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MOSCOW (Sputnik) Germany expects the United States touse the countrys influence onall the parties concerned toimplement the Minsk agreements onthe conflict settlement inUkraine, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Thursday.

"We would liketo see the United States not only informed, butalso using their capabilities, asan official representative ofthe State Department said, toexert influence onthose whom they can influence, so that [the Minsk agreements] were respected," Gabriel said afterholding talks withRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Gabriel is currently paying a two-day working visit toMoscow inorder todiscuss international issues, including the Syrian and Ukrainian crises and EU-Russia ties.

Sputnik/ Sergey Averin

In February 2015, Kiev forces and Donbass independence supporters signed a peace agreement inthe Belarusian capital ofMinsk. The deal stipulates a full ceasefire, weapons withdrawal fromthe line ofcontact inDonbass, aswell asconstitutional reforms that would give a special status tothe Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. Despite the agreement brokered bythe Normandy Four states, the ceasefire regime is regularly violated, withboth sides accusing each other ofmultiple breaches, undermining the terms ofthe accord.

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Berlin Expects US to Facilitate Implementation of Minsk Deal on Ukraine - Sputnik International

During the summer of 2016, in one tragic moment, Evgen Redka lost his friend, his left eye, and the ability to anonymously walk the streets without the concentrated stares of strangers.

The young Ukrainian soldier was nearly killed when the vehicle he was in drove over an anti-tank mine in Eastern Ukraine.

The blast left Redka with excruciating scarring on his face and body, but with help from a specialized team of Canadian medical professionals, there's hope that Redka will once again be able to lead a more normal life.

A team of 20 Canadian medical professionals, including surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurses, worked out of an old Soviet-built hospital in Kyivon a 10-day mission to offer reconstructive surgery to soldiers and civilians wounded during the conflict in the country's eastern regions.

Dr. Oleh Antoyshyn, head surgeon of the mission, fills out a medical record for Evgen Redka before the soldier undergoes an operation. (Anton Skyba)

The workload is unprecedented, but there is no shortage of volunteers willing to work long hours for free, said OlehAntonyshyn, head of the AdultCraniofacialProgram atSunnybrookHealth Sciences Centre and a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Toronto.

"The days are 12, 14 or 16 hours long," Dr. Antonyshyntold CBC News, shortly before an aide whisked him away to inspect another traumatic case. "But still we have many, many more people applying than we have room for."

Torontonian Dr. Harry Fosterand Winnipeg native Dr. Adrian Hawaleshkaare veterans of the mission, which has been in Ukraine three times in the last five years.

While the missions, organized by the Canada-Ukraine Foundation,are mainlyfunded by private donations, the team did receive government support in 2016. They're also supported by Stryker Canada, which provides all surgical hardware and implant materials for the medical procedures.

Dr. Hawaleshka feels connected here as a Canadian of Ukrainian heritage, but both doctors say they want the chance to make a lifelong impact in the lives of people who otherwise would likely never get the specialized care the Canadians can offer.

Nurse Ella Bakh, centre, records patient details after a surgery. (Anton Skyba)

"A lot of these guys are solemn, and you can tell that they've lost hope at a young age," says Dr. Foster. "I'm just hoping I can use my skills to give them back a bit of hope."

Canadian medical professionals including craniofacialreconstructive plastic surgeons, microsurgeons, neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, GPs, nurses and physical therapists have now completed over 300 reconstructive procedures on a total of 127 patients through the mission.

In 2015, they operated on a 10-year-old boy named Mykola, who was wounded by a blast in Eastern Ukraine. The boy lost both of his legs and one arm, and sustained dramatic shrapnel damage to his face and body.

He was brought via train to the Canadian doctors by a Ukrainian volunteer who'd heard about the medical mission on the news. The doctors operated on him almost immediately to help alleviate some of the scarring on the young boy's face and to pull bits of shrapnelfrom his body.

Eventually, they helped send him to Shriners Hospital for Children in Montreal, where he stayed for one year while receiving prosthetic limbs and relearning how to walk.

