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In mid-December, President Obama signed into law the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which, among options for more sanctions against Russia, calls on the White House to provide Kiev with assistance for internally displaced persons as well as to cooperate with international organizations to distribute aid in Ukraine.

Such aid is sorely needed in eastern Ukraine. Much of the infrastructure of Donetsk and Luhansk the main cities in the Donbas region has been destroyed, coal and food supplies are disrupted, and Kiev froze government pension and other payments to the region in November. With brutal winter conditions approaching, risks of starvation and death are becoming too real. As the United Nations and Amnesty International put it, a humanitarian crisis is looming.

Unfortunately, recent statements by Col. Oleksiy Nozdrachov, Ukraine's chief of military and civilian cooperation in eastern Ukraine, show disturbing signs of Kiev's attitude toward this crisis. Where the U.N. sees a looming humanitarian disaster, Kiev may see an opportunity.

Kiev's strategy, as outlined by Nozdrachov in USA Today, is to continue withholding government services from the rebel-held areas in hopes that increased suffering will turn the local population against the separatists. This shows the population in the occupied territory that the situation under the Ukrainian government is much, much better, Nozdrachov said. In addition, an Amnesty International report posted Dec. 24 said pro-Kiev volunteer battalions are increasingly blocking humanitarian aid into eastern Ukraine in a move which will exacerbate a pending humanitarian crisis.

These actions are reprehensible. Kiev, and most of the world, rightly views the petty warlords in control of Donbas as illegitimate entities. However, if a gunman takes over an office building, no police department in the United States would condone withholding basic necessities from the hostages in the hope that they would rise up and vanquish the perpetrator. Providing aid to civilians trapped in a standoff is not appeasement or negotiation with terrorists; it is a fundamental principle: preventing needless loss of life.

Any decision to use the tragic situation in eastern Ukraine as a weapon is not only morally repugnant, but it also will surely have negative repercussions for Kiev. The strategy may help force the rebels to capitulate and allow Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to establish nominal control over the region. But Ukraine is a land where grudges run deep. Western Ukrainians have never forgotten the genocidal policies of Josef Stalin's Russia (which, incidentally, employed hunger as a weapon); the Russian-speaking residents of Donbass are not likely to forgive Kiev for starving them into submission. Anger at Kiev, and the West, will continue to simmer in Donbass. And that is a problem.

Ukraine cannot afford to have Donetsk and Luhansk solidify into a permanent conflict zone such as Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, regions where long-standing enmities fester, preventing true national unity in those countries. Ukraine has long been teetering on the brink of economic collapse. Turning it around will be an enormous undertaking by the most optimistic of estimates; doing so without the industrial centers and natural resources of Donetsk and Luhansk may be impossible. Ukraine's best chance to beat back economic disaster is to move forward as a united nation, and to do that, it needs to win back the eastern Ukrainians.

That presents a challenge, which cannot be overcome by simply regaining territory and planting a Ukrainian flag. Eastern Ukraine is separated from the rest of country by a cultural, linguistic, and even religious, divide, with one of the two major Orthodox churches aligned with Kiev and the other with Moscow. It is a blurry divide, running through towns, sometimes through neighborhoods and families. Until last year, it was not an insurmountable barrier to national unity if that were the case, Ukraine would have split apart in the early 1990s, as did Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. But after 4,700 deaths in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, more than a million displaced persons and continued fighting, the chasms have deepened.

On Monday, Poroshenko announced that he would meet Jan. 15 with representatives from France, Germany and Russia to discuss a peace settlement for Ukraine. Ukraine, he said, cannot win back Donbas militarily. In Moscow, Russia announced that it would continue to supply oil to Ukraine, and over the weekend, prisoners were exchanged between Kiev and rebel forces in separate peace talks in Minsk. These are welcome moves, but for the millions of pensioners and other civilians in Donbas, will the resolution they portend a resolution that has been so far been elusive come fast enough?

Lev Golinkin, who was born in the former Soviet Union in the city of Kharkov, which is now part of eastern Ukraine is the author of the memoir "A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka." He lives in New Jersey.

Read more from the original source:
Kiev's brutal strategy in eastern Ukraine

By Terrell Jermaine Starr January 2 at 8:39 AM

Terrell Jermaine Starr is a senior editor at AlterNet. He specializes in African diasporas in Europe.

