Ukraine News in brief. Saturday 2 December. [Ukrainian sources]

SATURDAY HEADLINES:
United States and Russia have discussed the possibility of lifting sanctions after Trump's victory.  Tillerson Set To Meet Lavrov In Vienna To Discuss Syria, Ukraine.  Three Russians have asked for asylum in Ukraine for a week.  In the Russian Federation, it was clear that there was no Russian rights to Crimea.  A well-known journalist told how the Russian Orthodox Church is driving itself into a trap.

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The United States and Russia were negotiating the lifting of sanctions against Moscow after winning the Donald Trump presidential election.

As informs Tsensor.NET, about it informs Reuters and with reference to unpublished documents.
Read also: Ex-Advisor to Trump Flynn can agree to an investigation into Russian election interference, - The New York Times

It was planned that in the event of Trump's victory, then then adviser to the Presidential Administration of National Security, Michael Flynn, was supposed to support a project to build a nuclear power plant in the Middle East.

Referring to the agency's email, Reuters reports that within the framework of cooperation between the two countries in the Middle East, participation in the project of the Russian OJSC OMZ ("United machine-building plants"), which is subject to sanctions, was envisaged. She was supposed to supply nuclear equipment, which is specialized in manufacturing.

From the letter of Alex Copson, head of the ACU Strategic Partners Agency (which specializes in nuclear energy consultations), which he wrote to his business partners on November 16, 2016, Reuters learned that the US plans to help the Ukrainian company Turboatom to get a contract for $ 45 million for the production of turbines for reactors in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries.

It was expected that in exchange for this, Ukraine had to mitigate its position regarding the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions. Copson refused to comment on the agency.

Director General of Turboatom Viktor Subotin, for his part, stated in a comment to the Public Radio that he was not aware that the US allegedly offered the company a bargain contract in exchange for mitigating Ukraine's position on anti-Russian sanctions.

"For us, it's the same news as for journalists," he said, adding that Turboatom currently has no US-based contracts, in addition to a memorandum with Holtec International.

ua.censor.net.ua  In Ukrainian/український

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Vienna next week, with Syria and Ukraine to be on the agenda, a senior State Department official has said.

The official on December 1 said the meeting is set to take place on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in the Austrian capital, most likely on December 7.

“There is a meeting that’s been scheduled with Foreign Minister Lavrov,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We have a fairly robust set of discussions under way with the Russians on a lot of global issues -- [North Korea], Ukraine, and certainly Syria,” the official said when asked if Tillerson would address the six-year civil war in Syria during his upcoming European trip.

Tillerson is scheduled to travel to Brussels, Vienna, and Paris on December 4-8 for NATO, European Union, and OSCE meetings.

The State Department official said Ukraine “will very much be on the agenda” during the OSCE talks.

“The OSCE plays a role in Ukraine, particularly with the Special Monitoring Mission,” the official said.

“The secretary really has a heart for…the safety and security of the Ukrainian people in the east in the occupied territories who continue to be the target of military operations with the encouragement and participation of forces from the Russian Federation.”

The official added that the United States continues to “pursue negotiations with Russian counterparts,” citing the meetings of U.S. special envoy Kurt Volker and Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov.

Volker was named earlier this year to lead efforts to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Russia-backed separatists control parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, including the border between those areas and Russia, which Kyiv says is used to ship weapons and military personnel in from Russia.

Fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 10,000 people in Ukraine’s east since April 2014.

The official said whatever settlement is eventually decided upon for Ukraine, it must fit into the framework of the so-called Minsk agreements.

Several cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed at resolving the conflict -- have failed to hold.

“It needs to be an outcome that would have a UN force encompassing the contested area and not just ratifying the gains that the Russians have made on the ground,” the official said.

Tillerson's trip comes after U.S. media reported that President Donald Trump was preparing to fire the secretary and replace him with Mike Pompeo, the current head of the Central Intelligence Agency....................

rferl.org

During the week, three Russian citizens asked for refugee status from employees of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine.

This is December 2, the press service of the department informs, informs Цензор.NET.

