Ukraine News in brief. Thursday 28 September. [Ukrainian sources]

THURSDAY

TODAY'S HEADLINES:
Ukraine Security Chief Says Depot Blasts Dealt 'Big Blow' To Combat Capability.  Russia brazenly flouts UN Hague Court and jails Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov.  UN peacekeepers in the Donbas:In the Odessa region, the family were released from 13-year-old slavery.  IDIL fighters announced the killing of a Russian military and capturing two in Syria.  In Russia, launched a service of parental control in social networks under the slogan: "We are better than FSB". Poroshenko regarding the Law "On Education": Ukraine will not pay attention to the hysteria of the State Duma of the Russian Federation.

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Explosions at two large Ukrainian military depots this year have caused losses of ammunition so high that they represent the biggest blow to Ukraine's combat capability since the start of the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in 2014, a senior security official said on September 28 in Kyiv.

Massive blasts followed by a blaze at a military depot near Kalynivka in the Vinnytsya region, 270 kilometers west of Kyiv, forced the evacuation of 30,000 people on September 27. Another depot in the eastern city of Kharkiv was destroyed in March. That blast was blamed on sabotage.

Electricity and gas supplies were cut off in the Vinnytsya area, and trains were severely delayed across the country.

In Kalynivka, firefighters on September 28 were still unable to put out the blaze because there were still periodic explosions at the site, said Mykola Chechotkin, chief of the State Service for Emergency Situations.

"The country has suffered the biggest blow to our fighting capacity since the start of the war," the secretary of the Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, told journalists.

WATCH: A huge ammunition depot in Balaklia, near Kharkiv in the northeast of the country, exploded on March 23. Drone footage showed the extent of the disaster.



Access complete text of the editorial:  rferl.org In English

In a shock move on September 27, a Russian-controlled ‘court’ in occupied Crimea sentenced 60-year-old Ilmi Umerov, who has multiple serious illnesses, to two years’ imprisonment. Given the suspended sentence of journalist Mykola Semena on analogous charges just one week ago, the conclusion seems clear that the harsher sentence in this case is because Ilmi Umerov is Crimean Tatar. This new sentence of a Crimean Tatar Meljis or representative assembly leader has also come just over two weeks after Akhtem Chiygoz, Deputy Leader of the Mejlis, was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment on legally nihilistic charges concerning a pre-annexation demonstration.

Both Umerov and Semena had been charged with making so-called ‘public calls to action aimed at violating Russia’s territorial integrity” for calling Crimea Ukraine and opposing Russia’s occupation. There were no such ‘public calls’, even according to Russian legislation, in Semena’s article posted as an opinion piece, and the interview given by Umerov on March 19, 2016. Both had certainly upheld Russia’s correct territorial borders which do not include annexed Crimea, but they had specifically spoken of the need for only peaceful methods to reinstate those borders.

Nobody was seriously excepting that Umerov would be acquitted, despite the grotesque absurdity of the charges and the defence’s presentation of proof that they were based on words that Umerov had not uttered. The de facto prosecutor had, however, demanded a three and a half suspended sentence. Neither ‘prosecutor’ nor ‘judge’ are more than puppets in such political cases, and it is Moscow that is behind the decision to pass a two-year real sentence instead. The verdict will be appealed, and therefore concentrated international protest and diplomatic pressure on Russia are vital.

Ilmi Umerov suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes and hypertension, and there have been warnings from Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader Refat Chubarov, lawyer Nikolai Polozov and others that even the minimum security ‘colony-settlement’ term imposed is an effective death sentence against the Crimean Tatar leader, who would be deprived of decent medical care.

Chubarov calls the sentence against one of the Deputy Heads of the Mejlis “yet another demonstration of the intensifying repression against the Crimean Tatar people carried out by the Russian occupation authorities in Crimea”

The de facto ‘judge’ Andrei Sergeevich Kulishov also prohibited Umerov from engaging in any public activities for two years. Russia knows that it cannot cower Umerov into silence, and there is a very real danger that he would be taken to serve this monstrous sentence outside Crimea, being thus deprived of contact with his family and lawyers.

Umerov ended his final address to the de facto court on September 18 by saying that he would meet all of those implicated in this case at the international courts at the Hague.

Given the sentence against him, it is worth noting that the UN’s International Court of Justice at the Hague has already found grounds for taking preventive measures to stop Russia’s ongoing discrimination against Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians in occupied Crimea. Russia is ignoring the Court’s order to revoke the ban it imposed on the Mejlis, and has now jailed a second Mejlis leader.........................

Access complete text of the editorial:  khpg.org In English

US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Jovanovic states that the introduction of UN peacekeepers in the Donbas should be preceded by negotiations between the parties involved.

