively high level since March last year, when Ukrainian troops established control over the Avdiivka industrial park or promzona, which had formally laid in no-man’s land since the signing of the second Minsk peace agreements in February, 2015, bringing them to within a few hundred meters of Russia-backed forces’ positions on the highway out of Donetsk city.
The battle around Avdiivka began in the early hours of Sunday morning and there are two competing narratives of what happened.
According to the Ukrainian military, Russia-backed fighters launched a series of assaults on Ukrainian positions both in the promzona, and to the southwest and east of the town. In response, say reports from both front-line fighters and the Ukrainian defense minister, Stepan Poltorak, Ukrainian forces mounted a successful counter-attack and took over some of the Russia-backed fighters’ foremost trenches. Meanwhile, the separatists and their handlers in Moscow claim that the battle was initiated by a Ukrainian offensive.
Since then, fighting has intensified across the front line, well beyond Donetsk, with heavy shelling reported every day from Mariupol to the Luhansk region in the northeast.
Devastating and highly inaccurate Grad multiple-launch rocket systems are now back in regular use. Video from Donetsk city on Tuesday morning showed repeated volleys of the 122-mm rockets flying out of separatist-held territory towards Ukrainian lines. There are also numerous reports of the use of such rockets both to the south of Donetsk and the east of Mariupol. While the Ukrainian military has reported the sporadic use of Grads on several occasions in the last year, this is the first significant use of the weapons in urban Donetsk since the summer of 2015.
With artillery raining down on both sides of the front line, residents of Donetsk and Avdiivka have been comparing recent days to the darkest days of the war at the height of fighting in 2014 and 2015.
One particularly disturbing development has been the dissemination of threatening SMS text messages in Avdiivka, addressed to Ukrainian soldiers, warning them that their bodies “will be found when the snow melts,” or that they are nothing but “meat for their commanders.” The appearance of such messages closely resemble those sent out en-masse during the bloody battle for Debaltseve in January and February, 2015, which ended in the fall of the city to the Russian army. These texts appear to have been broadcast by Russian electronic warfare systems, which have been documented in Donetsk within the last year, with the aim of demoralizing Ukrainian troops.
Another is the return of the Buk surface-to-air missile system, with which Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down on July 17, 2014. The separatists published images today showing the wreckage of what they claimed was the wreckage of a Buk missile that had crashed, without detonating, in the Donetsk suburb of Makiivka, allegedly having been fired by Ukrainian forces at a drone operated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) which is monitoring the conflict with the aim of securing a ceasefire. While the photos do appear to be genuine, the OSCE has explicitly denied that any of their unmanned aerial vehicles came under attack. There are also some reports from locals that the missile was fired from separatist-held territory.
The humanitarian situation in Avdiivka is grim. Shelling has knocked out power supplies, and civilians have been left without running water, heat or light as temperatures reach -17 Celsius during the nights. The authorities have established field kitchens and warming centers, but announced that they are prepared to evacuate thousands of residents, though as of Wednesday, only 145, 88 of them children, have chosen to leave.
What we have seen this week is a major deterioration. While the level of violence in Ukraine has ebbed and flowed on a relatively cyclical, though still deadly basis over the last year, there have been occasional flare-ups, most notably in December last year, when heavy fighting broke out and lasted for several days near Debaltseve, leaving dozens of fighters on both sides dead. However, this week’s combat differs significantly from December’s. Firstly, the worst fighting is taking place in built-up, urban areas, posing a far greater risk to civilians than the battles in the countryside outside Debaltseve. Secondly, the increase in shelling, including the use of Grads, elsewhere on the front line is far more dramatic and widespread last year.
This escalation comes as Ukraine is trying to shore up international support at a time of great uncertainty following the inauguration of President Donald Trump, whose relationship with the Kremlin has Kiev worried. Ukrainian President Poroshenko was in Berlin on Monday for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel but cut his visit short due to the fighting. Meanwhile, both Danish and French ministers have been visiting Mariupol this week. A video released on Tuesday by the Danish foreign minister, Anders Samuelsen, captures the sound of distant shelling as the minister expressed his concern about the deterioration.
Many observers have noted that the explosion of violence came shortly after a phone call between Trump and President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, which, the Kremlin claims led to the two leaders agreeing to “establish partner-like cooperation” on the “crisis” in Ukraine—something the White House did not mention.
Could the Russians have launched an assault on Avdiivka having either felt they had received assurances from the White House that the US would not react, or to test the resolve of the new leader? Perhaps, but the relationship is likely more organic.
An important factor is that, over the last year, the Ukrainian armed forces have become significantly more assertive and effective in prosecuting counter-attacks, and bolder in establishing control over hirtherto-undefended areas, such as Avdiivka’s promzona or the villages of Novoluhanske [] near separatist-held Horlivka, and Vodyanoye, east of Mariupol.
While such moves by the Ukrainian military do not constitute violations of the Minsk agreements as the areas involved were already designated as being on the government-controlled side of the demarcation line, and have helped the army secure vulnerable territory and combat issues such as smuggling (which has become a deadly, multi-million-dollar industry), they do provide certain opportunities for Russia and the separatists.
Chiefly, the Russia-backed forces, having lost ground to counter-attacks near both Debaltseve and Avdiivka, can claim that Ukrainian forces are on the offensive, and justify their own attacks as retaliatory - a claim put forth this week by the Kremlin. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday that Ukraine’s actions in Avdiivka were “nothing other than a provocation,” claiming that “Donbass militiamen” had “been forced to respond” to a Ukrainian assault.
But it is the actions of Russia-backed forces themselves that appear to be provocations, as their fighters conduct assaults without the necessary force to actually break through Ukrainian lines and Russian-supplied rockets and shells rain down to little apparent military effect bar the infliction of casualties.
This is because the Kremlin has little to gain right now from an all-out assault as the sea change in Western politics, with the election of Trump and the strong possibility of a friendly government in France after the presidential elections later this year, means that the relief of sanctions is a growing possibility.
Instead, sensing that the U.S. and European Union are unlikely to impose additional sanctions this year, the Kremlin can pursue the path most likely to undermine the fragile stability of the Ukrainian government by increasing the rate of attrition in the Donbass and creating the impression of an impending offensive.
To boot, Ukrainian forces could be goaded into overreacting, allowing Moscow to claim that Kiev is abandoning the Minsk peace plan or even raising the possibility of an open intervention by Russian armed forces under the guise of peacekeeping.
Indicative of this is the emphasis given by Russian media to alleged attacks by Ukrainian forces on Russian journalists in Donetsk. On Sunday a crew from NTV filmed what they described as a shelling attack, marked by a chorus of shrieking babushki and the curious absence of any visual evidence of an attack. Then, on Tuesday, two groups of Russian journalists reportedly came under fire. A cameraman from LifeNews, a channel suspected of having close ties to Russia’s security services, was, the network said, injured after a Ukrainian shell exploded nearby.
Finally, today has seen what could be called a double provocation, this time in the Black Sea, after the Ukrainian defense minister reported that a Ukrainian military transport had been shot at by Russian sailors while flying over Ukrainian territorial waters. Despite photographic evidence that the plane had been struck by small-arms fire, the Russian military denied any such incident had taken place, instead accusing the Ukrainian aircrew of flying dangerously close to two drilling rigs and a Russian naval vessel. That the rigs were illegally seized by Russia during the annexation of Crimea and were operating in waters internationally recognized as being within Ukraine’s exclusive economic maritime zone did not prevent the Russian government from going further, by summoning the military attaché to the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow tonight to answer for the Ukrainian crew’s “clear provocation.”
Russia is playing a long game in Ukraine and the deadly violence around Avdiivka is just part of what looks likely to be a significant increase in pressure over the coming months as the Kremlin tries to do as much damage as possible while there is little probability of any real response from the West.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/02/rockets-fly-as-donetsk-returns-to-darkest-days-of-war.html

