All of the Ukrainian prosecutors who had been investigating the MH17 catastrophe have been suspended from work as part of departmental reforms, the Dutch newspaper NRC Next reports, citing one of the dismissed prosecutors.

A total of six prosecutors were involved in the investigation on Ukraine’s behalf, two of them as part of the Joint Investigation Team. In recent months, the JIT has not had a single participant from Ukraine.

Commenting on the dismissal of the prosecutors, Ukrainian Foreign …

The resignation of the government, the constitutional reforms and the promises to spend 4 trillion rubles (around $63 billion) on assisting the poor and families with children have been powerless to halt the downward slide of the Russian government’s ratings.

Russian citizens’ level of confidence in President Vladimir Putin lost another 4 percentage points in January 2020, falling to 35%, the Levada Center reports, based on a survey carried out in 50 of Russia’s federal subjects.

Compared to …

Russia is “carefully analyzing” French President Emmanuel Macron’s offer to improve dialog with Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, as cited by RBC news agency. The deputy minister remarked that Russia “is appraising the situation on the basis of reality”, and understands that, in order to bring about systemic changes to the status quo, Europe needs to take concrete steps towards cooperation.

According to Grushko, …

The Russian regions have been instructed to create a “festive atmosphere” in order to increase turnout on the day the population votes on Putin’s proposed constitutional reforms, RBC news agency reports, citing two participants of a seminar for vice governors dedicated to voting. The seminar was conducted by the Presidential Administration between February 13 and 15.

According to RBC’s sources, the seminar did not give any concrete guidelines, because “everyone knows what needs to be done”. “ …

Russian Ambassador to Turkey Alexey Yerkhov has been receiving new threats and insults online, directed against him personally and against Russia as a whole, he told the newspaper Zvezda.

“The most recent [threats] include things like: ‘We’ll build skyscrapers from the skulls of your soldiers’ and ‘You’ll pay the price for every drop of blood you’ve spilled,’ and so on,” said Yerkhov.

He said that such insults are unacceptable, since threats directed against an entire country can “radicalize …

A US convoy of military vehicles has departed from Iraq towards Syria, Sky News Arabia reports, citing sources in the Iraqi security service.

According to the source, the convoy consists of more than 50 military vehicles, and has already crossed the border from Iraq to Syria.

The radio station Sham FM reported that a convoy of 55 American military trucks had arrived in the Hasakah province in north-eastern Syria. The convoy’s destination and objectives were unknown.

The transfer of US …

Turkey has deployed special forces divisions near its observation points in the Idlib de-escalation zone, the Turkish media reports, citing the Turkish Defense Ministry.

According to the Anadolu news agency, armored vehicles (primarily armored transports) with special forces from various parts of Turkey have been dispatched to Syria through the Reyhanli district of Turkey’s Hatay province. Multiple rocket launchers have been deployed at positions along the Turkish-Syrian border.

The US has …

Russian military police have begun to take control of the M5 motorway in Syria, reported Al Hadath TV channel on Twitter. M5 is the country's main highway that connects Damascus with the central and northern regions.

Russian military police units have reportedly begun to deploy along the road, including in Idlib province, where fighting is underway for the control of the highway.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not yet commented on this information.

The M5 road runs through Syria. It …