The ambassador expressed such an opinion in an interview with the publication" New time".

According to the ambassador, the question remains whether Russia will agree to deploy UN peacekeepers on the Ukrainian-Russian border, but it is worth trying to persuade the Kremlin in this.

She also notes that meetings on the theme of peacekeepers in the Donbass region began last week and predicts that there will be a lot of such measures.

"No one proposes to send troops to the region and bring order to the force. All involved parties should come to a common denominator for a peacekeeping mission." If this is a UN mission, then the Russians will have the right to vote on this issue within the UN Security Council. "Frankly, we need a consensus, and now we are testing the attitude to the very possibility of the introduction of peacekeepers,"- said Yovanovich.

The ambassador also noted that before entering the issue at a meeting of the UN Security Council, negotiations should be held with the member states of the "Norman Quartet" (Ukraine, Germany, France, Russia).

Jovanovich also expressed the view that peacekeepers should separate the warring parties from both sides and protect the civilian population from hostilities.

"The world needs to bring security, and then it is necessary to take political steps to restore Ukrainian sovereignty in the Donbass. There are a lot of problems, and the peacekeepers will not solve them all," the ambassador also noted.

apostrophe.ua , Original in Ukrainian / Українською мовою

In the Baltsky district of the Odessa region, the Roma for 13 years held a Ukrainian family in slavery.

Odessa activist Yuriy Kozariz reported on this on his Facebook page.

According to him, investigative actions are under way.

"On the photo is the son of Ivan and Tamara's mother, crippled bodies, multiple fractures. After numerous beats throughout the time, both Ivan and Tamara repeatedly got into the hospital, but all the information was lost from the hospital," the activist said.

Kozariz added that there were appeals to law enforcement agencies, but all the information about it was missing.

"The new head of the department, of course, went to our meeting and urgently organized the operational group. Now let's go after the investigative actions to look at the hammer that was beaten on John's knees, and the blood of Tamara, which from the beating flooded the wall, to the strap from the combine which hanging on the wall that beat these bad guys, and the ears too, you see, it did not become when Ivan struck a board on him! "- explained the author of the post.







The video's nearly an hour long, but watch at the end where they try to enter the home View it in full screen



apostrophe.ua , Original in Ukrainian / Українською мовою

The terrorists of the "Islamic State" killed one and captured two more Russian soldiers in the Syrian province of Deir-ez-Zor.

It is reported by the news agency Amak, which is controlled by IDIL terrorists, reports the Russian edition Lenta.ru.

It is indicated that the Russian was killed during the battles for the village of Shul, which was eventually occupied by ID fighters.

At the moment, this information remains without official confirmation. The RF Ministry of Defense does not comment on this information.

As reported by the "Apostrophe", Russian lieutenant general Valery Asapov, who died as a result of mortar shelling in Syria, and before that fought in the Donbass, commanded the 5th corps of government troops.

apostrophe.ua , Original in Ukrainian / Українською мовою

On September 27, SocialDataHub launched the service "Parental Control" - for tracking students in social networks.

According to Censor.NET with reference to the Medusa website , the Russian company SocialDataHub announced on September 27 the launch of the "Parental Control" service, which allows parents to monitor the activity of children in social networks.

The service (it is paid and costs 150 rubles a month) will analyze the lychee, subscriptions, photos and comments - and send the parents a message if the child is seriously admired by "radical ideas", "planning a crime", or if it is in danger of being active in social networks of an adult man

He will also inform his parents that the child started watching porn and offered to talk to her about sex.

ua.censor.net.ua , Original in Ukrainian / Українською мовою

Ukraine is not going to respond to statements by the State Duma of the Russian Federation regarding the law "On Education".

As Tsensor.NET informs with reference to Interfax-Ukraine, this was stated by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko at a meeting with the workers of the educational sphere on Thursday in Kiev.

"Of course, we should not and will not pay attention to these hysterical statements of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, which have long been called the prison of the people, from which we broke away and - I emphasize - that we will never return," - said the head of state.

Recall that on September 5 the Verkhovna Rada adopted the law on education , which begins the reform of education in Ukraine. The law, among other things, determines that the language of the educational process in educational institutions is the state language. The new edition of the Law "On Education" stipulates that children who go to school from September 1, 2018, will have the opportunity to study in their native language only in elementary school - the first four years. From the fifth grade all subjects must be taught in Ukrainian.

On September 25, President Petro Poroshenko signed the Law "On Education", adopted by the Verkhovna Rada.

ua.censor.net.ua , Original in Ukrainian / Українською мовою