Russia escalates tensions with aid convoy, reported firing of artillery inside Ukraine - WP | Truck Convoy Returns to Russia From Ukraine - NYT
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Russia sent more than 130 aid trucks rolling into rebel-held eastern Ukraine without the approval of the government in Kiev. The convoy arrived in war-torn Luhansk on Friday. (AP)
MOSCOW — The conflict between Russia and Ukraine hit dangerous new heights Friday as Russia sent an enormous aid convoy into rebel-held Ukrainian territory without the permission of the Kiev government, a move that a top Ukrainian security official described as a “direct invasion.” The maneuver came amid reports from NATO that Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian artillery fire from inside their borders.
“Russian artillery support — both cross-border and from within Ukraine — is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statementaccusing Moscow of a “blatant breach of Russia’s international commitments” that would intensify a crisis he said it had helped to create and fuel.
“The disregard of international humanitarian principles raises further questions about whether the true purpose of the aid convoy is to support civilians or to resupply armed separatists,” Rasmussen said. It was the strongest denunciation of Russia’s role in Ukraine that NATO has issued and the first time the alliance has accused Russian forces of firing artillery at the Ukrainian army from within Ukraine.
The charges coincide with Russia’s decision to move a convoy of more than 200 trucks into Ukraine on Friday without either government permission or the participation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday morning that Moscow had run out of patience with “delays” and other “excuses” from Ukraine after a nearly 10-day standoff. It said Ukraine’s leaders were deliberately trying to slow-walk the delivery of aid to the war-torn region of Luhansk until “there is no one at all to provide help to.”
Russian aid trucks enter Ukraine
The White House condemned the Russian action and said it raised the likelihood that Russia planned the convoy as a pretext for invasion.
“At the same time as Russian vehicles violate Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia maintains a sizeable military force on the Ukrainian border capable of invading Ukraine on very short notice,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. “We recall that Russia denied its military was occupying Crimea until it later admitted its military role and attempt to annex this part of Ukraine.”
U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the supreme allied commander in Europe, separately condemned “Russia’s illegal incursion” into Ukraine as he expressed concern about the massing of 20,000 Russian “combat-ready troops” on the border with eastern Ukraine and the flow of Russian arms and operatives to pro-Moscow separatist forces. The unauthorized convoy “indicates that Russia is more interested in resupplying separatists rather than supporting local populations,” Breedlove said in a statement.
Ukrainian authorities appeared to be scrambling Friday to decide how to respond to the border incursion.
Officials had threatened a military response if the Russian convoy tried to force its way into Ukraine, despite the risk of triggering an all-out invasion by Russian forces. Yet allowing the trucks to disperse across the Luhansk region without any Ukrainian controls in effect allows Russia to force a cease-fire in Kiev’s fight against pro-Russian separatists.
State security chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko told journalists in Kiev that Ukrainian forces would not use force against the convoy because they want to avoid “provocations.” But Ukraine’s prime minister struck a more confrontational tone.
“It’s clear that Russia is not planning to conduct any humanitarian mission,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on national television. “We need to use all methods to stop Russian military aggression.”
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The move appears to have come without the approval of Kiev, which has voiced suspicions that the mission is a cover for an invasion.
Aug. 22, 2014 The first trucks of a Russian convoy drive on the main road to Luhansk near the village of Uralo-Kavkaz, Ukraine. Sergei Grits/AP
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For Ukrainian officials, a potential military response ultimately depends on whether the Russian convoy tries to do anything more than distribute aid.
“If we find in the convoy some other equipment, some other equipment that’s not humanitarian aid, then the direction will be different,” military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.
On Friday evening, Russian state television broadcast images of the trucks pulling up to a loading dock in rebel-held Luhansk. Shirtless men wearing jeans unloaded large white bags that appeared to be filled with grain, beans or flour and moved them into a warehouse.
The original ICRC plan was for the trucks to enter Ukraine, deposit aid supplies and leave immediately by the same route. Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, declined to say whether the convoy would hold to that plan.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry urged international allies to condemn Russia for what Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a “flagrant violation of international law.”