 
 


Belarus Prepares for Hybrid War as ‘Europe’s Last Dictator’ Knocks Russia



Well, this is alarming


Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, often called “the last dictator in Europe,” had long kept his country aligned politically, economically and militarily close to Russia. But this relationship deteriorated after the Russian invasion of Crimea — and as Lukashenko began to hedge, albeit slowly and very cautiously, toward the West.

Given that context, several recent events have been disquieting.

In a more than seven-hour news conference on Feb. 3, 2017, Lukashenko blasted Russia for reimposing border controls — a response to Belarus relaxing visa rules for foreign visitors — and categorically rejected a Russian plan to build an air base on Belarusian soil.

Lukashenko also ordered the arrest of Russia’s top food safety official, and accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of “practically appointing Trump.” The strongman further criticized Russia for sharply cutting oil exports to Belarus.

“Russia has become concerned that Belarus will go away, that Lukashenko has turned to the West,” he said.

Given the tensions involved, the Belarusian potentate took time to caution that “there will be no war … no one will occupy us, no one will send in troops. We will protect ourselves and our independence.”

The situation is strange. On Feb. 4, the Associated Press published a story that contained a random and disturbing anecdote that White House “national security aides have sought information about Polish incursions in Belarus, an eyebrow-raising request because little evidence of such activities appears to exist.”

And on Feb. 5, the Belarusian strongman gave kudos to a “fraternal Ukraine” which is “fighting for its independence” — noting that he was referring to an economic fight. Just days before, the Belarusian military conducted a large readiness test.

Separately, these reports — especially the one sourced from Donald Trump’s White House — and Lukashenko’s knocks on Russia are noteworthy. In a series, they’re quite remarkable. TV Rain, a Russian independent news channel, described the row as the “worst crisis” between Belarus and Russia in their recent history

The causes of the present crisis are complicated. Belarus retains a largely state-managed economy carried over from the Soviet Union. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager, has been president since 1994 thanks to rigged elections which he has openly boasted about.

Belarus’ economy heavily depends on a combination of Russian oil — which it refines — and subsidies, along with back-and-forth trade to Europe. But Western sanctions on Russia and a decline in oil prices have pummeled the Belarusian economy, which is in a severe recession.

Lukashenko has begun to experiment. Liberal advocates from the West now meet with Belarusian officials, which was unprecedented until recently. But Belarusians are hurting. Russia has cut its oil exports to Belarus by half, and pushing too fast on reforms could threaten the stability of Lukashenko’s regime.

“With the status quo of the past two decades looking increasingly unsustainable, some regard his predicament as unenviably similar to that of Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s,” Foreign Policy observed in September 2016.

Fortunately for Lukashenko, Western countries have given up on trying to reform his authoritarian ways, and in 2016 the European Union lifted most sanctions it imposed because of the regime’s abysmal human rights record.

Meanwhile, Russian state-controlled media outlets have aired speculative stories that the West could topple the Belarusian government or provoke instability. Irredentist, nationalist commentators have even taken to advocating for the absorption of Belarus’ territory … by force, if necessary.
Arseni Sivitski, a reserve officer in the Belarusian military and the director of the Minsk-based Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies, believes a Russian invasion of Belarus modeled on Eastern Ukraine is plausible — although the likelihood of such an event is impossible to predict.

He drew that conclusion from the political situation and the Belarusian army’s own preparations — including exercises in 2016 and a change in military doctrine to prepare for a “Donbass-like hybrid scenario,” Sivitski wrote.

“Belarusian military strategists simulated a situation in which a hypothetical foreign adversary provoked an internal armed conflict in the country with the help of reconnaissance and sabotage groups and illegal armed formations.”

“The Belarusian Armed Forces have been practicing neutralizing illegal armed groups, securing and releasing captured critical infrastructure objects, and neutralizing separatist groups backed from abroad,” Sivitski added. “Assigned tasks also included establishing temporary checkpoints on the state border and main road routes and conducting surveillance along the border.”

Sivitski also observed that publicly available logistics data from the Russian Ministry of Defense indicates that it plans to send more than 4,000 railway carriages to Belarus in 2017, compared to anywhere from 50–200 carriages annually between 2013–2016.

Belarus and Russia regularly team up for military exercises. But that’s an unusually large amount of freight. Two hundred carriages can support a single motorized rifle brigade. Four thousand can support…


“…a number of troops to Belarus almost equal to the 1st Guards Tank Army of the Western Military District, and not simply participate in regular military drills.”


Now the intentions are speculative and hypothetical — and the freight could very well be for an exercise … or some other reason. Sivitsi noted that the timing of the Ministry of Defense release came a week before a trip by Lukashenko to Moscow in November 2016.

Thus, the data could be a means of “putting psychological pressure on Minsk in order to bring Belarus into line with the Kremlin.” Intimidation.

In any case, this isn’t the first time Belarus and Russia have experienced tensions. And Minsk is still closer politically to Russia — and to Putin — than it is to the West. Lukashenko is not the kind of dictator who moves fast.

Russia may also seek to deploy troops in Belarus to match a NATO tank buildup in Poland. But what happens if Lukashenko says no?

The Belarusian military with its 48,000 active duty soldiers and airmen — plus an additional 289,500 reservists — would have a difficult time resisting Russia.

Minsk’s air force has “questionable” serviceability, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the country “would not be capable of repulsing a serious incursion across its borders.”

