/ukraine

Media: National Guard, Kherson battalion troops beat Crimean blockade activists (UPDATED)
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/media-national-guard-kherson-battalion-troops-beat-crimean-blockade-activi

About 100 Ukrainian National Guard troops and soldiers from the Kherson Battalion have beaten a group of activists enforcing an unofficial blockade of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory of Crimea, Ukrainian media reported on Nov. 21.

The troops were reported to have surrounded a group of activists near the town of Chaplynka, at the site of some high-voltage power line pylons reported to have been damaged by explosions in the early hours of Nov. 20.

According to Shevket Namatullaev, a journalist of the Crimean Tatar television channel ATR, the armed troops were beating the activists away from the area with their rifle butts. He said several Crimean Tatar activists had been injured.
[…]
According to the spokeswoman of the National Guard of Ukraine, Svitlana Pavlovska, the National Guard has yet to arrive in the area. However, she said that the guardsmen had been ordered by the Interior Ministry to provide security while the power pylons are being repaired.

“In accordance with the Interior Ministry leadership’s decision, the National Guard has been sent to secure areas, along with the national police and other law enforcement agencies, where electrical supply lines were damaged in order to ensure and provide security while they’re being repaired,” Pavlovska told the Kyiv Post by phone.

“The National Guard hasn’t arrived yet to those areas. It has no orders that are related to the so-called blockade / roadblock of Crimea from the mainland,” she added.

Officials say the damage to the electricity pylons could threaten the power supply to 40 percent of Kherson and Mykolayiv oblasts, Ukrainian television channel 24 Kanal reported.

Crimean Tatar activists, along with fighters from the ultra-nationalist Right Sector organization, have been blockading the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula for several weeks, preventing heavy goods vehicles from entering the annexed Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine moves to meet Minsk accords with constitutional changes - fastFT : Market-moving news and views, 24 hours a day - FT.com
▻http://www.ft.com/intl/fastft/361321/ukraine-gives-first-sign-off-decentralisation

Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday adopted constitutional changes in a first reading that envision a nationwide decentralization of authority and granting temporary self-rule for the Russian-backed breakaway eastern regions if they hold elections.

While a final vote fully upholding the constitutional changes is expected later this year after the Kiev’s constitutional court approves the revisions, separatist leaders on Thursday made clear they viewed the initiative as a violation of the Minsk agreements on grounds that it does not offer them enough “special status” or autonomy, reports Roman Olearchyk in Kiev.

Elections need to be held in accordance with Ukrainian law as envisioned in last February’s Minsk agreements.
[…]
Though the US and EU are expected to back the constitutional changes, Denis Pushilin, a representative of Donetsk-based separatists in peace talks was quoted by local news agencies as rejecting the draft on grounds that it “does not conform with Minsk principles.”

Sans surprises, le projet n’est pas approuvé par les séparatistes : les accords de Minsk (février 2015) prévoyaient l’établissement d’un dialogue visant à définir les conditions de l’autonomie…

Minsk agreement on Ukraine crisis : text in full - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11408266/Minsk-agreement-on-Ukraine-crisis-text-in-full.html

• On the first day after the pullout a dialogue is to start on modalities of conducting local elections in accordance with the Ukrainian legislation and the Law of Ukraine “On temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts,” and also about the future of these districts based on the above mentioned law.

On appréciera aussi le concept de temporary self-rule …

Ukraine crisis : US officials compare peace efforts to appeasing Hitler - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11398762/Ukraine-crisis-US-officials-compare-peace-efforts-to-appeasing-Hitler.h

A rift between Europe and the US over the Ukraine crisis appears to be growing after senior American figures reportedly compared the peace initiative by Angela Merkel and François Hollande to appeasement of Hitler in the run-up to the Second World War.
In a meeting attended by General Philip Breedlove, Nato’s military commander, and Victoria Nuland, the US’s most senior European diplomat, Angela Merkel was described as “defeatist” for her opposition to arming Ukrainian forces, according to details leaked to Bild newspaper.
Mrs Merkel and Mr Hollande’s peace initiative was dismissed as “Moscow bull****” at the meeting of American delegates to the Munich Security Conference, held behind closed doors at the conference hotel.
Senator John McCain reportedly compared the initiative to the Munich Agreement in 1938 between Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister at the time, and Adolf Hitler, which allowed Nazi Germany to annexe the Sudetenland.

Une belle brochette à Munich : McCain, le SACEUR, V. Fuck the EU Nuland pour nous dénoncer, évidemment, un nouveau… #Munich.

#Putin: a brilliant strategist, a cunning tactician, or mad?

