New Cold War.org, Jan 28, 2016
News reports in Ukraine on the fragile, Minsk-2 ceasefire agreement are ongoing as Moscow presses for full implementation of the agreement and Kyiv either flouts it or pretends to be implementing it. The first item below comments on this. That item and others further below provide description of ongoing events and issues in Ukraine which language barriers unfortunately obscure. The following is a selection of reports drawn from Facebook contributors and other sources. See also in this regard: What the trials and investigations of Ukraine’s extreme right are revealing, by Ivan Katchanovski, Jan 26, 2016.
Ivan Katchanovksi: (three items)
1. Poroshenko is trying to postpone adoption of the constitutional amendment concerning the special status of separatist-controlled parts of Donbas to the next session of the parliament. Various Ukrainian media reports suggest that there is no required 300 votes to adopt this constitutional amendment in the second reading. The adoption of the amendment and other laws required by Minsk were also discussed during recent meetings and telephone negotiations between Biden and Poroshenko, Kerry and Lavrov, Nuland and Surkov, and EU leaders and their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts. The outcome of these meetings and phone talks is not publicly known. But a major indicator is that the US ambassador publicly backed adoption of the constitutional amendments in the second reading by the Ukrainian parliament.
http://korrespondent.net/ukraine/politics/3619586-poroshenko-nazval-uslovyia-dlia-yzmenenyia-konstytutsyy
Background:
Decentralization reform in Ukraine, by Halyna Mokrushyna, New Cold War.org, Aug 28, 2015
2. The misrepresentation of the Maidan massacre in the Western mainstream media, which follows their governments’ line on the conflict in Ukraine like it largely did in cases of other foreign conflicts, continues. The factually inaccurate accounts, like this Oscar-nominated documentary film ‘Winter On Fire’ are hailed, while my study, the Maidan trial, and investigation revelations continue to be deliberately ignored and not reported. By now there is overwhelming publicly available evidence, which was identified in my study and revealed during the Maidan trial and the government investigation, that the far right and oligarchic parties were involved in this false flag mass killing in order to seize power in Ukraine. The Maidan massacre is one the most misrepresented mass killing in history along with the Stalin-perpetrated famine in the Soviet Union and the Katyn massacre, in spite of being one of the best documented.
“During the 93-day uprising, at least 106 protesters died, mostly by police sniper fire on Feb. 18-20, 2014. At least 18 policemen were also killed.” …”The New York Times gave the film a glowing review, and it won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. This month, it was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary film.”…. “Afineevsky’s bias hasn’t stopped praise from flooding in. Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president who came to power after the revolution, called him “the Russian fighting side by side with Ukrainians on the ground” and presented him a medal for his work. He got more positive feedback last week, when he says that Victoria Nuland — the U.S. assistant secretary of state who once famously handed out cookies to protesters on the Maidan — told him by phone that the film moved her to tears. Nuland could not be reached for confirmation. And then there’s the Oscar nod.”
http://mashable.com/2016/01/21/ukraine-winter-on-fire-oscars/#iHWesN4UvOqO
Background:
* The Snipers ’ Massacre on Maidan Square in Ukraine (updated Sept. 2015), By Ivan Katchanovski, September 2015
* Five things Netflix documentary ‘Winter On Fire’ doesn’t tell you about Ukraine, by Pedro Marin, New Cold War.org, Oct 24, 2015
3. A Kyiv journalist reported on her Facebook page two months ago that the leader of the neo-Nazi White Hammer organization, which was one of the founders of the Right Sector, told her that the first two Maidan protesters were killed in January 2014 by their own side and that these false flag killings were one of the reasons for the split of their group from the Right Sector. Not a single media in Ukraine or the West reported this latest revelation. Today, there were numerous media reports and public commemorations in Ukraine of these killings of the Armenian and Belarusian protesters two years ago. The official investigation concluded that these two protesters and a Lviv protester were killed in the Maidan-controlled areas from distances of a few meters, while the police lines were several dozen meters away from the Maidan positions. No videos of their killings, eyewitnesses, or suspects have been identified by the official investigation. But the government, investigation, and the media in Ukraine continue to attribute these killings to the Berkut police or government snipers. A similar split within the Right Sector in the end of 2015 coincided with the government investigation of their involvement in killings of the police on February 18-20, 2014. But it is unclear if the current split is connected to the current investigation of the Right Sector involvement in the Maidan massacre.
Ina Kirsch
Ukrainian media ZN.ua reports, that a compromise is found concerning requirement of the Minsk agreements to return the border control fully to the Ukrainian authorities. While Kiev has understood that it will not be able to control the border on its own in the near future, a compromise proposed by Russia is in the pipeline.Ukraine will officially regain control over the border under the condition that the border control forces are to be recruited from the local people of Donetsk and Lugansk. This would be in line with recent announcements from Kiev that it expects to gain full control over the border in nearest future.
http://obozrevatel.com/politics/06145-kiev-i-moskva-nashli-kompromiss-po-vozvratu-kontrolya-granitsyi-ukraine-rahmanin.htm
Dmitry Kovalevich
1. A hilarious moment at Davos meeting in Switzerland [Jan 20-23, 2016] which reveals who are the real masters of Ukraine. And note that Radio Free Europe reports it quite openly: “Soros told participants at the Ukrainian lunch: ‘OK, President Poroshenko is asking for extra powers. Why not give him these powers, but with a limited term?’ ”
Soros then used an odd term, “sunset”. That is, to organize for Poroshenko a “sunset” in two years. In short, the president of an ‘independent’ state asks George Soros about extra powers. Soros agrees but promises to render him a ‘sunset’ in two years.
http://www.radiosvoboda.org/content/article/27505644.html
2. Jan 28, 2015. The Ukrainian security service staged a raid on the Vietnamese community in Odessa. This caused a riot and clashes between the service and the Vietnamese community. As reports, Odessa media Dumskaya, the secret service was reportedly searching for evidence of ‘unlawful acts’ by the Vietnamese people. Police entered by force into rooms and flats.
Community members say police robbed them, taking money and valuables. As a result, the residents gathered and attempted to resist robbing and searches but were beaten.
http://dumskaya.net/…/vo-vetnamskom-kvartale-proizoshli-st…/
A Vietnamese migrant Msn Khong Vin was severely beaten and robbed, reports Odessa Timer. http://timer-odessa.net/…/obisk_vo_vetnamskom_kvartale_sotr…
Situation of the blockade of Crimea by Ukrainian extremists
From the daily report of the Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE, January 24, 2016
The SMM monitored the situation at the tent settlements of the “Crimea blockade” close to the crossing point in Chonhar and Kalanchak (167km and 90km south-east of Kherson, respectively) at the administrative boundary line between Kherson region and Crimea. The SMM saw 12 “Crimea blockade” activists in camouflage uniforms, without visible insignia, present in the tent settlement in Kalanchak and two activists in Chonhar. The SMM spoke to “Crimea blockade” activists in Kalanchak, who said that since 17 January they had been stopping vehicles at the crossing point and checking them. One of them told the SMM they would start “checking the work of border guards and customs” as of 1 February 2016.