Regardless, such a scenario would be a calamity. Keep a close eye on Belarus.
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https://warisboring.com/belarus-prepares-for-hybrid-war-as-europes-last-dictator-knocks-russia-86384fd2a468#.4awp7fxq8

 
 


Ukraine munitions blasts prompt mass evacuations


Some 20,000 people are being evacuated after a series of explosions at a massive arms depot in eastern Ukraine described by officials as sabotage.

The base in Balakliya, near Kharkiv, is around 100km (60 miles) from fighting against Russian-backed separatists.

The dump is used to store thousands of tonnes of ammunition including missiles and artillery weapons.

Rescue teams are overseeing a huge evacuation effort for people living in the city and nearby villages.

The total area of the dump spans more than 350 hectares, the military says.

Everyone within a 10km (6 miles) radius of the dump is being evacuated, the Interfax news agency quoted an aide to President Petro Poroshenko as saying.

Munitions from the depot are used to supply military units in the conflict zone in nearby Luhansk and Donetsk, reports say.

The authorities are investigating various ways the explosions may have been caused, Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak said, including the possibility of an explosive device being dropped from a drone.

A drone was reported to have been used an earlier attempt to set the facility on fire in December 2015.

Mr Poltorak said that there were no reports that civilians or serviceman had been killed or injured in the latest incident and that airspace had been closed within a 50km (31 miles) radius of Balakliya.

More than 9,700 people have died in the conflict which erupted in 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula. Pro-Russian rebels later launched an insurgency in the east.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39363416

 
 


Gunman in Ukraine kills Putin foe in attack denounced as ‘state terrorism


A former Russian member of parliament who defected to Ukraine and began sharply criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin was gunned down Thursday in downtown Kiev in an apparent contract killing.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called the murder of Denis Voronenkov, a former member of Russia’s Communist Party who fled to Kiev in October 2016, an act of state terrorism by Russia.”

...
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/gunman-in-ukraine-kills-putin-foe-in-attack-denounced-as-state-terrorism/2017/03/23/72ddd20e-0fc7-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html?utm_term=.87859fbeeca3

 
...In an interview with the Ukraine-based Censor.net online news portal, Voronenkov compared the present-day Russia with Nazi Germany -- saying that Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) controls everything in the country, including the State Duma.

Voronenkov also said he had testified against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was toppled by violent pro-European protests in Kyiv in February 2014.

"Yanukovych is a puppet. He resigned himself and his request [for the Kremlin] to send Russian troops [to Ukraine] was unlawful," Voronenkov said.

He also said that Russia had gone "crazy on its pseudo-patriotic madness."

"Crimea has united Russia around the idea to steal something from a neighbor," Voronenkov said.

Voronenkov and his wife, Maria Maksakova, who is also a former Russian lawmaker, left Russia for Ukraine in October 2016 after the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office refused to launch a probe against his alleged involvement in an illegal property seizure in Moscow. The probe was recommended by the federal Investigative Committee.

Voronenkov says he obtained Ukrainian citizenship in December.
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http://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-former-duma-deputy-lambasts/28309734.html

- Voronenkov was linking Yaukovych to Putin and events in Ukraine in one of the world's most important corruption investigations in history. Ukrainians are fighting for the rule of law.

 
 


Russia starts large-scale exercises in Crimea


Russia has started large-scale exercises with its airborne forces and live ammunition at the Opuk test site in the annexed Crimea, according to the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

More than 2,500 paratroopers are taking part in the exercises, and almost 600 pieces of military equipment – subdivisions of the Novorossiysk (mountain) airborne assault division, the Kamyshinsk and Ulan-Ude air assault brigades, some of the forces and equipment from the Black Sea Fleet, the 4th army of the air force, and the air defense of the Southern Military District.

“For the first time in the history of the Russian army, within the context of an exercise three combined airborne forces were simultaneously alerted and partially redeployed to the Crimea with normal weapons and equipment,” the report notes.

In total, more than 2,500 paratroopers are taking part in the exercise at the Opuk test site, and nearly 600 pieces of military equipment are being used.

In September, the large-scale “Zapad 2017” exercises will be conducted at various test sites in Russia and Belarus. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it is not yet willing to give NATO information about the upcoming military exercises.
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http://uawire.org/news/russia-starts-large-scale-exercises-in-crimea

- Several reports on this, but the exercises have been been all encompassing - naval, air, land.

 
Didn't know where else to put this, but since it's Russia related:

"Russia may be helping supply Taliban insurgents: US General"

The top U.S. general in Europe said on Thursday that he had seen Russian influence on Afghan Taliban insurgents growing and raised the possibility that Moscow was helping supply the militants, whose reach is expanding in southern Afghanistan.

"I've seen the influence of Russia of late - increased influence in terms of association and perhaps even supply to the Taliban," Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, who is also NATO's Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

He did not elaborate on what kinds of supplies might be headed to the Taliban or how direct Russia's role might be.

Moscow has been critical of the United States over its handling of the war in Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union fought a bloody and disastrous war of its own in the 1980s.

But Russian officials have denied they provide aid to the insurgents, who are contesting large swaths of territory and inflicting heavy casualties, and say their limited contacts are aimed at bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table.

According to U.S. estimates, government forces control less than 60 percent of Afghanistan, with almost half the country either contested or under control of the insurgents, who are seeking to reimpose Islamic law after their 2001 ouster.

Underlying the insurgents' growing strength, Taliban fighters have captured the strategic district of Sangin in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, officials said on Thursday.

The top U.S. commander in the country, General John Nicholson, said last month that Afghanistan was in a "stalemate" and that thousands more international troops would be needed to boost the existing NATO-led training and advisory mission.

Scaparrotti said the stakes were high. More than 1,800 American troops have been killed in fighting since the war began in 2001.

"NATO and the United States, in my view, must win in Afghanistan," he said.

Taliban officials have told Reuters that the group has had significant contacts with Moscow since at least 2007, adding that Russian involvement did not extend beyond "moral and political support."
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"How the Sanctions Are Helping Putin"

Donald Trump just can’t seem to make up his mind about Russia. After hinting repeatedly during the campaign and transition that he might lift the international sanctions that were imposed after Moscow annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, as president, he’s started to show signs of doubt.

“It just simply all depends on whether or not we see the kind of changes in posture by Russia,” Vice President Pence told ABC News last month, saying the administration wanted to work with Moscow “on common interests” such as the destruction of ISIS. Other officials, such as U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, have taken a notably harder line, declaring that “The United States stands with the people of Ukraine, who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military intervention.”