Terrell Jermaine Starr discusses the 18 months he spent in Ukraine as a Fulbright scholar and what he learned about race relations. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

I was already homeless unknowingly a victim of housing discrimination when my plane touched down in Kiev, Ukraine in the summer of 2009. I was traveling on a Fulbright grant to research the lives of biracial Ukrainians, and was eager to explore how the Slavic country could produce native people who looked like me, a young black man from Detroit. A local real estate agent had promised several months earlier to secure an apartment for me before my arrival. I took a taxi from the airport to meet him. Wearing a warm, wide smile, Sergei extended his hand and welcomed me. Then he explained why his apartment search had failed: Your skin color has been causing us a lot of problems.

Sergei explained that he had called numerous landlords saying that an American wanted to lease a flat. He thought emphasizing my American citizenship would expedite the leasing process. But when a landlord asked if I was black, Sergei was forced to reveal my race and the conversation would quickly end. We spent hours that day visiting flats throughout Kiev. Each time, the flatowner refused to rent to me until we finally met one agreeable landlord just as the sun was setting.

My introduction to racism in Eastern Europe had come swiftly and severely. Over my next 18 months in Ukraine, race would remain a constant obstacle to normal life and interactions with Ukrainians.

Certainly, black skin creates hurdles in the United States, as well. Here, racism systemically but usually covertly obstructs African-Americans from fully enjoying all the freedoms afforded to white people. But racism in Ukraine was much more blunt always in my face, unabashed and in plain view. I never had to guess whether a persons remarks carried racist undertones or if an officers stop was fueled by prejudice. Ukrainiansalways let me know where I stood with them, good or bad. And I appreciated it.

My acclimation to Eastern Europes brand of racism didnt come immediately. I spent my first six weeks in Ukraine simply getting used to the most extreme forms of anti-black hatred. Occasionally, Id encounter young men dressed in black shirts and Doc Martins who would throw up the Nazi salute in my direction. Other times, my skin color would attract open curiosity and such overwhelming kindness that I would wonder if I had been mistaken for a celebrity. (And sometimes I was. While visiting Georgia, some residents thought I was Allen Iverson, and I was asked to pose for 80 photos over two days.)

Of course, my arrival in Ukraine wasnt the first time the countryhad welcomeda black person. The highest number of black people arrived therethrough the former Soviet Union during the 1960s, after the decolonization of Africa. Soviet leadership granted thousands of African students generous scholarships to attend university throughout the 15republics. In some ways, the Soviet Union provided a much safer environment for black people than the United States or apartheid South Africa. But in just as many cases, black people were no better off than local, non-black Soviet citizens who were murdered during Stalins pogroms.

Racism was overt and ubiquitous. One of my most blatant encounters came when I was headed to Russian class. I was purchasing a token at the Central Train Stop, when I spotted a young cop glaring at me. As a black American, Im all too familiar with the look police officers give just before stopping you, and immediately recognized the gaze even in this foreign country. The officer walked toward me, gave a Soviet-style military salute and demanded that I present my passport. He looked it over before telling me to follow him into a mini-police unit inside the station. Once there, I asked the cop why I was being held. In Russian, he responded, Youre a nigger and I know youre bringingdrugs into our country, he said. Where are the drugs?

Link:
PostEverything: A cop in Ukraine said he was detaining me because I was black. I appreciated it.

After a year of conflict, where does the confrontation over Ukraine between Russia and the West now stand? Who has won so far and who has lost?

The situation remains complex not least from a Western Europe point of view because Mr. Putin has not defined exactly what his objectives are.

That could be seen as a good strategy, given that so far the West appears to have retreated on most of the main issues.

First, the international community which means in this case mainly the European Union, and within the EU, Germany will pay the Ukrainian debts for past supplies of Russian gas in order to keep supplies coming through the winter.

Second, Russia will continue to supply Western Europe with gas because it is in the immediate interests of both that the trade continues. Russia needs the revenues, particularly since oil prices are so low. Europe, especially Germany, needs the gas, which could not easily be substituted.

Third, Russia is entrenched in Crimea defined by President Putin as Russias equivalent of Jerusalem and will not be moving anytime soon. Russia also remains in effective control short of military occupation of Eastern Ukraine. The facts on the ground are becoming very firm and hard to change.

