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Ukraine, allies fear escalation after Russia exits ceasefire group

A member of the Ukrainian armed forces patrols area in the government-held village of Travneve, Ukraine, November 23, 2017. Picture taken November 23, 2017. REUTERS/Oleksandr Klymenko

By Alessandra Prentice

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian officials, security monitors and Kiev’s foreign backers warned on Wednesday that Moscow’s decision to withdraw from a Ukrainian-Russian ceasefire control group could worsen the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

On Monday, the Russian foreign ministry said it was recalling officers serving at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) in Ukraine, accusing the Ukrainian side of obstructing their work and limiting access to the front line.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak and security chief Olekshandr Turchynov said the decision, coupled with a recent surge in fighting in the eastern Donbass region, suggested Russia had switched to a more offensive strategy.

“We cannot rule out that they withdrew their officers in order to start stepping up not only military provocations but also military operations,” Turchynov said. “We will strengthen our positions at the front.”

“The Ukrainian armed forces are currently prepared for a change in the situation,” Poltorak told journalists.

A Russia-backed separatist insurgency erupted in 2014 and the bloodshed has continued despite a ceasefire that was meant to end the conflict. More than 10,000 people have been killed, with casualties reported on a near-daily basis.

A spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which works with the JCCC to monitor the much-violated Minsk peace agreement, said:

“We are concerned about any step that might lead to a further deterioration of the security situation in the region, affecting both the SMM (OSCE special monitoring mission) and the civilian population.”

Fighting between Ukrainian troops and separatists has climbed to the worst level in months, the OSCE said this week, after the shelling of a frontline village wounded civilians and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes.

Russia denies accusations from Ukraine and NATO it supports the rebels with troops and weapons, but the U.S. envoy to peace talks, Kurt Volker, said Moscow was answerable for the violence.

“Russia withdrew its officers from JCCC – a ceasefire implementation tool – right before a massive escalation in ceasefire violations. Ukraine just suffered some of the worst fighting since February, 2017. Decision for peace lies with Russia,” Volker tweeted on Tuesday.

Germany and France, which have spearheaded international efforts to resolve the conflict, expressed concern. A Germany foreign ministry spokesman said “it could have severe consequences for civilians in the conflict zones.”

“We call on the Russian authorities to reconsider this decision and hope that the Ukrainian authorities will guarantee access to Ukrainian territory to Russian representatives of the joint center (JCCC),” said Alexandre Giorgini, deputy spokesman for the French foreign ministry.

Created in 2014, the JCCC is made up of Ukrainian and Russian officers, who are meant to work together to ensure the safety of OSCE monitors and help implement the Minsk ceasefire.

(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice, Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets in Kiev, additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna, Michael Nienaber in Berlin and John Irish in Paris, editing by Matthias Williams, Larry King)

War-scarred neighborhoods in Ukraine’s rebel-held Donetsk

DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ruined houses, shell craters and deserted streets – this is a typical scene in the Oktyabrsky district of Donetsk, the largest city of Ukraine’s pro-Russian rebel region that bears the same name.

The self-styled Donetsk and next-door Luhansk “people’s republics” broke away from central rule in 2014 after months of violent street protests in Kiev toppled Ukraine’s Moscow-leaning president and propelled pro-Western nationalists to power.

In this calm suburb of Donetsk, many people stood aloof of politics. But then fierce clashes broke out between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists for control over the nearby Donetsk Airport.

A glistening air hub of steel and glass, specially built for the UEFA Euro 2012 of which Donetsk was a venue, the local airport was leveled to the ground, and many of the buildings in Oktyabrsky shared its fate.

A Reuters photo essay (http://reut.rs/2jONmoo ) captures images of hardship and despair of the dwellers of this district on the frontline of many battles.

Restored water and electricity supplies to local homes, with some households enjoying even gas supplies and heating, give a slight relief to some of the lucky locals as winter cold starts to bite.

“I try to keep away from politics, I only care about my family,” said Marina, aged 30. The woman, her husband and three children, one of whom is seriously ill, lost their house in 2014 when an artillery shell hit it.

“With no money, we were left in the street, with absolutely nothing. Everything burned, nothing was left … even spoons and forks were gone,” she said.

