In post-USSR Russia and neighbouring states, places now abandoned offer reminders of the region’s turbulent history, from the grandeur of a ruined Orthodox church, to the frescos that still adorn the crumbling walls of former barracks, schools and factories
Continue reading...Category Archives: Ukraine
Coronavirus live: Ireland brings in midnight curfew; Cyprus offers boosters to all adults
Irish restrictions include advice to work from home to fight rising hospitalisations; Cyprus health officials react to rising cases
- Covid now a pandemic of poor nations, WHO envoy tells UK MPs
- JP Morgan chief skips Hong Kong quarantine
- Austrian police carry out checks as unvaccinated enter lockdown
- UK extends Covid booster vaccines for those aged between 40 and 49
- See all our coronavirus coverage
Our economics editor Larry Elliott has written his analysis this morning on how the UK economy is beginning to emerge from Covid, but old problems remain. He concludes:
The economy as a whole is now starting to go post-Covid. The inflation figures due out on Wednesday will still show the impact of the virus on global energy prices and on supply chains but in other respects it is as if the past 18 months never happened.
There are two sides to that. The good news is that the labour market has emerged relatively unscathed. The bad news is that the problems of February 2020 – low investment, low productivity, weak underlying growth – are problems that remain to be tackled in November 2021.
Continue reading...Germany suspends approval for Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline
Move follows mounting politcal pressure to scrap project in setback to Kremlin-backed project
Germany has suspended its approval process for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which would double its reliance on Russian gas following growing geopolitical pressure to scrap the project.
Energy markets across Europe surged after the German energy regulator suspended its certification process, in a big setback to Kremlin-backed Gazprom’s plans to extend Russian gas dominance via a new pipeline across the Baltic Sea.
Continue reading...Volcano review – spoon-glueing Ukrainian adventure takes a surreal turn
Roman Bondarchuk handles this strange tale about an interpreter left stranded with some locals with deadpan poise
“That’s our wandering buoy. It slipped its anchor near the dam. It appears and disappears at will.” A light, unfathomable absurdity governs this 2018 fiction debut by Ukrainian documentarian Roman Bondarchuk, set in the area around the city of Kherson; a sun-roasted steppe north of the Crimea where Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) interpreter Lukas (Serhiy Stepansky) becomes stranded. He’s escorting an SUV full of foreign delegates when it breaks down and he wanders off in search of a mobile signal. On his return, both car and foreigners have vanished.
Hitching a ride, Lukas is invited to stay with Vova (Viktor Zhdanov), a middle-aged potterer living with his mother and daughter in a capacious ramshackle construction on the banks of the Dnieper river. So begins Lukas’s initiation – like a milder Ukrainian version of Wake in Fright – into the local anomie. Vova enjoys sticking spoons to his forehead using the supply of glue that was his severance payment from the Soviet fish farm he worked for; then Lukas gets an invite to a listless student party where someone nicks his jacket and wallet. Constantly slipping sly details into the frame, Bondarchuk handles the whole farrago with a lovely deadpan poise. Incensed by the theft, Lukas heads to the police station to make a complaint. Cut to him in the cells.
Continue reading...Ukraine has legal right to Crimean artefacts, Dutch court rules
Russia had sought to take control of ‘Scythian gold’ on loan to museum in Amsterdam
An appeals court in the Netherlands has ruled that Ukraine has legal control over a trove of artefacts from Crimea that was on loan to a Dutch museum when Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.
Russia had sought to take control of the historical treasures, often called the “Scythian gold”, which includes gold and ceremonial daggers used by the nomadic tribe, a golden helmet from the 4th century BC, amulets, jewellery, and other treasures, including a Chinese lacquered box that made its way to Crimea along the Silk Road.
Continue reading...Top aide to Ukrainian president survives assassination attempt
At least 10 bullets hit car carrying Serhiy Shefir with driver in surgery after being struck three times
A top adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has survived an assassination attempt that officials suggest is tied to a political battle with criminal and corrupt interests, including the countries’ oligarchs.
At least 10 bullets struck the car of Serhiy Shefir, an aide and longtime friend of Zelenskiy, on Wednesday as he travelled through the village of Lesnyky toward the capital, Kyiv.