Western leaders have to decide whether President Vladimir Putin has a master-plan in his fight for #Ukraine_

_At a recent conference held in the Baltic states, one word dominated the agenda: Putin. They could have discussed Russia and its foreign policy more generally, but all routes lead to a president whose 15 years in power have left him in total charge.
Amid increased fears of all-out war in Ukraine, governments and policy makers around #Europe are anxiously analysing the motivation of the most dangerous politician on the continent since the end of the Cold War. In stark terms, three possibilities are considered: is he a brilliant strategist succeeding in a long-term plan to create a 21st century variant of the Soviet Union? Is he a cunning tactician who responds to events as they happen? Or is he mad ?...

▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11398324/Putin-a-brilliant-strategist-a-cunning-tactician-or-mad.html

Nouvelle liste de personnalités russes sanctionnées : du lourd !
US slaps sanctions on Putin’s biker gang over Ukraine - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11306537/US-slaps-sanctions-on-Putins-biker-gang-over-Ukraine.html

http://allrus.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Surgeon-president-of-motor-club-Night-Wolves.jpg

Vladimir Putin’s favourite biker has been targeted by new US sanctions against Moscow over the Kremlin’s armed intervention in Ukraine.
Barack Obama, the US president, issued an executive order this weekend prohibiting trade with the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in March.
Among those added to the US Treasury blacklist are the Night Wolves biker gang, a group of denim and leather-clad ultranationalists that Mr Putin has befriended.
Alexander Zaldostanov, 51, the leather-clad head of the Night Wolves who frequently meets with Mr Putin, was also on the list, along with prominent figures from the pro-Moscow rebel authorities who are fighting government troops in eastern Ukraine.
(…)
On Saturday, the bikers’ leader told a Moscow radio station that he wanted to thank Mr Obama for “appreciating” his achievements by adding him to the list.
“I’ve already been called and congratulated by about a hundred people,” said Mr Zaldostanov, with whom Mr Putin has ridden on a Harley Davidson trike. “I would very much like to thank Obama for recognising my modest services to the motherland. And I promise that I will do all I can so that his concern for me only grows.”

http://rt.com/files/news/2f/a1/80/00/poklonskaya-3.jpg

Also on the list was Natalya Poklonskaya, a 34-year-old prosecutor from Crimea, whose good looks and staunch criticisms of Ukraine’s pro-Western independence movement made a hero in pro-Kremlin circles earlier this year. She became an internet sensation when she was appointed in March, attracting a particular following in China and Japan where she prompted a wave of anime fan art.

Les forces ukrainiennes consolident les tranchées dans l’attente d’une offensive. Reportage à Pisky, juste à l’ouest de l’extrémité de la piste de l’aéroport de Donetsk.
À la fin de l’article, ce point de vue d’un « local ».

Ukraine’s field army digs in for separatist offensive - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11247933/Ukraines-field-army-digs-in-for-separatist-offensive.html

A Donetsk native, Artyem says this checkpoint will be his home until he can get back his own place in the separatist-occupied city.
But perhaps worse than the weather is the sense that, despite being a local, he is not entirely welcome.
Several of the towns west of Donetsk raised rebel flags before being retaken by the volunteer battalions in summer, and uncomfortable truth for Kiev is that the sympathies of many locals lie on the other side of the lines.
“About seventy per cent of people around here support them,” said Artyem, who refused to give his second name. “There is a separatist lives over there,” he says, pointing towards the village up the road from his checkpoint. “Every time he drives through the checkpoint he tells me to go back where I came from. I tell him ’mate, this is my home.’”
Perhaps because they include a number of Donetsk natives, the men of Dnipro 1 seem less inclined than some other Ukrainian units to believe that their enemies are just Russian mercenaries.
“We captured a Russian paratrooper major a while back, so we know they [the Russians] are there. But along with them are the locals,” said Sergei, also a native of Donetsk.
“We’re on our own land,” he added, repeating a line popular on both sides of this war. “We know we’re defending our homes, and that is what makes us stronger.”
The tragic irony is that is precisely what the men in camouflage on the other side of the lines also say.

BBC News - Russian clocks go back for last time
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29773559

Russia will turn back its clocks for the last time on Sunday to permanently adopt winter hours.

It will also increase its time zones from nine to 11, from the Pacific to the borders of the European Union.

For the last three years, Russia experimented with keeping permanent summer time, but it proved to be highly unpopular with many Russians.

The Soviet Union introduced Daylight Savings Time in 1981.

In 2011, then President Dmitry Medvedev introduced measures to reduce Russia’s time zones to nine, and to keep daylight hours permanently all year around.

>>>>> (22 juillet 2014)
BBC News - Russia : Putin abolishes ’daylight savings’ time change
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28423647

Russia already has nine time zones - but now the area around the Volga River will run one hour ahead of Moscow, and the country’s remote Kamchatka and Chukotka regions in the far east will be nine hours ahead - giving Russia a total of 11 time zones.

