Putin and Poroshenko come face to face for the first time since fighting broke out in Ukraine...
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Tense: Ahead of the the talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) shook hands with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (right). Today's meeting is the first face-to-face meeting between the pair since June
As the administration considers the possible expansion of airstrikes beyond Iraq, President Barack Obama cautioned that the U.S. must use its power carefully and avoid sending Americans into harm's way unless absolutely necessary.
Ukraine: Captured Troops Proof of Russian Role in Separatist Fight by webdesk@voanews.com (Gabe Joselow)
Ukraine said on Tuesday its forces had captured a group of Russian paratroopers who had crossed into Ukrainian territory on a “special mission” - but Moscow said they had ended up there by mistake. On Monday, the Ukrainian military said it had captured a group of Russian paratroopers who had crossed the border. On Tuesday, Ukraine security services released video footage purporting to show testimonies from Russian paratroopers detained by Ukrainian government forces while fighting...
Пять дней в неделю ровно в 12 часов - о том, что случилось сегодня и что еще должно произойти. День в разгаре, мы следим за событиями.
Download audio: http://realaudio.rferl.org/RU/2014/08/26/20140826-080000-RU-program.mp3
Download audio: http://realaudio.rferl.org/RU/2014/08/26/20140826-080000-RU-program.mp3
 Reuters |
Ukraine accuses Russia of opening new war front before leaders' meeting
Reuters Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is due to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin in the Belarussian capital of Minsk, expressed "extraordinary concern" at the Russian move, his press service said, setting the scene for a possibly angry encounter. |
 The Independent |
Ukraine crisis: Russian soldiers captured in conflict area crossed border 'by ...
The Independent Ukrainian security services released video footage yesterday of 10 Russian paratroopers it claimed were captured by government forces while fighting alongside pro-Moscow rebels in the east of the country. The footage, which is likely to fuel ... |
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Свежая информация о событиях текущего дня и ее анализ вместе с экспертами. Новости экономики, культуры, науки и техники.
Download audio: http://realaudio.rferl.org/RU/2014/08/26/20140826-120000-RU-program.mp3
Download audio: http://realaudio.rferl.org/RU/2014/08/26/20140826-120000-RU-program.mp3
Ukrainians release images and video of Russian paratroopers captured in Ukraine as Moscow insists its troops crossed border "by accident" 
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Ukrainian, Russian Leaders Shake Hands As Minsk Summit Under Way by noreply@rferl.org (RFE/RL)
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin have shaken hands at the start of multilateral talks in Minsk, the first time the two presidents have met since June.
Antigovernment protests continue in Pakistan, wildfires burn in Kyrgyzstan, officials want to reduce lavish parties in Afghanistan, and a cricket tourney in Kabul.
RFERL Video Roundup -- August 26, 2014by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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Antigovernment protests continue in Pakistan, wildfires burn in Kyrgyzstan, officials want to reduce lavish parties in Afghanistan, and a cricket tourney in Kabul.
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Staunton, August 25 – Vladimir Putin had been remarkably, even amazingly successful in foreign affairs for the first 14 years of his rule in Russia, but his decision to set up Hamas-style regimes in southeastern Ukraine, the result of domestic imperatives, is going to condemn him to isolation and failure, according to Yevgeny Ikhlov.
Indeed, the Moscow commentator says, Putin’s violation of the rules of the game under which powerful countries do not seize the territories of others puts him on a course in which “not one of his undertakings from now on will be successful” and in which he will be increasingly isolated abroad and at home.
That this should be the case is suggested by what happened to two of his historical predecessors who were remarkably successful at one point in their careers and then, having suffered a major defeat, went on to their final ones almost without interruption, according to Ikhlov.
“Napoleon,” he writes, “fell because having discredited and destroyed the medieval orders, he liberated European nationalism — German, Spanish, and Russian which turned out to be no less powerful than the French a force whose awakening he so successfully based his operations.”
The obvious evil represented by Hitler united both heirs of the Great French Revolution, liberalism and communism which did not allow any chances for a medieval order to be reestablished by the Nazis.”