Her family changed several apartments, moving from one friend to another, before deciding that they would restore their house, using the bricks that had remained intact to build new walls. But they fast ran out of cash to buy construction materials.

The fragile ceasefire agreed in 2015 is often shattered by outbursts of gunfire and explosions of shells.

More than 8,000 private homes and more than 2,000 apartment houses were badly damaged in Donetsk, according to data provided by its administration. Most of these homes are uninhabitable and cannot be rebuilt.

A total of 64 temporary shelters for those who lost their homes in the war have been organized in various parts of Donetsk, a city of around one million residents.

Sometimes, student hostels accommodate the homeless. They include Alexandra Nikolayevna, 68, who survives with her several grandchildren at “University Hostel No.4” mainly due to handouts of humanitarian aid.

The fourth year of this ordeal has failed to shatter her political views. “We must be only with Russia, we only hope for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to take us under his wing,” she repeats. “Anyway, everyone says it’s Russian land.”

The feeling of relative normalcy which prevails in most parts of Donetsk, dissipates when you realise the city center is just slightly more than 10 km (6.3 miles) from the frontline.

The war is felt in the volatile rates of several currencies circulating in the city, in low wages and poor quality of local food.

And it is felt in the families which lost loved ones in the war that has claimed a total of more than 10,000 lives so far.

(Reporting by Alexander Ermochenko; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Tillerson says Ukraine is biggest obstacle to normal Russia ties

By Francois Murphy and Shadia Nasralla

VIENNA (Reuters) – The United States would “badly” like to lift sanctions against Russia but will not do so until Moscow has pulled its forces out of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday, calling that the main obstacle to normal ties.

Tillerson is on a visit to Europe during which he has reassured allies with tougher rhetoric against Moscow than that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sought better relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), also attended by his Russian counterpart, Tillerson said Moscow was to blame for increased violence in eastern Ukraine and that had to stop.

“We’ve made this clear to Russia from the very beginning, that we must address Ukraine,” Tillerson told a news conference with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz. “It stands as the single most difficult obstacle to us renormalizing the relationship with Russia, which we badly would like to do.”

On Wednesday, Tillerson met NATO foreign ministers and criticized Russia for the mix of state-sponsored computer hacks and Internet disinformation campaigns that NATO allies’ intelligence agencies say is targeted at the West.

The conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists has claimed more than 10,000 lives since it erupted in 2014. Russia denies accusations that it fomented the conflict and provided arms and fighters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the OSCE conference that “all the responsibility is with Ukraine” as far as violence in the east was concerned.

In his speech to the gathering, Tillerson went even further in spelling out Russia’s involvement in the conflict and the consequences it faced than he had the day before in Brussels.

“We should be clear about the source of this violence,” Tillerson said, referring to increasing ceasefire violations recorded by OSCE monitors in eastern Ukraine.

“Russia is arming, leading, training and fighting alongside anti-government forces. We call on Russia and its proxies to end its harassment, intimidation and its attacks on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission.”

While both sides have called for a U.N. peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine, they disagree on the terms of its deployment, and there was no sign of progress at Thursday’s meeting.

“We will continue to work with Russia to see if we could not agree a peacekeeping force that could enter Ukraine (and) reduce the violence,” Tillerson told the news conference.

In his speech, he referred to the 2015 Minsk ceasefire agreement, brokered in the Belarussian capital by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.

“In eastern Ukraine, we join our European partners in maintaining sanctions until Russia withdraws its forces from the Donbass (region) and meets its Minsk commitments,” Tillerson said.

He also made clear that Washington did not accept Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

“We will never accept Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea. Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns full control of the peninsula to Ukraine,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Kirsti Knolle, Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

As West frowns on Putin, young Russians learn the military way

STAVROPOL, Russia (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin may be criticized by the West for the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but at home his public approval ratings have been boosted.

The operation to seize the peninsula, hailed by Russian nationalists as “The Crimean Spring”, led to an upsurge in what is called “military and patriotic education” of Russian youths.

In the southern region of Stavropol, interest has been revived in the Cossacks, a warrior class in tsarist times, and in the history of tsarist and modern wars which Moscow fought in the North Caucasus region.