Double symbole :
– annulation d’une réforme de Medvedev
– heure d’hiver toute l’année -> glaciation ! (je m’étonne que ce ne soit pas (encore ?) utilisé dans la presse…

Up to a dozen Ukraine officials dumped in wheelie bins - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11145381/Up-to-a-dozen-Ukraine-officials-dumped-in-wheelie-bins.html

Since early September up to a dozen MPs, city councillors and other officials accused of wrong doing have been hauled from their offices by masked gangs in what has become know as the “Trash Bucket Challenge.”
The perpetrators - often members of the radical right-wing group Right Sector - say the public humiliations are to punish the corruption and criminality that characterised the previous regime.

But critics warn the attacks are just one step away from mob justice and public lynchings.
(…)
But public backing for their tactics appears to be lukewarm.

Petit historique des mises à la poubelle. En attribuant clairement la responsabilité à l’extrême-droite, pour une fois…

Russian armoured vehicles and military trucks cross border into Ukraine - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11035401/Russian-armoured-vehicles-and-military-trucks-cross-border-into-Ukraine

A column of armoured vehicles and military trucks crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine on Thursday night, in the first confirmed sighting of such an incident by Western journalists.

A separate, larger convoy of around 270 Russian trucks, which Moscow claims is carrying aid, rumbled to a halt just short of the border on Thursday night, while in east Ukraine, shells hit the centre of rebel-held Donetsk for the first time.

The Telegraph witnessed a column of vehicles including both armoured personal carriers and soft-skinned lorries crossing into Ukraine at an obscure border crossing near the Russian town of Donetsk shortly before 10pm local time.

The Ukrainian and Western governments have long accused Russia of filtering arms and men across the border to fuel the separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but such an incident has never before been witnessed by Western journalists.

The convoy, which included at least 23 vehicles, appeared to be waiting until sunset near a refugee camp just outside Donetsk, before moving towards the crossing without turning off headlights or making any other attempt to conceal itself.

While it was not immediately clear whether all of that convoy crossed the border, The Telegraph did see a substantial number of vehicles pass through check point manned by gunmen after shadowing the convoy down narrow country lanes near the frontier.

While the force did not seem to be a substantial invasion force, it confirms that military supplies are moving across the border. While the APCs carried no visible markings the fuel tankers and soft-skinned trucks in the convoy bore black Russian military number plates.

« it was not immediately clear » mais bien assez pour crier victoire : on va pouvoir passer à la suite. Et le MH17, y-a pas de droit de suite ?

#ukraine #russie

MH17: why the culprits may never be caught - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10993020/MH17-why-the-culprits-may-never-be-caught.html

The Telegraph’s own inquiries suggest the missile – an SA-11 from a Buk mobile rocket launcher – was possibly fired from a cornfield about 12 miles to the south of the epicentre of the crash site. Scorch marks in the soil indicate where the rocket’s propulsion system may have set fire to the crops.
The location of the site tallies with a surveillance photograph, released by Ukraine’s intelligence service, showing a signature trail of smoke emanating from beyond a hill in rebel-held eastern Ukraine. The Telegraph’s investigation corroborates analysis by Ukraine at War, a pro-Kiev English-language blog, showing that the smoke trail appears to originate from the direction of the cornfield which was purportedly left by the SA-11 missile after its launch.
The photograph appears to have been taken from a high-rise apartment block overlooking the area.
(…)
“It will be almost impossible to say who pushed the button,” said Reed Foster, head of the armed forces capabilities team at the intelligence and security analysts IHS Jane’s Defence. “The evidence at the crash site will not tell you if it was a Ukraine or Russian operator of the Buk launcher.”
“It is very easy for the Russians to maintain plausible deniability. The launch site needs to be found and treated like a crime scene. There will be telltale signs of chemical residue where the rocket motor has ignited the flora and fauna. But even once you have identified the site it is still difficult to know who the persons were at that location.” Debris from the crash scene will at some stage be removed and analysed. Photographs taken of Boeing 777 debris shows the metal skin perforated with a number of similar sized holes. The evidence is consistent with a ground-to-air missile attack from a Buk-launched SA-11 missile, said Mr Foster.
Shrapnel from the missile is likely to be scattered at the crash site, stretching over about eight square miles.
Vital evidence such as the missile casing and rocket motor, containing factory serial numbers, could have been removed by now by the rebel militia who control the area.
Even if the casing and motor is found, Russian-made SA-11 missiles are in possession of both sides in the conflict.

Les premières indications des “boites noires” confirment un impact de missile.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 black box findings consistent with blast - CBS News
▻http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-17-black-box-findings-consistent-with-blast

Unreleased data from a black box retrieved from the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine show findings consistent with the plane’s fuselage being hit multiple times by shrapnel from a missile explosion.

“It did what it was designed to do,” a European air safety official told CBS News, “bring down airplanes.”

The official described the finding as “massive explosive decompression.”