Tag Archives: Ukraine

Exclusive: Russia may borrow in yuan this year for first time

100 Yuan Note

By Yelena Orekhova and Andrey Ostroukh

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia may borrow Chinese yuan for the first time ever by the end of 2016, a Russian finance ministry official said, a step towards Moscow’s ambition of using Asian credit markets to compensate for its limited access to Western funding.

Russia needs new sources of cash as low crude oil prices lead to widening shortfalls in the budget. Its access to Western capital markets is restricted by Western sanctions imposed on it over the conflict in Ukraine.

One option the finance ministry may choose is selling treasury bonds, known as OFZs, denominated in the Chinese currency, later this year, Konstantin Vyshkovsky, head of the state debt department at the finance ministry, told Reuters.

Moscow may raise the equivalent of $1 billion in yuan through the OFZs, money that the finance ministry would convert into rubles, Vyshkovsky said.

Russia has drawn closer to China, painting it as its close partner, after Moscow’s relations with the West were soured by its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its support of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

But Moscow’s pivot towards Asia has not gone smoothly, in part because Asian credit markets are much shallower than the Western debt markets that Russia has turned to in the past when it needed to borrow.

Russia raised $3 billion through a dollar-denominated Eurobond this year, but the issue was complicated by the fact that many major financial institutions were wary of taking part because of sanctions risk.

Under a plan set by the finance ministry, Russia will not raise any more foreign debt this year, so the yuan-denominated OFZs, which are considered domestic borrowing, would be a timely supplement for the budget.

The money raised may help avoid a greater budget deficit, which this year will exceed the ceiling of three percent of gross domestic product that had been initially set by President Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s Reserve Fund is running out and low prices for crude oil, its key export, are putting pressure on the budget. The finance ministry had said it will respond by increasing borrowing and will also try to proceed with selling state stakes in major Russia companies.

The OFZ bonds would be issued as part of additional borrowing worth 200 billion rubles ($3.21 billion), Vyshkovsky said.

The extra borrowing program for the fourth quarter was approved in September after Russia had nearly reached its full-year borrowing limit of 300 billion rubles in the domestic market in the first three quarters.

Sovereign rouble bonds enjoyed strong demand this year thanks to high yields linked to the central bank interest rates . The central bank has been reluctant to cut rates quickly, given risks that inflation won’t slow to its ambitious target an all-time low of 4 percent in 2017.

($1 = 62.2255 rubles)

(Reporting by Yelena Orekhova, writing by Andrey Ostroukh, editing by Christian Lowe, Larry King)

Escalation in Syria means EU less likely to soften stance on Russia

Russia's President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the 23rd World Energy Congress in Istanbul, Turkey,

By Gabriela Baczynska and John Irish

BRUSSELS/ PARIS (Reuters) – Outraged by Russia’s intensified air strikes on rebels in Syria, the European Union is now less likely to ease sanctions on Moscow over Ukraine, diplomats say, and some in the bloc are raising the prospect of more punitive steps against the Kremlin.

While the EU says conflicts in Syria and Ukraine need to be kept separate, the latest military offensive by Damascus and its ally Moscow on rebel-held eastern Aleppo further clouds the strained ties between Moscow and the bloc.

That weakens the hand of Italy, Hungary and others who have steadily increased pressure for easing sanctions, returning to doing business and reengaging with Moscow after first hitting it with punitive measures for annexing Crimea in March 2014.

“It’s clear that the assault on Aleppo has changed the mindset of some. It will be impossible to back an easing of sanctions on Ukraine in the current context,” said one EU foreign minister.

A French diplomatic source echoed the view, saying: “The prospect of the Russian sanctions over Ukraine being lifted are practically nil after Aleppo.”

France says the Aleppo attacks amount to war crimes and wants Syria and Russia investigated. EU and NATO officials on Monday said the Ukraine sanctions on Russia should be kept in place.

“There is just no appetite for an easing of sanctions now. Ukraine is one thing, but what is going on in Syria creates no atmosphere for any overall improvement in ties with Russia,” said one diplomat in Brussels.