Proponents of the sanctions insist that they must stay in place until Russian President Vladimir Putin relinquishes his claim to Crimea and stops meddling in Ukraine, the demands for the latter laid out in the Minsk Agreement signed in Belarus in September 2014, and updated in February 2015. They worry that Trump’s eagerness for a deal may allow Putin to get the sanctions lifted in exchange for some other concession, possibly a new arms-control treaty, as the U.S. president has hinted—and that therefore Moscow will evade accountability for violating a clear norm of international behaviour. Russia, for its part, does not show any eagerness to make progress on the issue and leaves the West alone in deciding how to proceed.

Western observers and Kremlin spokesmen do agree on one thing, however—that the sanctions are the major cause of Russia’s deepening economic woes. But this overlooks one salient fact: The sanctions might not actually be hurting Russia all that much if at all.

The economic data is certainly sobering. Russian per capita GDP has shrunk to 2007 levels. By the fall of 2016, Russia’s dollar-equivalent GDP was 40 percent below the 2013 level—a 15-percent decline in real ruble prices. The trouble is that this decline has had very little to do with Western sanctions, whose impact has been primarily political, rather than economic.

The truth is that Western sanctions focus on a limited number of Russian business such as construction giant Stroytransgaz and Bank SMP, which belong to Putin’s judo trainer Arkady Rotenberg; the state-owned energy firm Rosneft, which is controlled by former Putin’s longtime aide Igor Sechin; and well-known defense behemoths. These businesses are no longer able to borrow on international markets and are prohibited from owning assets in Western countries. Western sanctions also prevent a small group of Russians from traveling to those countries or doing business with them, and forbid the transfer to Russia of dual-use military technology and advanced oil exploration equipment. We are talking about not more than 10 percent of the Russian economy; but more importantly, as the Russian banking system has excess liquidity, all sanctioned companies can easily borrow as much as they need from Russian banks.

Russia responded to the Western sanctions by launching sanctions of its own, mainly banning food imports. This has deprived the Russian middle class of delicacies such as parmesan, prosciutto, Norwegian salmon and Greek oranges.

Yet sanctions do not stop Russia from being an active global economic actor. It is still a member of the WTO and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Russia keeps its reserves in the most liquid financial instruments and currencies. There are no restrictions on its currency and foreign trade transactions. Its sovereign debt yields are low, with no sign of potential rise in the near future. Russia and Russian companies are not singled out for hostile economic measures such as protectionism or anti-dumping tariffs.

Restrictions on borrowing could not hurt a country that was already reducing its levels of foreign debt for several years before 2014. From 2015 to 2016, Russian oil and gas production was increasing faster than any of the Gulf countries or even the U.S, regardless of the technology ban. And Russia still exports $14 billion in weapons per year, making it the third-biggest arms exporter in the world after the United States and China.

Ultimately, one major factor determines the health of the Russian economy: the price of oil. As oil prices have stabilized, the Russian economy has mostly recovered and switched into slow recession mode. It’s no surprise then, that the World Bank currently estimates that sanctions are shaving off no more than half a percentage point of Russian GDP. Even that estimate is probably way too high.

A much tougher Western sanctions regime could have inflicted pain on Russia and made it change course. The Russian elite is heavily dependent on the West, as its chief purchaser of oil and gas, holder of its assets and educator of its children. Targeted measures, such as a ban on the sale and service of passenger or cargo aircraft, could have brought Russia to its knees in months. If gold and currency reserves had been frozen, then Russia would have been in deep trouble in about three to five years’ time.

Sanctions do make a big impact in one area—Russian domestic politics. The government-controlled media—which is most of it—blames Russia’s current economic decline on the United States and European Union. President Putin declared on Oct. 12, 2016, speaking at the VTB investment forum in Moscow: “We often repeat that so-called sanctions do not have a significant influence on us. They do, and the major threat is the ban on technology transfer.” For Putin, the sanctions are useful in helping him alienate the public from any Western-backed opposition leaders or from those who still proclaim that the West is a model for Russia’s future development.

Sanctions have also raised the implied risks of holding assets offshore and limited the capacity for Putin and other members of the Russian elite to invest (or hide their money) abroad. That, in turn, has given the president tremendous leverage in controlling his team.

Meanwhile, a handful of Russian oligarchs and Kremlin-connected businessmen—chiefly those who run state-owned firms—have successfully exploited sanctions to get sweetheart deals and control over new monopolies for domestic products that are unfailingly inferior, over-priced and unreliable. Billions of rubles started to flee from the budget into pockets of closest Putin’s cronies, who promised to quickly develop Russian facsimiles of Windows software, iPhones, GPS, computers, civil aircraft, and so on. The Ministry of Defense has already placed a sizable order for “Russian iPads,” costing $6,000 each. Gennadiy Timchenko, another old Putin friend, has monopolized the salmon trade, raising prices by over 200 percent and turning his chronically lossmaking fish company into a super-lucrative business.

Ultimately sanctions have become a trap for the West. Keeping them in place gives Putin an additional source of popular support and a ready-made excuse for all his economic mistakes. Yet lifting them would be a clear sign to the Russian regime that it has prevailed in a battle-to-the-death with the West. And for President Trump, any hint at this point of pro-Russian sentiment would add more ammunition to Democrats who say he’s suspiciously close to Moscow.

Having found itself in a lose-lose situation, the West will most probably do nothing—keeping sanctions in place and freezing the situation. The Kremlin will be happy. Russia won’t stop meddling in Ukraine or give up Crimea. Die-hard supporters of the president will keep walking the streets of Moscow carrying banners saying, “Putin outplayed everybody again”—and they will probably be right.
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Thoughts? The guy who wrote it, Andrey Movchan, seems legit from the little I've researched about him. Then again, I don't do a lot of deep research into Russia's economy, so I'm not in a position to know.

 
Don't Toews Me said:
...Ultimately sanctions have become a trap for the West. Keeping them in place gives Putin an additional source of popular support and a ready-made excuse for all his economic mistakes. Yet lifting them would be a clear sign to the Russian regime that it has prevailed in a battle-to-the-death with the West. And for President Trump, any hint at this point of pro-Russian sentiment would add more ammunition to Democrats who say he’s suspiciously close to Moscow.

Having found itself in a lose-lose situation, the West will most probably do nothing—keeping sanctions in place and freezing the situation. The Kremlin will be happy. Russia won’t stop meddling in Ukraine or give up Crimea. Die-hard supporters of the president will keep walking the streets of Moscow carrying banners saying, “Putin outplayed everybody again”—and they will probably be right.
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Thoughts? The guy who wrote it, Andrey Movchan, seems legit from the little I've researched about him. Then again, I don't do a lot of deep research into Russia's economy, so I'm not in a position to know.
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Who knows, we have certainly heard the argument that the sanctions are brilliant as crafted because they target the true powers in Russia.