Dr. Oleh Antonshyn, head surgeon for the mission, checks X-rays during the pre-op day. (Anton Skyba)

At first, the patients included civilians shot by government snipers during Ukraine's 2014 Maidan revolution, but now virtually all the patients are Ukrainian soldiers. Their injuries are all sustained on thefront linesand run the gauntlet from almost inconceivable burns and disquieting cases of facial trauma, to more minor but still debilitating wounds.

The soldiers are victims of the war in Eastern Ukraine, which began in the early spring of 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and quietly began sending troops and military equipment across the border into Ukrainian territory.

Combined Russian-separatist forces have fought the Ukrainian military since the spring of 2014. The fighting has now taken the lives of more than 9,750 people and wounded over 20,000 according to official UN figures, while displacing more than 1.8 million people from their homes.

Most of the Ukrainian soldiers seeking treatment will never be able to serve again.

At least one, Valeri Skachka, 24, recalled being trained by Canadian soldiers stationed in Western Ukraine during Operation Unifier.

"They just operated at such a serious level," said Skachka of his timewith the Canadian troops. "It was eye-opening to see that level of organization and equipment."

Valeri Skachka shows his certificate of participation in Unifier traning, a day after he had hand surgery from the Canadian surgery mission to Ukraine. (Anton Skyba)

Skachka is currently eager to return to the fighting, after surgery on his hand.

In two days of consultations, Dr.Antonyshynand his team saw dozens of patients to determine whether they can be offered treatment. That's followed by five gruelling days of intricate surgery.

And although U.S. President Trump's commitment to Ukraine in the conflict, established under the Obama administration, has been called into question, a set of U.S. Army onlookers joined the Canadian team for this mission.

U.S. Army Major Justin Miller made the trip from Germany as part of a six-person detachment from the American military who are hoping to replicate the Canadian medical mission for their own standalone aid program for Ukraine.

"We're in the early stages of planning for the U.S. mission," Miller, a veteran of the Iraq War, told CBC News."But being here and seeing the amount of injuries and disfigurements from war, I can tell you it's been awhile since we've seen this on our side."

Dr. Todd Mainprize, head of neurosurgery at Sunnybrook Health Sciences, finishes his operation in Kyiv Central Military Hospital. (Anton Skyba)

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Canadian doctors rebuild bodies shattered by war in Ukraine - CBC.ca

Arsene Wenger felt that the red card delivered to Laurent Koscielny was game-changing moment.

It was. But it was right.

The Frenchman was sent off for the denial of an obvious goalscoring opportunity in the 53rd minute of Arsenal's second leg tie with Bayern Munich with the Gunners leading 1-0.

Greek referee Tasos Sidiropoulos - who was taking charge of his first-ever Champions League knockout game - originally handed a yellow card to Koscielny.

With the game having not restarted, the fifth official behind the goal corrected the decision and told Sidiropoulos to brandish red.

At the start of this season, the law regarding the denial of a goalscoring opportunity changed, so that if the offence occurred inside the penalty area, it would be a yellow card, rather than red.

That is apart from when it is an 'upper body' offence.

The law describe these as "holding, pulling or pushing" fouls, or one where "the offending player foes not attempt to play the ball or there is no possibility for the player making the challenge to play the ball".

As Koscielny's foul was one of the above mentioned 'upper body' offences, it was correct decision in law to send off Koscielny.

Mirror Football columnist Robbie Savage tweeted: "Correct decision red card, in my opinion no genuine attempt to play the ball a push in the back prevented clear goal scoring opportunity."

Former World Cup final and Premier League referee Howard Webb quickly responded with "Correct interpretation."

Wenger insisted that the incident was game-changing. It certainly was.

Over the two legs, with Koscielny on the pitch, Arsenal would have been leading 2-1. Without him... well, you do the maths.

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Why Laurent Koscielny's red card for Arsenal in Bayern Munich defeat was the RIGHT decision - Mirror.co.uk

Two people familiar with the matter say Trump's White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and Obama's former White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, have spoken since Trump claimed, without evidence, that Obama had him wiretapped.