EU leaders will discuss their ties with Moscow on Oct. 20-21 in Brussels. The bloc’s main economic sanctions against Russia over Ukraine are now in place until the end of January.

The sanctions include restrictions on Russia’s access to international financing, curbs on defense and energy cooperation with Moscow, a blacklist of people and entities and limitations on doing business with the Russian-annexed Crimea.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has long called for a substantial debate, saying that the crisis in Ukraine, where Russia backs rebels in the country’s east, must not rule out more economic cooperation.

Italy is backed by Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia and Hungary in calling for doing more business with Russia, the EU’s main gas supplier, not least to help economic growth.

“Things are going from bad to worse. No one will dare to ask for an easing. At this stage, the doves will be happy if things stay where they are,” said another diplomat in Brussels.

Russia says it will never return Crimea to Ukraine. Efforts led by Germany and France to implement a broader peace deal in east Ukraine have stalled for many months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet some leaders of the EU and Ukraine on Oct. 19 for more talks.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko is expected in Brussels at the time of the 28 EU leaders’ summit and the bloc will then hold a high-level meeting with Kiev on Nov.24.

A man carries a child that survived from under debris in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria

A man carries a child that survived from under debris in a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria January 10, 2016. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

NEW SANCTIONS SEEN A LONG SHOT

Diplomats said France was leading discussions on whether to impose new sanctions on Russia specifically over Syria, where Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad in the five-year-old war.

Russia last week vetoed a French-drafted U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate end to air strikes and military flights over Aleppo.

On Monday, EU foreign ministers will discuss the bloc’s reaction to the devastating bombings of Aleppo.

But Germany is seen as opposing new sanctions on Moscow and diplomats in Brussels cast doubt on chances for any swift move on that, saying there was no critical mass among EU states.

“But even if its is too early for the whole bloc to arrive at a common position, the sole fact that these discussions are taking place does send a signal to Russia,” one said.

(Additional reporting by Andreas Rinke in Berlin, Writing by Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Russia’s Putin suspends plutonium cleanup accord with U.S. because of ‘unfriendly’ acts

Putin at award ceremony

By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday suspended an agreement with the United States for disposal of weapons-grade plutonium because of “unfriendly” acts by Washington, the Kremlin said.

A Kremlin spokesman said Putin had signed a decree suspending the 2010 agreement under which each side committed to destroy tonnes of weapons-grade material because Washington had not been implementing it and because of current tensions in relations.

The two former Cold War adversaries are at loggerheads over a raft of issues including Ukraine, where Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supports pro-Moscow separatists, and the conflict in Syria.

The deal, signed in 2000 but which did not come into force until 2010, was being suspended due to “the emergence of a threat to strategic stability and as a result of unfriendly actions by the United States of America towards the Russian Federation”, the preamble to the decree said.

It also said that Washington had failed “to ensure the implementation of its obligations to utilize surplus weapons-grade plutonium”.

The 2010 agreement, signed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called on each side to dispose of 34 tonnes of plutonium by burning in nuclear reactors.

Clinton said at the time that that was enough material to make almost 17,000 nuclear weapons. Both sides then viewed the deal as a sign of increased cooperation between the two former adversaries toward a joint goal of nuclear non-proliferation.

“For quite a long time, Russia had been implementing it (the agreement) unilaterally,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists on Monday.

“Now, taking into account this tension (in relations) in general … the Russian side considers it impossible for the current state of things to last any longer.”

Ties between Moscow and Washington plunged to freezing point over Crimea and Russian support for separatists in eastern Ukraine after protests in Kiev toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich.

Washington led a campaign to impose Western economic sanctions on Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis.

Relations soured further last year when Russia deployed its warplanes to an air base in Syria to provide support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops fighting rebels.

The rift has widened in recent weeks, with Moscow accusing Washington of not delivering on its promise to separate units of moderate Syrian opposition from “terrorists”.

Huge cost overruns have also long been another threat to the project originally estimated at a total of $5.7 billion.