"One of them arrived in the morning at the checkpoint Kyiv-Passenger and, at the time of registration, applied for a verbal declaration declaring him to be a refugee or a person in need of additional protection," the statement said.

A citizen of Russia explained that he participated in rallies against corruption and the Russian opposition, in particular, Oleksiy Navvalny, and therefore prosecuted in a neighboring country, informs the border guards.

According to their information, at this point of passage on November 29 another citizen of Russia also asked to grant refugee status. He said he was forced to flee and seek asylum in Ukraine in connection with his persecution by Russian law enforcement agencies for his participation in actions against the Russian authorities.

The border guards have specified that another Russian citizen has asked for protection in connection with his persecution by the Russian authorities at one of the checkpoints in Chernihiv region on November 28.

The report said that citizens of Russia explained the procedure for applying for protection in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine and sent them to the State Migration Service of Ukraine.
There are no public comments on Russian state bodies on this issue.

Since 2011, Ukraine has two forms of protection: refugee status and additional protection. However, as the report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says, the number of people receiving additional protection is small.

Citizenship of Ukraine can be obtained by persons who have resided in the country for more than 3 years with refugee status, additional protection while not granting Ukrainian citizenship rights.

ua.censor.net.ua  In Ukrainian/український

Russian financier and blogger Slava Rabinovich said that the Russian Federation had no rights to the Ukrainian Crimea.

He told about this "Apostrophe".

"As for the decision of the Crimeans, it is absolutely obvious, an unconditional black and white picture of what the law says. Crimea, being a territory of the Ukrainian state, lives according to the laws of the Ukrainian state, including under the Constitution of Ukraine, which does not foresee local referendums in which Any parts of the country. Accordingly, any referendum of any kind can be only all-Ukrainian", - noted Rabinovich.

According to him, on the same principle, it is possible not only to give examples of various analogies with the referendums that have long been filled with omen, for example, in Kaliningrad, Tatarstan, Chechnya, Karelia, and so on.

"It is possible, in fact, to give examples of ethnic Russians living in Canada, but this does not allow them the right to unite in a certain province of the most populated ethnic Russians and to demand a referendum for separation from Canada. Ethnic Russians have long have their own national state, which is called the Russian Federation, regardless of where they live - in Canada, France, Australia or the Crimea. They have no right to establish their national state in these countries and parts of the world because they already have their own separate ethnic state. amovyznachylys "- said the financier.

Rabinovich emphasized that the right of the nation to self-determination, even under the auspices of the UN, has absolutely no relation to the Crimean problem, since those who were ethnic Russians who lived in the Crimea by the end of 2013 could quietly emigrate to the Russian Federation.

apostrophe.ua  In Ukrainian/український

In the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) more and more supporters of autocephaly are becoming, because they do not want to be part of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC).

This is written by journalist Vitaliy Portnikov in the article for Radio Liberty.

"The time itself works for the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP, ed.) Sooner or later, the ROC in Ukraine may face a situation in which the Serbian Orthodox Church was in the territory of Macedonia, in this country the unrecognized Macedonian Orthodox Church, but the canonical Serbian Church In Macedonia, the ROC recently suffered a serious defeat: its mediation in the negotiations between the Serbian and Macedonian churches ended with the fact that the Macedonian church turned to another Orthodox church - Bulgarian - with a request to recognize Father church-mother and provide autocephaly. For Patriarch Kirill, this is an unpleasant signal, "Portinkov said.

In his opinion, the longer the Russian Orthodox Church will refuse to grant the autocephaly of the UOC, the more the territory of "Moscow Orthodoxy" in Ukraine will be reduced.

"And when the UOC-KP will unite church parishes in most of the country and push the ROC and its branch of the UOC (MP) into Ukrainian religious life, they will be able to appeal to the Constantinople Orthodox Church to recognize themselves as the mother-church and to grant autocephaly. It will be the end of the Ukrainian split - sooner or later Moscow will have to agree with it, "writes Vitaly Portnikov.

apostrophe.ua  In Ukrainian/український