Ukraine crisis. News in Brief. Wednesday 11 November [Ukrainian sources]

WEDNESDAY

Please scroll down to view news items added during the course of the day

News -
More attacks by Putin yesterday, and last night, but no numbers.
Update - now saying 21 attacks by the Russian forces.
Sadly 1 Ukrainian soldier died, 5 were injured.
After the fiasco in the Rada yesterday - Samopomich, Liashko and the Opposition block stopping the EU visa legislation, will they try again?
Liashko was on tv last night - live interview with protesters - saying that the gas price for people should be reduced by half or so.
Who will pay? Why not give everybody a free Mercedes while he is at it. Liashko - limited intelligence. Now getting the Soviet babushka support.

Weather -
Another very warm night. 9C. Warmer than it should be during the day at this time of year!
A lot of rain also yesterday and last night.
If similar around Donetsk the fields will be very boggy and almost impossible for any major tank offensive by Putin.

7:42
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/11/11/7088255/
During the last day the militants continued attacks on the Ukrainian position Artemivsk and Donetsk areas.
The press center informs Staff ATO page on Facebook.
With 82-mm mortars, heavy machine guns and small arms and terrorists fired Mayorsk, Zaitsev.
"At 22.00 Russian-terrorist mercenaries tried to attack our military in the area Novozvanivky. When approaching DRG was decided to open fire. The enemy retreated and tried to get around from the left. When re-attempt the attack opened fire. Pick dead and wounded invaders retreated "- said in a statement.
In Donetsk direction with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades fired by militants Avdiyivka, Pisky and Mar'yintsi.
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I wonder sometimes if Putin is simply trying to reduce the number of his Russian terrorists. Lower costs, fewer witnesses.
Similar report here, also in Ukrainian,
http://www.unn.com.ua/uk/news/1519031-teroristi-prodovzhili-obstrili-sil-ato-na-artemivskomu-na-donetskomu-napryamkakh-pres-tsentr

9:15
http://www.rbc.ua/rus/news/sud-savchenko-prodolzhitsya-segodnya-rostovskoy-1447224755.html
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Russia - a wasteland of state-sponsored kidnappings. A truly terrorist state.

Just noticed, reading the brief article - trial due to start at 11am, on the 11th day of the 11th month.
Shades of the First World War - the "war to end all wars" - except it didn't because of idiots like Putin and Hitler.

9:29
http://novosti.dn.ua/details/263358/
====
Who do you believe? Shaun Walker stuff from his beloved "DNR guys".

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/nov/10/russian-anti-doping-laboratory
At the Moscow facility at the centre of the claims in Dick Pound’s report, an air of secrecy and, in places, intimidation prevailed when the Guardian visited...
a thickset man who said he was a member of the anti-doping lab’s security confronted me, taking my photograph on a phone, asking if I was a “spy”, and ordering me to leave.... As another guard emerged from the building, the man threatened to call members of the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence agency, who would “put you on the ground with two fingers”.
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What a lovely welcoming place Russia is today!
Not a bad article from Alec Luhn - not Shaun Walker, otherwise you would have got the Kremlin position in triplicate!

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/world/europe/2-accused-of-being-russian-soldiers-appear-in-court-in-ukraine.html?_r=0
...Both men, Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Aleksandr Aleksandrov, had confessed to being Russian soldiers while recovering from wounds in Ukrainian captivity. At the hearing, however, both told the court they were unemployed, not soldiers, the local news media reported...
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Are there any Russians left on the planet who are able to tell the truth about anything?

http://www.newsweek.com/why-ukrainians-hate-when-you-say-ukraine-392903
..."After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians probably decided that the article denigrated their country [by identifying it as a part of Russia] and abolished 'the' while speaking English, so now it is simply Ukraine," explained Oksana Kyzyma, press secretary for the Ukrainian Embassy in the United Kingdom. ...
====

Old habits die hard. People who were born talking about The Netherlands, The Argentine, The Phillippines, ... still sometimes say "The Ukraine" by accident.
Very very politically incorrect now.
Time for a list -
The United Kingdom, The United States, The West Indies, The Netherlands, The Congo, The Gambia, The Phillippines, The Czech Republic, The Lebanon, Die Schweitz, ... mmmm.. The Bahamas, The United Arab Emirates, El Salvador,
(seems in some cases The is used when the country word is a plural. Netherlands, US, Phillippines etc. Also for a group of islands. Solomon, Maldives,.. )

