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MIUSYNSK, Ukraine — Natalia Shevchenko, 57, doesn’t know if she and her husband are going to survive the winter. Her last pension check arrived in June, and since then, she and her husband have eaten through most of the pickled tomatoes and canned food on their shelves. “Now we understand that no one needs us,” she said.
Shevchenko lives in Miusynsk, a village in eastern Ukraine of fewer than 2,000 people that hugs the border between Luhansk and Donetsk, the two regions controlled by pro-Russian rebels fighting Ukrainian forces.
Elsewhere across the region, some help has trickled in. Russian Cossack commanders have set up a soup kitchen for the elderly and distributed a one-time payment of 1,000 hryvnia, about $63, to pensioners in other cities. Russian and international aid groups have delivered food, clothing and basic medical supplies to the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukrainian aid trucks made a delivery to other parts just before the New Year.
But it appears that no humanitarian help has reached Miusynsk. With no money and no food aid to speak of, many villagers here say they feel forgotten in the 10-month conflict that has left more than 4,700 dead.
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Ukraine peace talks break down – Al Jazeera English.
A round of peace talks between Ukrainian and pro-Russian rebel leaders has been scrapped, the host of the negotiations -the foreign ministry of Belarus – has said.
Dmitry Mironchik, a spokesman of the ministry, told the AP news agency that the talks broke down on Friday, but did not give a reason.
The opening round was held on Wednesday, one day after Ukraine’s decision to drop its non-aligned status, which added a new element of tension to attempts to resolve the violent crisis in the country.
A deal was reached on only the least contentious of the four agenda points: a prisoner swap that will involve 225 rebels and 150 Ukrainian troops.
An aide to one of the two rebels at Wednesday’s negotiations said he was heading back to the separatist east Ukrainian region of Donetsk, because there appeared to be little point in staying in Minsk.
If the US has become the undisputed world leader in sending non-lethal “military advisors” to the middle east, then Russia is learning fast, and as Interfax just reported, the head of the Russian Armed Forces chief of staff Gerasimov just confirmed that Russian “military specialists” are now working in the Donetsk region, although not to support the separatist army, but topromote “conflict de-escalation.” One just has to admire politically correct war talk. But the punchline, from both Interfax and Bloomberg which also just reported this news, is that Russia is doing so at the “request of Ukraine’s head of general staff.” In other words, Ukraine actually invited the Russians.
From Interfax:
The Russian press agency reports that “Representatives of the Russian armed forces led by Lt. Gen. Alexander Lentsov have been sent to the community of Debaltseve in the Donetsk region at Ukrainian armed forces chief of staff Col. Gen. Viktor Muzhenko’s request,” Gerasimov said at a meeting with military attaches of a number of foreign countries on Wednesday.
“This mission has been tasked, together with the OSCE, with helping the conflicting parties, which are the Ukrainian forces and the local militia, to find compromise solutions on de-escalating the tension and withdrawing the troops from the contact line,” he said.
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In what the pro-Russian separatists call “an act of genocide,” Ukraine’s President Poroshenko signed a decree Friday that will explicitly withdraw state support for the regions within a month. While appearing to implicitly recognize the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as autonomous, the decree means that the central bank will no longer service bank accounts, prisoners will be transferred (inmates with minor offences will be released), and perhaps most troubling as the cold winter begins, the order covers all public services, including crucial ones, such as schools, hospitals, and emergency services; and local heating and power plants will be subject to new laws that could involve cutting energy supplies altogether to the plants that don’t pay. Luhansk’s leader exclaimed, “the total socio-economic blockade of Donbass is de facto an act on genocide and devastation of our people,” and as the images below show, bank runs have already begun across the region with long lines forming at ATMs.
Ukraine’s president has ordered the withdrawal of all state services, including funding for hospitals and schools, from rebel-held areas.
Petro Poroshenko issued a decree that also asks parliament to revoke a law granting self-rule to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
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Ebola is solved. Oil price drops are “unequivocally good news”. The US election is positive. Draghi promised to do whatever it takes again. And Ukraine is in ceasefire.So why is it that Donetsk’s Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Purgin claimsUkrainian security officials have started full-scale fighting, clashing 26 times today according to Ukraine military.y. With tanks advancing, Purgin exclaims, “now there is a full-scale war… attacking us, we are defending.”
As RIA reports (via Google Translate),
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