The thing about Russia and it's weird state-capitalist-mafia-military-FSB market hybrid is that they are desigend from the decades of Soviet rule and collapse to operate illegally anyway.

They also flipped the sanctions regime on its head by simply making it an excuse for protectionism.

One way of looking at it is that Russia drove into Ukraine (this is per Putin) out of fear it would turn NATO, thus the idea that traditional Russian territory would be under the hands of foreigners seemed real, and this was provoked by Maidan, and that was provoked by the EU.... so now Putin and his coterie seek to destroy both NATO and EU. However sanctions cuts off Russia, encourages its worst historic tendencies, and energized its nationalist and expansionist impulses, while also giving the regime justification to declare Cold War 2.0 (which it did) which it very much wanted, because they associate the Cold War with an era of domestic control and national cohesion.

 
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Rally in Sevastopol against local authorities decisions on land, plan - to write a petition to Putin


Occupants intend to seize land from Crimea residents

SIMFEROPOL / AQMESCJIT (QHA) -

The occupation authorities in Crimea intend to take away real estate titles, granted on the peninsula under the legitimate Ukrainian authorities, according to the report of the Russian edition Kommersant.

The publication says that documents confirming ownership of land in the Crimea or the right to use them can be recognized as invalid.

According to self-proclaimed officials, these documents do not meet the requirements of the Russian Federation legislation. As an example, there are beaches and parks, which, according to the occupants, are used for other purposes. The initiative was proposed by the "Head" of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov.

"Authorities" plan to clear most of the places with questionable documentation until 2021. According to preliminary data, the approximate cost of the sites to be withdrawn exceeds $ 1 billion.

According to the occupation authorities, tens of thousands of documents on property in the Crimea were previously issued bypassing Ukrainian laws.
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http://qha.com.ua/en/politics/occupants-intend-to-seize-land-from-crimea-residents/140737/

Crimean Prosecutors Seize 10 Million Square Meters of Land



A total of more than $1 billion in real estate and other assets has been seized by the new Crimean government since the annexation last year, the New York Times reported in January.


Crimean prosecutors have seized nearly 10 million square meters of land that they claim was illegally privatized before Russia annexed the territory from Ukraine last year, the region's chief prosecutor said.

"More than 960 hectares [9.6 million square meters] of land that was illegally given away has been returned to the government," Crimean Prosecutor Natalya Poklonskaya said late last week, news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Property ownership has long been contentious in Crimea, a region riddled with corruption since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The new authorities claim their actions were necessary in order to undo the damage done over decades by corrupt Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs.

But some of those whose land has been seized tell a different story. An investigation by the Associated Press late last year found that thousands of businesses and agencies had lost property to the new authorities, often with little legal justification and at times by force.

A total of more than $1 billion in real estate and other assets has been seized by the new Crimean government since the annexation last year, the New York Times reported in January.
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https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/crimean-prosecutors-seize-10-million-square-meters-of-land-46281
- Crimeans are awaking to find that their Russian masters have legalized theft of property.

 
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Moscow’s objective – gain land corridor to Crimea by seizing Mariupol, Ukrainian analyst says




Although most observers recognize that Moscow is treating the Minsk Accords as a dead letter, few of them have focused on a more serious aspect of the Kremlin’s current policy in Ukraine: its effort to seize Mariupol and thus gain a land corridor to Russian-occupied Crimea, Leonid Polyakov says.

The former Ukrainian deputy defense minister and current head of the experts’ council at Kyiv’s Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies tells Radio Liberty’s Kseniya Kirillova that continuing Russian attacks in the direction of Mariupol clearly have that as their goal.

But Mariupol, a city of more than half a million residents, is important for Moscow for other reasons as well: it is a major transportation hub with an airport and deep water port that would allow the movement of goods and services into and out of that region, and it has three major metallurgy plants that produce military goods Russia needs.

At the same time, Polyakov continues, Moscow has other reasons to renew fighting along the demarcation line. It wants to push Ukrainian forces back from the administrative centers of the regions it occupies. It wants to keep morale among its forces high. And it has not given up plans for “occupying new territories” or for covering the covert introduction of more troops under cover of fighting.

And not least of all, Moscow is interested in provoking a response from Ukrainian forces in order to present its version of the conflict in which Russia supposedly is interested only in peace while Ukraine is the one doing the fighting. Given media coverage of what has been going on around Mariupol, it has had some success in that regard.
At present, there is no clear indication that Moscow will in the near term launch a major attack in the eastern part of Ukraine, Polyakov says; but “Ukrainians must be prepared for the worst possible scenario.” After all, “the Kremlin’s adventurism shows that this can occur at any moment.”
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The Country That Doesn't Exist

In little-known Transdniestria, life is a constant search for identity. One photographer recently took a closer look.

In 2015, Transdniestrians celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II—also known as the “great patriotic war”—and 25 years of independence from Moldova.

Snaking down the border between Moldova and Ukraine is a landlocked sliver of terrain called Transdniestria. It’s home to more than half a million people and run by an independent government. It has its own form of currency, a constitution, and a standing army. The national anthem is, “We Sing the Praises of Transdniestria.”

But Transdniestria—sometimes spelled Transnistria—is not recognized by the United Nations. In other words, it’s not considered a country.

The “culture house” is a relic of the Soviet era that lives on in the villages of Transdniestria. This one, in Cionurciu, has been cleaned in preparation for a dancing event to celebrate the end of World War II.

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Left:

Nadesha Bondarenco—editor in chief of Bravo, the newspaper of the Transdniestrian Communist Party—stands amid flags and a bust of Lenin. The CP has just one seat in the parliament. Bondarenco says that although Transdniestria is a capitalist society, symbols of communism still abound.

Right:

In Tiraspol, Transdniestria, a statue of Vladimir Lenin stands in front of the parliament building, also known as the "Supreme Soviet."

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Officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic (PMR), Transdniestria is technically part of Moldova. But, says Eastern Europe scholar Dennis Deletant, “the separatist statelet has had de facto independence since the Moldovan civil war in 1992,” which pitted Moldovans against Transdniestrians.

Transdniestria is sometimes referred to as a “frozen conflict” because, while fighting ceased in the area 25 years ago, no formal peace treaty has ever been drawn. Today the perimeter of Transdniestria is patrolled by “about 1,200 Russian peacekeepers,” says Deletant, “who enforce an uneasy cease-fire.”

And though its residents are patriotic, calling themselves “Transdniestrians,” many pledge allegiance to Russia rather than Moldova.