Also - The Algarve, The Punjab, Y Wyddfa (welsh, for Snowdon), The Hague,

This is not bad
https://www.quora.com/What-countries-have-names-that-are-officially-preceded-with-the-word-the

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article4610520.ece
Ukraine’s fragile ceasefire was in danger of collapsing last night after a series of assaults on government positions by Russian-backed rebels was followed by counterstrikes along the eastern front line.
After weeks of relative peace, the country’s armed forces were put on a war footing, preparing to repulse what they said was “a major offensive” following days of skirmishes....
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pay to view for more.

http://www.unian.info/economics/1179908-russia-said-to-plot-strategy-to-block-imf-lending-to-ukraine.html
...Russia’s protests over the $3 billion bond are unlikely to be heeded by the IMF, said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “This is the kind of thing you say when you don’t have an argument,” he said. “The trouble lies elsewhere,” Aslund said, citing domestic resistance to the Ukraine government’s efforts to broaden the country’s tax base as an example of something that represents a greater challenge to the IMF program.
Russia Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak said Tuesday that “we want to resolve the issue without big consequences for Ukraine as a potential borrower from financial markets,” though the “alternative is either court or payment.”...
===
Threats from Russia. Are we not surprised.

10:51
http://www.rbc.ua/rus/news/payett-pribyl-verhovnuyu-radu-1447231671.html
US Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Payєtt arrived in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to discuss with the chairman of the Rada Vladimir Groisman forthcoming visit of US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. The journalists said the ambassador himself, reports RBC-Ukraine.

10:53
На Керченской переправе снова очередь, оккупанты просят воздержаться от поездок (НБН)
http://nbnews.com.ua/ru/news/165679/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-3313566/Military-jet-crashes-Ukraine-killing-pilot.html
KIEV, Nov 11 (Reuters) - A Soviet-designed Su-25 jet aircraft crashed in south-eastern Ukraine on Wednesday during a training exercise, killing its pilot, the Ukrainian military said.
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Really, no further info.

Nelson wrote:10:51
http://www.rbc.ua/rus/news/payett-pribyl-verhovnuyu-radu-1447231671.html
US Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Payєtt arrived in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to discuss with the chairman of the Rada Vladimir Groisman forthcoming visit of US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. The journalists said the ambassador himself, reports RBC-Ukraine.

What's the problem with the guy's name? Should read:

Geoffrey R. Pyatt

an all-round good bloke!

Russia is squeezing out disloyal population, Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians who oppose the annexation of peninsula. On the other hand, Moscow is resettling to Crimea native Russians, Tatar leader Refat Chubarov said in a statement Nov. 11.
The Russians have already brought to Crimea thousands of law enforcement officials and their families, Chubarov said.

The occupants are out to change the demographic, ethnic and religious make-up of the land they occupied. This is a gross violation of the UN charter, Chubarov said.'

zik.ua

The militants has deployed locked-and-loaded BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers and self-propelled artillery in the Donetsk region.


Censor.NET informs citing the situation report by the ATO press-center.
The statement reads: "Warning: According to intelligence reports (as of 8:20 p.m. November 11, 2015), the Russian-terrorist forces has deployed fully operational BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launchers and self-propelled artillery in the village of Lisne (Makiivka, Krasnoarmiisk district) in the cemetery."

censor.net.ua In Russian

Congress has passed a defense policy bill that authorizes up to $50 million in lethal military aid for Ukraine and mandates a White House response if Russia is deemed to be violating a key arms control treaty.

The White House said hours after the $607 billion bill was passed by the Senate on November 10 that President Barack Obama was likely to sign the legislation.

The House of Representatives passed a similar version of the bill last week.

Obama vetoed the previous bill over provisions that forbade the White House from moving the remaining prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba to U.S. prisons.

But he does not appear to be threatening a veto on the latest bill over the Guantanamo prisoner issue.

Among other things, the package appropriates $300 million to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.

That includes $50 million for lethal weaponry such as antiarmor weapon systems, mortars, grenade launchers, small arms, and ammunition.

The Obama administration has previously resisted calls to provide Ukraine with lethal aid, fearing that could provoke Russia.