Everything was working for Putin as long as he was seeking to resolve “the historic tasks which objectively stood before Yeltsin but remained unresolved by him.” The current Russian president converted himself into a much desired “velvet Pinochet,” and he learned that he could have “the greatest success” with “a totalitarian restoration” based on “market Stalinism.”
But since Stalinism itself was “a restoration of Russian archaism” in and of itself, Putin’s “market Stalinism rapidly began to be transformed into a Chekist oprichnik operation,” with the FSB turning out to be a more reliable “party of power” although rapidly degenerating into “a corrupt police machine of the South Asian or South American type.”
According to Ikhlov, “Putin instinctively went along the path of least historical resistance – and developed consumer totalitarianism.” That worked for much of his time in office because it condemned protest against him to failure much as the dissident movement had failed in the times of Brezhnev and Andropov.
“But totalitarianism by definition is a society in the state of mobilization,” the Moscow analyst points out. Having “finally demobilized society” by his suppression of protests against him and clearly setting “the limits of the permissible,” Putin faced the challenge of coming up with a new means of mobilizing people.
That was war, and his “appeal to xenophobia, anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism and imperial nationalism almost doubled his social base,” Ikhlov says. But it led him to promote the formation of what can only be called “a ‘Russian HAMAS’” on the eastern portion of Ukraine which has been “just as uncompromising in its relation to the population which it supposedly is defending as is the Palestinian” origin.
Putin’s “Hamas in this case is a designation of a kind for a local, aggressive religiously motivated pseudo-state formation of a totalitarian (political-gangster style) type, which sets for itself utopian goals, uses violence against liberal values and global processes and does not have internal resources for its existence.”
While some Russians may find that attractive for a time, “the civilized world will sanction practically any abortion of the Donbass HAMAS,” Ikhlov says, and that in turn will limit Putin’s freedom of action and success in the future. In fact, Ikhlov argues, it may prove to be what Moscow was for Napoleon and El Alamein was for Hitler, the turning point to defeat.
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Ukrainian security services have released video footage purporting to show Russian servicemen who were captured by Ukrainian government forces while fighting alongside pro-Moscow rebels in Ukraine
Policymakers will have no choice but to continue buying gas from Russia until at least the mid-2020s and "potentially much longer", according to Fitch
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 CNN |
Russian soldiers detained in Ukraine; leaders meet in Minsk
CNN Slovyansk, Ukraine (CNN) -- Ten Russian soldiers were detained in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, that country's Security Service said Tuesday, as tensions simmered over the conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels. The Russian... Russia admits its soldiers have been caught in UkraineThe Guardian Ukrainian forces capture 10 Russian soldiersFox News Ukraine detains Russian paratroopers; US ambassador warns of 'counteroffensive'Washington Post BBC News -Yahoo! Voices all 1,381 news articles » |
Russia Playing Politics With Alleged Submarine Confrontations
USNI News Confrontations—and alleged confrontations—between the Russian armed forces and those of the United States, Europe and Japan have been on the uptick in recent weeks. The encounters have paced a general decline in relations between Russia and the ... and more » |
Russian Soldiers Are In Ukraineby noreply@rferl.org (Glenn Kates)
It's a claim authorities in Kyiv have made for months, but in recent days the evidence has become undeniable. Russian soldiers are now being captured -- and perhaps dying -- in Ukraine.
Staunton, August 24 – Stalin made “an error” in annexing Galicia to the Ukrainian SSR via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because what Moscow needed with war on the horizon was “the establishment of buffer states on the border of the USSR and not their being pulled into the Union itself,” with all the border changes that would involve, according to Vladimir Kornilov.
“It was possible and necessary to draw Galicia into its sphere of influence,” the director of the Moscow Center for Eurasian Research says, “but to join it to the USSR or even more to the Ukrainian SSR was a mistake,” one that had fateful consequences for the future of the region.