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

MH17 was shot down by Russian-made missile fired from rebel held area

Local workers transport a piece of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 wreckage at the site of the plane crash near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine

By Toby Sterling and Anthony Deutsch

NIEUWEGEIN, Netherlands (Reuters) – A Malaysian airliner shot down in eastern Ukraine was hit by a Russian-made Buk missile launched from a village held by rebels fighting Ukrainian government forces, international prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The findings challenge Moscow’s suggestion that Malaysia Airlines flight 17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014, was brought down by the Ukrainian military. All 298 people on board, most of them Dutch citizens, were killed.

The prosecutors cannot file charges but victims’ relatives have been seeking details of who shot the plane down in the hope that it might lead eventually to prosecutions over an incident which led to a sharp rise in East-West tensions.

The Buk missile system used to shoot down the plane fired one missile from the village of Pervomaysk and was later returned to Russia, said the prosecutors, from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine.

They told a news conference in the central Dutch city of Nieuwegein that the investigative team had identified 100 people who were described as being of interest to them but had not yet been formally identified individual suspects.

It was not clear whether an order had been given for fighters to launch the missile or whether they had acted independently, the prosecutors said.

A civilian investigation by the Dutch Safety Board also concluded last year that MH17 was hit by a Buk missile fired from eastern Ukraine, but Moscow denied that pro-Russian rebels were responsible.

Repeating those denials on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “First-hand radar data identified all flying objects which could have been launched or were in the air over the territory controlled by rebels at that moment.”

“The data are clear-cut…there is no rocket. If there was a rocket, it could only have been fired from elsewhere,” he said.

The investigators said they had not had access to the new radar images on which Moscow was basing its latest statements.

Ukraine's President Poroshenko and Dutch ambassador to Ukraine Klompenhouwer commemorate victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko (R) and Dutch ambassador to Ukraine Kees Klompenhouwer commemorate victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 outside the Dutch embassy in Kiev July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

RELATIVES WANT DETAILS

Victims’ families were informed of the findings shortly before the prosecutors’ news conference.

At the time of the incident on July 17, 2014, pro-Russian separatists were fighting Ukrainian government forces in the region. The Boeing 777 broke apart in mid-air, flinging wreckage over several kilometers (miles) of fields in rebel-held territory.

Prosecutors cannot file charges because there is no international agreement on what court a case would be heard in.

Speaking before the news conference, Silene Fredriksz, whose 23-year-old son Bryce was on the airplane with his girlfriend, Daisy Oehlers, said the victims’ families wanted justice.

“As a family we are impatient. We want to know what happened, how it happened and why. We want those responsible to face justice,” she said.

The downing played a significant part in a decision by the European Union and United States to impose sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict.

Ukrainian and Western officials, citing intelligence intercepts, have blamed pro-Russian rebels for the incident. Russia has always denied direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict and rejects responsibility for the destruction of MH17.

Prosecutors have sought legal assistance from Moscow since October 2014, and visited in person for a week in July.

“Russian authorities have offered information in the past, but have not answered all questions,” they said in a statement at the time.

(Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Pravin Char)

Russia announces war games after accusing Ukraine of terrorist plot

Russian President Putin chairs meeting with members of Security Council to discuss additional security measures for Crimea after clashes on

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin summoned his security council and the Russian Navy announced war games in the Black Sea, a day after the Russian president accused Ukraine of trying to provoke a conflict over Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in 2014.

The belligerent posture heightened worries in Ukraine that Russia may plan to ramp up fighting in a war between Kiev and pro-Russian eastern separatists that had been de-escalated by a shaky peace process.

Using some of his most aggressive rhetoric against Kiev since the height of the war two years ago, Putin has pledged to take counter-measures against Ukraine, which he accused of sending saboteurs into Crimea to carry out terrorist acts.

Ukraine has called the accusations false and says they look like a pretext for Russia to escalate hostilities. Such an escalation could be used by Putin to demand better terms in the Ukraine peace process, or to inflame nationalist passions at home ahead of Russian parliamentary elections next month.