Continue reading...Israel to prosecute Hasidic pilgrims who faked negative Covid tests to fly home
Dozens of Hasidic Breslov pilgrims boarded planes in Ukraine with bogus paperwork, border officers say
Israel says it will prosecute dozens of pilgrims returning from Ukraine who flew back into the country with fake negative Covid test results.
The pilgrims had been attending the annual celebration of the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, in the Ukrainian city of Uman, where Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, who founded the Hasidic Breslov sect in the early 19th century, is buried. He was a great-grandson of the founder of Hasidism.
Continue reading...‘I am full of feelings of revenge’: families of flight MH17 victims demand justice
Relatives of 298 people killed when Malaysia Airlines plane shot down in 2014 give their testimonies at trial of suspects
The families of 298 people killed when flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 have demanded justice from Russia as they testified in the Dutch trial of four suspects.
People who lost close relatives in the crash of the Malaysia Airlines plane said they could not truly say goodbye to their loved ones until those responsible had been brought to account.
Continue reading...Ukraine denies minister’s claims of hijacked Afghanistan evacuation flight
Deputy foreign minster Yevhen Yenin said plane was diverted to Iran by armed attackers, which Iran has also denied
A Ukrainian minister has claimed a passenger jet meant to evacuate people fleeing Afghanistan to Ukraine was hijacked at gunpoint and flown instead to Iran, in an unconfirmed incident that was later denied by his own government.
Ukraine’s deputy minister for foreign affairs, Yevhen Yenin, said armed hijackers seized the plane at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai international airport, where a multinational evacuation is under way ahead of a 31 August deadline for foreign militaries to leave the country set by the Taliban.
Continue reading...Belarus exile group leader Vitaly Shishov found dead in Kyiv, police say
Police open murder investigation after activist discovered in park after failing to return from a run
The head of a Kyiv-based non-profit organisation that helps Belarusians fleeing persecution has been found dead in a park in the Ukrainian capital, police have said, raising suspicion that he may have been murdered.
Vitaly Shishov, the head of Belarusian House in Ukraine (BDU), was reported missing by his partner on Monday after he failed to return from a run and could not be reached on his mobile phone.
Continue reading...Chernobyl for Ukraine, pizza for Italy: South Korean TV apologises for Olympic images
- MBC sorry for ‘inappropriate images and captions’
- Syria and Haiti summed up by war and unrest
A South Korean broadcaster has apologised after using offensive images to depict several countries during the opening ceremony of the Olympics on Friday.
MBC displayed photos and facts about each country as athletes walked out during the parade of nations. Most of them varied from inane to odd: Great Britain’s athletes were accompanied by a photo of the Queen, and El Salvador, where the cryptocurrency is legal tender, was summed up by a bitcoin symbol.
Continue reading...No conspiracy in hit-and-run killing of Briton in Kyiv, judge rules
Businessman Barry Pring sustained fatal injuries when hit by car in Ukrainian capital in February 2008
There was no conspiracy to kill a British businessman who died in a hit-and-run incident in Ukraine while celebrating his first wedding anniversary, a judge has concluded.
Barry Pring, an IT consultant, sustained fatal injuries when he was hit by a car while waiting for a taxi on a carriageway outside a restaurant in Kyiv on 16 February 2008.
Continue reading...Widow denies organising murder of her British husband in Ukraine hit and run
Julianna Moore, formerly Ganna Ziuzina, told an inquest she did not seek to profit from Barry Pring’s death, as his family alleges
The widow of a wealthy British businessman killed in a hit and run in Ukraine as he celebrated his first wedding anniversary has denied organising his murder, an inquest heard.
Barry Pring, 47, suffered fatal injuries when he was hit by a vehicle using a stolen number plate while waiting for a taxi outside a restaurant in Kiev with his wife, Ganna Ziuzina, on 16 February 2008.
Continue reading...The Earth Is Blue As an Orange review – subtle doc tells Ukrainian family’s war story
Iryna Tsilyk sensitively captures a family caught up in the conflict with Russia who are trying to make a film of their own
This sensitive and astute Sundance-winning documentary, in which Kyiv-based director and poet Iryna Tsilyk haunts the back alleys of the Russo-Ukrainian war, is the antidote to the warped propaganda-fest the conflict was depicted as in the 2018 film Donbass. It layers fact and fiction as delicately as an onion as it focuses on the Trofymchuk-Gladky family, who are attempting to shoot piecemeal their own fictional work, called 2014, based on their wartime experiences. But, here, artifice and cinema work entirely in the service of good. They are a source of self-expression and spiritual nourishment for Ukrainians beaten down by close to a decade of fighting.
