Ukraine Truce Wobbles as Eastern Regions’ Power Expanded

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

By Kateryna Choursina, Daryna Krasnolutska and Ilya Arkhipov Sep 17, 2014 8:41 AM ET

The cease-fire in Ukraine showed more signs of strain as rebels questioned further peace talks with the government, even after lawmakers in Kiev approved a special status for the country’s two easternmost regions.

“Fierce” battles were under way in Donetsk, the largest city in the conflict zone, since the morning hours, with two civilians killed and three wounded as of noon, the local government said in a website statement. Government forces were shelled by Russian and rebel troops at 15 locations during the past 24 hours, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, told reporters in Kiev today. While no casualties were reported by the Ukrainian army, one woman was killed by a mine planted near the border with Russia, he said.

Europe risks the “biggest humanitarian disaster since World War II on its eastern borders” after failing to give Ukraine enough support, Polish Deputy Prime Minister Janusz Piechocinski said today in an interview on Radio Zet.

The uncertainty about the peace process is overshadowing the ratification of Ukraine’s association agreement with the European Union on the same day that lawmakers approved a bill expanding the powers of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The government gave its approval to the EU accord today.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-16/ukraine-truce-wobbles-as-eastern-regions-power-expanded.html

[cosmicone]

1. Send Victoria Nuland with cookies, cause humanitarian disaster. n/t

[LanternWaste]

3. Chuirlish bumper-stickers seem to be the best analysis you posses...

Chuirlish bumper-stickers seem to be the best analysis you posses...

[geek tragedy]

2. The fascist thugs in Moscow want to violently

seize that land. Bottom line this is what is happening. The people there don't want to bend the knee to Moscow, but that has never mattered to the imperialists who rule Russia.

Give Russia the territory, make what's left of Ukraine a member of NATO. And continue research on missile defense.

The rejection of regional autonomy shows exactly what the agenda is.

[Igel]

4. Should we charge for the people?

Or just throw them in, free of charge?


People had trouble describing the Baltics as "oppressed nations" back in the '60s and '70s, because it wasn't the USSR that was a possible oppressor. It was only the US.

It was with great distaste that many Russian lit professors offered any courses on Soviet dissident literature, and many didn't want to teach Solzhenitsyn's works. Because many of them believed that somehow the USSR was good. It wasn't the tanks in Prague and Brno that were the problem in the '60s, it was the Yucatan decades earlier.

They couldn't even admit there was a beam in their neighbor's eye because of the mote they perceived (still) in their own. Talk about the GULags and the response is "Guatemala."

[joshcryer]

7. They need a land bridge to Crimea, badly.

Otherwise Crimea will remain dependent on Ukraine for years.

[daleo]

5. Scotland will vote tomorrow for or against independence from the U.K.

Why is tend eastern Ukraine different?

[joshcryer]

6. Because it's political?

The violent approach would be Northern Ireland. Though some in Scotland did flirt with the approach. Had the US aided them as another country is doing in Ukraine I am sure that the result would've been just as disastrous.

[pampango]

8. I doubt violent separatists want a peaceful referendum. Polls and demographics do not help them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/05/08/new-poll-shows-eastern-ukraines-separatists-are-wrong/