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This article first appeared on The Daily Signal.

In September 2014, I watched a tank battle from a hilltop in Mariupol, Ukraine.

I toured that battlefield, the day the first cease-fire was signed, on Sept. 5, 2014. I witnessed a wasteland of charred, destroyed tanks, and armored personnel carriers.

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And scores of dead soldiers who reminded me of the plaster molds of the dead in Pompeii, the way they seemed to be frozen in the moment and the motion of their deaths.

The conflict was then, and it remains today, a real war.

In the early months of the war, with Ukraines regular army on its heels, everyday Ukrainians filled the ranks of a partisan army that stopped an offensive by combined Russian-separatist forces, which was, at that time, leapfrogging across the Donbas.

It was a grassroots war effortan example of a society that didnt need to be coaxed into a war by propaganda but by a spontaneous, organic realization that the homeland was at risk.

Ukrainian society, not its armies, repelled Russias 2014 invasion of the Donbas.

Men of the Ukrainian volunteers battalion of Donbass rest in the village of Shirokine, Donetsk region on June 6, 2015. ALEKSEY CHERNYSHEV/AFP/Getty

And now, three years after the war began, and more than two years after the Minsk II cease-fire went into effect, Ukrainian soldiers are still out there in the trenches, weathering daily artillery attacks, mortars, snipers, tank shots, and rockets, in a static war that feels like it has no end.

The war is mainly fought from trenches and fortified positions along about 250 miles of front lines in the Donbas. Its a long-range battle, in which soldiers hardly ever see whom theyre shooting at.

Its a terrifying type of combat, which I had never experienced during my career as an Air Force special operations pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The February 2015 cease-fire, known as Minsk II, is a farce. The war is still going on, and soldiers and civilians, on both sides, are still dying and being wounded almost every day.

Yet, the war has hardened Ukraine, both its citizens and its soldiers, and proven that the country is ready and willing to fight for its freedom.

During my years of reporting on the war, Ukraines military evolution has been nothing short of remarkable.

In 2014, the Ukrainian army was a rudderless force, which had been gutted in equipment and personnel by 25 years of purposeful neglect and dismantling by successive, corrupt governments that were beholden to Moscow.

In the past three years, and while fighting a war, Ukraine has rebuilt its military into the second-largest in Europe, comprising about 250,000 active-duty troops and 80,000 reservists. On the Continent, only Russias military is bigger.

Its like building a boat while youre already out at sea, Luke Coffey, director of The Heritage Foundations Foreign Policy Center, told me.

Additionally, Ukraine increased its military budget by 23 percent the year after the war began. Ukraines current defense budget of about $6 billion represents roughly 6 percent of the countrys gross domestic product. And military spending is set to increase by about 10 percent annually.

Ukraine now operates more than 2,800 tankscompared with 423 in France, 407 in the U.K., and 408 in Germany.

Similarly, Ukraines arsenal comprises 625 multiple launch rocket systemscompared with 44 in France, 42 in the U.K., and Germanys 50.

Yet, while Ukraine maintains a numerical advantage over other European nations in terms of troops and conventional weapons, its military needs to modernize. Much of its arsenal dates from the Cold War.

Many of the Kalashnikovs the Ukrainian troops use have serial numbers from the 1970s, some from the 1960s or older.

Yet, in a complete about-face from the Cold War, Ukraines strategic military doctrine now identifies Russia as the countrys top security threat. Resultantly, Kiev is rebuilding its military with the specific objective of defending against a Russian invasion and adopting NATO standards by the year 2020.

To modernize, Ukraine is revamping its military-industrial complex.

In 2015, Ukraine was the worlds ninth-largest weapons exporting nation. In 2016, Ukraines arms exports contracts jumped by 25 percent from 2015 levels, totaling about $750 million.

Petro Poroshenko, Ukraines president, has called for Ukraine to rank among the worlds Top 5 weapons exporting countries by 2020.

