2014 Ukrainian Maidan Revolt: News, Views, Photos & Videos

Reporting from Slovyansk, Ukraine—
Shortly after a Ukrainian military helicopter was struck and crashed near a contested eastern Ukrainian town Friday, the Ukrainian government said it would lay siege to the community, Slovyansk, which is now in the hands of armed pro-Russian separatists.

“What we have in Slovyansk has nothing to do with politics," Sergei Pashinsky, chief of the presidential administration, said at a briefing in Kiev on Friday. "It is classical terrorism.”

Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, a separatist leader who has proclaimed himself the mayor of Slovyansk, took responsibility for the helicopter crash, which left the pilot seriously injured.

“They kept flying across our airspace and we decided to teach them a lesson and so to say cut down their wings,” said Ponomaryov, with a laugh.

Ponomaryov said it was the same helicopter that had flown over the town Friday morning dropping “government propaganda” leaflets. Most of the leaflets were carried away by the wind and landed in the fields outside the town, but some were picked up and read by local residents.

The leaflet featured a black-and-white picture of a masked man taking aim with a handgun and read: “Peaceful residents of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk. In your native towns Russian saboteurs and terrorists and local criminals under their leadership are preparing grounds to totally destabilize the situation and destroy peaceful life.”

The aircraft crashed over the local airport halfway between Slovyansk and the neighboring town of Kramatorsk, an airport official said.

“A Mi-8 helicopter crashed shortly after taking off, supposedly resulting from a subversive act by Russian special services,” airport chief Dmitry Podushkin told the Los Angeles Times. An AN-2 passenger on the ground was destroyed in the explosion caused by the falling helicopter, Podushkin said.

The announcement that the Ukrainian government would use troops to surround and isolate Slovyansk, in the north of the Donetsk region, comes almost two weeks after pro-Russian gunmen in masks and unmarked uniforms seized the town's administration building, police and security service stations and built barricades and checkpoints in its center and outskirts.

The aim, Pashinsky said, is to block “the town of Slovyansk to prevent a possibility for reinforcements and to localize the problem.”

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Ukraine's Defense Ministry says a grenade fired from a launcher caused an explosion in a helicopter at an airfield outside the eastern city of Kramatorsk, wounding a pilot. (April 26)

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Russia is not responsible for the crisis in Ukraine. The US State Department engineered the fascist-backed coup that toppled Ukraine’s democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with the American puppet Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a former banker. Hacked phone calls reveal the critical role that Washington played in orchestrating the putsch and selecting the coup’s leaders. Moscow was not involved in any of these activities. Vladimir Putin, whatever one may think of him, has not done anything to fuel the violence and chaos that has spread across the country.

Putin’s main interest in Ukraine is commercial. 66 percent of the natural gas that Russia exports to the EU transits Ukraine. The money that Russia makes from gas sales helps to strengthen the Russian economy and raise standards of living. It also helps to make Russian oligarchs richer, the same as it does in the West. The people in Europe like the arrangement because they are able to heat their homes and businesses market-based prices. In other words, it is a good deal for both parties, buyer and seller. This is how the free market is supposed to work. The reason it doesn’t work that way presently is because the United States threw a spanner in the gears when it deposed Yanukovych. Now no one knows when things will return to normal.
The overriding goal of US policy in Ukraine is to stop the further economic integration of Asia and Europe. That’s what the fracas is really all about. The United States wants to control the flow of energy from East to West, it wants to establish a de facto tollbooth between the continents, it wants to ensure that those deals are transacted in US dollars and recycled into US Treasuries, and it wants to situate itself between the two most prosperous markets of the next century. Anyone who has even the sketchiest knowledge of US foreign policy– particularly as it relates to Washington’s “pivot to Asia”– knows this is so. The US is determined to play a dominant role in Eurasia in the years ahead. Wreaking havoc in Ukraine is a central part of that plan.

Retired German Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jochen Scholz summed up US policy in an open letter which appeared on the Neue Rheinilche Zeitung news-site last week. Scholz said the Washington’s objective was “to deny Ukraine a role as a bridge between Eurasian Union and European Union….They want to bring Ukraine under the NATO control” and sabotage the prospects for “a common economic zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok.”

Bingo. That’s US policy in a nutshell. It has nothing to do with democracy, sovereignty, or human rights. It’s about money and power. Who are the big players going to be in the world’s biggest growth center, that’s all that matters. Unfortunately for Obama and Co., the US has fallen behind Russia in acquiring the essential resources and pipeline infrastructure to succeed in such a competition. They’ve been beaten by Putin and Gazprom at every turn. While Putin has strengthened diplomatic and economic relations, expanded vital pipeline corridors and transit lines, and hurtled the many obstacles laid out for him by American-stooges in the EC; the US has dragged itself from one quagmire to the next laying entire countries to waste while achieving none of its economic objectives.