Fourth and more negative for Russia, recent events have reminded the Europeans of their dependence on Russian gas, which provides one-third of total supply and 100% of gas needs in some Eastern European countries.

The European Union is preparing in its slow, methodical but ultimately effective way to diversify supply and reduce gas use. Dependence on Russia could fall by one-third within five years. That is why Russia is diversifying its gas trade to Asia a perfectly rational commercial step considering the circumstances.

Fifth, Russia continues to divide opinion within Europe. A strong group of the friends of Russia remains entrenched in Germany, although they are under far more political pressure now.

In addition, groups in Hungary and Bulgaria believe that heavy-handed European sanctions against Moscow have led to the decision to abandon the proposed South Stream gas pipeline, which would have brought more Russian gas into Europe.

Read more:
Ukraines Uncertain Future

Natural gas tumbled to a four-month low in Europe as Ukraine paid its debt to Russia, reducing the risk of disruptions to flows from the continents biggest supplier and prompting Societe Generale SA to cut price forecasts.

Front-month prices reached the lowest levels since August in the U.K. and the Netherlands, Europes largest traded markets, broker and exchange data showed. Societe Generale reduced price forecasts for U.K. gas for a second time in less than six weeks as NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy settled a debt to OAO Gazprom and pre-paid for January supplies. Russia began the New Year by cutting flows to Ukraine twice in the past decade.

Russia supplies about a third of Europes natural gas, half of which flows via Soviet-era pipelines crossing Ukraine. European gas prices fell more than 20 percent in 2014 as the mildest year on record left storage sites the fullest since at least 2009, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe, a lobby group in Brussels. Oils bear market also pushed prices lower as Russian gas sales are indexed to crude prices with a time lag.

As Ukraine paid back its debt and pre-paid some additional Russian volumes, the market is now more relaxed and looking at the storage overhang and the oil price going down, Thierry Bros, a Paris-based analyst at Societe Generale, said by e-mail today. This is impacting negatively gas prices.

U.K. gas slid as much as 4.1 percent to 47.75 pence a therm ($7.35 a million British thermal units) on ICE Futures Europe, the lowest since Aug. 28 for a front-month contract, and traded at 47.9 pence by 3:50 p.m. in London. The equivalent Dutch contract lost as much as 3.2 percent on the Title Transfer Facility hub to 20.60 euros ($24.81) a megawatt-hour, the lowest since Aug. 29, according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg.

Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine in June as fighting escalated between pro-Russian rebels and troops backing the Kiev government. Flows restarted in December after the European Union brokered an interim deal, settling price and debt issues through the winter heating season before a court in Stockholm makes a final arbitration decision.

Gas prices in the U.K. will average 49 pence a therm this year and 50 pence in 2016, Societe Generale estimated, compared with respective previous projections of 54 pence and 52 pence. Some oil-indexed contracts will be cheaper than spot gas in the coming months, Bros said.

European gas brokers, traders and analysts are betting on lower prices for U.K. and Dutch fuel for a fourth week, according to a Bloomberg survey of 13 respondents published today. Traders are bearish amid reduced risk of supply disruptions and the return of warm weather next week.

Central and western Europe will have above-normal temperatures in six to 10 days, forecaster MDA Weather Services in Gaithersburg, Maryland, said in a report today. The U.K. will be as much as 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) above the norm by mid- to late next week, with an identical forecast for Germany for the latter parts of next week and next weekend, said Byron Drew, lead forecaster at MetraWeather.

U.K. gas for within-day delivery slumped 6.7 percent to the days low of 45.5 pence a therm on the National Balancing Point hub, according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg. Day-ahead fuel fell 2.3 percent to 47.55 pence a therm.

Read more:
Gas Falls to Four-Month Low in Europe Amid Reduced Ukraine Risk

Ukraine: Radiation leak at Zaporozhye nuclear plant - reports
Radiation leaked from Ukraine #39;s Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, Sunday according to reports that emerged Tuesday. According to a leaked document of the Ukraine State Service for Emergency ...

By: RuptlyTV

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Ukraine: Radiation leak at Zaporozhye nuclear plant - reports - Video