Yet, in my opinion, the revamp of Ukraines military-industrial complex has been misguided.

Ukraines nationalized defense production conglomerate, Ukroboronprom, has focused on building showcase items like tanks, sophisticated rocket systems, and armored personnel carriers. Thereby siphoning limited funds from dealing with practical battlefield needs.

For example, after more than two years of a static conflict, there are still no mobile army surgical hospital units off the front lines to provide initial medical care for wounded troops. If wounded, Ukrainian troops travel across potholed roads, often in the back of civilian vehicles, to get to the nearest hospital for treatment.

Ukrainian troops are still mostly dependent on non-governmental organizations and civilian volunteers for things like combat medical training, individual first aid kits, body armor, uniforms, food, and water.

At most places, Ukrainian soldiers still used Soviet-era paper maps of the battlefield. Although some enterprising university students have created apps for tablets, which can be used for targeting artillery on a digital map of the war zone.

But the soldiers still have to buy the tablets on their own.

In the front-line town of Marinka, Ukrainian troops have to steal electricity from the local power grid becauseafter three years of warthe government hasnt yet given them generators.

Even something as simple and inexpensive as modifying off-the-shelf drones for reconnaissance and targeting mortars is still being done by civilian volunteers. Many of whom are patriotic university students.

The bottom line: Ukraines military-industrial complex is being undermined by corruption. Altogether, its more committed to building weapons for export than meeting the needs of Ukraines troops in the field.

The Ukrainian government allocated 13.5 billion hryvnias (about $500 million) in 2016 to repair, modernize, and produce new weapons for its armed forces.

Ukroboronprom, however, said it received only one-third of this amount from the government, and is operating at less than half its production capacity.

Yet, despite its materiel shortfalls, Ukraine now has a battle-hardened military that has been fighting a type of conflict, with which virtually no active-duty U.S. troops have combat experience.

Ive had the chance to observe the U.S. Armys training operation at Yavoriv, in western Ukraine. And the overall impression I had was that the Ukrainian soldiers had more to teach the Americans than vice versa.

Trench warfare, tank battles, artillery and rocket barragesUkraines army has years of experience fighting a conventional war with no air support, scant possibility of air medevac, and limited supplies. Theyre used to being on the weak side of a fight. Thats not a familiar place for most U.S. troops to be.

Ukrainians also have years of experience defending against Russian hybrid warfare, including cyberattacks and targeted propaganda. In short, Ukraine has a lot of experience, which the U.S. military and its allies, if they are wise, should study to understand what a war with Russia would look like.

The war in Ukraine is a case study in Russian hybrid warfare. And Ukrainian troops, with limited means available, have improvised a successful defense against it.

After three years of war, in which more than 10,000 Ukrainians have died, morale remains good among the Ukrainian troops. Although theyre weary after three years of war under difficult conditions.

Each time I visit the front lines, I ask the Ukrainian soldiers what theyre fighting for. Throughout three years of unending combat, their answers have not changed.

They say theyre fighting for their countrys freedom. They believe that if they laid down their arms, left their positions, and went home, Russia would simply invade behind them.

Underscoring this existential threat to the homeland, Ukrainian society has militarized due to the war.

Across the country, civilians regularly meet on the weekends for military training. They comprise a network of partisan forces called territorial defense battalions, which can be rapidly mobilized to defend against a Russian invasion.

This grassroots defense mindsetwhich saved Ukraine from disaster in 2014promises a protracted guerrilla conflict should Russia ever again launch a major offensive in Ukraine.

Ukrainians have the will to fight. Theyve proven that by fighting and dying for their freedom, singlehandedly, against the worlds second-strongest military for more than three years. But they need help.

The U.S. has, to date, provided Ukraine with some technology, which has proven useful on the battlefield. Ive observed Ukrainian troops using the U.S. Raven drone on the front lines outside the town of Marinka, to target their mortars on enemy positions and vehicles.