Zinaida Borets, 37, is a Transdniestrian actress who has belonged to a Tiraspol theater troupe for more than a decade. Every year, near the anniversary of the end of World War II, the troupe performs a play dedicated to the glory of Soviet soldiers.

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Left:

As Transdniestrians celebrate Victory Day with a military parade—complete with Soviet-era tank—Russian flags line the streets of Tiraspol.

Right:

Men fish on the Dniester River, just a few hundred meters from a power station in Dubassari.

Andrey Smolenskiy, 30, works out every day at this Soviet-era gym in Cionurciu. When he’s not exercising, he runs a travel agency.

Left:

Transdniestria is not recognized by any country in the world, so a Transdniestrian passport is not valid. But since dual nationality is permitted, most people are entitled to either a Moldovan, Russian, or Ukrainian passport. Some keep additional papers, waiting to see if "the wind will blow West or East," says Vanden Driessche.

Right:

At an equestrian center on the outskirts of Tiraspol, the son of the owner prepares for a jumping competition.

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In Tiraspol, military guards of the president (Vadim Krasnoselsky, elected last year) take a break at the end of the Victory Day celebration .

Left:

The Bender Independence War Museum commemorates the war with Moldova. The most violent clashes took place in Bender, west of the Dniester River.

Right:

Along the highway that links Tiraspol to the industrial city of Ribnita, a monument commemorates the Second World War.

In a Tiraspol theater, actors perform in a patriotic play that pays tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died during World War II.

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This national identity crisis was what compelled Belgian photographer Thomas Vanden Driessche to travel to Transdniestria and document life there.

Starting in the capital of Tiraspol, Vanden Driessche spent two weeks driving around the region with a fixer who spoke Russian, one of the territory's main languages (along with Romanian and Ukrainian).

For the most part, says Vanden Driessche, people were comfortable with him taking their portraits. But when he was out on the street with his camera, something struck him about the way people reacted. Instead of being either overly friendly or confrontational—the two extremes he typically encounters—Vanden Driessche was met with an unfamiliar indifference.

“It was strange,” he says. “Nobody was happy. But nobody was pissed off.”

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eta - This is Transdniestria (Transnistria).

 
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Number of those killed in Donbas war rises to 10,090 – UN report

On 13 June, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued the latest report on the human rights situation in Ukraine. It covers the period from 16 February to 15 May 2017.

This report is a quite disturbing read.  For instance, the OHCHR recorded 36 conflict-related civilian deaths and 157 injuries. According to the report, this is a 48% increase compared to the previous reporting period from 16 November 2016 to 15 February 2017.

The report gives updated information about the casualties of the Donbas war: from 14 April 2014 to 15 May 2017,  the OHCHR “recorded 34,056 casualties among civilians, the Ukrainian military and members of armed groups (10,090 people killed, including 2,777 civilians, and 23,966 injured).” Moreover, these are “conservative estimates,” according to the report.

OHCHR also writes that the conflict in Donbas is stagnating. “Lack of progress or tangible results in investigations and legal proceedings connected to conflict-related cases, including those which are high profile, contribute to the sense of stagnation of the conflict,” the report says. Additionally, OHCHR observed the ongoing deterioration of freedom of expression in conflict-affected areas, particularly in territory controlled by “DNR”/”LNR.”

This report also pays attention to human rights situation in Crimea. OHCHR observed that several court decisions were issued against members of the Crimean Tatar community in apparent disregard for fair trial guarantees. “Gross violations of the right to physical and mental integrity were also documented on the basis of interviews conducted with 12 convicts formerly detained in Crimea and the Russian Federation,” OHCHR notes.

The report underlines that Ukraine continued to implement judicial reform measures on the basis of constitutional amendments adopted in June 2016: “Several codes and legal acts were amended, introducing notably e-governance, subject-matter jurisdiction rules, and the use of mediation as a means of dispute resolution.”
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http://euromaidanpress.com/2017/06/13/number-of-those-killed-in-donbas-war-rises-to-10090-un-report/

 
Russian Army Arrives at Ukraine Border as U.S. Fears Over ‘Hot War’ Simmer

Speaking during a military conference, captured in a Facebook video and posted on the military’s official account on Sunday, Ukrainian Chief of General Staff Viktor Muzhenko said his forces had observed new moves on the Russian side of the border.

“The organizational and staff structure, the arms and the military equipment that is approaching for reinforcement, indicates that these Russian divisions are striking forces in their essence and are intended for carrying out rapid offensive actions,” he said.

The units in question, Muzhenko specified, were three motorized rifle divisions, two of which are usually headquartered at the borders of Ukraine’s war-torn Donbass region and one that is usually deployed further north, near Smolensk.
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- Apparently three Russian divisions have moved to the border.

 
Russia-West Balancing Act Grows Ever More Wobbly in Belarus

MINSK, Belarus — Western officials and the news media have for years routinely described President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus as “the last dictator of Europe.”

So it may have been jarring for some to hear him expressing deep support for human rights, democracy and the rule of law in an address last month toa large group of United States and European lawmakers who came for a conference to Minsk, the country’s tidy, but utterly uniform, capital.

For Mr. Lukashenko, however, the performance was old hat.

Over two decades, he has perfected the art of playing Russia and the West against each other. Belarus has been both an indispensable ally and ward of the Kremlin, depending on Russian subsidies to keep its economy afloat, and an important buffer for the West against the Kremlin’s growing military aggressiveness.

But with major Russian military exercises scheduled for next month in Belarus, opposition leaders, analysts and even the American military fear that Mr. Lukashenko’s tightrope act may be coming to a close.

There are widespread fears in Minsk that when Russian servicemen come to Belarus for the war games, known as Zapad, Russian for “West,” they will never leave. Intensifying those concerns are official reports that Russia has rented 4,162 railway cars to transport only 3,000 soldiers and no more than 680 articles of military equipment to Belarus.

The troops started to move into the country in late July, with the exercises scheduled for mid-September. Both the Russian and Belarussian authorities have vowed publicly that the troops will return home after the exercise.

Over the years, as Mr. Lukashenko has sought to demonstrate his independence, he has periodically picked fights with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — stage-managed affairs that have been quickly patched up in highly public displays of Slavic brotherhood.

With living standards declining, Belarussians took to the streets at the end of March in the biggest wave of antigovernment protests in years. 

As Moscow’s relations with the West have plunged to levels last seen during Soviet times, however, Mr. Lukashenko’s balancing act has grown increasingly untenable. The time may be approaching when he will have to choose between the two camps, a decision that carries decided risks.

