Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Nine regions block Russian trucks

Russian trucks trying to get to EU countries have been blocked in nine regions of Ukraine, says Taras Deyak, one the initiators of the blockade.

Deyak and fellow activists were the first to stop Russian trucks from entering the Transcarpathian region. On the third day of the blockade, Volyn, Lviv, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi and Zhytomyr regions joined the action movement.

“We keep in touch with Vinnytsia and Dnipropetrovsk via telephone.” says Deyak.

He stressed that the action is open-ended, and its goal is to make the country’s leaders block the transit of Russian goods on the territory of Ukraine.

The Kremlin has just responded by banning Ukrainian long-haul trucks from entering Russia.

Moving letter from Russia’s Oldest Ukrainian Hostage

Yury Danilovych begins with a quote by the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Tychyna:

“To live – I’ll tear apart all shackles, I reassert and validate myself , Because I’m alive.“

Dear Yana,

Today is the happiest day of the entire year and a half of my imprisonment, if it’s possible at all to feel happiness. I have not wept once while here, yet when I read your letters, tears came to my eyes. Thank you so much for your words of support! It feels very nice to realize that there are so many people who are not indifferent. I have received letters from people I don’t know, from Ukraine, from Moscow, Russia, Canada. I answered them all. As far as I’m able in this situation, I follow the fate of my compatriots and admire their courage. I totally agree with you, in captivity I have met many decent people. I am horrified by the Russian justice system that is so free with sentences of 10 years and more. And that’s with such life expectancy!

Throughout the entire investigation, I never believed it would end this way. I was never an enemy of Russia and what they are accusing me of I knew 10 years ago, when the equipment was still being designed, since that was my work which I loved and which I’m proud of.

Here I have felt more intensely how much I love Ukraine, my family and my beloved grandchildren. Though how can one love more or less? It’s possible only to love tenderly, loyally, faithfully and absolutely! There are simply no words for how I miss my homeland. I love every leaf on a bush in the meadow, every blade of grass, every insect crawling along Ukrainian soil. Even if it stings me, at least not too painfully.

Thank you, Yana for such a noble, important and much-needed mission.

If you receive this letter, I will write more.

With sincere respect, Yury Soloshenko

(Your human rights colleagues are visiting me, Yours, … Feb 2016 )

http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1455291216

Today’s DNR/LNR look a lot like Stalin’s “partisans”.

(My favorite Motyl article so far.)

Alexander Gogun’s excellent study, Stalin’s Commandos: Ukrainian Partisan Forces on the Eastern Front, sometimes reads like an analysis of Putin’s commandos in the eastern Donbas. In both cases, the official Moscow line was and is that they’re a popular movement generated by discontent from below. In fact, Stalin’s commandos, like Putin’s, were largely creatures of the Kremlin—a point Gogun, a Russian scholar currently based at the Free University in Berlin, makes forcefully, repeatedly, and convincingly.

Gogun details how the partisans were structured and led (from abroad), what they did (terrorism) and whom they fought (the Germans and Ukrainians), how they interacted with the local population (with abandon), what their behavior looked like (robbery, drunkenness, and rape), and how they compared with the Ukrainian nationalist insurgents, the UPA, and the Polish nationalist guerrillas, the Home Army (AK). One table (p. 160) has a wealth of information: the 11 largest units of the Soviet Ukrainian partisan movement consisted of 45,478 fighters. Just over 11 percent were killed; 2 percent were executed or deserted; 7 percent were women; 57 percent were Ukrainians, 25 percent were Russians, and only 13 percent were members of the Communist Party. Their job was not to defend the people, but to fight the Germans, regardless of the exceedingly high toll the local population paid for their actions. Both the UPA and AK, in contrast, were careful to defend the people they claimed to represent.

Unsurprisingly, Stalin’s commandos were most active in the forest and marsh regions of northern and northwestern Ukraine. That fact greatly contributed to one of the major secondary-theater wars during World War II: the bloody Ukrainian-Polish conflict in Volhynia. As Gogun’s evidence demonstrates, the presence of Soviet partisans in this volatile region populated by large numbers of indigenous Ukrainian peasants and many Poles, both indigenous and recent settlers, may have sparked the large-scale violence that engulfed both communities in mid-1943.