The Cossacks, who were portrayed as peaceful ploughmen in quiet times, were swift to repel attacks from nearby regions, such as Chechnya and Dagestan, or join Moscow’s military campaigns elsewhere.

“Tomorrow begins today,” reads the motto of a cadet school in Stavropol that was named after Alexei Yermolov, a 19th century Russian general who conquered the Caucasus for the Russian empire.

A Reuters photo essay (http://reut.rs/2jp4dgu) captures images from the General Yermolov Cadet School training in Stavropol and in the countryside.

Most cadets come from families of active Russian soldiers or officers from other security forces. About 40 percent of school leavers join the military or law enforcement agencies.

Many instructors spent years in “hot spots” or conflict zones.

A group of teenagers from the “Patriot” club in Crimea visited the school’s field camp, named “Russian Knights”, over the summer. Up to 600 boys and girls train there each summer.

This camp trains more than 1,500 teenagers a year.

Physical exercises go hand-in-hand with weapons training, marksmanship tests, car driving and even parachuting.

(Reporting by Eduard Korniyenko; Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Edmund Blair)

Putin, Trump may meet next week at APEC summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to meet with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia October 30, 2017

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump may meet next week at an Asian economic summit amid strains over sanctions against Moscow, the Syria conflict and the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

The Kremlin on Friday said talks were under way to set up an encounter at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Danang, Vietnam, from Nov. 8-10.

Trump told Fox News in an interview late on Thursday that it was possible he would meet with Putin during the trip.

“We may have a meeting with Putin,” he said. “And, again – Putin is very important because they can help us with North Korea. They can help us with Syria. We have to talk about Ukraine.”

Representatives for the White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Friday.

“It (the meeting) is indeed being discussed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “It’s hard to overestimate the importance and significance for all international matters of any contact between the presidents of Russia and the United States.”

Putin and Trump first met at a G20 summit in Hamburg in July when they discussed allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election last year but agreed to focus on better ties rather than litigating the past.

But relations between Moscow and Washington have soured further since then.

Trump in August grudgingly signed off on new sanctions against Russia, a move Moscow said ended hopes for better ties. Putin ordered Washington to cut its embassy and consular staff in Russia by more than half.

Tensions have also flared over the conflict in Syria.

If it the Trump-Putin meeting comes about, it would come as investigations in Washington over alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign yielded its first indictments.

U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s office this week unveiled charges against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Manafort associate Richard Gates and campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty while Papadapoulos pleaded guilty.

The Wall Street Journal also has reported that U.S. authorities have enough evidence to charge six members of the Russian government in the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers during the 2016 campaign.

(Reporting by Polina Nikolskaya in Moscow and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Maria Kiselyova and Bill Trott)

Putin opens monument to Stalin’s victims, dissidents cry foul

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and former Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin attend a ceremony unveiling the country's first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called "The Wall of Grief" in downtown Moscow, Russia October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Alexander

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin inaugurated a monument to the victims of Stalinist purges on Monday, but Soviet-era dissidents accused him of cynicism at a time when they say authorities are riding roughshod over civil freedoms.

“The Wall of Grief” occupies a space on the edge of Moscow’s busy 10-lane ring road and depicts a mass of faceless victims, many of whom were sent to prison camps or executed on Josef Stalin’s watch after falsely being accused of being “enemies of the people.”

Nearly 700,000 people were executed during the Great Terror of 1937-38, according to conservative official estimates.

“An unequivocal and clear assessment of the repression will help to prevent it being repeated,” Putin said at the opening ceremony.

“This terrible past must not be erased from our national memory and cannot be justified by anything.”

His words and the ceremony amounted to one of his strongest condemnations of the Soviet Union’s dark side in the 18 years he has dominated Russia’s political landscape.

Putin has in the past called Stalin “a complex figure” and said attempts to demonise him were a ploy to attack Russia. But at Monday’s ceremony, he said there were lessons for Russia.

“It doesn’t mean demanding accounts be settled,” said Putin, who stressed a need for stability. “We must never again push society to the dangerous precipice of division.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a ceremony unveiling the country’s first national memorial to victims of Soviet-era political repressions called “The Wall of Grief” in Moscow, Russia October 30, 2017. REUTERS/Alexander Nemenov/Pool

‘TRAGIC PAGES’

Putin’s carefully balanced words reflect Kremlin unease over this year’s centenary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which paved the way for Stalin’s rise. Uncomfortable about promoting discussion of the idea of governments being overthrown by force, the Kremlin is not organizing any commemorative events.