There have also been conversations between other former Obama officials and Trump officials since Saturday.

"There is a dialogue," one person familiar with the conversations said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the talks.

The question is whether these talks among advisers will ultimately lead to a conversation between the 44th and 45th presidents.

Spokesmen for Trump and Obama declined to comment.

Obama was irked and exasperated in response to his successor's uncorroborated wiretapping accusation, sources close to the former president tell CNN, though these sources say Obama's reaction stopped short of outright fury.

Obama and his aides responded with disbelief when they learned of Trump's Saturday morning tweets laying out the charges. Later in the day, an Obama spokesman said "neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any US citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."

Obama's loyal army of supporters have been far more active in voicing their dissatisfaction with Trump. On social media and television, former aides have been aggressively pushing back on Trump in the first weeks of his presidency.

Presidents Trump and Obama have not spoken since Inauguration Day, when Obama welcomed Trump for coffee in the White House and accompanied him to the US Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony.

The two men had developed what Trump termed a "warm" relationship in the run-up to Trump's inauguration, fostered by an in-person meeting in the Oval Office and several phone conversations.

But people close to both men acknowledge that the bitterness of the presidential campaign, paired with Trump's longstanding antagonism toward Obama regarding his birth certificate, would make a close relationship improbable.

On the weekend that Trump levied his explosive charges, Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, were spotted at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on a private tour of artist Theaster Gates' new exhibition. The President was all smiles when he departed the museum, dressed casually and carrying a bag from the gallery's gift shop.

Asked Monday whether Trump's claims would damage the relationship between the 44th and 45th presidents, White House press secretary Sean Spicer downplayed any tensions.

"I think that they'll be just fine," Spicer said.

CNN's Kate Bennett contributed to this report.

This story has been updated to reflect CNN's latest reporting.

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Trump, Obama haven't spoken since inauguration, but advisers ...

Trump greets former President Barack Obama during the presidential inauguration. | Getty

The former president hits back at the charge, with a spokesman saying, 'Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.'

By Eli Stokols

03/04/17 07:45 AM EST

Updated 03/04/17 04:45 PM EST

President Donald Trump, under scrutiny for possible ties between his campaign and Russia and increasingly fixated with rooting out leaks, on Saturday sought to deflect attention by accusing former President Barack Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phones prior to the election.

He offered no evidence to support his claims, which appear to be based on commentary rising in conservative media circles and, above all, the presidents own agitation over the metastasizing Russia controversy.

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Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism! Trump tweeted, as part of a six-tweet screed.

Trump went on to ask, Is it legal for a sitting President to be wire tapping a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election! Trump continued, also tweeting, How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

An Obama spokesman forcefully pushed back against the accusation. "A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice," said Kevin Lewis, an Obama spokesman. "As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false."

Obama's former speechwriter, Jon Favreau, pointed out in a tweet that the former president's avowed lack of involvement does not mean that a legal FISA warrant could not have been granted to tap Trump's phones if the intelligence community had reason to do so. I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the WH ordered it," Favreau tweeted.

Former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes also tweeted back at Trump: No President can order a wiretap. Those restrictions were put in place to protect citizens from people like you."

Trumps top aides were caught off guard by the tweets Saturday morning, a senior administration official said. The president was scheduled to spend a quiet day golfing and relaxing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. After several days without a controversial tweet and a relative message discipline following his speech to Congress on Tuesday evening, Trumps angry Twitter tirade marked a return to form and a trusted tactic of turning around the exact words being used against him on his opponents.

Trumps allegation that Obama carried out Nixon/Watergate-like wire-tapping comes at a time when his own administrations constant leaks and controversies have drawn comparisons to Nixons White House. His complaints of McCarthyism come from a president who was mentored by McCarthy adviser Roy Cohn and whose focus on rooting out undocumented immigrants has troubled critics who fear allegiance tests.

