The Principal Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Alexander Hug, stated that the number of ceasefire violations in the Donbas has decreased but still remains high.

“The number of violations has significantly decreased in recent days but it still remains unacceptably high. From midnight on February 9 to midnight February 10, the OSCE mission recorded 460 violations of the ceasefire, with 55 violations in Luhansk region alone,” Hug said at a press conference …

The Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, Viktor Ozerov, stated that Russia will put the air defense systems of the Crimea on high combat alert during the Ukrainian missile firing exercises, RIA Novosti reported. “All our intelligence and air defense systems will be put on high combat alert in order to avoid any missiles accidentally hitting our territory,” Ozerov said.

According to him, Russia does not consider these firing exercises as a threat because the …

Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, representing the interests of ex-CIA employee and notorious whistleblower Edward Snowden said that there was no merit to the information from western media that Moscow is considering Snowden’s extradition to the USA as a present to President Trump.

“Russia has no legal basis for extraditing Snowden. All these talks are simple speculations. This is someone’s wishful thinking,” Kucherena told Interfax on Saturday, February 12. “Someone in Washington, in the USA really …

Iran will continue to allow Russian military aircraft to pass through Iranian airspace on their way to and from Syria.

“We uphold in this regard a close cooperation with Russia by opening the airspace of Iran," the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Ali Shamkhani, said on Saturday, February 11th.

Shamkhani also noted that Russian aircraft are allowed to use Iran’s Hamedan air base for refueling purposes.

The Secretary stated that such allowances entail complex …

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin announced the creation of a Ukrainian Institute for Improvement of Image with representative offices in other countries. This Institute will monitor the public image of Ukraine.

“We have analyzed the experiences of European countries. This experience isn’t the same. However, how could the country present a positive image of itself abroad? Over the past three years, we have done impressive work. There are so many separate projects but we …

The Russian military has created the 22nd Army Corps of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and the new corps has begun combat training in the Crimea, the commander of the Southern Military District of Russia, Colonel-General Aleksandr Dvornikov, stated.

"At present, the 150th Motorized Rifle Division in the Rostov region, the 42nd motorized rifle division in the Chechen Republic, and the 22nd Army Corps of the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimea were formed and began combat training. Also a squadron of Ka- …

Authorities of the so-called Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) have stated that they are ready   to "nationalize" the enterprises of Ukrainian oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov.

According to the separatist’s news websites, the LPR authorities has "reviewed and adopted in the first reading, a bill which will ensure that the state takes under its control the enterprises that operate in certain areas of Luhansk region but are not registered in LPR." The bill states that “a temporary administration” will be …

U.S. President Donald Trump must avoid the mistakes of Barack Obama, who was not determined enough to provide  Ukraine with the weapons necessary for its self-defense, as stated by General Philip Breedlove, the former Commander in Chief of NATO forces in Europe, while testifying to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

“Trump Administration, which understands the value of negotiating from strength, should adopt a position of forward defense in dealing with the Kremlin challenge to NATO. …