The Russian leader met his top military and intelligence service brass on Thursday and reviewed “scenarios for counter-terrorism security measures along the land border, offshore and in Crimean air space,” the Kremlin said.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he had ordered all Ukrainian units near Crimea and in eastern Ukraine onto the highest state of combat readiness. He was seeking to urgently speak to Putin, the leaders of France and Germany, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and European Council President Donald Tusk.

Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border guards, said Russia had massed troops on Ukraine’s border with Crimea in recent days following an uptick in Russian military activity in northern Crimea and heavier fighting in eastern Ukraine.

“These troops are coming with more modern equipment and there are air assault units,” he told a news briefing in Kiev.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its navy – whose Black Sea Fleet is based in Crimea – would start to hold exercises in the area to practice repelling underwater attacks by saboteurs.

PUTIN’S PLAY

Russia says it caught the infiltrators after at least two armed clashes on the border between Crimea and Ukraine over the weekend, and one of its soldiers and an FSB security service employee were killed. Kiev denies the events ever happened.

Whatever the truth, the allegations have already scuppered planned talks about eastern Ukraine slated for the sidelines of a G20 summit in China next month. Putin said such talks would now be “pointless.”

In an editorial, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti said escalation was a proven Kremlin tactic ahead of negotiations. Putin was trying either to alter or to tear up the Minsk peace process, named for the Belarus capital where truces were hammered out for the war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.

“Events in Donbass in 2014-15 showed that the Kremlin tactic is to raise the stakes before negotiations. The main political question now is what will happen to the Minsk process. Will Russia break away from it or will it demand new concessions?” the newspaper wrote.

“Putin in his rhetoric has returned to the start of 2014. Once again, he does not deem the Ukrainian authorities legitimate.”

Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst in Ukraine, said he thought the Kremlin had its own revised peace plan for eastern Ukraine up its sleeve.

“Putin will scare the West with the prospect of full-scale conflict with Ukraine,” he said. “He is trying to increase pressure on Kiev to force Ukraine to accept a Russian plan to resolve the conflict in the east.

“Putin won’t go all out for a big war. But there might be pinpoint military operations against radicals whose bases are located near the border with Crimea.”

PUTIN’S AIMS

The European Union and the United States have tied the success of talks under the Minsk process to any possible decision to lift financial sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

But Moscow has grown increasingly frustrated by the talks and by what it says is Ukraine’s refusal to fulfill the terms of the truce. Kiev for its part says Moscow is the one that is still stirring tensions among pro-Russian separatists.

Escalating tension over Crimea could give Putin a pretext to abandon talks altogether, or demand changes to their format and terms, while holding out the prospect of a full-scale renewal of hostilities if he doesn’t get what he wants.

It could also help rally Russians ahead of the parliamentary vote, in which the main pro-Kremlin United Russia Party might struggle to win as many votes as usual because of an economic slump caused by low oil prices as well as the sanctions.

“While polls show United Russia doing okay (60 percent support), Putin never likes to take chances with domestic politics,” Timothy Ash, a strategist at Nomura Bank, wrote in a note. “(He) will want to impress on the Russian electorate his own strength and how lucky they are to be Russian citizens as perhaps compared to their Ukrainian counterparts.”

The imbroglio also gives Crimea’s pro-Russian authorities an excuse for their failure to raise living standards since Russia took over. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-backed prime minister, told state TV he blamed the Ukrainian incursions on the U.S. State Department.

Putin may also hope instability in Ukraine can feed into the U.S. presidential election campaign, where Republican Donald Trump accuses President Barack Obama’s administration of incompetence and has called for better ties with Moscow. Putin may yet hope to cut a deal on both Ukraine and Syria, the two big issues of contention with Washington, before Obama exits.

What actually happened in and around Crimea at the weekend remains disputed. U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt said Washington had so far seen nothing to corroborate Russia’s version. A spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini also said there had been no independent confirmation.

Russia’s Kommersant newspaper on Thursday cited unnamed security sources as saying a group of men Russia had arrested for planning attacks had confessed to seeking to destroy Crimea’s tourist industry by bombing resorts.

