Ukraine crisis. News in brief. Monday 15 February [Ukrainian sources]

MONDAY

Please scroll down to view news items added during the day

News -
Russian forces fire 71 times yesterday at Ukraine.
Update - no losses. Slava Ukraini!

Weather -
Strange. Still a little snow around after yesterday's fall. But temperature is +1.
Forecast for +8 today. We will see. But then cooler on Wednesday - back to near zero. High and low.
Update - already +10 at 1300.

7:41
http://censor.net.ua/news/374297/povedenie_rossiyiskoyi_delegatsii_na_myunhenskoyi_konferentsii_po_voprosam_bezopasnosti_bylo_agressivnym
..."I think the Russians Putin's behavior resembles the behavior in 2007. Very aggressive, very antagonistic However, the mention of the Cold War are entirely inappropriate.." - Senator McCain said....

http://www.radiosvoboda.org/content/news/27552433.html
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And we all know what that brings. More ammunition and weapons for Shaun Walker's "DNR guys".

http://www.unian.info/politics/1264626-putin-tells-obama-he-hopes-ukraine-to-pardon-militants.html

Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama expressed hope that Ukraine would grant amnesty to the pro-Russian militants who seized parts of Donbas, the Kremlin’s press service has told UNIAN.

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Does that include the Russians from the base in Kursk who shot down MH17? Does the amnesty include Putin himself, who sent the Buk launcher, and gave the orders?

http://shkvarki.org/donbass/item/5152-v-dnr-vmesto-zarplaty-vydayut-sotsialnuyu-kartu
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Given to factory workers now. Food coupons, instead of wages. So who is pocketing all the money?
Coupon for 25g of butter?! The butter I get is in a 200g packet. Not massive. So you need 8 coupons for this?
Also coupons for flour, toilet paper. Back to the Soviet Union for the Donbass.
And I bet no shops accept the coupons!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35575774
....His reported death comes two months after he resigned his post at Rusada following the doping scandal which engulfed Russian athletics.
Tass quoted Rusada's former director general Ramil Khabriev as saying it appeared to have been a heart attack....
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He clearly knew too much.
Here's the TASS report
http://tass.ru/sport/2667193
Aged 50. ... looks dodgy to me.

http://www.unian.info/world/1264887-two-senior-ex-officials-of-russias-anti-doping-agency-die-within-2-weeks.html
Former executive director of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) Nikita Kamaev and Chairman of the Executive Board RUSADA Vyacheslav Sinev, who led RUSADA from 2008 to 2010, have died this February, according to TASS....
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I didn't really two had "gone". This is a report - Russian source - on the first one
http://www.mk.ru/sport/2016/02/05/umer-byvshiy-prezident-rusada-vyacheslav-sinev.html
"no cause of death disclosed". .... yeah... No.2 "probable" heart attack. ....

http://www.unian.info/politics/1264940-another-high-profile-resignation-in-ukraine-deputy-prosecutor-general-quits.html
...."The last straw was yet another redistribution of authority within the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine. [Prosecutor General Viktor] Shokin has taken away all the functions and tools to investigate and control proceedings in cases initiated by our team, including the case of the so-called ‘diamond prosecutors.’ However, the reasons why it is no longer possible and meaningful to work at the General Prosecutor's Office - they are much deeper," said Kasko....
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Corruption in the corruption investigation. Not a surprise.
see also in English - also short -
http://www.unian.info/politics/1265039-kasko-corruption-cover-up-reign-in-pgo.html

12:15
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2016/02/15/7099016/?attempt=1
....Bourbaki believes that the dismissal of Yatsenyuk is pro-Russian plan.
"To any reasonable person it is clear that the resignation of the government - it does not solve the situation and jump into the abyss of acute national crisis and public anxiety. It's time to openly say that this pro plan. How many more need to step on the rake, to finally understand: Moscow alone waiting here all burn again, "- he said....
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Tymoshenko wants to be President. That is the end goal, I have been told, by people who sit in on her top level meetings. Nothing more, nothing less.

http://news.liga.net/news/politics/9033018-pod_enakievo_okkupanty_otkryli_ogon_iz_152_mm_gaubits_razvedka.htm
[Apparently from a Russian brigade]

http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2016/02/15/7099020/
Slava Ukraini.

http://obozrevatel.com/politics/10738-rossiya-ne-budet-vozvraschat-ukraine-kontrol-nad-granitsej-na-okkupirovannom-donbasse-mid-rf.htm
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Saying only returned after a complete "settlement".