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, stopped short of calling the movement an invasion but said “it strains credulity to think that this equipment’s not moving across the border accompanied by Russian forces.”
Kirby called on Russia to withdraw vehicles and personnel and threatened “additional costs and isolation” otherwise. That is a reference to potential further economic sanctions on Russia and diplomatic ostracizing of Moscow, tactics the West has applied for months with little success.
“They should not be doing this under the guise of a humanitarian convoy,” Kirby said.
In a conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin said “explicit delays from the side of Kiev” forced Russia to send the convoy across the border unilaterally. Further delays in getting help to Luhansk residents, many of whom have no water or electricity, would be “unacceptable,” he added.
The latest delays, however, emanated from the ICRC’s concerns for the safety of its workers.
Poroshenko had agreed last week to let Russian and European aid into rebel-held portions of the eastern region of Luhansk, but only if ICRC workers presided over the shipments. The ICRC asked for security guarantees, which Ukraine gave — but only for areas under government control.
On Friday morning, ICRC officials told Russia that after a night of heavy shelling in Luhansk, they did not yet have the necessary safety guarantees.
Yet the convoy was shrouded in controversy from the start. When Russia first sent the trucks toward Ukraine they did it without specific ICRC authorization, prompting Ukraine and its allies to worry that the shipment was designed as cover for a military invasion.
Ukrainian officials refused to let the trucks through a government-controlled border crossing in the Kharkiv region, so the convoy headed for rebel-controlled territory instead.
The trucks then spent more than a week idling outside the Izvaryne border crossing to Luhansk, which is controlled by pro-Russian rebels, as government ministers tried to hammer out a deal.
Reporters in the area noted the presence of food, water and emergency supplies in the trucks. Some on the scene also reported seeing heavy military vehicles near the convoy on the Russian side of the border.
Last week, Western reporters watched a column of Russian armored personnel carriers enter Ukraine while the aid convoy was waiting on the Russian side. Ukraine said its forces subsequently destroyed part of the column, but Russia denied that any of its vehicles had crossed the border or had been attacked.
On Thursday, Russian customs officials cleared the first group of aid trucks into the border zone between Russian and Ukrainian territory, where they were waiting for the go-ahead to enter Ukraine.
That night, ICRC officials said the first trucks would likely enter Ukraine on Friday.
William Branigin, Anne Gearan and Karen DeYoung in Washington and Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin contributed to this report.
Michael Birnbaum is The Post’s Moscow bureau chief. He previously served as the Berlin correspondent and an education reporter.
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Russia on Friday defied international warnings against its 280-truck convoy barging into eastern Ukraine without the Kiev government’s consent, drawing widespread condemnation for its intrusion into the territory of its strife-torn neighbor.
Ukraine’s national security chief called Russia’s unauthorized entrance a “direct invasion” but said Ukrainian forces would refrain from attacking the trucks to avoid a dangerous escalation of the conflict that has already killed more than 2,000 people.
Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted it was necessary to move the convoy without Ukraine’s go-ahead or with its intended escort by the International Committee of the Red Cross, saying Ukrainian authorities had been needlessly delaying the mission for more than a week.
In a telephone call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was due in Kiev on Saturday, the Russian leader blamed what he said was Ukraine’s “blatant attempts to hinder” delivery of the relief goods for forcing Moscow’s decision.
Putin’s willful demonstration of support for Russian-speaking communities in separatist-held areas was cheered in Moscow’s state-run media as a triumph over Ukrainian authorities, who were portrayed as pursuing political advantage at the expense of suffering civilians. By doing so, the Kremlin made the Ukrainian government look impotent and created tactical advantages by delivering hundreds of vehicles that could help the surrounded separatist gunmen evacuate or redeploy.
“We are sure that we did the right thing. And we accuse Kiev and its backers of repeatedly putting their political interests, which are anti-Russian in essence, above the basic human values of kindness and compassion,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in a statement.
Beyond Moscow, the reaction was harshly critical.
“We call this a direct invasion for the first time under the cynical cover of the Red Cross,” Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, told reporters in Kiev. He said, however, that Ukraine would refrain from attacking the Russian trucks.