An overt move to embrace the West could provoke a reaction from the Kremlin, as happened in Ukraine after the ouster of President Viktor F. Yanukovych. The West almost certainly would not oppose such a move militarily.

But a complete embrace of Russia would collapse Belarus’s sovereignty and could renew the street demonstrations that erupted this year among a population already seething over declining living standards.

Most analysts assume that Mr. Lukashenko, if forced to choose, will throw his lot in with his patrons in Moscow.

“Belarus can build many bridges to the West, but it cannot cross any of them,” said Artyom Shraibman, referring to a well-known formula to describe the relationship between the two, as he sat in the modern newsroom of Tut.by, the country’s leading independent news website, where he is a political editor. “The European vector is just a way to balance the relationship with Russia.”

A landlocked country squeezed by Russia, Ukraine and three NATO states — Poland, Latvia and Lithuania — Belarus has historically served as an invasion corridor for the major powers. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union maintained several major military bases there, which included nuclear-tipped missiles.

In 2015, Belarus rebuffed a Kremlin request for permission to establish a military base. But analysts wonder how long Mr. Lukashenko can continue to resist in the face of strong Russian pressure.

“For the Kremlin, it is very important to have its own troops here to have the ability to escalate the situation in the region at any time,” said Arsen Sivitski, director of the Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies, a Minsk-based research group. “For Belarus, it is important to restrain the Kremlin. Otherwise, Minsk would have no strategic value for Europe.”

But, he added, “the Kremlin has the ability to break this game at any time.”

Since it gained independence in 1991, Belarus has survived in large part on heavy subsidies from Moscow in what a local economist, Sergei Chaly, called an “oil for kisses” scheme.

“Mr. Lukashenko has fulfilled an important historic mission,” Mr. Chaly said. “He came up with the best system for how a post-Soviet state can deal with Russia.”

Minsk was permitted to purchase Siberian oil at a low price, process it at its two refineries, then sell it in the West at market prices, pocketing the difference.

Various estimates put the overall Russian subsidy at more than $50 billion over the past two decades. Mr. Lukashenko used the money to prop up his so-called zombie factories, hopelessly outdated and decrepit industrial enterprises that allowed him to boast that he was the only post-Soviet leader who kept industry afloat.

In return for the subsidies, Mr. Lukashenko pledged brotherly unity, allowing Mr. Putin to show that he has allies beyond Russia’s borders. The relationship grew testy in 2014, however, when Minsk stopped short of officially recognizing Crimea as a part of Russia. Then, a year later, there was the standoff over Russia’s request for a military base.

Fed up, the Kremlin retaliated by raising natural gas prices. When Mr. Lukashenko refused to pay them, Moscow dismissed any concern about driving Belarus into the Western camp and cut the supply of oil, leaving the Belarussian economy high and dry.

“The Kremlin understands well that with all his flirtations with the West, Mr. Lukashenko is still a dictator and cannot move Belarus into another geopolitical space,” said Pavel Usov, director of the Center for Political Analysis and Prognosis. “The dependency is so strong that Russia can manipulate any political process and event in Belarus.”

Sometimes, this dependency manifests itself in odd ways.

After Russia banned imports of Western food in retaliation for sanctions imposed over Crimea and the Ukraine crisis, for example, Belarus turned into a hub for Italian Parmesan and Polish apples. The products were relabeled as Belarussian and appeared on store shelves throughout Russia.

Exports of “Belarussian” apples to Russia jumped 50 percent last year, whereas local production remained steady. Belarus, a country with severe winters, became the origin of such tropical species as pineapples, mandarin oranges and kiwi fruit, and also the butt of much sarcasm.

This scheme still could not generate enough income, though, and with help from Russia shrinking, the economy of Belarus contracted for the second year in a row in 2016. In June, Belarus had to borrow $1.4 billion on the European market, and it is negotiating $3 billion more from the International Monetary Fund.

Salaries have dropped by more than 13 percent over the past two years and the country’s finances have soured, forcing the government to introduce one of the more remarkable tax laws in the world: a requirement that people who are not employed full time pay $240 a year as “compensation” for lost taxes.

With living standards declining, ordinary people took to the streets at the end of March to take part in the biggest wave of antigovernment protests in years.

“He will lead this situation to what had happened in Ukraine,” said Aleksandr Konches, a pensioner and one of the protesters. “Look at who came out — pensioners, workers, simple people.”

However, many local people said that even if Mr. Lukashenko were ousted amid antigovernment protests, they doubted the country would turn against Russia.

Viktor V. Bocharenko has spent his whole life in Redzki, a picturesque village of 150 people on the border with Russia. After heading a local collective farm for 13 years, he now leads the life of a simple retiree, growing potatoes and sometimes selling a sack at a healthy markup in the Russian region of Smolensk.

Mr. Bocharenko, 65, said he sees little evidence of the stricter border controls Moscow said it was imposing in an attempt to reduce the transshipment of Western food. “They just look into my car and let me go,” he said.

He added, “What happened between Russia and Ukraine will never happen between us.”
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- TLDR version: Russia has been moving troops into Belarus and it is not really clear they are leaving.

 
Russia Plans Huge Zapad 2017 Military Exercises With Belarus

LONDON — As a diplomatic standoff escalates between Washington and Moscow, another military challenge may be on the horizon. Thousands of Russian troops and tanks are preparing to take part in what may be the country's largest military exercise since the Cold War.

The Zapad 2017 war-games will take place next month in Russia's neighboring ally of Belarus. The drills scheduled to run between September 14 and 20 will also involve naval and air units operating in and around the Baltic and North Sea.

While Russian officials have said that 13,000 troops would participate in the exercises, whose name means "west" in Russian, Western estimates have run much higher. ...
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- NBC.

 
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SaintsInDome2006 said:
- Apparently three Russian divisions have moved to the border.
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I know I mentioned my son studying abroad this summer (somewhere on the forum), as he has a double major in poly sci and economics and his capstone project is due this spring. He studied in Geneva and Vilnius, Lithuania. The gist of his project is arguing why Crimea was a better target for the Russians rather than any of the Baltic states. That is a complete oversimplification...but it helps to understand this:

NATO and the EU will not allow new members as long as they have border disputes.

This may seem obvious to some, but it's something I never thought much about.

 
Lutherman2112 said:
I know I mentioned my son studying abroad this summer (somewhere on the forum), as he has a double major in poly sci and economics and his capstone project is due this spring. He studied in Geneva and Vilnius, Lithuania. The gist of his project is arguing why Crimea was a better target for the Russians rather than any of the Baltic states. That is a complete oversimplification...but it helps to understand this:

NATO and the EU will not allow new members as long as they have border disputes.

