Contents tagged with Donbas
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Muzhenko: Ukraine could lose 12,000 soldiers in 10 days in Donbas power struggle
Chief of General Staff of Ukraine Viktor Muzhenko pointed out that the Armed Forces are ready for a forceful resolution of the Donbas issue, if the matter is considered in terms of weaponry and control systems. According to preliminary estimates, ten days of an operation using aircraft could result in the loss of 10-12,000 soldiers, 3,000 of whom will be killed. He explained this to reporters on Thursday, Ukrayinska Pravda reports.
However, Muzhenko doubts that the Ukrainian society is ready …
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Ukraine: meetings of US representative for Ukraine Volker and Putin’s aide Surkov are an addition to Normandy talks
The meeting of the Special Representative of the US State Department Kurt Volker, and a personal advisor to the Russian President, Vladislav Surkov, is an additional platform for negotiations, which complements the Minsk and Normandy formats, the Political Director of the Directorate General for Policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Oleksii Makeiev said, as reported by Radio Liberty. According to him, the Ukrainians were informed in advance about the details of this planned …
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Ukraine asks Poland to stop buying coal from LPR separatists
Poland must stop buying coal from the occupied Donbas, said Ukrainian Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Ihor Nasalyk.
“This is not at all partnership-like, and we hope that the Polish government will react to this situation,” Nasalyk said on Wednesday during a meeting with a Polish business in Warsaw, Ukrinform reports.
According to the minister, the origin of the coal can easily be tested with chemical indicators. Nasalyk reiterated that Ukraine does not use anthracite coal from the …
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Ukrainian Parliament publishes draft bill on integration of Donbas
The main highlights of the new Presidential bill on the Donbas were published on the web site of the Verkhovna Rada.
The purpose of the Bill is stated to be “the liberation of the territory of the Donbas”.
The word "aggression" and its derivatives occur 42 times in the text of the Bill. At the same time, the Bill does not call Russia an "aggressor country." Nevertheless, the authors directly declare that it is the Russian Federation that has been carrying out armed aggression on the territory …
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Russian soldiers captured by ISIS in Syria previously fought in eastern Ukraine
One of the Russian soldiers who were captured in Syria by ISIS terrorists fought previously in the Donbas in the ranks of the LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic), and another is connected to the so-called “Domodedovo” military brotherhood, as reported by Russian blogger Anatoly Nesmiyan (El Murid) in his LiveJournal.
As evidence, he released a photo which may shed light on Roman Zabolotny’s connection to the LPR, and Gregory Tsurkanov’s connection to the Domodedovo military brotherhood.
Nesmiyan …
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Herashchenko: Ukraine is conducting international negotiations on peacekeeping mission in the Donbas
Ukraine intends to bring its position in line with partnering countries before submitting a resolution on promoting the peacekeeping mission in the Donbas, and is currently negotiating on this topic, according to the First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group, Iryna Herashchenko.
"The issue is not the submission date for the resolution. It could have been submitted three years ago. The question is that the …
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Kyiv: the presence of Russians at the OSCE mission has doubled in one year
The number of representatives of the Russian Federation and countries friendly to it that are part of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) has increased significantly over the past year, notes Iryna Herashchenko, the First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and Ukraine's representative in the humanitarian subgroup of the Tripartite Contact Group.
"Very often in the mission there are representatives of those countries that have special sentiments towards Moscow, and sometimes they do not …
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U.S. Secretary of Defense believes weapons sent to Ukraine will not cause escalation in Donbas
At a press conference in Kyiv, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that there is no need to fear an escalation in the Donbas in the event that America provides weapons to Ukraine, as reported by Voice of America.
“Defense weapons do not provoke anyone unless you are the aggressor. And Ukraine is clearly not an aggressor, since military operations are taking place in its territory,” he said.
Luke Coffey, director of the conservative research group Allison Center for Foreign Policy …
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Former US ambassador to Russia: the US sanctions are effective but did not change the situation with Ukraine
US sanctions against Russia did not lead to a drastic change in the situation in Ukraine, said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper former US Ambassador to Russia, John Tefft.
In his opinion, the imposed sanctions proved to be effective against Russia. "And the Russian president, together with a number of other Russian Federation officials, acknowledged this," he emphasized. "But did these sanctions lead to a drastic change in the situation in Ukraine? Obviously not."
Nevertheless, …
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Kremlin: the deployment of UN monitors on the Russian border violates the Minsk agreements
Moscow believes that the Ukraine’s insistence on the need to place the UN peacekeeping mission primarily on the Russian-Ukrainian border violates the sequence of the stages of the Minsk agreement, as stated by the official spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova.
"Immediately after the introduction of the Russian draft resolution, it was distorted in much of Ukrainian mass media, and presented completely differently," Zakharova said. “One of the serious problems in the …