Tag: eastern ukraine
United States Hits Russia’s Largest Bank, Energy Sector With Sanctions

United States Hits Russia’s Largest Bank, Energy Sector With Sanctions

By Paul Handley

Washington (AFP) — The United States hit Russia’s top bank and leading energy and technology companies with sanctions Friday, restricting access to finance and technology to punish Moscow’s support for Ukraine’s separatist rebels.

In its latest round of sanctions, Washington slapped tight controls on business dealings with for Sberbank, pipeline giant Transneft, and energy firms Lukoil, Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, and Surgutneftgas.

Also listed was state defense technology group Rostec, and five other state owned companies in the defense sector.

The White House actions followed similar moves by Europe aimed at punishing the Russian economy over the country’s interference in neighboring Ukraine.

“Given Russia’s direct military intervention and blatant efforts to destabilize Ukraine, we have deepened our sanctions against Russia today, in concert with our European allies,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

“These steps underscore the continued resolve of the international community against Russia’s aggression.”

The U.S. sanctions ban American entities from offering anything but short-term financing to Sberbank, Rostec, and two of the energy companies listed, a move that could restrict their business activities and long-term planning.

For Sberbank and Rostec, the limit is 30 days maturity for any new debt issued by the companies. For Gazprom Neft and Transneft, it is 90 days.

For Lukoil, Gazprom, and Surgutneftgas, U.S. companies are blocked from providing any support, materials, or technology for oil and gas exploration projects involving the Arctic region, offshore anywhere, or shale-based resources.

The sanctions also freeze any U.S.-based assets of the five defense sector companies.

The latest effort to ratchet up pressure on Moscow also tightened earlier sanctions on Russian businesses. The previous 90-day financing limit for Bank of Moscow, VTB Bank, and the Russian Agricultural Bank was reduced to a 30-day maximum.

And the support for exploration activities for the energy companies named Friday was extended to oil giant Rosneft, also listed under a previous round of sanctions.

“Russia’s economic and diplomatic isolation will continue to grow as long as its actions do not live up to its words,” said Lew.

“Russia’s economy is already paying a heavy price for its unlawful behavior. Growth has fallen to near zero, inflation is well above target, and Russian financial markets continue to deteriorate.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin quickly lashed out at the U.S. and European effort, saying it would not make Russia change tack, and arguing that Ukraine is being used by the West to destabilize international relations.

“We have been convinced a long time ago that the implementation of sanctions as a foreign policy instrument has little effect and practically never delivers the intended results,” Putin said in Tajikistan, according to Russian news agencies.

“I’ve had a sneaking thought that Ukraine itself does not interest anyone but is being used as an instrument to destabilize international relations.”

AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilkoff

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Ukraine’s Chief Says Most Russian Forces Gone, Vows More Local Powers

Ukraine’s Chief Says Most Russian Forces Gone, Vows More Local Powers

By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Russia has withdrawn about 70 percent of the armed groups it sent into eastern Ukraine in recent weeks, Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko said Wednesday, quoting his nation’s intelligence sources.

“That gives us a real hope that peace efforts have good prospects,” Poroshenko said in televised remarks before parliament, referring to a cease-fire agreement reached last week.

The truce brought relief from a five-month conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists — backed, Ukraine and NATO have said, by Russian mercenaries and later Russian troops — that has claimed more than 3,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in the east.

Poroshenko said that about 700 Ukrainian servicemen had been freed by the separatists, with about 500 more expected to be released in the next few days.

Poroshenko also said a bill would be submitted to parliament next week granting more powers to local authorities in Ukraine in an attempt to answer the demands of separatists in the east.

“I may agree that most likely we will not be delighted with the personalities of local lawmakers to be elected” in some areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east, he said. “But is it better if policy be enforced by bursts of automatic fire and Grad (missile system) salvos rather than by ballot papers?”

Nonetheless, he insisted that “Ukraine didn’t make any concessions on the issues of its territorial integrity” when it agreed to the truce.

“I stress it once again: Now the war of independence is going on, no less, no more, for the existence of our state and we will surrender the issues of our sovereignty or independence or territorial integrity to no one,” he said. And despite expressing hope for the peace process, he added: “I will be frank, God alone knows how long the cease-fire will last.”