The sources told Kommersant two of seven saboteurs in one group had been killed and five captured. Most were Crimea residents and some had Russian passports, they said.

In Ukraine, the brother of one of the detained men said he thought his brother had been kidnapped as part of “a big game.”

(Additonal reporting by Matthias Williams, Pavel Polityuk, Natalia Zinets and Alexei Kalmykov in Kiev, by Maria Tsvetkova and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow and by Francesco Guarascio in Brussels; Editing by Peter Graff)

Obama urges NATO to stand firm against Russia despite Brexit

European Council President Donald Tusk (L-R), U.S. President Barack Obama and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker deliver remarks to reporters after their meeting at the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland July 8, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

By Yeganeh Torbati and Wiktor Szary

WARSAW (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama urged NATO leaders on Friday to stand firm against a resurgent Russia over its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, saying Britain’s vote to leave the European Union should not weaken the Western defense alliance.

In an article published in the Financial Times newspaper as he arrived for his last summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation before he leaves office in January, Obama said America’s “special relationship” with Britain would survive the referendum decision he had warned against.

“The special relationship between the U.S. and the UK will endure. I have no doubt that the UK will remain one of NATO’s most capable members,” he said, but noted that the vote raised significant questions about the future of EU integration.

The 28-nation EU will formally agree to deploy four battalions totaling 3,000 to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland on a rotating basis to reassure eastern members of its readiness to defend them against any Russian aggression.

Host nation Poland set the tone of mistrust of Russia. Its foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, told a pre-summit forum: “We have to reject any type of wishful thinking with regard to a pragmatic cooperation with Russia as long as it keeps on invading its neighbors.”

Obama was more diplomatic, urging dialogue with Russia, but he too urged allies to keep sanctions on Moscow until it fully complies with a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine, and to help Kiev defend its sovereignty. Ukraine is not itself a member of NATO.

“In Warsaw, we must reaffirm our determination — our duty under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty — to defend every NATO ally,” Obama said.

“We need to bolster the defense of our allies in central and eastern Europe, strengthen deterrence and boost our resilience against new threats, including cyber attacks.”

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland – all NATO members – have requested a permanent NATO presence. They fear Moscow will seek to destabilize their pro-Western governments through cyber attacks, stirring up Russian speakers, hostile broadcasting and even territorial incursions. Critics say the NATO plan is a minimal trip wire that might not deter Russian action.

The head of NATO’s military committee, Czech General Petr Pavel, said Russia was attempting to restore its status as a world power, an effort that includes using its military.

“We must accept that Russia can be a competitor, adversary, peer or partner and probably all four at the same time,” he said.

The Kremlin said it was absurd for NATO to talk of any threat coming from Russia and it hoped “common sense” would prevail at the Warsaw summit. Moscow was and remains open to dialogue with NATO and is ready to cooperate with it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with journalists.

Russia often depicts NATO as an aggressor, whose member states are moving troops and military hardware further into former Soviet territory, which it regards as its sphere of influence.

Russian President Vladimir Putin made several gestures aimed at showing a cooperative face before the summit. At the same time, Moscow highlighted its intention to deploy nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.

Putin agreed to a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council next week, the second meeting this year of a consultation body that was put on ice after Moscow’s seizure of Crimea in 2014. Russia allowed a U.N. resolution authorizing the EU to intercept arms shipments to Libya in the Mediterranean, and Putin talked by telephone with Obama in the run-up to the NATO meeting.

However, a White House spokesman said they reached no agreement on cooperation in fighting Islamic State militants in Syria during that call on Wednesday.

BRITAIN

Outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said he will resign after losing the referendum on EU membership last month, will seek to emphasize an active commitment to Western security at his final NATO summit, to offset any concern about Europe’s biggest military spender leaving the EU.

The first item on the summit agenda was the signing of an agreement between the EU and NATO on deeper military and security cooperation.