The U.S. has also equipped Ukraines military with counter-battery radars, which are now deployed to protect some military positions.

They are not being used, however, to defend civilian areas, like the towns of Marinka and Avdiivka, which frequently come under rocket and artillery attacks.

A Ukrainian military official told me: These units, although nonlethal, are still considered to be weapons, therefore we do not place them in residential areas or cities in order to not attract enemy fire and jeopardize the safety of civilians who live there.

The perennial question here in Washington is whether the U.S. should send Ukraine lethal, defensive weapons. Based on what Ive seen, and from conversations with Ukrainian officials, U.S. lethal weapons would, at this point, be a largely symbolic gesture. But it would send a strong message to Moscow about U.S. resolve to defend Ukraine from more aggression.

It would also be an affirmation for the right of any people, no matter whose sphere of influence within which they find themselves, to choose their own destiny.

Yet, to truly make a difference on the battlefield, as it exists today, Ukrainian troops still need the basics like body armor, night vision goggles, encrypted radios, and first aid kits.

One last, quick aside before I close.

While I was embedded with the Ukrainian army in Pisky in June 2015, I made friends with an impressive 19-year-old soldier named Daniel Kasyanenko. He was afraid that the war was ruining his soul, he told me, and that he had seen too many horrible things to ever be happy again.

Two months after I met him, a mortar killed Daniel while he was fighting in the trenches in eastern Ukraine.

Yesterday, I emailed Daniels mother, Marina, and told her I was in Washington DC to tell people about the war, and what her son had died fighting for.

She replied to me: Thank you. The whole world must learn the truth about the war in Ukraine. You do what you can to prevent our boys from dying.

Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signals foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.

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Ukraine's War Against Putin-Backed Rebels is Being Undermined ... - Newsweek

Thirty-five of 85 medical students of the Osun State University who were sent to Ukraine University for medical studies by Governor Rauf Aregbesolas administration have returned to Osun.

The medical doctors checkout at the Arrival post of the Muritala Muhammed Airport, Lagos few minutes past9pmon Saturdaynight and were received by a state government delegation led by the Commissioner for Innovation, Science and Technology, Engr Remi Omowaiye and Special Adviser to the governor on Higher Education, Bursary and Scholarship, Prof Grace Akinola.

They returned home after graduating from the the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkov, Ukraine and certified as medical doctors.

About 15 of the medical students stayed back in Ukraine for future pursuit.

It would be recalled that 50 of the 85 UNIOSUN students recently graduated and were inducted as qualified medical doctors after passing the 2017 KROK 2 Ukraine National Medical Exams June this year.

The UNIOSUN students were sent to Ukraine by the Aregbesolas administration to complete their medical studies in Ukraine in 2013 as a result of non-availability of teaching hospital for their clinical studies.

One of the medical students, Miss Latifat Abiola Oyeleye was declared the over best medical student of the Karazin Kharkiv National University as well as the 2017 overall best students in the entire Ukraine with an outstanding score of 95.6% in KROK 2 Exams.

Receiving the young doctors at the Government House, Osogbo, Aregbesola welcomed them and urged them to let their skills, knowledge and education speak for them.

Aregbesola explained that sending the students to Ukraine was not about nationalism but about justice and fairness, stating that the students were admitted for medicine and it behoved the university and government to fulfill their obligations.

He said: We had advertised the medical course and admitted the students, it is the obligation of the government to see the students through the program. Human being will only succeed when he upholds justice and fairness. So, what informed our decision on this students is justice and fairness.

Aregbesola who said education is not about one discipline but about having skills, motivation and knowledge, said he was happy and proud for the success in their academic program.

The governor urged the young doctors to be professional, humane and Godly in discharging their duties in hospitals and everywhere they find themselves.

In their remarks, the students attributed their academic success Aregbesolas commitment to promoting functional education and concern on their plights when they were stranded in UNIOSUN.

They promised to embark on service to humanity and give back to the community, particular Osun state in appreciation of their free medical studies.