Though the truce had largely been observed, Ukrainian military spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko said Wednesday that “terrorists and Russian military carried out 20 provocations and shooting attacks” on Ukrainian forces over the previous 24 hours.

Poroshenko referred to Russia as “the military might No. 1 in Europe, whose forces have been constantly undergoing modernization in the last 10 to 15 years (and) possess the most modern and the most perfect weaponry today.”

“Unfortunately this is a lasting military threat,” he said. “It will not go away even if the current crisis is resolved in the nearest times. We need to learn to live in such conditions.”

The Russian threat may remain in force “not for months or years but even for dozens of years,” he said, suggesting not only that Ukraine should continue to build up and rearm its armed forces but to erect more effective fortifications on the border with Russia.

Three new lines of defense are already being set up on the approaches to Mariupol, the second-largest industrial city in the Donetsk region along the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian government and NATO say Russian troops crossed the border near Mariupol to back up separatists during a fierce battle outside the city in the days leading up to the cease-fire.

Reflecting the theme raised by Poroshenko about the threat from Ukraine’s neighbor, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that his nation was planning to develop new weapon systems, including strategic nuclear arms.

“We are doing it only as a response measure,” Putin said in televised remarks speaking at a meeting with a group of the country’s arms manufacturers. “We won’t get ourselves drawn into (an arms race).”

A Ukrainian political expert said Wednesday that the truce most probably will last through Ukrainian parliamentary elections planned for Oct. 26.

AFP Photo/Philippe Desmazes

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MH17 Pierced By ‘High-Energy Objects,’ Investigators Into Crash Find

MH17 Pierced By ‘High-Energy Objects,’ Investigators Into Crash Find

By Dpa Correspondents, dpa

AMSTERDAM — Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 broke up in the air probably after being hit “by a large number of high-energy objects,” a preliminary Dutch report on the crash showed on Tuesday.
Images of the MH17 wreckage show that it was pierced in numerous places from the outside, causing the Boeing 777 to break up in flight July 17 over eastern Ukraine, the report said.

The Dutch Safety Board, which is leading the multination investigation, said it found no evidence that the crash resulted from a technical problem or crew error.

The report did not assign blame for the crash, but the United States and Ukraine accuse pro-Russian separatist rebels of downing the jet with a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile system.

The MH17 damage outlined by the investigators would be consistent with a strike from a missile from a Buk system, which detonate before hitting a target to maximize damage and improve the missile’s chances of destroying it.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the report backed his country’s view that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile and called on the international community to find and punish the perpetrators of the attack.

Separatist rebels said, however, that the Dutch crash report confirmed their conviction that Ukraine shot down the airliner.

“It is obvious that this was a provocation carried out by the Ukrainian armed forces to discredit Russia and the insurgency,” separatist commander Miroslav Rudenko told Russia’s Interfax news agency from the rebel-held city of Donetsk.

All 298 people on board the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur were killed. A majority of the passengers were Dutch.

The Dutch Safety Board has not had access to the crash site, which is in an area that has seen fighting between Ukraine government forces and the rebels. It relied on photographs taken during short visits to the site by Ukrainian and Malaysian investigators, data from MH17’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders, air traffic control communications, satellite images, and radar information to issue its preliminary findings.

“The initial results of the investigation point towards an external cause of the MH17 crash,” said Tjibbe Joustra, chairman of the Dutch Safety Board. “More research will be necessary to determine the cause with greater precision.”

The board said it expected to release a final report by the first anniversary of the crash.

It said it plans to visit the crash site if it is safe to do so, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak demanded that investigators be allowed to return.

The plane crashed near Hrabove village in the Donetsk region, an area controlled by the rebels, who restricted investigators’ access to the site.

“It is of the utmost importance that the investigation teams gain full and unfettered access to the crash site in order to recover all human remains, complete their investigation, and establish the truth,” Najib said.

However, his defense minister, Hishammudddin Hussein, said the crash site is “currently volatile and inaccessible” after meeting Tuesday with senior military officials in Kiev.

Malaysia was among the nations contributing to the investigation. They also include Ukraine, Australia, Russia, Britain, and the United States.