So now the US has jettisoned its business strategy altogether and moved on to Plan B, regime change. Washington couldn’t beat Putin in a fair fight, so now they’ve taken off the gloves. Isn’t that what’s really going on? Isn’t that why the US NGOs, and the Intel agencies, and the State Dept were deployed to launch their sloppily-engineered Nazi-coup that’s left the country in chaos?

Once again, Putin played no part in any of this. All he did was honor the will of the people in Crimea who voted overwhelmingly (97%) to reunite with the Russian Federation. From a purely pragmatic point of view, what other choice did they have? After all, who in their right mind would want to align themselves with the most economically mismanaged confederation of all time (The EU) while facing the real possibility that their nation could be reduced to Iraq-type rubble and destitution in a matter of years? Who wouldn’t opt-out of such an arrangement?
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Equation said:

Here's a video of Ukrainian military helicopter on fire



[video=youtube;Y90HzRj4yUw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y90HzRj4yUw[/video]

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Russia complains of large Ukrainian troop buildup in east
By Ralph Ellis, Laura Smith-Spark and Gul Tuysuz, CNN
Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- A perilous faceoff intensified Saturday when Russia state news complained that Ukraine had mobilized 15,000 troops in the suburbs of Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine "in order to wipe out the city and its residents."
Quoting a Russian Defense Ministry source, RIA Novosti said satellite photos showed the force forming around the city that has become a friction point between the Ukraine military and pro-Russian militants.
The Defense Ministry source said the number of Ukraine troops put the pro-Russian militants at a disadvantage because the latter are "armed only with small amount of pistols and shotguns." Many eastern Ukraine residents have Russian roots and sympathize with Moscow.
The source said the photos showed about 160 tanks, 230 infantry combat vehicles and armored personnel carriers, mine throwers and multiple-launch rocket systems.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly criticized Kiev's use of force against Ukrainian civilians.
Developments in Ukraine have come at a rapid pace in recent days:
-- Russia, which already had 40,000 troops on its side of the border, started new military drills a few days ago after Ukrainian forces said they killed five pro-Russian militants. Ukraine launched the second stage of an "anti-terrorist operation" against militants in Slavyansk.
-- On Friday, a team of European and Ukrainian military observers were seized Friday by pro-Russian separatists in Slavyansk.
-- Russian military aircraft "crossed and violated" Ukrainian airspace seven times overnight, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told reporters in Rome on Saturday. The Russian Defense Ministry denied the accusation, according to the state news agency Itar-Tass.
-- Yatsenyuk met with Pope Francis while in Rome on Saturday. The meeting has been seen as a sigh of support from the Vatican for his government.
-- G7 leaders said they would impose new sanctions on Russia over its role in the crisis.
The Ukrainian Prime Minister urged Russia to pull back its security forces and not to support pro-Russian militants in eastern and southern Ukraine. "We urge Russia to leave us alone," he said in televised remarks.
Ukraine's government has promised constitutional reforms and protections for Russian speakers in a bid to ease the tensions in its eastern regions.
On Saturday, the fate of the military inspectors preoccupied world leaders.
The group from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe were detained Friday as it entered Slavyansk, alongside five Ukrainian military representatives and the driver of their bus, Ukraine's Interior Ministry said.
Ukraine's Security Service, the SBU, said the group is being kept under "inhumane conditions" in the basement of a building held by the militants.
"One of the detainees is in need of urgent medical care which the Ukrainian anti-terror unit is ready to provide," the service said in a statement. "Terrorists are not allowing any assistance to the hostages."
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The self-declared mayor of Slavyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, told reporters that one of the "prisoners" has diabetes, but he has the medicine he needs and will be given his own quarters overnight.
Ponomarev earlier told CNN that the observers were safe and well, but that there were no negotiations going on. Their captors will exchange them for activists held by Kiev, he said, adding that the men were unarmed soldiers from NATO countries who did not have permission to be there.
A spokesman for the OSCE said there is work being done to free the captives.
The organization is in talks with the Ukrainian government, and is seeking contact with the group that has detained their team, Michael Bociurkiw said.
"We have to work with the utmost speed and, of course, the Ukrainian government is a key partner in this," he said.
Separatist leader Denis Pushilin, self-declared chairman of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic," told CNN he doesn't believe they are from the OSCE, but that some are NATO spies.
The German Foreign Office said it had set up an emergency task force to find out what has happened to the team, four of whom are German.
The others are from Denmark Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, Russian state media said.
In a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asked the United States to use its influence to secure the release of pro-Russian leaders being held in Ukraine. The Russian minister restated the country's position that Ukraine must stop its military operations against pro-Russian separatists, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Kerry urged Russia to support efforts of the OSCE and the government of Ukraine to liberate the inspectors and their Ukrainian guides, according to a senior State Department official.
The diplomat called on Russia to publicly support Ukraine's efforts rather than denigrate them, the official said, and "expressed continued concern that Russia's provocative troop movements on Ukraine's border, its support for separatists and its inflammatory rhetoric are undermining stability, security and unity in Ukraine."
Russia will do all it can, envoy says
The OSCE mission in Ukraine is tasked with helping to implement an international agreement signed nine days ago in Switzerland, which called for illegal militia groups to disarm and leave occupied buildings, among other provisions.
Western nations and Ukraine's interim government in Kiev accuse Russia of coordinating and supporting the militant groups, and of seeking to destabilize the situation in Ukraine.
The SBU accused the militants in Slavyansk of seeking to use the OSCE representatives as a human shield and claimed a Russian citizen was behind their seizure.
Acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov also pointed the finger at Russia for the OSCE team's capture, saying it must have endorsed the militants' actions, and said the Russian leadership must be held accountable for what he called its support for terrorism.
Even the observers' international mandate did not prevent "armed criminals" from taking them hostage, he said, according to a statement from his office.
Russia's Foreign Ministry insisted Saturday it was taking all possible measures to resolve the situation.
In a statement, it added that the security of the observers is the responsibility of the hosting country.
Russia, like the United States, is a member of the 57-nation OSCE, a body which has a history of stepping in to mediate crises.
Targeted sanctions
Against the backdrop of increasing volatility in Ukraine, leaders of the G7 industrialized nations on Friday announced they would "move swiftly to impose additional sanctions on Russia" over its actions in Ukraine.
The statement from the group -- which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States -- came hours after U.S. President Barack Obama threatened Russia with new sanctions.
According to a senior Obama administration official, each G7 country "will determine which targeted sanctions they will impose" -- measures that "will be coordinated and complementary, but not necessarily identical."
The United States could take action as early as Monday, according to the official.