Ukraine’s Western allies condemned what they called a violation of its sovereignty but offered little to enforce demands that Russia recall the convoy and respect international law.
“We very much condemn the flagrant violation to Ukraine’s sovereignty,” said Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s deputy national security advisor. The administration planned to consult the U.N. Security Council on the situation, Rhodes said.
U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden warned that Russia would “bear additional consequences” for its provocative action, alluding to a White House threat to impose further sanctions on Moscow for its aggression against Ukraine.
A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the 28-nation alliance was outraged by the Kremlin action in the volatile region where fighting has intensified in recent days.
“We deplore Russia's decision to enter the humanitarian consignment into Ukrainian territory without ICRC's escort or the consent of the Ukrainian authorities,” Ashton aide Sebastien Brabant said.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the border crossing “a blatant breach of Russia's international commitments” and “a further violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.”
A spokeswoman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Oana Lungescu, reiterated alliance reports that Russian troops and artillery have been increasingly active in the separatist-held areas over the last week.
There were conflicting reports on the number of vehicles that entered Ukraine. Russian news media, whose reporters accompanied the column of white-tarped Kamaz vehicles from Moscow, said all 280 vehicles had driven through the separatist-controlled Izvaryno crossing. An observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that has been posted near Izvaryno for weeks said it counted 227 Russian vehicles crossing into Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko denounced the convoy’s entry for its disregard of the conditions agreed to a week earlier. Kiev said it would allow access if the trucks were escorted by the Red Cross and their cargo inspected by Ukrainian customs authorities before crossing through a government-controlled border post.
Pro-Russia gunmen seized the Izvaryno crossing in April, and much of the delay in getting clearance for the convoy was caused by Moscow’s decision to send the column to the separatist-held crossing that has been inaccessible to Ukrainian authorities for months.
Only 35 of the Russian vehicles had been examined by Ukrainian customs workers before the convoy began moving across the border about 11 a.m., the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.
“Neither the Ukrainian side nor the International Committee of the Red Cross knows the content of the trucks. This arouses special concern,” the statement said, reflecting government suspicion that Moscow might use the convoy to smuggle in weapons to the beleaguered separatists.
There was also rampant speculation that the trucks, many of which were reportedly less than half full, were sent to evacuate Russian gunmen who have been commanding local separatists.
A Red Cross statement issued via Twitter said the agency was not escorting the convoy because “we’ve not received sufficient security guarantees from the fighting parties.”
Russian news media have alleged that intensified fighting in recent days was aimed at routing the separatists by Sunday, when Ukrainians will celebrate the 23rd anniversary of their independence from the Soviet Union.
Special correspondent Gorst reported from Moscow and staff writer Williams from Los Angeles.
Follow @cjwilliamslat for the latest international news 24/7
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
6:06 p.m.: This post has been updated with new information throughout.
11:50 a.m.: This post has been updated to add reactions from the European Union, NATO and Washington and to include new commments from the Red Cross and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
9:45 a.m.: This post has been updated with additional details about the Russian convoy entering Ukraine.
This post was originally published at 8:13 a.m.
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MOSCOW -- Russia has deployed troops and military hardware to the Kuril Islands for drills that seem calculated to make Japan, which claims the southern tail of the archipelago, think twice about its support for the West's tough line on Ukraine.
The exercises began Tuesday and are expected to last through this month. Attack helicopters and around 100 other military vehicles will take part, according to Russia's defense ministry, which did not elaborate on the nature or location of the training.
The islands stretch from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East to Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island. Japan claims sovereignty over four of them, which it calls the Northern Territories.
This marks Russia's first extensive military exercises in four years that include the Northern Territories. Speaking to reporters, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called them "totally unacceptable."
The Japanese government tried through diplomatic channels to dissuade Moscow from going ahead with the drills, but to no avail. That Russia chose to play war games in the remote island chain at this time shows its displeasure with Japan for joining Western efforts to punish its Ukraine intervention. Moscow decried Japan's decision last week to impose new sanctions, including asset freezes on figures linked to President Vladimir Putin's government, and said it was postponing talks on the Northern Territories dispute.