The initial inquiry found the plane “broke up in the air probably as the result of structural damage caused by a large number of high-energy objects that penetrated the aircraft from outside.”

The jet’s black boxes and its communications with air traffic controllers showed no emergency or technical problems but that the flight was operating normally until “it ended abruptly.”

The investigators said they believe the damage the plane sustained caused it to break up in-flight because its wreckage was scattered over a large area. Its communications with air traffic control also suddenly halted, it disappeared from radar, and the recording of data on its black boxes ended abruptly, the report said.

Before the report was issued, the remains of two more Malaysian victims of the crash were returned Tuesday to Kuala Lumpur, Najib said.

So far, 34 bodies of the 43 Malaysian victims have been repatriated from Amsterdam, where all the bodies were being examined by international forensics experts.

The other victims were 193 Dutch nationals, 27 Australians, 12 Indonesians, 10 Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three Filipinos, a Canadian, and a New Zealander.

AFP Photo/Genya Savilov

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Ukrainian President Warns Fight Against Pro-Russia Gunmen Not Over

Ukrainian President Warns Fight Against Pro-Russia Gunmen Not Over

By Sergei L. Loiko and Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine will never cede its strategic port of Mariupol to Russia, President Petro Poroshenko vowed Monday during a visit to the latest city in the gun sights of pro-Russia separatists.

In a defiant speech to workers at the Ilyich Mariupol metal works, the president warned that the 5-month-old conflict is far from over and ordered government troops to shore up their defenses around the city that is home to 500,000.

While major fighting has mostly subsided since the government and separatist leaders agreed to a cease-fire on Friday, a Ukrainian military spokesman in Kiev, the capital, said the pro-Russia gunmen had violated it at least five times over the weekend.

“We will do our best to achieve peace but we will be getting ready to defend our country,” Poroshenko told the hard-hat audience in remarks carried on national television. “As the commander in chief of the armed forces I have given full orders to strengthen the defenses of Mariupol.”

Poroshenko commended the military for halting the advance of Russian tanks on Mariupol that began two weeks ago. Poroshenko accused Russia of carrying out “a full-scale invasion” when two columns of Kremlin armor and troops entered southeastern Ukraine along the Sea of Azov and rolled over the town of Novoazovsk before opening an artillery barrage against Mariupol.

Shortly after the onslaught, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Poroshenko agreed on the need for a cease-fire and their representatives proclaimed one after negotiations Friday in the Belarus capital of Minsk. The 12-point plan also calls for opening peace talks and for an exchange of prisoners.

The release of captured fighters and others detained during the conflict was proceeding slowly, said Vladimir Ruban, a retired general with the nongovernmental organization mediating the exchange process.

“The government side has complicated the process with numerous bureaucratic obstacles,” said Ruban, head of the Detainees Liberation Center. “In recent days we have facilitated the exchange of only 41 of Ukraine’s soldiers and officers for nine so-called separatists.”

More than 650 Ukrainian servicemen remain in separatist custody in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, Ruban said.

The separatists complained Monday that they still didn’t have lists of the prisoners held by Kiev authorities.

Leonid Baranov, a security official of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on the separatist leadership’s website that their side was still holding more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers captive.

“Kiev says that they are holding 200-300 of our self-defense members, but there are no exact lists at this stage,” Baranov said, adding that about 1,000 separatists and local residents who support them are missing and feared to be in Ukrainian government detention.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that helped broker the Ukraine cease-fire last week told a news conference in Geneva that he held out dim hopes of it lasting.

“We want to give it a chance,” said Didier Burkhalter. But he said he was “not optimistic at all.”

The European Union was due to expand its list of Russian officials, private citizens, and businesses to be targeted with sanctions for their alleged roles in fomenting the Ukraine crisis, which the United Nations said Monday has taken more than 3,000 lives.

In another expression of little confidence in the shaky cease-fire, European Commission President Herman van Rompuy said the new sanctions could be rolled back if the 3-day-old agreement does hold.

Before his address to the metal workers, Poroshenko vowed that the government is prepared to defend Mariupol at all costs.

“We will give away this piece of our land to no one!” he wrote on his Facebook page as he entered the front-line city.

AFP Photo

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