Putin, who is expected to run for and win the presidency again in March, told human rights activists earlier on Monday that he hoped the centenary would allow society to draw a line under the tumultuous events of 1917 and to accept Russia’s history – “with great victories and tragic pages”.

Yet some historians fret that what they say is Putin’s ambiguity about Stalin along with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea have emboldened Stalin’s admirers.

Monuments and memorial plaques honoring Stalin have sprung up in different Russian regions. State-approved textbooks have softened his image, and an opinion poll in June crowned him the country’s most outstanding historical figure.

By contrast, those who have helped document Stalin’s crimes, from the Memorial human rights group to individual historians and journalists, have sometimes felt themselves under pressure from the authorities.

A group of Soviet-era dissidents published a letter on Monday, accusing Putin of cynicism.

“We … consider the opening in Moscow of a monument to victims of political repression untimely and cynical,” they said in the letter, published on the Kasparov.ru news portal.

“It’s impossible to take part in memorial events organized by the authorities who say they are sorry about victims of the Soviet regime, but in practice continue political repression and crush civil freedoms.”

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

U.S. hopes for more from Russia after Crimean prisoners freed

Kurt Volker, United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Kiev, Ukraine October 28, 2017. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Matthias Williams

KIEV (Reuters) – The release of two Crimean Tatars from Russian custody this week was a good sign and hopefully means Russia will take positive steps in eastern Ukraine as well, the U.S. special envoy to the Ukraine peace talks said on Saturday.

Ukraine and Russia are at loggerheads over Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and support for separatists in the Donbass region in a conflict that has killed more than 10,000 people despite a notional ceasefire.

Russia unexpectedly released a pair of Tatar activists on Wednesday thanks partly to an intervention by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. They have vowed to return to Crimea to campaign for the release of other prisoners.

“The fact that they were released is a small positive sign,” Kurt Volker told Reuters on a visit to Kiev, where he met the freed men. “It’s the kind of thing you hope you could build on that, Russia would build on that with some other steps with the Donbass,” he added.

A former ambassador to NATO, Volker was appointed in July by the Donald Trump administration to help resolve the Donbass conflict, which Washington cites as a key obstacle to better relations between the United States and Russia.

A recent sticking point is whether and how the United Nations should send a peacekeeping force to the region. Volker met Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov in October for talks on this, which he said produced no breakthroughs but were “constructive”.

“What we are doing, is we are seeing whether we can create some common ideas for how a peacekeeping force could be useful in resolving the conflict,” Volker said, saying the force could only be effective with a stronger mandate than Russia envisages.

Russia denies sending its own troops or sophisticated weaponry to helping the separatists.

Volker blamed Russian aggression for the Donbass conflict but said a realization on Russia’s part that the violence is against its interests could spur a change in Moscow’s behavior.

“The real issue is Russia’s decision-making. Until now, Russia has been holding this territory, keeping this conflict alive, hoping that it provides some leverage over Ukraine,” Volker said.

“The reality has sunk in I believe that this has actually produced the opposite. It has produced a Ukraine that is more unified, more nationalist, more anti-Russian, more westward-looking than ever existed before.”

Volker also said the United States was “actively considering” supplying lethal defensive weapons to Kiev, a prospect that has riled Russia.

“No-one has any worry about someone defending themselves unless they are an aggressor, so it should not be that controversial an issue,” Volker said.

(Editing by Stephen Powell)

NotPetya hackers likely behind BadRabbit attack: researchers

By Jack Stubbs

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Technical indicators suggest a cyber attack which hit Russia and other countries this week was carried out by hackers behind a similar but bigger assault on Ukraine in June, security researchers who analyzed the two campaigns said on Wednesday.

Russia-based cyber firm Group-IB said the BadRabbit virus used in this week’s attack shared a key piece of code with the NotPetya malware that crippled businesses in Ukraine and worldwide earlier this year, suggesting the same group was responsible.