Ethnic relations were anything but simple in Volhynia. The Germans terrorized the Poles and Ukrainians and fought the UPA, AK, and the Soviets. Many Poles, and above all the AK, viewed Ukrainians in general and Ukrainian nationalists in particular as their sworn enemies and sympathized with the Soviets, especially after the Polish government-in-exile allied with Moscow by means of the Sikorski-Maisky Pact of July 30, 1941. Many Ukrainians, and above all Ukrainian nationalists, viewed Poles, the AK, and the Soviets as their sworn enemies and the Germans as their situational allies (in early 1941 and 1944) or their situational enemies (1941-1943). The Soviets regarded the Germans and Ukrainian nationalists as their enemies, mistrusted the Ukrainians, and viewed the Poles and the AK as situational allies.

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/stalin%E2%80%99s-partisans-ukraine

Why Are Russian Engineers Working at an Islamic State-Controlled Gas Plant in Syria?

Officially, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and his Russian allies are at war against the Islamic State. But a gas facility in northern Syria under the control of the jihadi group is evidence that business links between the Syrian regime and the Islamic State persist. According to Turkish officials and Syrian rebels, it is also the site of cooperation between the Islamic State and a Russian energy company with ties to President Vladimir Putin.

The Tuweinan gas facility, which is located roughly 60 miles southwest of the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, is the largest such facility in Syria. It was built by Russian construction company Stroytransgaz, which is owned by billionaire Gennady Timchenko, a close associate of Putin. . . .

A senior Turkish official said that after its seizure, Stroytransgaz, through its subcontractor Hesco, continued the facility’s construction with the Islamic State’s permission. He also claimed that Russian engineers have been working at the facility to complete the project.

Syrian state-run newspaper Tishreen published a report appearing to corroborate this claim. In January 2014, after the facility was captured by the Islamic State, the paper cited Syrian government sources, saying that Stroytransgaz had completed 80 percent of the project and expected to hand over the facility to the regime during the second half of the year. The article didn’t mention that the facility was under the control of the Islamic State.

According to David Butter, an associate fellow at London-based Chatham House, who has seen a letter written by George Haswani explaining the details of the project, the facility’s first phase of production started towards the end of 2014, and it became fully operational during 2015. “Some of the natural gas goes to the Aleppo power station, which operates under the Islamic State’s protection, and the remainder is pumped to Homs and Damascus,” he said.

Abu Khalid said that Russian engineers still work at the facility, and Haswani brokered a deal with the Islamic State and the regime for mutually beneficial gas production from the facility. “IS allowed the Russian company to send engineers and crew in return for a big share in the gas and extortion money,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State and attributing the information to Syrian rebel commanders fighting the Islamic State in the area. “Employees of the Russian company were changing their shifts via a military base in Hama governorate.”

Haswani has rejected the Treasury Department’s allegations that he worked as a middle man in oil deals between the Islamic State and the Assad regime. But he has never denied Hesco’s continued work on the gas facility after the Islamic State captured it.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/09/why-are-russian-engineers-working-at-an-islamic-state-controlled-gas-plant-in-syria/

Estonia expresses cultural preference for Ukrainian refugees

Article in biggest Estonian weekly:
“New idea: 2000 Ukrainian refugees to Estonia?!”

Minisrty of Internal Affair’s vice chancellor of internal security has written a private paper arguing for accepting refugees from Ukraine rather than Africa and ME. Prime minister has also mentioned this on weekly press briefing.

Estonia needs both skilled and unskilled labor otherwise we are facing lack of labor. “Immigration is necessary in 20-30 year perspective”. He doesn’t mention the africans and middleeasterns.

We already have 30000 Ukrainians many with relatives in Ukraine. If people have relatives here they will assimilate quicker. They are also not supporters of Putin.

The more we voluntarily accept Ukrainians the less we have to accept people from other third countries.

The risks of accepting Ukrainians are smaller than risks.

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Lord Palmerston on Russian Opportunism

“The policy and practice of the Russian Government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other Governments would allow it to go, but always to stop and retire when it met with decided resistance and then to wait for the next favorable opportunity.” – Lord Palmerston

Top IT companies in Ukraine by Staff

Top IT companies in Ukraine

http://dou.ua/lenta/articles/top-25-jan-2016/

rank/company/offices/number of specialist/growth in second half of 2015

1 EPAM Киев, Харьков, Львов, Днепропетровск, Винница 4400 +500
2 SoftServe Киев, Харьков, Львов, Днепропетровск, Ровно, Ивано-Франковск, Черновцы 3891 +44
3 Luxoft Киев, Днепропетровск, Одесса 3730 +3
4 GlobalLogic Киев, Харьков, Львов, Николаев 2672 +111
5 Ciklum Киев, Харьков, Львов, Днепропетровск, Одесса, Винница 2335 +44
. . . .

top25920

The Corruption, Paranoia, and Infighting of the Russian “Separatists”

Ukraine’s security service the SBU envisions three scenarios towards which Russia is working: the so-called “Somalia Scenario,” “Little Trojan Horse,” and “Big Trojan Horse.”