The U.S.-led alliance is also expected to announce its support for the EU’s Mediterranean interdiction operation. NATO already supports EU efforts to stem a flood of refugees and migrants from Turkey into Greece, in conjunction with an EU-Turkey deal to curb migration in return for benefits for Ankara.

Obama and the other NATO leaders will have a more unscripted discussion of how to deal with Russia over dinner in the same room of the Polish Presidential Palace where the Warsaw Pact was signed in 1955, creating the Soviet-dominated military alliance that was NATO’s adversary during the Cold War.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg sought to balance the new military deployments and air patrols close to Russia’s borders by stressing the alliance would continue to seek “meaningful and constructive dialogue” with Moscow.

“We don’t want a new Cold War,” he told reporters. “The Cold War is history and it should remain history.”

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told reporters before leaving Ankara to attend the summit that NATO also needed to adapt to do more to fight a threat from Islamic State militants, who were accused of last week’s deadly attack on Istanbul airport.

“As we have seen from the terrorist attacks first in Istanbul and then in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, international security is becoming more fragile,” Erdogan said.

“The concept of a security threat is undergoing a serious change. In this process, NATO needs to be more active and has to update itself against the new security threats,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska and Robin Emmott in Warsaw, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul and Elizabeth Piper in Lodon; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Toby Chopra, Larry King)

NATO says Ukraine ceasefire barely holding, scolds Russia

NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg briefs the media during a NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russia is violating an internationally-agreed ceasefire in Ukraine “again and again”, NATO’s chief said on Wednesday, accusing Moscow of continuing to arm separatists in the conflict at the center of East-West tensions.

Some European governments are eager to lift the economic sanctions that the West has levied on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

But the assertions by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg of continued fighting and Russian support would make it difficult to ease any penalties under the terms of the Minsk peace deal.

“The ceasefire is violated again and again, and this is of great concern,” Stoltenberg told a news conference following a meeting about Ukraine with NATO defense ministers. “Russia supports the separatists … with equipment, with weapons. They also mass troops along the Ukrainian border,” he said.

There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin, which has denied any direct support for the rebels. Moscow returned to Kiev jailed Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenko last month, in a prisoner exchange welcomed by Western politicians.

Europe and the United States have linked any softening of the economic sanctions on implementation of the peace deal signed in Minsk in February 2015, which calls for a full ceasefire in the rebel-held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.

EU leaders must decide at a June 28-29 summit whether to extend sanctions on Russia’s financial, defense and energy sectors over what the West says is Moscow’s support for separatists in the conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people since April 2014.

OSCE international observers recorded more than 200 explosions on Sunday and Monday in eastern Ukraine, as well as shelling, heavy-machine-gun fire and grenade attacks that destroyed buildings and left craters in the ground.

Asked about the report, Stoltenberg said: “We see many ceasefire violations over a long period of time. There are also many casualties. Ukrainian soldiers have lost their lives.”

Ukraine’s defense minister, who joined NATO defense ministers for their meeting in Brussels, said civilians were being shelled in the city of Donetsk and that Russian-backed rebels were increasingly using heavy weapons.

“We have evidence that separatists are firing at Donetsk,” Stepan Poltorak told a separate news conference.

“How can we talk about a ceasefire when it is violated 50 or 60 times a day, when we have soldiers wounded every day? Violations are made by heavy artillery, which is banned by Minsk,” he said.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Andrew Heavens)

MH17 investigation at ‘advanced stage’

Emergencies Ministry member walks at a site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Prosecutors conducting the criminal investigation into the downing of flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine two years ago said on Friday it was at “a very advanced stage” and that they would present their conclusions after the summer.

In a statement, prosecutors said they had made “several requests” for legal assistance from countries involved in the case, but were still waiting for information from Russia about the Buk missile that is believed to have brought down, killing 298 people.

The investigation is being carried out by a joint investigation team involving officials from Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine and led by the Netherlands, from where two thirds of the flight’s passengers came.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by Andrew Roche)

Ukraine bans Gorbachev over support for Crimea annexation

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev looks on during a presentation of his new book "After Kremlin" in Moscow

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine has banned former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev from entry for the next five years over his support for Russia’s seizure of Crimea, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) said on Thursday.

