Malaysian jet 'shot down' over Ukraine (with 295 people on board)

A Malaysian airliner was brought down over eastern Ukraine, killing all 295 people aboard and sharply raising the stakes in a conflict between Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels in which Russia and the West back opposing sides.
Ukraine accused "terrorists" - fighters aiming to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia - of shooting down the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 with a heavy, Soviet-era SA-11 ground-to-air missile as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday.
Leaders of the rebel Donetsk People's Republic denied any involvement, although around the same time their military commander said his forces had downed a much smaller Ukrainian transport plane. It would be their third such kill this week.


Journalists saw burning and charred wreckage bearing the red and blue Malaysia insignia and dozens of bodies strewn in fields near the village of Hrabove, 40km from the Russian border near the rebel-held regional capital of Donetsk.
Al Jazeera's Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said the plane fell in an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
"The investigation would be very difficult given that it's controlled by the rebels," he said. "Ukrainian officials are saying that many children were dead. Some are saying that all died. Reuters is reporting that body parts were found at the scene. It seems that it was a very gruesome scene."
Despite the shooting down of several Ukrainian military aircraft in the area in recent months, including two this week, and renewed accusations from Kiev that Russian forces were taking a direct part, international air lanes had remained open.
Dutch news channel RTL said at least 76 Dutch citizens were aboard the aircraft. A Ukrainian official said there were 23 US citizens. France said at least four of its citizens were on board.

Wreckage and bodies
Malaysia Airlines said air traffic controllers lost contact with flight MH17 at 1415 GMT as it flew over eastern Ukraine towards the Russian border, bound for Asia with 280 passengers and 15 crew aboard.
Flight tracking data indicated it was at its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet when it disappeared.
That would be beyond the range of smaller rockets used by the rebels to bring down helicopters and other low-flying Ukrainian military aircraft - but not of the SA-11 system which a Ukrainian official accused Russia of supplying to the rebels.

"I was working in the field on my tractor when I heard the sound of a plane and then a bang," one local man at told Reuters news agency at Hrabove, known in Russian as Grabovo.
"Then I saw the plane hit the ground and break in two. There was thick black smoke."
An emergency worker said at least 100 bodies had been found so far and that debris was spread over 15 km. People were scouring the area for the black box flight recorders and separatists were later quoted as saying they had found one.
"MH17 is not an incident or catastrophe, it is a terrorist attack," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko tweeted. He has stepped up his military campaign against the rebels since a ceasefire late last month failed to produce any negotiations.
Russia, which Western powers accuse of trying to destabilise Ukraine to maintain influence over its old Soviet empire, has accused Kiev's leaders of mounting a fascist coup.
It says it is holding troops in readiness to protect Russian-speakers in the east - the same rationale it used for taking over Crimea.

• Ukrainian Interior Ministry official Anton Gerashchenko said on Facebook: "Just now, over Torez, terrorists using a Buk anti-aircraft system kindly given to them by Putin have shot down a civilian airliner flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur."

The Buk is a 1970s vintage, truck-mounted, radar-guided missile system, codenamed SA-11 Gadfly by Cold War NATO adversaries. It fires a 5.7-metre, 55-kg missiles for up to 28km...............http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/07/report-malaysian-jet-crashes-near-ukraine-2014717151147473508.html
17/7/14
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Ukraine Making sense of sanctions

Visa bans, freezing assets, boycotts: There is no lack of suggestions of how to tone down Russian aggression. But what good would sanctions do? Politicians are growing increasingly skeptical. DW takes a look. 

The European Union has said it is halting visa talks with Russia following an emergency summit of the bloc's leaders where they discussed ways to punish Russia for its recent exploits on the Crimean Peninsula. If Russia continues to reject negotiations, further measures are to be taken, which could entail economic sanctions.

It didn't take long for the Kremlin to respond. Any sanction will be met with countermeasures from Moscow, an official government statement declared. The United States has already imposed visa bans on targeted Russians and warned of freezing their assets. In response, Russia has threatened to stop reciprocal weapons inspections.

The chimes of boycotts flashin'
According to news magazine Der Spiegel, Chancellor Angela Merkel has said her attendance at the upcoming G8 summit in Sochi depends on developments in Crimea. If the Moscow-backed referendum on whether Crimea should join Russia, which Merkel has openly called "illegal" and in "violation of Ukraine's constitution," goes ahead, the chancellor won't be in Sochi in June.

Michael Fuchs, conservative politician and deputy parliamentary head of Merkel's CDU, has suggested another form of sanction to force Putin's hand: take away, or at least call into question, Russia's hosting of the 2018 Soccer World Cup. That suggestion has been criticized by left-leaning Social Democrat and Left Party politicians as "soccer diplomacy."
But calls for some kind of sanctions are growing ever louder; at the same time, criticism is also reverberating that this form of conflict resolution is simply wrong. Even EU Parliament President Martin Schulz, himself a German Social Democrat, has expressed doubt as to whether such words will ultimately bring Putin to the negotiating table.