The BadRabbit attack hit Russia, Ukraine and other countries on Tuesday, taking down Russia’s Interfax news agency and delaying flights at Ukraine’s Odessa airport.

Multiple cyber security investigators have linked the two attacks, citing similarities in the malware coding and hacking methods, but stopped short of direct attribution.

Still, experts caution that attributing cyber attacks is notoriously difficult, as hackers regularly use techniques to cover their tracks and sometimes deliberately mislead investigators about their identity.

Security researchers at Cisco’s Talos unit said BadRabbit bore some similarities with NotPetya as they were both based on the same malware, but large parts of code had been rewritten and the new virus distribution method was less sophisticated.

They confirmed BadRabbit used a hacking tool called Eternal Romance, believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) before being stolen and leaked online in April.

NotPetya also employed Eternal Romance, as well as another NSA tool called Eternal Blue. But Talos said they were used in a different way and there was no evidence Bad Rabbit contained Eternal Blue.

“It is highly likely that the same group of hackers was behind (the) BadRabbit ransomware attack on Oct. 25, 2017 and the epidemic of the NotPetya virus, which attacked the energy, telecommunications and financial sectors in Ukraine in June 2017,” Group-IB said in a technical report.

Matthieu Suiche, a French hacker and founder of the United Arab Emirates-based cyber security firm Comae Technologies, said he agreed with the Group-IB assessment that there was “serious reason to consider” that BadRabbit and NotPetya were created by the same people.

But some experts have said the conclusion is surprising as the NotPetya attack is widely thought to have been carried out by Russia, an allegation Moscow denies.

Ukrainian officials have said the NotPetya attack directly targeted Ukraine and was carried about by a hacking group widely known as Black Energy, which some cyber experts say works in favor of Russian government interests. Moscow has repeatedly denied carrying out cyber attacks against Ukraine.

The majority of BadRabbit’s victims were in Russia, with only a few in other countries such Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey and Japan.

Group-IB said some parts of the BadRabbit virus dated from mid-2014, however, suggesting the hackers used old tools from previous attacks. “This corresponds with BlackEnergy timeframes, as the group started its notable activity in 2014,” it said.

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Jim Finkle/Mark Heinrich)

Ukraine says cyber attack may strike in next few days

A hooded man holds a laptop computer as blue screen with an exclamation mark is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

KIEV (Reuters) – The government of Ukraine, which was victim of a major cyber attack earlier this year, told businesses on Friday to make sure their networks were protected because of intelligence suggesting that another attack may be in the works.

Ukraine’s state security service SBU and the state-run Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said the attack could take place Oct. 13-17 when Ukraine celebrates Defender of Ukraine Day.

Ukraine, which believes Russia is behind regular attacks on its computer systems, is trying to roll out a national strategy to keep state institutions and major companies safe. Moscow denies that it is behind cyber attacks on its neighbor.

The security agencies said that a new attack may be similar to the NotPetya computer virus which struck on June 27 taking down computers in Ukrainian government agencies and businesses before spreading rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; editing by Peter Graff)

Moscow denies Ukraine’s accusation that it left troops in Belarus

FILE PICTURE: Spokesman for the Russian Defence Ministry, Major-General Igor Konashenkov speaks during a news conference in Moscow, Russia, September 26, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian troops that took part in war games in neighboring Belarus have returned to their bases, a Russian general said on Saturday.

“As for units of Russian forces that took part in a mutual strategic military exercises ‘Zapad 2017’, they all returned to their permanent disposition,” TASS news agency quoted Major-General Igor Konashenkov as saying. “Zapad” is the Russian word for “west”.

Konashenkov spoke after Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Viktor Muzhenko said Russia had left troops behind after staging the war games despite promising not to.

Relations between Kiev and Moscow nosedived after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 and supported the outbreak of a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,000 people.

Muzhenko told Reuters that Russia had withdrawn only a few units from Belarus and had lied about how many of its soldiers were there in the first place.

Konashenkov said Muzhenko’s remarks on Russian troops in Belarus were a fantasy. He said the comments were “a reason for an immediate resignation for such an executive officer,” referring to Muzhenko.

A Belarussian defense ministry spokesman said the last train of Russian troops and equipment had left Belarus on Thursday, Sept. 28.

(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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