A spokesman for Gorbachev pointed to his response to Russian state media earlier this week when asked about a possible Ukraine travel ban. “Fine, I don’t go there and I will not go there,” he said.

The Crimea does not have uniformly happy associations for Gorbachev whose Perestroika reforms ended the Cold War but ultimately brought the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

It was at a holiday home at Foros, on its Black Sea coast, that he was held prisoner for three days in 1991 in a failed coup by communist hardliners.

Gorbachev, 85, has repeatedly commended the 2014 annexation of the peninsula, which houses a large Russian naval base. On Sunday, he told Britain’s Sunday Times he would have acted the same way as President Vladimir Putin in a similar situation.

However, the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner has warned of potentially dire consequences if tensions are not reduced over the Ukraine crisis. He has also been critical of Putin on domestic issues.

The annexation followed the toppling of a pro-Russian president in Kiev. Within weeks, a pro-Russian insurrection broke out the east of Ukraine that has so far cost over 9,000 lives and soured relations between Moscow and the West.

“We have indeed banned him from entering for five years in the interests of state security, including for his public support of the military annexation of Crimea,” SBU spokeswoman, Olena Gitlyanska, said in post on Facebook.

Last September, the SBU banned former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi from entering Ukraine after he became the most prominent Western politician to visit Crimea, where he met Putin, an old friend and political ally.

(Reporting by Alessandra Prentice; Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly; editing by Matthias Williams and Ralph Boulton)

Ukraine Chernobyl victims remember on 30th anniversary

A man lights a candle at a memorial, dedicated to firefighters and workers who died after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, during a night service in the city of Slavutych

By Alessandra Prentice and Natalia Zinets

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine held memorial services on Tuesday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster which permanently poisoned swathes of eastern Europe and highlighted the shortcomings of the secretive Soviet system.

In the early hours of April 26, 1986, a botched test at the nuclear plant in then-Soviet Ukraine triggered a meltdown that spewed deadly clouds of atomic material into the atmosphere, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes.

President Petro Poroshenko attended a ceremony at the Chernobyl plant, which sits in the middle of an uninhabitable ‘exclusion zone’ the size of Luxembourg.

“The issue of the consequences of the catastrophe is not resolved. They have been a heavy burden on the shoulders of the Ukrainian people and we are still a long way off from overcoming them,” he said.

More than half a million civilian and military personnel were drafted in from across the former Soviet Union as so-called liquidators to clean-up and contain the nuclear fallout, according to the World Health Organization.

Thirty-one plant workers and firemen died in the immediate aftermath of the accident, most from acute radiation sickness.

Over the past three decades, thousands more have succumbed to radiation-related illnesses such as cancer, although the total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

Nikolay Chernyavskiy, 65, who worked at Chernobyl and later volunteered as a liquidator, recalls climbing to the roof of his apartment block in the nearby town of Prypyat to get a look at the plant after the accident.

“My son said ‘Papa, Papa, I want to look too’. He’s got to wear glasses now and I feel like it’s my fault for letting him look,” Chernyavskiy said.

The anniversary has garnered extra attention due to the imminent completion of a giant 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) steel-clad arch that will enclose the stricken reactor site and prevent further leaks for the next 100 years.

The project was funded with donations from more than 40 governments and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Even with the new structure, the surrounding zone – 2,600 square km (1,000 square miles) of forest and marshland on the border of Ukraine and Belarus – will remain uninhabitable and closed to unsanctioned visitors.

The disaster and the government’s reaction highlighted the flaws of the Soviet system with its unaccountable bureaucrats and entrenched culture of secrecy. For example, the evacuation order only came 36 hours after the accident.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said he considers Chernobyl one of the main nails in the coffin of the Soviet Union, which eventually collapsed in 1991.

(Additional reporting by Margaryta Chornokondratenko, Sergei Karazy and Andriy Perun; Editing by Robert Birsel and Richard Balmforth)