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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

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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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Ukraine police make arrest in NotPetya ransomware case - ZDNet

We carry our tragedy inside

The 2017 Participatory Assessment Report for refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced persons in Ukraine

Acknowledgements

This report is based on dialogues with refugees asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and persons at risk of displacement conducted in Ukraine between February and March 2017. UNHCR is grateful for the extensive involvement and support of UNHCRs partners, local authorities, free legal aid centres, civil society, and international organizations. Finally, UNHCR would like to acknowledge the refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and persons at risk of displacement whose participation demonstrates a commitment to engage pro-actively in decision-making concerning their protection and finding solutions to their needs despite the challenges and difficulties faced in their current situation.

Executive Summary

The 2017 Ukraine participatory assessment involved 167 focus group discussions conducted by UNHCR and its partners across the country, supported by local authorities, free legal aid centres, civil society and international organizations, with women, men, girls and boys of different ages and backgrounds. This report presents the specific protection risks and their underlying causes faced by refugees, internally displaced persons (IDP), and persons at risk of displacement. It provides details of their capacities, and their proposed solutions. The previous participatory assessment exercise in Ukraine took place in 2015.

The overarching concerns of participants from all target groups relate to discrimination, administrative and bureaucratic obstacles to the exercise of their rights, and housing. All target groups called for assistance from the Government, international organizations, civil society, and local communities, to support their integration in a tolerant and inclusive society.

Specific concerns of refugee and asylum seeker participants relate to xenophobia, challenges in accessing asylum procedures and flaws in these procedures, as well as lack of local integration prospects, and a preoccupation with identifying durable solutions.

Many feel a sense of hopelessness and exclusion despite having spent years in Ukraine, and a belief that there are few opportunities for resettlement. For those granted refugee status or complementary protection, concerns focus on possibilities for naturalisation and a more stable presence in Ukraine. For IDPs and persons at risk of displacement, concerns include high rents, lack of employment prospects, and difficulty accessing state subsidies to offset high utility costs in the context of adapting to the challenges of life since displacement, and the realisation that return to their prior place of residence is increasingly unlikely in the near future. They perceive administrative and procedural barriers as the main underlying causes of their problems, together with a lack of political will, coordination and understanding from the authorities. Many IDPs feel discriminated against by Ukrainian society and conclude that the authorities do not make sufficient efforts to ensure that they have full access to their rights.

The participatory assessment presents recommendations for each target group, and by rights group. The findings will influence the design of UNHCRs programmatic responses in Ukraine.

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Ukraine 2017 Participatory Assessment - Reliefweb

I'm not as good a runner as I used to be. This revelation came somewhere between the ninth and first floors of a murky, bomb-ravaged building located at the edge of no-man's land in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. I began scrambling downstairs after our sentinel, positioned nearby, yelled "Run!"

I did not ask why, nor linger to consider how only minutes before we had inched up these very same stairs, stepping carefully in each other's footsteps to avoid setting off any booby traps secreted to maim, mutilate or murder anyone scouting this abandoned edifice. Children's toys, full bottles of alcohol and other seemingly innocuous household items can be the disguised agents of your destruction, something I learned a few days earlier at the Ukrainian Armed Forces Demining Centre in Kamyanets-Podilsky.

No matter. I ran for my life. It was only after I got outside and turned a corner into the comparative safety of shadows behind the building that I was told a Russian tank had emerged from the distant rubble, manoeuvring to take a shot. We didn't offer the enemy a chance for target practice.

What surprised me was that I experienced no fear. Instead I was quite resigned to whatever might happen. Indeed, the strongest emotion I had was a kind of desperate hope that I didn't do anything to endanger my companions, members of an elite Ukrainian military intelligence unit. So I was pleased when I got out of that ruin without failing my friends, even though I was quite winded, my big toes bruised badly despite the protection of combat boots.

Like I said, I'm not a runner anymore.

We moved to a nearby firing position, heavily sandbagged, from where my companions opened up at the enemy's front line. Crouching, I snapped a few photographs, including one of "Okun," the squad machine gunner. His pseudonym means "Perch." This troop regularly penetrates the enemy's front lines to gather intelligence and sow fear in the hearts and minds of the Russian invaders and their local collaborators.

The latter are dismissively called vatniks after the padded jackets worn by the Russian military, considered little more than a dull-witted breed of drunks and criminals, and certainly no match for the professional Ukrainian soldiers who routinely best them on the battlefield. Even so, Ukrainian special forces soldiers usually do not give their names or like to be photographed to lessen the chance of the Russians targeting their loved ones, many of whom live close by in the Donetsk Oblast or a few hours away in Kharkiv.

Ukrainian spetsnaz groups have infiltrated the occupied territories right up to the Russian Federation's border. Their enemies do the same in the opposite direction. The Ukrainians know their foes have no scruples when it comes to murdering women and children to further Moscow's ongoing campaign to destabilize Ukraine.

As I questioned these troopers, I learned many have been fighting since the Russians invaded in February 2014. For them this is not a civil war or an anti-terrorist operation, even if Kyiv's politicians pretend otherwise. Instead they see themselves as soldiers in a war of independence, struggling to secure Ukraine's proper place in Europe rather than allowing their homeland to be swallowed by a resuscitated Russian empire, as prescribed by Vladimir Putin, the KGB criminal in the Kremlin.

Since Ukraine's soldiers understand what they are fighting for, their morale remains excellent. A Ukrainian spetsnaz officer in Luhansk Oblast told me:

"In early 2014 I just wanted to stay alive. By 2015- 2016 I was fighting to recover occupied Ukrainian lands. Today I think of myself as a wolf. I know the boundaries of my territory. I do not want anyone else's. I know how to kill. And I believe every Ukrainian woman, whether a child, a mother, a wife, or a grandmother, is a woman I must protect. And so I will pursue the enemy until every one of them is killed or goes back where he came from. Not one of them will be allowed to occupy even a metre of Ukrainian land, except for those whose bodies will rot in our chornozem soil, fertilizing it as the corpses of all of the past invaders of Ukraine have done. There can be no quarter. We did not invade their country. They attacked ours. Now we will make them pay for it."

That credo comes with a price. A Russian sniper killed Okun the next day. He was 20, a volunteer who joined up in December 2015, an only son. When the news came I realized I had forever captured his last photograph. I made sure his mother got it. Her son, Maxim for that was his name died bravely in battle. Although I could not attend his funeral I believe this good young man rests in peace having sacrificed himself in a just war, defending Ukraine. There is a glory in that.

Also on HuffPost:

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Okun Was 20 When He Sacrificed Himself To Defend Ukraine - Huffington Post Canada