Section: Newsweek (USA)
Ukraine Says Crimea Tourism Ad Displays Kremlin’s ‘Imperialist Pride’
Russia’s attempt to rebrand the annexed Crimean peninsula as a summer tourism hotspot has prompted outrage in Ukraine and been widely mocked by Russian bloggers. Soon after pro-European protesters toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian government, the peninsula was annexed from Ukraine in March 2014 by heavily...
Donetsk Separatists Claim to Launch Own Mobile Network to Ward Off Kiev Tapping
Separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region are launching their own mobile phone network, fearing that existing connections could be tapped by Ukrainian security services or have ceased to work as a result of damage incurred to connection cables as during fighting, according to Russian independent news agency Interfax. Last April, the...
Munich to Continue Ban of Stumbling Stone Holocaust Memorials
Munich’s city council voted Wednesday to uphold a ban on the placement of plaque-topped cobblestones that for years have served as memorials to Holocaust victims in towns throughout Germany. First instituted in 2004, the ban on the Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, does not allow the small memorials to be embedded in Munich streets as...
Donetsk People’s Republic Wants to Play Ukraine at Football
The pro-Russian rebels currently holding lands in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region have set up a football union and prioritized organising a domestic championship as well as a national side to eventually take on Ukraine. The rebels, who refer to their administration as the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), officially launched their...
Pentagon Plans More Support for Ukraine as Buffer Zone Mooted
A Department of Defense plan to send Ukraine advanced, long-range counter-battery radar systems highlights both an evolution of the Ukraine war as well as a ratcheting up of U.S. military support for the post-Soviet state, which continues to fight a war in its eastern territories against combined Russian-separatist forces. On July 22, The Wall...
Russia Plans to Burn Foreign Cheese
It’s no longer enough for Russian border agents to stop banned food products from Europe and the U.S. from getting into the country—the government wants them destroyed. Russia imposed sanctions last August banning beef, pork, fish, dairy imports and other food from the U.S., European Union, Australia, Canada and Norway in August 2014, in...
Ukraine Detains Suspected Russian Army Officer
KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian state security agents on Sunday questioned a soldier suspected of being a Russian army officer who was picked up while riding in a military truck packed with ammunition in the country’s east. If he is confirmed as a Russian soldier, Ukraine is likely to use the case to bolster its charges that Russia is...
Lessons In Democracy On Ukraine’s Front Line
In a stuffy basement a block off Prospekt Lenina (Mariupol’s main street, which is named after Vladimir Lenin), about 30 Mariupol residents recently gathered for a lesson in democracy. It was raining and thundering outside. And, like during most storms in Mariupol since the war began in spring 2014, it wasn’t immediately clear if the...
Khodorkovsky: Putin Will Step Down in 2019
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of Russia’s most famous political dissidents and one of the Kremlin’s most prominent critics, has predicted in an interview with Russian weekly newspaper Sobesednik that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s time at the helm of the country will come to an end by 2019. Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s...
MH17 Lawyer: “It All Points to Russia”
The lawyer representing families of Malaysia Airlines crash victims has said the downing of MH17 is a “war crime” and laid the blame with Russia. Chicago-based aviation lawyer Floyd Wisner filed a lawsuit last Wednesday on behalf of the families of 17 victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 against Igor Girkin, Russian colonel of the...