Kornilov’s argument, made in an interview with Dmitry Rodionov of Svobodnaya Pressa, is important both historically and politically. Historically, it represents a rare dissent among Russians from Stalin’s annexations under the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, annexations that involved the three Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and Western Belarus as well.
And politically, it can be read and certainly will be seen by many as an implicit criticism of Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea, an action that also has had enormous consequences for the Russian Federation both in terms of alienating Ukraine and the West and in terms of that country’s domestic development.
According to Kornilov, there has always been “a struggle between at a minimum two Ukraines,” a conflict which one can capture by the two phrases, “Together forever,” or “Get away from Moscow.” That was true in the 18th century, the 19th century, the 20th century and even now.
“There have been times,” the historian says, “when it appeared that one Ukraine had finally defeated the other.” Thirty or forty years ago, anyone who said that portraits of Bandera would appear on the streets of Ukrainian cities would have been viewed as mad. At that time, that “other Ukraine” appeared to have finally been suppressed or destroyed.
But now the political “wind” has changed direction, and some imagine that that is permanent as well, Kornilov says. However, in his view, “a financial victory in the war of the two Ukrainians can never be,” and that is something which “both the one side and the other must understand.”
At the very least, the two must reach an agreement either about “how to co-exist in a civilized fashion within the framework of a single state” – something Kornilov says he thinks will be increasingly difficult given the intensity of conflict now “or alternatively split up in a civilized way.”
The existence of the two Ukraines, Kornilov says, has another consequence. When one side thinks it has one, the other becomes a supporter of federalization. When it appeared that the pro-Moscow Ukraine had won, Galicia and Western Ukraine more generally were the chief advocates of federal arrangements.
When the reverse appeared to be true as now, the advocates of federalism shifted as well. What has to happen, the historian says, is that both Galicia and the Donbas need to understand that neither has the chance to defeat the other forever – and they need to understand that “at the same time and without illusions on the part of one or the other.”
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Klaus Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin who once described Germany’s capital city as “poor by sexy,” said Tuesday that he would leave the post in December after more than 13 years in the job.
EU Case Against Russia's Import Bans Would Unravel WTOby By Delphine d'Amora
If the EU bites the bullet and challenges Russia's food import bans at the WTO, the bitter battle of sanctions could claim yet another, unexpected victim - the World Trade Organization itself.
Russian Paratroops in Ukraine: Lost in Media Haze (Video)by By Alexey Eremenko and Ivan Nechepurenko
A slew of reports about Russian paratroopers slain or captured in Ukraine have reignited fears of a Russian invasion in the war-torn country, but confusion reigned supreme.
This week, the US tested a hypersonic prototype missile in its bid to develop a weapon capable of reaching any target in the world in an hour. How will China and Russia respond?
As top-secret, super-fast missile experiments go, it wasn't the most successful. This week the UStested its Advanced Hypersonic Weapons system, the Pentagon's latest attempt to create a weapon that can reach any target in the world, in just an hour. Instead it exploded within four seconds of takeoff and fell back down to earth, causing undisclosed damage to the test site.
Yet while the system failed this test, it's unlikely to cool the enthusiasm for developing such a weapon which has already sparked a new arms race between China, Russia and the US and which critics fear could potentially spark a nuclear war.
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NATO says it is planning constantly manned facilities in NATO-member countries that are east of what formerly was the iron curtain.
Excerpts of an interrogation of Ivan V. Milchakov, a Russian soldier whom Ukraine said its security forces captured in the Donetsk region.
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Nato plans east European bases to counter Russian threatby Ian Traynor in Brussels
Nato chief announces move in response to Ukraine crisis and says alliance is dealing with a new Russian military approach
Nato is to deploy its forces permanently at new bases in eastern Europe for the first time, in response to the Ukraine crisis and in an attempt to deter Vladimir Putin from causing trouble in the former Soviet Baltic republics, according to its chief.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark, said that next week's Nato summit in Cardiff would overcome divisions within the alliance and agree to new deployments on Russia's borders a move certain to trigger a strong reaction from Moscow.
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