Ukraine War Update - 14 May 2015

Thursday, May 14, 2015  8:07 AM PDT

NATO not to restore practical cooperation with Russia - Stoltenberg

   KIEV, May 14 (Ukrinform). --- NATO is not going to restore practical cooperation with Russia.

   NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this to journalists on Thursday at the closing press conference following the meetings of NATO foreign ministers in Antalya, Turkey.

   "Last spring, NATO decided to suspend all practical cooperation with Russia, and that was a response to the aggressive actions of Russia in the Crimea, namely the illegal and illegitimate annexation of the Crimea," Stoltenberg said.

   "However, it was decided to maintain open political contacts with Russia," he said.

   According to him, there is no contradiction between a strong defense and political dialogue, but his position remains unchanged - practical cooperation with Russia is suspended due to the actions of Russia in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Thursday, May 14, 2015  8:01 AM PDT
Kiev to be freed from communist symbols before the Independence Day

   (Censor.NET) --- The City Council has decided to demount the communist symbols from the community owned buildings in the capital and replace them by the state symbols of Ukraine.

   Censor.NET reports citing ZN.UA.

   The decision was supported by 86 deputies.

   "It has been determined that the communist symbols, which are the subjects to dismantling, are any images of the main state emblem of the former Soviet Union "Hammer and Sickle " as well as any images of Vladimir Lenin," the decision reads.

   The City Council instructed the Department of Communal Property of the Kiev City State Administration to make an inventory of the buildings and structures, which have communist symbols before Constitution Day on June 28, and draw up schedule for their dismantling.

   All these symbols must be demounted before the Independence Day on Aug. 24 and the authorities in charge of such buildings shall ensure the installation of state symbols of Ukraine at the expense of the city budget before March 31, 2016.

   There were proposals voiced at a meeting of the City Council to start the process of getting rid from the communist symbols from the building of the City Hall.

   It was also said that the emblem on the shield of "The Motherland" monument in the capital should be among the first to be dismantled.

   It should be reminded that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted the Law "on the condemnation of the Communist and National Socialist (Nazi) totalitarian regimes in Ukraine and prohibition of propaganda of their symbols" April 9. The law has not yet been signed by the president.

Thursday, May 14, 2015  7:32 AM PDT
About 11,000 Russian military fighting in Donbas - Poroshenko

   KIEV, May 14 (Ukrinform). --- There is a 'pseudo ceasefire' established in eastern Ukraine, and the country pays a very high price for it.

   Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said this in an interview with Germany's ZDF channel.

   "We pay a very high price for this pseudo tranquility," Poroshenko said.

   He stressed that peace is possible only after the reintegration of the occupied areas through peaceful negotiations and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukrainian territory. "But now the situation is that, since the signing of the Minsk agreements on a ceasefire in Donbas, 83 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and more than 400 were injured, the country is losing its heroes almost every day," he said.

   According to him, there are about 11,000 Russian soldiers in Donbas. "Today, we see that in spite of the Minsk agreements, the amount of Russian weapons and Russian troops in the occupied territories only increases," he said, stressing that the Russian troops are mostly concentrated near the city of Mariupol. In this regard, Poroshenko called this area "a top priority" for defense.

   Poroshenko reiterated that Ukraine does not see a military solution to the conflict and consistently implements the provisions of the Minsk agreements. At the same time, the President assured that in case of aggression "we will fight till the last drop of blood."

Thursday, May 14, 2015  7:04 AM PDT
As in 1939, Kremlin said mulling ‘preventive occupation’ of the Baltic States

By Paul Goble for “Windows on Eurasia”:

   (Ukraine Business News) ---People of decency and good will around the world have been horrified by Vladimir Putin’s defense this week of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which made Hitler and Stalin

Cartoon: David Low’s take on the Ribbentrop-Molotov 

agreement and the invasion of Poland

allies, opened the way to World War II, and allowed the Soviet Union to occupy Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, portions of Poland and Bessarabia for half a century.

   But they should be even more horrified by the fact that some near the Kremlin are once again thinking about “a preventive occupation” of the Baltic countries, a step that, as Kseniya Kirillova pointed out May 12, could trigger the collapse of the West or a third world war (nr2.rublogsKsenija_KirillovaRossiya-gotovitsya-okkupirovat-strany-Baltii-96466.html).

   Moreover, and just as in 1939, they should be disturbed by Moscow’s duplicity and cynicism about such a move, one nominally taken in the name of improving Russia’s defense capability but in fact threatened in order to advance Russian imperialism and to disorder and confuse the Western powers.

   In her commentary, Kirillova does two things First, she points to a recent article by Moscow commentator Rostislav Ishchenko calling for a “preventive” strike against the Baltic littoral in order to block what he sees as a threat from NATO; and second, she interviews former RISI analyst Aleksandr Sytin on why Ishchenko’s words are more than the ravings of one man.

   According to Ishechenko, Moscow has a compelling interest in a preventive occupation of at least portions of the Baltic countries in order to counter NATO, an interest he says exists even if there is no such threat, because such a move would allow for “the preservation of the line of ‘the virtual front’” (newsbalt.ruanalytics201504iskupitelnyy-vykup).