Oyeleye, the overall best students said: I am one of the beneficiaries of Aregbesolas gesture, I am one of the 85 medical students sponsored by his administration to one of the best universities in the world.

We have studied and graduated. We thank God that today, we have been made medical doctors through the support of Osun Government. It is a dream comes true for me and my family.

Osun Government has made history through this, Governor Aregbesola has done excellently well in our lives to attain this giant feat in academic because if not for him, we might not be celebrated like this today.

Another beneficiary, Dr. Oluwasayo Motunrayo said, I will forever be grateful to Aregbesola for making our dreams come to pass. He has done well to ensure that we did not fail in meeting up with our medical carrier in life.

Ezekoye Maria, an indigene of Anambra state, who is part of the medical students, said: We had lost hope when there was no teaching hospital to proceed to for out medical studies at UNIOSUN, we were all stranded.

But Governor Aregbesola restored our hope, he made us realise our dreams by sending us to one of the best universities in Ukraine for medical studies free of charge. Today, we are certified medical doctors. We are all proud of Osun government.

Visit link:
UNIOSUN medical students return from Ukraine, become medical doctors - Vanguard

Crimea features Russian soldiers, tanks and planes and what the director calls a Romeo and Juliet tale. Photograph: YouTube

This is the kind of decision that is only taken once a century, says a voice on the trailer for Crimea, a high-budget Russian film that dramatises the 2014 Russian takeover of the peninsula.

The film, which will premiere across Russia next month, features Russian soldiers, tanks, planes and a love story the director describes as a Romeo and Juliet tale.

The Russian annexation of the territory from Ukraine, which led to sanctions and a fallout between Moscow and the west, was denounced internationally as illegal. In Russia, however, the annexation has been portrayed as the event which showed that the country is again a global power, after a long period of humiliation following the Soviet collapse.

Crimea, the movie, brings that pride to the screen. The film follows a romantic liaison between a young woman from Kiev, who is a supporter of the pro-European Maidan uprising, and a man from Sevastopol who joins the pro-Russian resistance in the aftermath of Maidans success in Kiev.

The director, Alexei Pimanov, said the film is dedicated to the Ukrainian and Russian officers who did not shoot at each other and avoided large-scale bloodshed during the Russian takeover. We wanted to make a film about how we have to love each other and not kill each other, he said.

Pimanov said after helping his daughter-in-laws family to evacuate from Luhansk, which has been hit by fighting between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces, he wanted to make a film about how the Russian intervention in Crimea prevented bloodshed there.

In Ukraine and elsewhere, however, the film is likely to be viewed as a glorification of the Russian annexation. Critics of Russia would say that the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine occurred primarily because Russia funnelled weapons and troops across the border.

The film will not be shown in Ukraine, where Pimanov has been persona non grata since 2014, placed on a sanctions list that includes Russian journalists and artists who Kiev believes to be propagandists. Indeed, the film is unlikely to be released anywhere outside Russia except for Belarus. The Ukrainian embassy in that country sent a note of protest to the Belarusian foreign ministry earlier this month after trailers for the film were shown in cinemas in the country.

Pimanov insisted that the film is not crude propaganda, and said the female heroine was a sympathetic character and a genuine supporter of the goals of the Maidan protests in Kiev. However, it is clear that the film takes a Russian perspective on the events of March 2014, with some of the funding coming from Russias ministry of defence. Indeed, Pimanov knows the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, personally, and said the initial idea for the film was his.

We were talking in March 2014 and realised these events were globally important. He said: Try to make a film about this. Shoigu helped by providing planes and other military hardware used in the film, he said.

After the annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putins approval ratings, which had been flagging, soared to an all-time high of 86% as the country was consumed by a wave of nationalistic fervour. Krym nash (Crimea is ours) became a frequently repeated slogan, and the return of Crimea, as it is referred to in Russia, has been used to show that the country can stand up for its interests on the international stage.