The first, and most extreme, refers to the theoretical Russian aim of reducing a pro-Western Ukraine to a failed state. Oleksandr Tkachuk, the SBU’s chief of staff, told VICE News: “This would involve creating political instability, causing the gradual disintegration of government structures, emphasizing different grievances among the population, and disrupting all aspects of political, economic and social life.”

Under the “Little Trojan Horse” scenario, rebel-held territories would be re-absorbed into Ukraine’s political sphere, allowing them to influence policy in Kiev and block Ukraine from further integration with European and Atlantic structures. Such a veto “could make Ukraine a grey zone between Europe and Russia,” said Tkachuk.

“Big Trojan Horse” refers to a restoration of the political regime of former President Viktor Yanukovych, ousted during the Maidan Revolution in 2014. “There is a risk that the pendulum could swing the other way,” said Tkachuk. “Some politicians that were close to Yanukovych are still quite active. A proportion of the population sympathizes with these people and there is growing dissatisfaction with current leaders who are unable to deliver what they promised before the revolution. Russia wants to restore these politicians to power and install a regime favorable to the Kremlin.”

The International Crisis Group uncovered similar evidence. It carried claims from a number of separatists that their Russian counterparts had cited “a ten-year plan to regain control over Ukraine,” combining “continued destabilization of the east” as well as economic and political pressures. . . .

The report, which VICE News has seen, suggests that a network of top rebel chiefs and high-ranking Ukrainian officials had joined forces to run a fuel-smuggling cartel operating across the frontline. Lyamin also names a number of Ukrainian fuel companies which, he says, have been granted access to these black market energy supplies. . . .

Surkov, a shadowy figure and Kremlin ideologue, often characterized as the Rasputin of modern-day Russia, oversees Ukraine’s rebel regions on Putin’s behalf and is said to refer to Moscow’s separatist proxies there as his “wards.” According to an LNR insider, Surkov’s secret visits to Luhansk in the past have been accompanied by city-wide cellphone blackouts, serving both as an extreme security precaution and a means of preventing leaks of confidential information. . . .

https://news.vice.com/article/paranoia-and-purges-the-dark-and-dirty-battle-for-power-in-rebel-held-ukraine

Moscow Patriarchate losing parishes to Kyiv church and its dominance of Ukraine’s religious life

The Moscow Patriarchate may have succeeded in intimidating the Universal Patriarch of Constantinople not to grant autocephaly to its rival in Ukraine, the Kyiv Patriarchate; but as a result of the war and the attitude of the two churches to it, an increasing number of parishes are shifting their allegiance from Moscow to Kyiv.

The Moscow Patriarchate still has far more parishes in Ukraine than does the Ukrainian Patriarchate, 12,515 to 4,877 respectively, but the shift of some 60 parishes on their own volition from the first to the last is “unprecedented,” according to Ukrainian analyst Ivan Verstyuk.

Never before have so many parishes transferred allegiance in this way; and this shift, while still relatively small calls attention to two important developments: the growing strength of Ukrainian identity and opposition to Moscow, and the fact that in Ukraine, Moscow parishes are now vastly outnumbered by those of the Kyiv Patriarchate and other Christian denominations.

According to Ukraine’s culture ministry, there are now approximately 16,000 Christian church parishes in that country not subordinate to Moscow, compared to only 12,500 that are. As a result, Moscow Patriarch Kirill’s talk about Ukraine as “the canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox Church has ever less of a foundation in reality.

Most of the shifts in subordination have taken place in Western Ukraine, although intriguingly some have occurred near the front lines. And more are in prospect given a shift in popular attitudes. In 2011, 31.1% of Ukrainians said they supported the Kyiv Patriarchate while 25.9% said they supported the Moscow one.

Now, those figures have shifted, with 44.2% of Ukrainians declaring that they support the Kyiv Patriarchate and only 20.8% supporting the Moscow church. If Constantinople recognizes the Kyiv Patriarchate as independent, the number of churches which will change size will rise dramatically.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/01/28/moscow-patriarchate-losing-parishes-to-kyiv-church-and-its-dominance-of-ukraines-religious-life/