Contents tagged with Donbas

  • Ukrainian Foreign Minister and OSCE head discuss expanding Special Monitoring Mission in the Donbas

    The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, and the Acting Chairman of the OSCE, the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration, Sebastian Kurz, discussed the strengthening of the Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE in the Donbas.

    “We talked about the importance of strengthening the mission both in terms of its personnel and in a technical sense,” Klimkin stated at a joint press conference with Kurz in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister also noted that after the …

  • Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine announced plans to 'return' the Donbas in 2017

    The Ukrainian Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, urged border guards to prepare for the "de-occupation of the Donbas" as soon as this year.

    "In 2017, our goal is to attain the internationally recognized State border in the Donetsk Basin, and in the future, of the Crimea, as well. This process will involve the police, guards, and judicial authorities, but the border guards will be the first to act," he said, according to UNIAN.

    According to the head of the Interior Ministry, the border guards …

  • Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk: Separatists are blocking the exchange of prisoners

    On January 16, this year's first meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group on the peaceful settlement of the situation in the Donbas was held in Minsk. Iryna Herashchenko, Member of the Ukrainian humanitarian subgroup said that representatives of separate areas of Donetsk and Luhansk (ORDLO) are blocking the release of the hostages. The separatists have apparently stepped up attempts to exclude her from the negotiating process.

    On her Facebook page Iryna Herashchenko wrote, "Despite the call of …

  • Separatists plan to jam Ukrainian radio signals

    According to the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples’ Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, the beginning broadcasts of Ukrainian radio in the territory of the Donetsk region is not controlled by separatists, as he stated at a press-conference.

    "Yes, I know about this problem. There is this station in Chasiv Yar which will broadcast to our territory. For today, if you turn on TV, you can catch any wave including in Ukrainian language. Basically, we have lived with Ukrainian broadcasting …

  • Ukrainian official predicts that the liberation of the Donbas will begin in the fall

    The Deputy Minister for the temporarily occupied territories and internally displaced people, George Tuka, stated on Espreso.TV that the liberation of the occupied territories of the Donbas from separatists and Russian servicemen will start in autumn 2017, Ukrinform reported.

    Tuka noted that the issue of the liberation of the Crimea and the Donbas from Russian occupation should be separated from each other because, according to him, it will take much more time to return the annexed peninsula. …

  • Ukrainian official: The armed conflict in Ukraine can flare up again

    A new phase of an armed conflict is going to flare up in Ukraine sooner or later, according to a Ukrainian political expert of the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, Olga Aivazovska, at a briefing with journalist.

    “What is happening in the media with regards to the narrative that Ukraine has to accept the loss of the Crimea... is not the way to achieve peace. It can only delay the crisis or the new phase of the armed conflict, which will start sooner or later. Ukrainian society cannot easily …

  • Ukrainian representative: There are Russian FSB and GRU officers in the OSCE Mission

    The Ukrainian representative to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the ceasefire (JCCC), General Borys Kremenetsky, is certain that the Russian officers assigned to the OSCE mission are career officers of the Russian Special Services, as stated in an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda.

    The Major-General admitted that the episode where Ukrainian servicemen did not allow the OSCE patrol to withdraw weapon storage sites until they were sure that there were no Russians involved is a …

  • Ukrainian headquarters: The presence of our troops at the Svitlodarsk salient does not violate the Minsk agreements

    New positions that the Armed Forces of Ukraine took and held in the Svitlodarsk salient in the Donetsk region do not violate the Minsk agreements, according to a brief on January 11 by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Defense, Colonel Oleksandr Motuzyanyk.

    The Colonel reminded the press that fighting intensified recently on this stretch of a front line. "As you know, the situation there has been very tense in recent months. Very severe fighting continued there that resulted in units of the …

  • Savchenko published the lists of POWs despite SBU’s opposition

    Despite the opposition of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Nadiya Savchenko has published on her Facebook page a list of the Ukrainians who are imprisoned by the LPR and DPR, as well as those who are considered missing. She also posted the names of those who the DPR (Donetsk People's Republic) and LPR (Luhansk People's Republic) demand to be released. The SBU believes that this move could harm the prisoner exchange process and their families. Savchenko herself believes the opposite: that …

  • Canadian groups sent 11 tons of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine

    The Congress of Ukrainians in Canada together with the company Сaravan Logіstics and public organizations, Ukraine Appeal, GlobalFire, Global Medic, and the Canadian League of Ukrainians collected and sent 11 tons of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, as reported on the website of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine. It is noted that the cargo consists of medical equipment and fire-extinguishing equipment and will be provided to hospitals and fire stations in eastern Ukraine, in particular, …