This may seem obvious to some, but it's something I never thought much about.
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Well another way to look at it is that Russia has placed a toehold in two nations, Georgia and Ukraine, where EU & NATO expansion was specifically discussed. Putin said in his big Crimea speech that the unacceptable specter of NATO ships docking in Sevastopol was among the reasons he invaded.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Well another way to look at it is that Russia has placed a toehold in two nations, Georgia and Ukraine, where EU & NATO expansion was specifically discussed. Putin said in his big Crimea speech that the unacceptable specter of NATO ships docking in Sevastopol was among the reasons he invaded.
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So glad you caught what I was trying to say. I got a bit of a buzz going now from a wake for a friend. My thoughts are a bit scattered.

 
Russia’s military has around 80,000 troops, around 1,400 artillery and missile systems, 900 tanks, 2,300 armored vehicles, 500 airplanes, and around 300 helicopters all stationed in the “temporarily occupied” parts of Ukraine known as the Donbas and Crimea, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko said.
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- Newsweek.

 
>>Explaining the naval clash between Russia and Ukraine

Russia seizes three ships and seeks to landlock eastern Ukraine

“WE NEED TO ####### #### them up, ####…it seems like the president is controlling all this ####,” a Russian commander tells the captain whose ship rammed a Ukrainian military tug-boat in the Kerch Strait while another used live ammunition against a Ukrainian warship. The intercepted conversation, published on YouTube, provides a flavour of what happened between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea on November 25th. A video shot aboard one of the Russian ships provides the images.

It looked more like piracy than self-defence. The Russian coastguards, part of the FSB, or security service, seized the Ukrainian ships and captured 23 sailors, wounding six of them. They took them to Crimea, a chunk of Ukraine that Russia grabbed four years ago. In 2014 Russia acted deniably, sending “little green men” in unmarked fatigues to Crimea. This time its forces acted openly, under the Russian flag.

The crisis did not emerge from out of the blue. It is the culmination of six months of growing Russian pressure on Ukraine. Having in 2004 annexed Crimea, Russia is now restricting access from Ukraine’s eastern ports to the Black Sea, and thence to the Mediterranean and the world.

To get to the Black Sea, ships must pass through the Kerch Strait (see map). On May 16th Russia opened a bridge across the strait that is too low for large ships. It also moved five naval vessels from the Caspian to the Sea of Azov. Russia’s coastguard has since then detained scores of Ukrainian and foreign merchant ships—more than 140 between May and August—for hours and even days at a time, in what amounts to an undeclared blockade.

An agreement between Russia and Ukraine in 2003, before Ukraine tried to break away from Russia’s sphere of influence, established joint control of the Sea of Azov. Now both sides of the strait that controls access to it are held by Russia. Immediately after the latest clash, Russia briefly parked a tanker across the waterway, to remind Ukrainians what Vladimir Putin’s promises are worth. Ukrainians fear that his next move will be to take control of the whole of the Sea of Azov—a huge strategic prize—and further endanger the port of Mariupol, Ukraine’s third largest.

The detentions, delays and uncertainty have already strangled eastern Ukrainian ports like Mariupol and Berdyansk. The new bridge has bottled up 144 Ukrainian ships that are too tall to slip under its 33-metre structure. Shipping in and out of Mariupol has fallen by a quarter.

Ukraine cannot fight back. It lost up to 80% of its navy when Crimea was annexed, since most of its ships were moored there and the Russians pinched them. Now, the most formidable vessel owned by Mariupol’s coastguard is an old fishing boat confiscated from Turkish poachers.

Sailing small military vessels from Odessa through the Kerch Strait last week was a “provocation” staged by Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, said the Kremlin, adding that he wanted to create a crisis and have an excuse to delay presidential elections due next year. Like all shrewd propaganda, it contained an element of truth. Mr Poroshenko, who is badly trailing his rivals in opinion polls, probably did want to rally popular support around the flag and buy himself more time. When Russia escalated the situation, he called for martial law in Ukraine—a move his critics decried as a political stunt.

The clash may have helped Mr Putin, too. The Russian strongman’s poll ratings have fallen to levels not seen since before he annexed Crimea. His mouthpieces in the Russian media now have useful material to decry the perfidious Ukrainians and praise Russia’s great protector. The timing of the clash—near the anniversary of the Maidan “revolution of dignity” that overthrew the Moscow-backed government of Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine in 2014—provided a perfect peg for reheating conspiracy theories about the West trying to meddle in Russia’s back yard.

As Mr Poroshenko gave a rousing speech in the Rada (parliament) on November 26th, demanding the introduction of martial law, many deputies asked: “Why now?” Ukraine did not introduce martial law when Russian forces seized Crimea. Nor when they surrounded and killed its soldiers trying to recapture the Donbas (a part of eastern Ukraine seized by Russian-backed separatists in 2014). Nor when a Russian-supplied missile shot down a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine. The question was rhetorical. The two months of martial law that the president requested probably would have forced a delay to the presidential election, due at the end of March, and allowed Mr Poroshenko to associate himself with the armed forces, one of the few institutions in Ukraine that people respect. Perhaps for this reason, parliament, in an unusual display of muscle, gave him much less than he wanted. Martial law has been declared, but only for one month and only in areas bordering Russia.

Mr Putin may not get all he wants, either. The annexation of Crimea temporarily pushed up his approval ratings to nearly 90%. This time, however, his adventurism could backfire. Denis Volkov, a sociologist with the independent Levada Centre, wrote recently: “They may still consider Russia’s renewed greatness on the international stage to be Putin’s main accomplishment, but the public is growing disillusioned with Russia’s isolation, its unresolved conflict with the West, and the fact that the country is constantly ‘helping others’ at the expense of its own citizens.”

The Western response has so far been mixed. American officials condemned Russia’s aggressive actions. However, Donald Trump, who once said that the annexation of Crimea would not have happened on his watch, said nothing for 24 hours. When he finally spoke, he did not mention Russia by name, and said merely that he did not like the situation “either way”.

Germany’s reaction was also muted. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, who has been the strongest European voice against the Kremlin, had a telephone conversation with Mr Putin but did not condemn Russia’s actions publicly. Mrs Merkel’s critics say her hand is weakened by Germany’s interest in the planned Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that passes through it. Others hint that she is too busy worrying about her party’s leadership election to pay attention to Russia (see article). Mrs Merkel may feel that quiet diplomacy works better than public denunciations. Alas, there is little sign that either approach is working.<<

- The Economist

- Basically Putin needs military expansionism to prop up his flagging popularity, and it's basically a race as they cost a lot vs the growing reality of economic troubles at home.

 
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