This is the only issue in which Russia has leverage against Japan, says Dmitry Streltsov, a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Compared with the European countries that buy loads of natural gas from Russia, Japan depends little on it economically.
Meanwhile, Washington is pressing Tokyo to ratchet up pressure on Putin. Given its need for American backup in contending with China, Japan "can't do anything that compromises its alliance with the U.S.," a government source said. Tokyo is unlikely to risk falling out of step with Western partners on the Ukrainian situation just to please Moscow.
Time is running out to finalize plans for Putin's proposed trip to Japan this fall. Abe had hoped the visit would build momentum for resolving the island dispute. But his freedom to roll out the red carpet looks increasingly contingent on relations between Russia and the U.S. Tokyo has already scrapped a number of diplomatic initiatives toward Russia, including a trip by Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, out of deference to Washington.
"The drawn-out standoff between the U.S. and Russia is making it increasingly doubtful that President Putin will visit Japan this year," said a senior Japanese foreign ministry official.
Still, "Russia has high hopes for Abe's independent foreign policy, as evinced by his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in defiance of U.S. hand-wringing," said a diplomatic source.
Perhaps because Japanese sanctions have been relatively mild, Russia has spared Japan the bans on food imports that it leveled against the U.S. and European countries. Count on Tokyo and Moscow to avoid a decisive split as they continue their delicate diplomatic dance.
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A controversial Russian aid convoy has crossed the border into Ukraine, in a move described by Kiev as a "direct invasion". The first trucks in the convoy arrived in the war-torn city of Luhansk late on Friday afternoon.
After Russia's foreign ministry announced that it could not wait any longer on the convoy – which had been stuck at the border for more than a week – the vehicles passed through a Ukrainian border post controlled by pro-Russia fighters. Rebels in cars escorted the convoy, which moved ahead without observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Reporters and officials at the border said all of about 260 trucks in the convoy had crossed the border by Friday afternoon. Russian outlet LifeNews showed footage of men unloading bags from the trucks in Luhansk, where it said 100 trucks had arrived. It also reported some mortar fire had landed near the convoy in the city although other reports said the convoy had not been targeted.
Some trucks were said to be leaving Ukraine and returning to Russia early on Saturday.
The head of Ukraine's security service, Valentin Nalyvaichenko, described the crossing of the border as a direct invasion but ruled out the use of force against the convoy. Nalyvaichenko argued that the convoy's drivers were Russian military forces members trained to drive combat vehicles and the half-empty trucks would be used to move weapons and bring the bodies of Russian fighters out of Ukraine.
Russia's move is sure to complicate peace talks between the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, set to take place on Tuesday in Minsk.
Western leaders fear the convoy could serve as a pretext for direct Russian intervention in the conflict between government forces and pro-Russia rebels which has been raging for the past four months in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, suspicions Moscow has dismissed.
In a phone call with German chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, Putin said in the light of Kiev's "obvious stalling", Russia had decided to send the convoy in because further delays would have been unacceptable, according to a Kremlin statement.
The move drew swift condemnation from the US and European countries. The White House warned of "additional consequences" if Russia does not remove the convoy.
"We very much condemn this flagrant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty which we saw today with the movement of this Russian convoy into Ukraine," said deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes in a media briefing from the president's vacation home on Martha's Vineyard.
"We will be in touch today with our partners on the United Nations security council to discuss next steps. Russia should take the opportunity to remove this convoy from within Ukraine. If they don't, they will face additional costs and consequences from the United States and our partners in the international community".
In a separate statement issued on behalf of the White House national security council, the administration added: "In violation of its previous commitments and international law, Russian military vehicles painted to look like civilian trucks forced their way into Ukraine."
The US also accused Russian military forces of repeatedly firing into Ukrainian territory and warned that the convoy could be a "pretext for further Russian escalation of the conflict".
"Russia's decision today to send in its vehicles and personnel without the ICRC and without the express permission of the Ukrainian authorities only amplifies international concerns about Russia's true intentions," said the NSC statement. "It is important to remember that Russia is purporting to alleviate a humanitarian situation which Russia itself created – a situation that has caused the deaths of thousands, including 300 innocent passengers of flight MH17."
Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: "The disregard of international humanitarian principles raises further questions about whether the true purpose of the aid convoy is to support civilians or to resupply armed separatists."
While 34 trucks were checked by Ukrainian and Russian officials on Thursday, the rest of the convoy had reportedly not been inspected by the Ukrainian side. Ukraine's military said 90 trucks that had not been checked by either side had been moving across the border on Friday.
In a combative statement, Russia's foreign ministry accused Kiev of "deliberately dragging out the delivery of the humanitarian aid" so it could complete a "military cleansing of Luhansk and Donetsk" by Independence Day celebrations on Sunday and before Poroshenko and Putin meet.
"It's impossible to suffer such an outrage, open lies and inability to negotiate any longer … Our column with humanitarian aid is starting to move toward Luhansk," the statement said.
"We warn against any attempts to disrupt this strictly humanitarian mission, which was prepared some time ago amid complete transparency and cooperation with the Ukrainian side and the ICRC," the statement added. "The responsibility for the possible consequences of provocations against the humanitarian convoy lie entirely on those who are ready to continue sacrificing human lives for their own ambitions and geopolitical plans, rudely trampling the norms and principles of international humanitarian law."
Ukraine's national security council said it had proposed negotiations between Ukraine and Russia's general staffs, but the Russian side had turned the offer down. The national security council spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said the "responsibility for the safe movement of the column through territory in the Donbass [the historical name for Donetsk and Luhansk] not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities lies on Russia".
Street fighting and shelling in Luhansk have left tens of thousands of civilians without water, electricity or communications for more than two weeks. Representatives of the ICRC, who Kiev and Moscow had agreed would oversee the aid delivery to the city, were not accompanying the convoy on Friday. The convoy had reportedly been held up because the ICRC was waiting for safety guarantees from both sides in the conflict.
ICRC spokeswoman Anastasia Isyuk told the Guardian that 34 trucks had been checked by Russian and Ukrainian officials on Thursday but ICRC representatives did not accompany the convoy on Friday.
"Because of the volatile security situation, with heavy shelling continuing through the night in Luhansk, we do not believe we have received sufficient security guarantees from the fighting parties to allow us to escort the convoy at this time," Isyuk said. "The convoy of Russian aid is now moving. However, we are not part of that convoy in any way."
But the Russian Red Cross was "ready to take part in escorting the convoy" and was waiting for a response from the ICRC, its director Raisa Lukuttsova told Interfax news agency.
The Ukrainian border service said in a statement that its group of customs and border patrol officials had been "barricaded in the Russian border crossing at Donetsk". Lysenko told reporters on Friday that Kiev was waiting for information from the foreign ministry and Red Cross before deciding whether to stop the convoy from moving further.
Dmitry Tymchuk, a defence analyst with close links to the Kiev government, said Moscow was "openly continuing its provocation under the guise of 'humanitarian aid for the residents of Donbass".
Government forces have claimed tactical victories in fighting around these two rebel strongholds in recent weeks but have yet to capture them. Rebels shot down a Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter in the Luhansk region on Wednesday but Kiev did not immediately release this information so as not to disrupt the search for it, Lysenko said on Friday.
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3. In 1779, Catherine the Great employs London-born architect Charles Cameron. He becomes her favourite designer.
4. In 1917, Lenin seizes power in St Petersburg. He is soon being chauffeured in a Rolls-Royce, a make of car assembled on the edge of the Goodwood Estate today.
5. In 2005, St Petersburg-born Leon Max, the fashion entrepreneur, buys Easton Neston, the superb Northamptonshire house.
6. In 2009, Yekaterina Vyazova publishes The Hypnosis of Anglomania, a study of English influence on Russian art and culture of the 19th and 20th centuries.
7. 2014: Nature Translated opens at the Marble Palace in St Petersburg.
Nature Translated, an exhibition by Charles March. January 23-February 24, 2014, The Marble Palace, The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
For more information, go to www.charlesmarch.com
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"It is an undeniable and blatant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty," Mr Lyall Grant said.