Next years presidential elections, in which Putin is expected to stand and win a new six-year term, have been moved to 18 March, the fourth anniversary of the official Kremlin ceremony marking the annexation of Crimea. The Kremlin hopes linking the election day to the Crimea anniversary will help create a patriotic wave of support for Putin and boost turnout.

Crimea had been part of the Russian republic inside the Soviet Union until Nikita Khrushchev approved the transfer of it to Ukraine in 1954, and many Crimeans had always considered themselves more Russian than Ukrainian.

Not everyone in Crimea supported the annexation, however, with the majority of the peninsulas indigenous Crimean Tatars opposing the move. Some of them are now on trial over violence that broke out between Crimean Tatars and pro-Russians during the annexation, while others report harassment and persecution.

Crimean prosecutors are seeking eight years in jail for Akhtem Chiigoz, a leading Crimean Tatar politician. In his closing speech to the court earlier this week, his lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, said Russia was behaving like a fascist state and compared the takeover of Crimea to Nazi Germanys Anschluss with Austria.

Pimanov, however, has no time for such comparisons: A lot of people in the west dont understand what happened in Crimea. It was the will of the people, he said.

Read more from the original source:
Crimea the big budget Russian blockbuster the world will never see - The Guardian

The National Bank of Ukraine, the country's central bank, has indicated it may soonseek to regulate the use of cryptocurrencies.

While a clear outline for the initiative is still absent, in its latest announcement, the central bank said the legal implications of cryptocurrencies will be discussed at the next Financial Stability Board of Ukraine meeting at the end of August.

The decision comes at a time when Ukraine is seeing increased bitcoin activity, from payments to mining to blockchain development, but also when regulatory uncertainty hasled its law enforcementto take steps to reprimand bitcoin users.

Just days ago, Ukrainian police arrested several suspects who allegedly set up 200 computers to mine bitcoins at an abandoned swimming pool withina state institute in Kiev.

According to local media Kyiv Post, the court documentaccused the suspectsof illegally taking advantage of state property, and producing a currency, which is currently a function only the National Bank is legally allowed to do. Further, the law also states that no other currency besides theUkrainian Hryvnia can be treated as legal payment in Ukraine.

Citing the different approaches taken by other countries in defining cryptocurrencies, the banking authority will now begin itsdiscussion withthe Ministry of Finance, State Fiscal Service, the State Financial Monitoring Service, Securities and Stock Market State Commission and the National Commission for the State Regulation of Financial Services Markets.

Ukraine imagevia Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].

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Ukraine's Central Bank Moves Closer to Cryptocurrency Regulation - CoinDesk

Ukrainian police have arrested an individual accused of spreading the NotPetya malware, used in a cyberattack that knocked thousands of companies offline earlier this year.

An unnamed 51-year-old from the southern city of Nikopol was detained by the state cyber-police last week after a raid was carried out at the alleged attacker's home.

In a brief statement (translated for ZDNet), police say they seized computers that were used to spread the malware in the cyberattack.

The statement said that the person of interest told police he had uploaded the malware to a file-sharing account and shared a link on his blog with instructions on how to launch the malware.

The malware was downloaded about 400 times, police say.

Several companies downloaded the malware intentionally to "conceal criminal activity" and to "evade payments" to the state, police say.

But it's not clear if police have declared the person of interest a formal suspect in the cyberattack that spread to more than 60 countries.

News of the outbreak began in late June, when predominantly Ukrainian systems were hit by a new strain of ransomware -- just a month after a similar cyberattack that leveraged leaked NSA hacking tools to spread the WannaCry ransomware.

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Zack Whittaker can be reached securely on Signal and WhatsApp at 646-7558849, and his PGP fingerprint for email is: 4D0E 92F2 E36A EC51 DAAE 5D97 CB8C 15FA EB6C EEA5.

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Ukraine police make arrest in NotPetya ransomware case - ZDNet