13:34
http://ubr.ua/ukraine-and-world/power/timoshenko-iniciiruet-otstavku-pravitelstva-380612
...According to her, "any positive change" under the current government in Ukraine is impossible.
"Today the question: either Ukraine will live, or will continue to exist this government", - said Tymoshenko.
She insists that tomorrow the first to vote in Parliament raised the question of the resignation of the government....
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She sees Yatseniuk as a traitor because he left her party and formed his own - Narodni Front.
And now it is payback time for her.
What good will it do? None. Just more and more instability. And the hryvnia will fall further, of course.
New elections? Who will gain - I would think, the Opposition block and Tymoshenko.
Who would lose out? Liashko's Radikalni Party, and Narodni Front.
End result - Tymoshenko would have more power and say in putting her own people in places of power and control - in charge of the corruption, basically.

http://glavcom.ua/news/361962.html
....Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine will consider the report of the government on Tuesday, February 16 at 12:30 pm, immediately after the consideration of visa-free laws. This proposal parliament speaker Vladimir Groisman supported by MPs during a conciliation board....
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Tymoshenko, Samopomich, the Opposition block and Putin want him out.
But - even if he is removed - then what?!

Mosquitoes capable to carry Zika virus may be contaminated intentionally.

Former head of Rospotrebnadzor and current Aide of the Russian Prime Minister Gennady Onishchenko stated in an interview with BBC-Russia, Censor.NET reports.

According to Onishchenko, the Russian entomologists have been recording subspecies of mosquito capable of carrying Zika virus on the Black Sea coast in Abkhazia since 2012.

"I am concerned about it since the U.S. army microbiology laboratory is situated within a hundred kilometers from the current inhabitation of this mosquito, in the immediate proximity to our borders," he said.

According to Gennady Onishchenko, "the military microbiology laboratory constructed by Pentagon is intended for something different than protection of Georgia's children against measles."

It became known that Rospotrebnadzor (the federal service responsible for Supervision of consumer rights Protection and Human Well-Being in Russia) has recorded the first case of infection with Zika fever in the Russian Federation on Monday.

censor.net in Russian

And my mother wears army boots.

Soviet dissident and vice rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University says the signing Feb. 12 of the declaration by Pope Francis and Patriarch Kiril was the victory for FSB and Kremlin, Dzerkalo Tyzhnya reports Feb. 15.

The meeting in Cuba of Francis and Kiril exposed the miscalculations of Vatican diplomats who continue to take an unrealistic view of the world, says Matynovych.

“Pope had a chance to defend the interests of those harmed by the Russian aggression – and missed it,” he says.

The wording of the Cuban declaration presents Russia as ‘the country of unprecedented revival of the Christian faith giving absolute freedom to espouse this faith,’ Marynovych says.

“The declaration reveals a total defeat of the Ukrainian diplomacy and lack of information service of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as well as blindness and incompetence of Vatican diplomats and perilous inability of Europe’s influential politicians to decode the hypocritical formulas of Putin’s propaganda,” Marynovych stresses.

“I, therefore, must admit that in its assessment of the conflict in Ukraine the Catholic church sacrificed the truth for its ephemeral dialog with Russia,” Myroslav Marynovych says.

zik.ua

1. Exotic means of murdering


The most dramatic insight is the large number of Kremlin critics murdered by exotic poisons and other means.  That the Kremlin is accused of murdering critics of President Putin is not new, but the Litvinenko inquiry provides a breathtaking summary of the number and manner of the killings.  John Le Carré couldn’t write this stuff.

The inquiry lists at least 13 murders, and there are numerous more.  The victims die from gunshot, such as Anna Politovskaya, crusading journalist, and Boris Nemtsov, opposition leader, or from poisons of various kinds, such as Ibn Khattab, Islamist guerrilla leader, who was killed with a poison letter, or Alexander Perepilichny, businessman and whistleblower, who may have died from ingesting a rare poison flower, or from radioactive materials, such as Roman Tsepov, one time associate of Putin, who died from an unknown material, and, of course, Alexander Litvinenko who died from ingesting polonium 210 while drinking tea with two Russian agents at the Millennium Hotel in London.  The list goes on.

The inquiry observes,.................

Recommend to read further. Go to this link: euromaidanpress.com 

The surplus of Ukraine's foreign trade balance in 2015 was estimated at UAH 4.065 billion, which was 21.1%, or $709 million up on 2014, when Ukraine posted $3.365 billion, according to the State Statistics Service of Ukraine.

Imports of goods and services to Ukraine fell by 29.9%, to $42.583 billion (excluding services on a tolling basis), while exports of goods and services from Ukraine declined by 27.2%, to $46.648 billion.

In particular, the surplus of foreign trade in goods alone in 2015 was estimated at $632.5 million against a $527 million deficit in 2014.

The surplus of foreign trade in services last year was estimated at $4.407 billion, which was 14.4%, or $741 million, down on the surplus in 2014.............

To read further go to this link:  unian.info

Russian Defense Ministry continues military exercises in Crimea, according to the press service of the agency.

Helicopter crews of the Southern Military District of Russia struck ground targets on the training grounds in the occupied peninsula, the Crimean news agency Krym.Realii reported.

"During the performance of tasks, helicopter crews carried out fire destruction of ground targets and landing of tactical airborne assault teams in day and night hours," the report says.

According to the Russian Ministry, the crews carried out more than 50 combat sorties and about 100 combat missions, involving Mi-8MTV5, Mi-8AMTSh, Mi-28-N, Mi-35M and Mi-24........

To read further go to this link:   unian.info