Watered down sanctions?
Be that as it may, the sanctions that have been addressed are seen by many as rather mild. In a commentary in the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, one journalist remarked that the proposed measures are weaker than those hurled at Switzerland following its referendum on capping immigration.
Some German politicians have said that any sanctions at all would miss the mark, resulting merely in further dividing the two sides. Gregor Gysi, parliamentary head of the Left Party, rejects imposing sanctions against Russia altogether: "You can perhaps impress a weak partner with sanctions, but not Russia. It has China on its side, and we must not underestimate this," Gysi told German public radio.
"Such a situation lends itself to saber rattling, and as soon as we shout 'sanctions' then Putin will make his own threat," Gysi added, pointing out that the EU should also keep in mind its dependency on Russian gas.
The EU's careful stance on the accelerating Ukraine crisis has garnered praise from German economic representatives. "It's quite right to promote de-escalation," said Martin Wansleben, head of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
"We are communicating not only with Putin but with all of Russia," he added. "I think it's smart to say that we're in a position to talk, but at the end of the day we are willing to compromise." Wansleben also pointed out that the dive taken by the rouble since the outbreak of the crisis can be seen as an indirect effect of the sanctions already pledged.

Close economic ties
Economic sanctions would be senseless for Germany, because they would endanger billions in investments. Trade volumes between Germany and Russia in 2013 were over 75 billion euros ($104 billion). Around 6,000 German companies currently do business in Russia, and around 300,000 jobs could be jeopardized. And then there is the financial sector: European banks have around 180 billion euros in Russia at the moment.

EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger's concerns of a potential escalation between Russia and Europe are perhaps the most acute. Sanctions, he said, "would negatively affect Europe's fragile economic renewal," adding that Europe needed to find alternatives to Russian gas. As far as Germany's transition to renewable energy is concerned, Oettinger said it would be impossible without Russian gas. At the moment, Germany receives 35 percent of its oil and gas imports from Russia.
Germany is divided as to whether the West should impose sanctions on Russia. A recent Emnid survey indicates that 45 percent of Germans are against the sanctions, with 44 percent in support. The results were significantly different when the question was put differently: 54 percent of Germans said they wouldn't be willing to help Ukraine if sanctions led to higher gas bills.
http://dw.de/p/1BMXo  
9/3/14
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• White House: Obama calls 6 world leaders about Ukraine crisis

• Russia Warns US Sanctions Would Have Boomerang Effect

Russia Warns US Sanctions Would Have Boomerang Effect

MOSCOW, March 7 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Washington on Friday against "hasty and reckless” steps over the crisis in Ukraine that could harm Russia-US relations.
In a telephone call initiated by the American side, Lavrov told US Secretary of State John Kerry that any sanctions against Russia “would inevitably hit the United States like a boomerang.”
US President Barack Obama on Thursday announced the first set of sanctions against Moscow to punish Russia for perceived violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The sanctions include visa bans and asset freezes against unidentified Russian officials deemed responsible for the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis.

• In an hour-long telephone call earlier on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Obama that US-Russian relations "should not be sacrificed due to disagreements over individual, though extremely significant, international problems."

• Meanwhile, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a chat show on state television late Friday that Russia did not want the return of the Cold War that kept the Soviet Union and the West on opposite sides of the barricades for over four decades.

• “There still remains hope...that some points of agreement [over the Ukrainian crisis] could be found as a result of dialogue - which our partners, thank God, have not yet rejected,” Peskov said.

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140307/188197242/Russia-Warns-US-Sanctions-Would-Have-Boomerang-Effect.html
7/3/14
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• Obama: Crimea Referendum Violates International Law

• Ομόφωνο δεκτό το αίτημα Πούτιν για στρατιωτική επέμβαση στην Κριμαία από τη ρωσική Ανω Βουλή. - FC deputy speaker: Obama’s statement ‘insults Russian people’

• Russia slams NATO’s ‘cold war’ standards / NATO chief says alliance suspends meetings, military mission with Russia

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• О телефонном разговоре Министра иностранных дел России С.В.Лаврова с Госсекретарем США Дж.Керри

7 марта по американской инициативе состоялся телефонный разговор Министра иностранных дел Российской Федерации С.В.Лаврова и Государственного секретаря США Дж.Керри. В соответствии с поручением президентов В.В.Путина и Б.Обамы, накануне обсудивших по телефону обстановку на Украине, главы внешнеполитических ведомств условились продолжить рассмотрение проблематики острого политического кризиса, охватившего эту страну.
 