"It has nothing to do with humanitarianism. That humanitarian effort is being coordinated by the U.N. and if the Russia federation wanted to participate in that, it could have done so in a collective way rather than acting unilaterally."
Mr Lyall Grant said "there was no unanimity of views" during the emergency consultations, which were held at the request of Lithuania.
Paul Picard, the acting head of the mission observing the Russian border post known as Donetsk, told AFP that some of the vehicles had begun passing through but could not provide a number. Russian news agencies reported that several dozen had arrived at the border.
He said six groups of vehicles were expected to cross back.
After waiting on the Russian side of the border for a week as Moscow, Kiev and the International Committee of the Red Cross tried to come to agreement on the convoy's passage, the lorries rolled across the border Friday without Ukrainian permission or Red Cross monitors.
OSCE monitors counted only 227 vehicles as having crossed the border in six groups, according to a statement published on Friday, while Russia had previously said there were 280 lorries in the convoy.
Russia had previously let journalists look inside a handful of the lorries, which it said were carrying around 1,800 tonnes of aid including food, water, medicine and electrical generators.
The lorries unloaded their cargo in rebel-held Lugansk late on Friday, according to Russian state television.
The convoy of some 260 trucks drove Friday into Ukraine, headed for Luhansk, a city in eastern Ukraine hard-hit by weeks of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels.
The Ukrainian government and Western countries said they suspected that the convoy could be used by Russia to smuggle supplies and reinforcements for rebel fighters.
The European Union and the United States both called for Moscow to pull out the trucks immediately or face further isolation as they drove cross-border tensions to a new high ahead of an already tricky visit to Kiev for the German leader.
German chancellor Angela Merkel will have to tread a fine line in Ukraine, showing firm support for Kiev's pro-Western leaders while also pushing for them to halt their increasingly successful - but brutal - offensive.
Ms Merkel, the most influential Western leader to visit Ukraine's pro-Western leaders, will hold talks with President Petro Poroshenko, three days ahead of the first meeting in months between Mr Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Minsk alongside top EU officials.
In an interview to be published in full tomorrow, Germany's vice chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said establishing a federal Ukraine would be the only viable solution to the crisis pitting Kiev against pro-Russian separatists.
"The wise concept of federalism seems to me the only viable path," the vice chancellor and economic and energy affairs minister said in an interview to appear Sunday in the German weekly Welt am Sonntag.
The paper released extracts of the interview just hours before German Chancellor Angela Merkel was set to meet Ukrainian officials in Kiev for crisis talks.
In Donetsk, two civilians were killed on Saturday apparently by artillery fire in Donetsk, the main separatist stronghold in eastern Ukraine, an AFP reporter witnessed.
Their bodies were seen covered with bloodied sheets in a street of central Donetsk after artillery explosions rocked the city around 6am (3am GMT).
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Only the courts can judge Michael Browns killer but this is the system that let George Zimmerman walk free
Just outside a mall in Ferguson, Missouri, shortly after 10 oclock on Wednesday, a black man in his 30s was stopped and frisked by around eight white policemen. As he gingerly emptied his pockets, careful not to move too quickly, he yelled at them. It was a soliloquy of pure rage; a fluent, apparently unstoppable oration against not just the men who had apprehended him but the system they represented.
Yes Im angry, he shouted. Four hundred years we been here. We built this place for free and yall still hate us. A man filming the incident was told to move on but did not budge. When the police let the pedestrian go (whatever they were looking for he didnt have), the man recording went too. Ive done my job, he said.
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The boy was killed this evening in Nahal Oz, near the border with Gaza, after a mortar shell landed in the kibbutz where he lived - prompting a chilling response from Israeli authorities.
Although American journalist James Foley's killer is masked in black, some distinguishing features can be picked out -- but the biggest clue may be in his voice.
The execution of American journalist James Foley represents a terrorist attack against the U.S., the White House said Friday, ratcheting up language it is using against the Sunni militant group calling itself Islamic State.
Published on Jul 25, 2013
Slide-show of Venice with contemporary photographs and antique oil paintings.