The legislation also sets a deadline for the administration to tell Congress whether Russia continues to be in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear-capable missiles from Europe in the late 1980s.....................

To read further go to this link: rferl.org

On the grass outside an old Soviet-era military hospital, tucked on a side street in the capital, Kyiv, Ukrainian soldiers in camo-patterned jackets and fur hats puff on cigarettes and share laughs.

Their banter reflects the current lull in the fight against Russian-backed separatists hundreds of kilometers to the east, where a shaky cease-fire is holding despite occasional flare-ups and no sign of a lasting solution.

But just a few steps away, in a medical building surrounded by the nearly leafless trees of autumn, lies a tragic example of one of the legacies of war that could haunt Ukraine well into its future.

Eleven-year-old Mykola Nyzhnyakovskyy -- Kolya to his mom and friends -- is straining to scratch the itching wounds from shrapnel embedded in what's left of his legs. He is using his left hand, the one that remains.

His mother, 38-year-old Alla Nyzhnyakovska, caresses his head and tries to put a brave face on his situation since the day two months ago when an unexploded munition shattered three of Kolya's limbs and killed his 4-year-old brother, Danylo, instantly.

"I'm showing him pictures of soldiers who've lost their limbs but manage to live normal lives now," she says as she flashes a photo of a man with two prosthetic legs holding a baby. "I want him to know that he still has a life ahead of him, that there is hope to start a family and live a normal life."

It is just one facet of the 20-month-old conflict paralyzing the country since a separatism-fueled war erupted in eastern Ukraine. But unlike the shooting, it threatens to keep killing well beyond the end of the fighting.

Kolya's Story...................

To read further go to this link: rferl.org

Vladimir Putin’s declaration that Moscow will create a nuclear strike force capable of overcoming any anti-ballistic missile system works to Ukraine’s advantage both by showing to the world what his foreign policy is really about – a return to the Cold War – and by diverting, for a time, his focus on Ukraine, according to Vitaly Portnikov.

The Ukrainian commentator says that Putin’s statement is “a clear demonstration of what the logic of the return to the Soviet Union will lead to.” No longer will anyone be able to view the Russian attack on Ukraine or the earlier one on Georgia as a successful “Kremlin act of local or ‘hybrid’ war” (rus.newsru.ua/columnists/11Nov2015/zvezdnievoyny.html).

As long as people in the West viewed things in this way, they could view what Putin has been doing as a tactic intended “to preserve [Russia’s] position on the post-Soviet space and interfere with the development of neighboring countries” rather than as something that constituted a direct challenge to them and thus required more military spending.

Many in Russia and the West “asserted,” Portnikov continues, “that in such a regime Putin could maintain power forever.” Of course, “they said something similar about Brezhnev when the aging Soviet leader introduced forces into Afghanistan.” But by talking about nuclear arms and countering ABM defenses, Putin has made such interpretations insupportable.

The Kremlin leader “really can try to minimize the means spent on the war in the Donbas – and it is no accident that he so insistently tries to force Ukraine to support the territories he’s occupied. But the logic of a besieged fortress is simple” and it is extremely costly for those who are creating it, Portnikov says.

“Putin is certain,” he writes, “that the goal of the Americans is ‘the neutralization of the strategic nuclear potential of nuclear powers other than the United States and its allies and above all our country Russia.” And that is really frightening to him because “he has nothing to offer the world besides a nuclear threat.”
“Consequently,” Portnikov says, “if Washington will no longer be afraid of his bombs and rockets, he will not be able to act the hooligan any longer. No one will conduct negotiations with him about Ukraine or Syria. They will act as they did with Milosevic: a NATO military occupation and then his transfer to the Hague.”

That is what “the Kremlin military criminal fears most of all,” the Ukrainian analyst says, “and therefore he will spend any sums for the defense against an imaginary threat, having failed to understand that in this way he will undermine his country’s economic potential.”

In short, Putin will conduct himself just as the Soviet leaders did when they were frightened by Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program. They boosted their military spending to be able to preserve themselves by being in a position to destroy humanity. As a result, they ultimately had to withdraw not only from Afghanistan and Central Europe but also had presided over the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Given Putin’s analogous reaction to the West’s new defense measures, he is setting the stage for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine. And thus, Portnikov concludes, because he is now acting on them, “Putin’s fears help us.”.....

ukrainebusiness.com.ua

To mark the upcoming anniversary of the start of Euromaidan Revolution, Ukraine Today launches a series of interviews with politicians who came to the parliament after participating in the uprising.