С.В.Лавров предостерег от поспешных и необдуманных шагов, способных нанести ущерб российско-американским отношениям, особенно в том, что касается санкционных мер, которые неизбежно ударят бумерангом по самим США.
http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/newsline/13992ACD9FAC95DA44257C940062EB5B
7/3/14 

Russia slams NATO’s ‘cold war’ standards / NATO chief says alliance suspends meetings, military mission with Russia

Russia accused NATO on Wednesday of applying double standards and “Cold War” stereotypes to Moscow after the Western alliance said it was reviewing cooperation with Russia over tensions in Ukraine.

“This meeting proved that NATO still has a double standard policy. And Cold War stereotypes are still applied towards Russia,” Russian’s envoy Alexander Grushko told reporters after a meeting of NATO and Russian officials to discuss Ukraine.
Earlier, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that ambassadors for NATO’s 28 member states decided after a meeting with their Russian counterpart to suspend plans for a joint mission as well as all civilian and military meetings.

Rasmussen said because of Russia’s military action in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula “the entire range of NATO-Russia cooperation (is) under review.”

• Rasmussen said the alliance will continue to meet with Moscow at the political level but insisted that halting all other cooperation “sends a very clear message to Russia.”

He also said NATO decided “to intensify our partnership with Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel “discussed possible scenarios for international co-operation in the normalization of the social and political situation,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
U.N. special envoy to Crimea Robert Serry cut short his mission to the region Wednesday after unidentified gunmen threatened him and ordered him to leave, an assistant travelling with him told AFP.
Serry, who had been sent to assess the situation in the disputed Black Sea peninsula for UN chief Ban Ki-moon, was confronted by gunmen outside the Ukrainian naval headquarters in Crimea’s capital Simferopol.
After he was prevented from returning to his vehicle, he dropped into a cafe to use a telephone to alert the mission of the incident, and an angry group of pro-Russian activists briefly blocked his exit, the aide said.
Serry then left on foot for his hotel after his safety was assured, and he was driven to the airport where he was in a lounge waiting for a flight.
“He’s fine. The self-defense militias in Simferopol have guaranteed his security,” Serry’s assistant told AFP by phone from the car.
“He wants to fly to Kiev but there is no ticket for him yet. He is hoping that he can leave Crimea without further incident,” she said.
Serry himself would not speak on the phone.
U.N. deputy secretary general Jan Eliasson said: “He is in good shape physically but he feels threatened.”
Serry, a former Dutch ambassador to Kiev who was travelling with a U.N. colleague, was accosted by gunmen outside the naval headquarters on Wednesday and warned “he should leave Crimea,” according to the United Nations.
Serry had arrived only Tuesday in the tense Crimean peninsula, which has come under de facto control by Russian forces.
He had already aborted a trip to Crimea last week, saying tensions made it impossible to visit the peninsula.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/world/2014/03/05/Gunmen-threaten-U-N-envoy-to-Crimea.html
5/3/14
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• U.S. warns Russia on Ukraine ultimatum / Russian Defense Ministry dismisses Ukraine ultimatum reports as ‘total nonsense’

• Ομόφωνο δεκτό το αίτημα Πούτιν για στρατιωτική επέμβαση στην Κριμαία από τη ρωσική Ανω Βουλή. - FC deputy speaker: Obama’s statement ‘insults Russian people’

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• Remarks by the NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the Press Conference held following the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at NATO HQ, Brussels.

Good evening.
The situation in Ukraine presents serious implications for the security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area.
And Russia continues to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and its own international commitments.
So NATO decided today to take a number of immediate steps.
We have suspended the planning for our first NATO-Russia joint mission. The maritime escort for the U.S. ship Cape Ray, which will neutralise Syria’s chemical weapons. Let me stress, this will not affect the destruction of chemical weapons, but Russia will not be involved in the escort of the US vessel.
We have also decided that no staff-level civilian or military meetings with Russia will take place for now.
We have put the entire range of NATO-Russia cooperation under review. NATO Foreign Ministers will take decisions on this in early April.
These steps send a clear message: Russia’s actions have consequences.
At the same time, we do want to keep the door open for political dialogue. So we are ready to maintain meetings of ambassadors in the NATO-Russia Council, as we have done today.
I have just chaired a frank and important meeting of the NATO-Russia Council to discuss the situation in Ukraine.
The NATO-Russia Council is a forum for discussions on all issues. Where we agree, and where we disagree.
As Chairman of the NATO-Russia Council, it is my duty to uphold the principles on which our relationship is founded.
Those fundamental principles are now at stake. Our joint pledge to observe in good faith our obligations under international law. And our commitment to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, or any other state.
So I asked the Russian Ambassador to convey NATO’s firm message to Moscow.
At the same time we have decided to intensify our partnership with Ukraine, and strengthen our cooperation to support democratic reforms.
We will step up our engagement with the Ukrainian civilian and military leadership.............http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/opinions_107743.htm
5/3/14
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