It was not immediately clear what specifically prompted the outburst, but the accusations parrot those made by conservative radio host Mark Levin, who on Thursday evening asserted that Obama used police state tactics to undermine Trump in the last months of his presidential campaign.

Breitbart senior editor Joel Pollak then picked up Levins argument on Friday.

It appears that the crux of that argument comes from reporting that U.S. officials secretly monitored a computer server in Trump Tower to determine whether there were links to Russian banks. A New York Times article published on Jan. 19 just one day before Trumps inauguration reported that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies had intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a probe of links between Trumps campaign and Russian officials.

There has been no definitive reporting, however, that any phone lines belonging to the Trump campaign were tapped. If a judge found probable cause to conduct such secret monitoring, it likely would have been after being presented with enough evidence to suspect illegal conduct or communication with a foreign leader.

Trump and his team have been dogged by allegations of contacts between his campaign and Russian intelligence officials that occurred as Russians were allegedly attempting to tilt the election in Trumps favor by hacking Democratic targets.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told attendees at a raucous town hall in Clemson, South Carolina, that he was "very worried" about the allegations. "The president of the United States is claiming that the former president of the United States ordered wiretapping of his campaign last year, Graham told the crowd. I dont know if its true or not, but if it is true, illegally, it would be the biggest political scandal since Watergate.

After several people in the crowd began to boo and yell, Graham asked them to calm down so he could continue. If the former president of the United States was able to obtain a warrant lawfully to monitor the Trump campaign for violating law, that would be the biggest scandal since Watergate, he said.

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who opposed both Trump and Hillary Clinton in the presidential campaign, called the current political atmosphere a "civilization-warping crisis of public trust" after Trump's allegations.

"The president today made some very serious allegations, and the informed citizens that a republic requires deserve more information," Sasse said. "If without [an authorization], the president should explain what sort of wiretap it was and how he knows this. It is possible that he was illegally tapped."

Democrats were also blunt.

"If there is something bad or sick going on, it is the willingness of the nation's chief executive to make the most outlandish and destructive claims without providing a scintilla of evidence to support them," said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. "No matter how much we hope and pray that this president will grow into one who respects and understands the Constitution, separation of powers, role of a free press, responsibilities as the leader of the free world, or demonstrates even the most basic regard for the truth, we must now accept that President Trump will never become that man."

The scandal flared up this week when it was revealed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with the Russian ambassador twice last year despite telling senators during his confirmation hearing that he had no communication with the Russians during the campaign.

Sessions was a key adviser to Trumps campaign.

On Saturday morning, Trump attempted to turn the scrutiny to the Obama administration.

The first meeting Jeff Sessions had with the Russian Amb was set up by the Obama Administration under education program for 100 Ambs...... Trump tweeted, adding, Just out: The same Russian Ambassador that met Jeff Sessions visited the Obama White House 22 times, and 4 times last year alone.

Trump's aggressive accusations come as his team has tried to battle numerous leaks regarding law enforcement and intelligence agency investigations into not only allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election but also potential ties between his campaign and the Kremlin.

Trump has raised eyebrows by repeatedly singling out Russian President Vladimir Putin for praise. National security adviser Michael Flynn had to resign last month for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and others about the nature of his post-election conversations with Russian officials. Trump himself has denied that his people were in regular contact with Russian officials, but the controversy has spawned multiple congressional investigations and has fueled calls for a special prosecutor.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Saturday said the current congressional probes are not enough. The Deflector-in-Chief is at it again. An investigation by an independent commission is the only answer, she tweeted.

Trump finished off his tweetstorm on Saturday with an unrelated parting shot for a rival who has nothing to do with the Russia scandal. A day after Arnold Schwarzenegger blamed Trump for the dismal ratings of his version of "Celebrity Apprentice," Trump tweeted: Arnold Schwarzenegger isnt voluntarily leaving the Apprentice, he was fired by his bad (pathetic) ratings, not by me. Sad end to great show.

It had been less than four full days since he said, in his address to Congress on Tuesday night, that the time for trivial fights is behind us.

Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

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Trump accuses Obama of wire tapping Trump Tower phones