Symphony No5 /Mahler/ Adagietto/ Berlin Philharmoniker/Herbert von Karajan
The 1974 recording - Deutsche Grammophon
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
Symphony No5 /Mahler/ Adagietto/ Berlin Philharmoniker/Herbert von Karajan
The 1974 recording - Deutsche Grammophon
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
MOSCOW — The huge convoy of Russian trucks that entered war-torn eastern Ukraine on Friday, sharply escalating tensions, returned to Russian on Saturday after unloading food and medicine in the city of Luhansk, and the Russian government quickly declared its satisfaction with the operation.
Russia’s decision to send the convoy across the border without an escort by the International Red Cross or final clearance from the Ukrainian government in Kiev, had drawn harsh criticism. President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine called it a “flagrant violation of international law.” Another senior Ukrainian official denounced it as a “direct invasion.” And NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasumussen in a statement condemning the convoy’s entry, said it coincided with a “major escalation in Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine.”
The convoy’s swift return suggested that at least for a moment the government of President Valdimir V. Putin of Russia had scored a public relations victory.
Trucks from a Russian convoy said to be carrying humanitarian aid crossed the border into a rebel-held area in eastern Ukraine, without the consent of the Ukrainian government on Friday. On the same day, NATO officials said that Russian artillery units had moved into Ukrainian territory and were firing at Ukrainian forces. Clashes continue throughout the region. View full graphic »
Russian television stations, largely controlled by the government, had carried constant coverage of the convoy crossing the border on Friday, after the Russian Foreign Ministry declared the humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine so grave that it could no longer tolerate what it described as stalling by the Ukrainian government and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had agreed to oversee the convoy.
For weeks, Kiev and its allies, including the United States and major European countries, had raised suspicions about Russia’s plans to deliver humanitarian aid, fearing that the trucks could be used to carry weapons and other supplies to pro-Russian militants who seem to be on the verge of defeat in their fight against the Ukrainian government.
There were also concerns that Russia would use the trucks to slow the Ukrainian government’s military operations in Luhansk, essentially to shield rebels as they regrouped and rearmed.
By swiftly returning the trucks to Russia, the Kremlin seemed to seize an opportunity to make its detractors in Kiev and the West appear alarmist, and the Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the goals all along had been strictly humanitarian. “We are satisfied that the Russian humanitarian aid for southeast Ukraine was delivered to the destination,” the Foreign Ministry said. “We were guided in this exclusively by the goal of helping needy civilians.”
The statement added that Russia intended to work with the Red Cross to deliver the assistance. The hasty unloading of the more than 260 trucks also seemed to confirm that many of them had been nearly empty. Journalists who were allowed to look inside some trucks had seen that many were only partially filled.
The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine’s inspections of an initial group of trucks found that most of them carried foodstuffs, including buckwheat, rice, sugar and water, and that some bore medical supplies.
The Red Cross said on Friday that fighting in eastern Ukraine made it too dangerous for the convoy to cross the border and deliver the aid. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the humanitarian crisis was worsening and it could no longer wait.
Military experts say that there is no doubt that Russia could invade Ukraine — with tanks not cargo trucks — on extremely short notice and that the West could do little about it.
The loud criticism from Kiev and the West, however, seemed to provide the Kremlin with an easy opportunity to portray its critics as shrill and unreliable, while pushing back on hard-line Russian nationalists who have criticized Mr. Putin and his government for not doing more to help pro-Russian militants.
The Obama administration on Friday had also sharply criticized Russia’s unilateral decision to send the convoy across the border, which it said was “in violation of its previous commitments and international law.”
“Russian military vehicles painted to look like civilian trucks forced their way into Ukraine,” said a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Caitlin Hayden.
In her statement, Ms. Hayden said that only a small number of vehicles were inspected by Ukrainian customs officials and that there was no way to know the contents of the entire convoy. The Ukrainian government complained that its customs agents sent to a border crossing to inspect the trucks had been blocked as Russia sent the convoy through.
The return of the trucks to Russia came as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany arrived in Kiev to visit Ukrainian leaders.
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