Tsilyk mentored budding film-maker Myroslava Trofymchuk at a workshop, and it is the teenager we see here calling the shots for her family as they act in scenes hunkering down in their cellar; echoes of the shock and trauma they are simultaneously living for real, inspecting bomb damage by smartphone light. The whole household – including single mother Anna and her other three children – is clearly deeply invested in the project, squabbling over shot choices at dinner. After jubilantly celebrating her daughter being accepted for a film scholarship in Kyiv, Anna packs her off, still in hyper-protective mode: “The only thing, I beg you, if you are being bullied, please call me.”
Continue reading...England rout Ukraine 4-0 to surge into Euro 2020 semi-final with Denmark
Harry Kane back to his lethal best, productivity from set pieces, yet another clean sheet – the fifth out of five at Euro 2020 – and, for the coup de grace, a first England goal for Jordan Henderson on the occasion of his 62nd cap. This was the night when pretty much everything was picture perfect for Gareth Southgate and his players as they set up a Wembley semi-final against Denmark on Wednesday night.
As England came home from Rome it was easy to wonder whether football was headed in the same direction and, certainly, the fans of the team who had made it from across mainland Europe into the Stadio Olimpico thought that way.
Continue reading...‘Idiotic’: Fury in Ukraine after female soldiers made to march in heels
Female troops were photographed practising for a parade wearing high heels, sparking outrage among lawmakers
Ukrainian authorities have found themselves buried in controversy after official pictures showed female soldiers practising for a parade in heels.
Ukraine is preparing to stage a military parade next month to mark 30 years of independence following the Soviet Union’s breakup, and the defence ministry on Friday released photographs of fatigue-clad women soldiers marching in mid-heel black pumps.
Continue reading...‘I want to believe’: proud Ukraine aims for Euro 2020 upset against England
After disappointment in past tournaments, there has never been as good a time to be a Ukraine fan
Kyiv doesn’t look like a city gripped by Euro 2020 fever. Take a walk through Ukraine’s capital on a non-game day and there are few banners or flags to suggest the national team is on a historic run to its first quarter-finals of a European football championship.
But scratch the surface and you’ll find a city of diehards. “I’m set for a Ukraine victory,” said Andriy, 29, the head of a marketing agency, outside the popular Espressoholic cafe in the Podil district. “I know, of course, that England are stronger, but I want to believe.”
Continue reading...Britain acknowledges surprise at speed of Russian reaction to warship
Kremlin summons UK ambassador as Boris Johnson says HMS Defender’s deployment ‘wholly appropriate’
British officials acknowledged they were taken by surprise by the speed of the Russian reaction to HMS Defender’s 36-minute passage through Crimean waters on Wednesday as the British ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Kremlin.
Although a Russian response to the Royal Navy warship’s passage within the 12-mile territorial limit was anticipated, the UK Ministry of Defence did not expect the Kremlin to speedily declare that warning shots had been fired.
Continue reading...UK-Russian naval dispute: both sides will claim victory
Analysis: Royal Navy ship sailing near Crimea may also be test of Beijing reaction to territorial reach
British ministers will have been under no illusions that the decision to sail HMS Defender into disputed waters off the coast of Russian-annexed Crimea would provoke a reaction from the Kremlin.
A dispute about whether warning shots were fired or not is beside the point – although if they were, they were miles out of range. Because even if the west considers Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, to be still part of Ukraine, the Russians do not and will act accordingly.
Continue reading...Ukrainian couple break up after being handcuffed together for 123 days – video report
The couple, from the eastern city of Kharkiv, decided to handcuff themselves together on Valentine’s Day in a last-ditch attempt to break the cycle of breaking up and making up.
After 123 days handcuffed together to save their on-again, off-again relationship, Ukrainians Alexandr Kudlay and Viktoria Pustovitova shed their bonds on national TV, saying the experiment had brought home uncomfortable truths
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