Section: The Guardian (The United Kingdom)
Ukraine seizes Russian tanker on Danube port city of Izmail
Move seems to be retaliation for Russian seizure of three Ukrainian vessels last yearUkrainian authorities have seized a Russian tanker moored in a river port near the Black Sea in apparent retaliation for Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian vessels and arrest of 24 sailors in November last year.Ukraine’s SBU security service said in...
Ukraine election: early results indicate big win for president’s party
Volodymyr Zelenskiy expected to command outright majority with 42.4% of the voteEarly results show that the Ukrainian president’s party has won a majority of seats in Sunday’s parliamentary election.With nearly half of the ballots counted on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s party, Servant of the People (SOTP), is...
Ukraine election: rock star set for coalition talks with comedian-turned-president
President ready for talks with singer Svyatoslav Vakarchuk as exit polls point to victory but as part of coalitionAs if a comedian becoming the president wasn’t enough, Ukraine now has a rock star as a potential political kingmaker.Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, the 44-year-old lead singer of rock band Okean Elzy, is set to enter Ukraine’s...
Fifty shades of grey: great towers of the eastern bloc – in pictures
David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka photographed postwar estates across central and eastern Europe, finding strange, stark beauty in these concrete giantsEastern Blocks: Concrete Landscapes of the Former Eastern Bloc is published by Zupagrafika… …read more Source: The...
Ukrainian tycoon can be extradited to US, Austrian court rules
Dmytro Firtash, confidant of ousted Ukrainian president, faces bribery-related chargesAustria’s highest court has upheld a decision making it possible to extradite the Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash, paving the way for him to face bribery-related charges in the United States.Before his 2014 arrest, Firtash wielded significant political...
Austria approves US extradition of Ukrainian tycoon
Supreme court clears way for Dmytro Firtash to face trial on bribery chargesAustria’s supreme court has upheld a decision granting a request by the US to extradite the Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash on bribery charges.A US grand jury indicted Firtash in 2013, along with a member of India’s parliament and four others, on suspicion of...
Ukraine walks out of Europe human rights body as Russia returns
Delegation leaves Council of Europe assembly in protest at readmission of Russian MPsThe Ukrainian delegation at the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe has walked out in protest after Russian MPs were allowed to return to the human rights body five years after the annexation of Crimea.The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy,...
In Moscow, Riyadh and Washington, this is the age of the shameless lie
As David Miliband argues in his Fulbright lecture, world leaders have found they can lie with impunity. We must not be complicit in their mendacityTruth or consequences, a parlour game in which players are penalised for dishonesty or wrongdoing, is mostly fun – but it also reflects a broad moral consensus about the unacceptability of lying. This...
Putin fails to mention MH17 in phone-in but finds time for whales
Russian president avoids 2014 disaster in annual Q&A but is confronted by journalists on subject afterwardsVladimir Putin faced questioning on both domestic and international issues at his annual phone-in – but managed to avoid any mention of the MH17 plane disaster until journalists confronted him about it afterwards.“There is no evidence of...
The west thinks Putin is Russia’s spymaster. But are the spies controlling him? | Mark Galeotti
From Ukraine to the US, Russia’s risky policies may be a sign of the security services’ sway over the presidentVladimir Putin will be hoping that the release of the Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov in response to an unprecedented campaign of public protest demonstrates his credentials as a a “good tsar” willing and able...