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26 April 2014 Last updated at 15:28 ET
Ukraine crisis: Moscow 'to help free European observers'
Moscow says it will do all it can to bring about the release of European military observers detained in eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian separatists.
The assurance came as EU diplomats revealed they will meet on Monday to discuss new sanctions against Russia.
Earlier, the G7 group of economic powers agreed to intensify sanctions.
The West accuses Russia of leading a secessionist revolt in Ukraine's east, after it annexed Crimea last month. Moscow denies the allegations.
Rebel militia continue to occupy official buildings in a dozen eastern cities, defying the Ukrainian government in Kiev.
Russia has tens of thousands of troops deployed along its side of the border with Ukraine and has said it would act if its interests were threatened.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry spoke again on Saturday.
Mr Kerry expressed concern about "provocative" Russian troop movements and "inflammatory rhetoric", US officials said.
For his part, Mr Lavrov said Ukraine should stop its military operations in the south-east, the Russian foreign ministry said.
'Carrying maps'
Negotiators are trying to secure the release of eight international observers who were seized and accused of espionage by pro-Russia gunmen.
The observers were taking part in a mission linked to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Quoting German government sources, Reuters said an OSCE team was on its way to the region to try to secure their release.
"We believe that these people should be released as soon as possible," Andrei Kelin, Russia's envoy to the OSCE, was quoted as saying.
"As an OSCE member, Russia will take all possible steps in this case," he said.
The group - believed to be military observers from Germany, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic - is being held, along with several Ukrainian army personnel, by forces in the city of Sloviansk.
An OSCE spokeswoman in Vienna said the organisation had had "no direct contact with the eight observers being held."
Pro-Russian leaders in Sloviansk confirmed the observers' bus had been stopped and said they were checking the identities of those on board.
The self-proclaimed mayor of Sloviansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, said at least one passenger had been carrying maps showing separatist checkpoints in the area, which suggested "their involvement in espionage".
Last weekend, Mr Ponomaryov broadcast an appeal to President Putin asking for Russian troops to protect the city from "fascists" after three of his men died in a gunfight.
Meanwhile, the G7 praised Ukraine for acting with restraint in dealing with the "armed bands" that had occupied government buildings.
But the group, which includes the US, UK, Germany, Japan, France, Canada and Italy, condemned Russia's "increasingly concerning rhetoric and ongoing threatening military manoeuvres."
The G7 was committed to intensifying sanctions on Russia, ahead of Ukrainian presidential elections next month, a statement said.
The US and EU already have assets freezes and travel bans in place targeting a number of Russian individuals and firms accused of playing a part in the annexation of Crimea.
In other developments:
Ukraine's Prime Minister, Arseny Yatseniuk, has cut short a visit to Italy "because of the situation in the country"
The US and the Ukrainian government accused Russian jets of violating Ukraine's airspace - a charge Moscow denied
Crimea's Prime Minister, Sergei Aksenov, said there were back-up plans to guarantee the peninsula's water supplies although there was no problem with drinking water at present.

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