Ukrainians protest gov't abandoning EU free trade agreement over Russian pressure

Alessandra Kelley

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/w...e-in-crimea-grows-chaotic.html?hpw&rref=world

Meanwhile, life in Crimea is complex and frustrating. The waiting list for Russian passports is twenty times as large as the number of people seen each day. Most banks are closed and some foreign companies, such as McDonald's, have pulled out. Some foods are running short. Russians pouring into the country to buy estates find the land offices mostly closed. Courts are closed until the law is shaken out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make Crimea a gambling and casino mecca, but at the moment it is an uncomfortable place to be.

Certain groups are particularly worried. Crimean gays are in trouble, given Russia's near-genocidal laws against homosexuality. Drug addicts in treatment programs are left high and dry, since methadone is banned in Russia. Even Ukrainian priests are targets. Apparently the Russian Orthodox church loathes the Ukrainian Orthodox church (which is odd, since the Russian religion started in Kiev as I understand it), and Ukrainian clergy fear for their families, their icons, and their very church buildings.
 

raburrell

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So Simon Ostrovsky, the Vice Journalist who had been doing indepth video journalism in Ukraine on the Ukrainian crisis has been captured.

Edit: Link: http://mashable.com/2014/04/22/vice-journalist-captured-ukraine/

According to his paper, he's been released in good health. https://news.vice.com/articles/simon-ostrovsky-has-been-released?trk_source=homepage-in-the-news

VICE News is delighted to confirm that our colleague and friend Simon Ostrovsky has been safely released and is in good health.
 

raburrell

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I don't have a link yet, but twitter is showing 'full scale clashes with injuries reported' and 'explosions and gunfire' in Donetsk.

If true, Gah.
 

Xelebes

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I don't have a link yet, but twitter is showing 'full scale clashes with injuries reported' and 'explosions and gunfire' in Donetsk.

If true, Gah.

Use Google Chrome to translate into English. The link is to a thread of a Donets community discussing what is going on.

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=889944&page=246

Still reading to break down the situation there. An explosion is reported and a focus is on a highrise residential building there.

Report of violence in Ukrainian:

http://gazeta.ua/articles/np/_u-don...pali-na-proukrayinskih-mitinguvalnikiv/555067

Violence is between Pro-Ukraine and Pro-Russian marchers.
 
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Xelebes

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The town of Sverdlovsk in Luhansk Oblast is getting jittery. Grave concerns about men running around discussing openly how to frame the Right Sector in various crimes and letting rumours fly of impending pogroms.

https://www.facebook.com/olena.stepova/posts/560759954041535

courtesy of Google Translate:

Guys, the situation worsens. My dear, if I do not get the connection, if something happens to me, give to family and children, take away from this hell. Tel husband 097-59-19-197. Brought from Kiev many impressions and good and bad and very bad. But not when you share them. On the border troops (p. Panchenko, mine Krasny Partizan) visibility of troops "at a glance" - APCs, tanks. Local separable run to them, bypassing the customs in the fields. Helping them smugglers. We in the city runs the Bear (his pipe and other contraband).

Olena Stepova is on town council, I believe.
 

Xelebes

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Things are getting interesting in Ukraine. Two big battles going on right now:

Slavyansk: the Ukrainian Army has surrounded the city and while it's land forces have been prevented from entering because a human-chain has been set up on most if not all entrances into the city, helicopters are flying over city and picking what they can. Two helicopters have been shot down and pilots taken captive, but the Army has taken out a few armed separatists.

Odessa: Eastern oligarchs had promised funding to get things going there. It didn't turn out so well. The separatists came out in force but so did the pro-Ukrainian civillians. The militia (police) had at one point managed to separate them, facing each other. However, the militia guard broke down and an interesting mix and made for some cool photos and what not. Women tore the street up, men threw the bricks and the Ukrainians repelled the separatists, some who were armed with more than bricks and molotov cocktails (I'm sure Putin hates that.) So far six pro-Ukrainians died, most of the dead were shot. This might not be the only casualty as the separatists holed themselves up in the union buildings leaving the pro-Ukrainians to use their molotov to light the buildings on fire.

Edit 1: In Odessa, 6 people had died in the clashes, and police are reporting that at least 38 people had died in the fires.
 
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robjvargas

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Ummm...

The [Donetsk People's Republic] urged people to use the "unconditional right of all the citizens to take up arms and to conduct a sacred war." It said the insurrection would take place on Friday, the anniversary of Victory Day when Nazi Germany capitulated to the Soviet Union in World War II.

<Story Link>

Well... Who has the body count graphics from Bosnia-Herzegovina? Once someone makes violence "sacred," all that's left is counting the victims.
 

Xelebes

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Yes, but there is also a religious dynamic to this conflict. There is the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox versus the Ukrainian Catholic and Baptist (Protestant) dynamic. Ukrainian Orthodox have an especially virulent antagonism towards the Ukrainian Catholic Church. This is likely why the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog People's Republic attempted to split off from the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918, a short lived venture.
 

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RichardGarfinkle

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Ukraine's new president signs the trade deal with the EU that the last one refused to.

Russian reactions Godwin the situation.

Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to Putin, told the BBC before the signing that "Europe is trying to push Ukraine to sign this agreement by force" and said Petro Poroshenko, the president, lacked the legitimacy to make the deal.
"They organised [a] military coup in Ukraine; they helped Nazis to come to power. This Nazi government is bombing the largest region in Ukraine." He said he "of course" believed the Ukrainian president was a Nazi.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-29567246

More than 100 football fans have been detained in Belarus after nearly the entire stadium joined in chanting a well-known song insulting Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports say.

Both local and visiting fans at the Euro 2016 qualifier between Ukraine and Belarus in Borisov came together in a rousing rendition of the song - which has became a popular expression of opposition to Putin in Ukraine, the Belarusian paper Nasha Niva reports.