   Specifically, he writes, “a preventive strike with the goal of liquidating the Baltic place des armes could become necessary from a military point of view not because someone might expect an attack from this direction but in order to preserve the line of the front (even virtual), to extend a land corridor to the blockaded group of forces in Kaliningrad, and to free up forces for actions in other, more important directions.”

   Not taking such actions in a timely manner – and Ishchenko helpfully provides a map showing just what Russian forces should seek to seize – could, he suggests, prove “fatal in the indefinite situation” the world now finds itself in. Indeed, he argues, “the rapid [Russian] occupation of the Baltics could become the best choice” among those available.

   Ishchenko suggests, as Kirillova puts it, that “the main goal of this operation would be not ‘the defense’ of [Russia’s] borders from imagined enemies but the occasion for the beginning of a trade with Europe about the shift of borders and spheres of influence in which of course the sovereignty of other countries and the will of the peoples living in them are not and cannot be taken into consideration.”

   As Ishchenko puts it, “a lightning-like occupation of the Baltics would put the European Union in a situation when the restoration of the status quo could be achieved only by means of negotiations.” That is because Paris and Berlin could not “fight” for the Baltic countries if they no longer existed.

   It would be comforting to think that Ishchenko’s article is simply one more example of the absurdities that often surface in countries during times of stress, and undoubtedly many people in the EU and the US will dismiss his notions as nothing more than that.  But to do so would be a serious mistake.

   Aleksandr Sytin, a former analyst for Russia’s SVR intelligence service and more recently for the now infamous Russian Institute for Strategic Research, argues that Ishchenko is speaking for more than himself and that his article is intended simultaneously to test the waters of public opinion and expand the limits of what people consider permissible.

   He told Kirillova that Sytin now works closely with Russia Today and other Kremlin media outlets and that he and others so connected put out ideas Moscow wants to see spread through the population so that the regime can act nominally in the name of “’the will of the people’” even though the source of the ideas is the Kremlin itself.

   According to Sytin, “Ishchenko’s declarations entirely and completely reflect the foreign policy course of present-day Russia and in particular its striving to become a world center of power and to restore the configuration of the world as it was in 1945, and also to ‘save’ the peoples at a minimum of Eastern Europe and ideally all European peoples from the ‘pernicious influence’ of the US by using the existing contradictions between them and the EU’s weakness.”

   Sytin said that, despite proposals like Ishchenko’s, he is certain that the Kremlin does not really want to get into a military confrontation with Europe and NATO. Instead, it hopes for a compromise, one in which the West will make even more concessions to Moscow in order to avoid such a conflict.

   “The more quickly the West recognizes that the era of a ‘good’ agreeable Russia is now in the past the better,” Sytin argued, and he insisted that  “the Kremlin’s current aggressiveness is creating a danger much greater than that which came from ‘the evil empire’ operating under the name USSR.”

Thursday, May 14, 2015  6:41 AM PDT
Ukrainian army has no fatalities in Donbas for second day in row

   (Interfax) --- The Ukrainian army has had no fatalities in the Donbas combat zone for two days in a row; yet four servicemen have been wounded, a representative of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration, Andriy Lysenko, said.

   "Luckily, we had no deaths in the past 24 hours. Four servicemen have suffered injuries," Lysenko said at a press briefing in Kiev on Thursday.

Thursday, May 14, 2015  6:23 AM PDT
Surge in violence triggers fears of new offensive in east Ukraine

   (UNIAN) --- Ukrainian troops report increased attacks by Russia-backed militants since the May holidays on the front line, while Luhansk residents are desperate to find means of survival as prices have risen drastically in militant-held areas and supplies are running thin.

   Crossing into the government-controlled areas for supplies, Luhansk residents complain of constant shelling by militants, which rattles nerves, provoking fear and anxiety, Ukraine Today reports.

   Calling a renewed military activity by insurgents a provocation, Ukrainian soldiers have said that the enemy is preparing for a new offensive.

Thursday, May 14, 2015  13:25 AM PDT
Last night an explosive device detonated in a communication well

   (UTR.TV) --- Another explosion occurred in Odessa.  An explosive device was put in a communication well near the building of the Odessa railway technical school, press centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Odessa region reports.

   According to preliminary conclusions of experts, there were 400 grams of TNT in the device. No casualties have been reported as a result of the explosion. Law enforcers qualified the incident as deliberate damage of property.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015  10:04 AM PDT

Russian/rebel troops pull heavy weapons close to touchline, stage provocations, Ukraine army spokesman says

   (Zik) --- During May 12, the Donbas separatists and their Russian patrons were pulling heavy artillery and tanks close to the touchline, something banned by the Minsk agreements, Ukraine army spokesman said.

   The number of shellings at hitherto quiet areas has risen, and the statements by the rebels are clearly aimed at disrupting the ceasefire and putting the blame for this on Ukraine, the spokesman said.

   Near Mariupol, the enemy used 120-mm mortars to fire on Ukraine army positions near Shyrokine.

   Near Donetsk, there was a flare-up in fighting that day, with the enemy using 152-mm artillery to shell areas near Pisky, Maryinka, Horlivka and Svitlodarsk.

   On May 12, 23 enemy drones were spotted over Ukraine army-held territories and the Azov Sea.