On Ukraine Today's Viewpoint, Volodymyr Solohub is joined by the lawyer Mr Markiyan Halabala to talk about the legal action against the perpetrators of the killings in central Kyiv during the Euromaidan revolution.

Volodymyr Solohub: Mr Halabala, you are representing the victims in one of the two cases which finally reached the courts proceedings, and this is by far the largest case. You are representing the families of 39 victims, activists who were killed during the Euromaidan revolution. Can we talk a little bit with you about the case and about the defendants? Who are the defendants in this case, and what is their main line of defence?

Markiyan Halabala: There are two defendants in that case, it's Mr Abroskin and Mr Zinchenko. They were policemen in a special police unit called Berkut. And during events on the 20th of February 2014, there were part of the big team who murdered the protesters in Instytutska Street.

V.S.: Are they alleged to be part of these special ops which were running across Instytutska Street, in a video that the whole world saw when the police force was shooting directly at the protesters?

M.H.: Absolutely. There are even video proofs that, for example, Mr Abroskin was shooting in the crowd of protesters, because his face was open, and so it was possible to identify him. He also had a special bag on his body, so it was easy for experts to identify him.....................

To read further go to this link: uatoday.tv

Illegal armed groups continued to build equipment in the region of Donetsk. To coordinate the activities of high-ranking soldier arrived from Rostov-on-Don, the press center of the ATO.

"In violation of the Minsk agreed to continue increasing cases of force groupings of illegal armed groups in the region of Donetsk. It was found moving up to 10 tanks and 10 infantry fighting vehicles and seven trucks from Shahtersk Donetsk ", - said the press center on the Facebook page.

At the headquarters of stress that for the planning and coordination of activities in that direction came from senior military commanders of the 12th reserve the Southern Military District, in Rostov-on-Don.

glavcom.ua In Russian

In the district of Makeyevka in the cemetery militants launched a "Grad" and artillery. This was reported by the press center of the ATO to Facebook.

"According to intelligence reports, in the village of Forest (Makiyivka, Krasnoarmeyskiy district), in the cemetery of the Russian-terrorist forces (as of 20:20 November 11, 2015) deployed for firing multiple rocket launchers BM-21" Grad "and self-propelled artillery "- said in a statement.

Earlier it was reported that the gunmen moved 10 tanks, 10 infantry fighting vehicles and seven trucks from Shakhtersk Donetsk.

glavcom.ua In Russian

The militants tried to storm the position of the Ukrainian military commando group. This was the TV channel «112.ua» said Speaker Leonid Matyuhin ATO.

He also commented on the order of Ukrainian military to repulse the rebels in the case of threats to their lives.

"In fact, it only confirmed the military, as it was a few days earlier, opened fire. The military did not open fire on the provocative attacks, and only then, when they were hit by our positions or military personnel, then our open fire. But if you look at the tactics of fighting terrorists, they are now more subversive groups, here a few days they tried, by night, and before this day, they tried to sabotage the group to storm our positions, but they did not succeed ... If the evening the situation in the whole from 17:00 to evening there were three fire, firing rocket-propelled grenades and small arms on the sand and Trinity, and Trehizbenke they fired 82-mm mortar shells, "- said Matyuhin.

glavcom.ua In Russian

"DNR", who was killed the day before in the Donetsk region when trying to assault Ukrainian position.
According InfoResist, according to user Twitter, the dead were Russian Vladimir Gornostaev, on the wanted list on October 22 in the city of Togliatti.

Publication spotted cousin Vladimir Gornostaeva and talk to her. According to Eugene, Vladimir just left home without telling his family.

Eugene identified him from the photo. She confirmed the authenticity of the phone numbers listed on a piece of paper that is found with him, as well as the authenticity of a credit card issued by Russia's Sberbank.

She also added that he was recruited. Vladimir previously served in the Russian army. No other details she said.



It is worth noting that the last time Vladimir went to his page on VKontakte October 31st. All photos of his pages have been removed.

The announcement that he was gone, placed the local media on 28 October.



Also in social networks was published advertisement with another photo.



As reported by the "Observer", previously the Ministry of Defence has shown further proof of Russia's presence in the Donbas.

obozrevatel.com In Russian