NBU weakens official exchange rate to historic maximum to almost Hr 13.14/$1 http://t.co/HV8JFuD4BD
— Kyiv Post (@KyivPost) August 12, 2014
If #Russia aid convoy passes through #Kharkiv- big question: what will #Kernes/@GennadyKernes do?
— Thomas C. Theiner (@noclador) August 12, 2014
Pretty good Russian convoy explainer from the BBC's Patrick Jackson:
Russian aid or Trojan Horse? - My Q&A on the aid convoy http://t.co/zA72lwKwhR #Ukraine #гумпомощь
— Patrick Jackson (@patrickgjackson) August 12, 2014
Here are some more details from our news desk regarding the Russian aid convoy and whether Kyiv is will to let it cross its borders:
A Ukrainian military spokesman says a humanitarian convoy being dispatched to eastern Ukraine by Russia will not be admitted into the country.
Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said the convoy will not be let in until it has been certified by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
A convoy of nearly 300 Russian trucks headed for Ukraine early on August 12, one day after agreement was reached on an international humanitarian relief mission.
Russian officials said the trucks were carrying 2,000 tons of aid, from baby food to sleeping bags.
The ICRC said it had no information on what the trucks were carrying or where they were going.
Ukrainian and Western officials have voiced concerns that Russia could use the pretext of humanitarian aid to send troops into eastern Ukraine where government forces are fighting pro-Russian separatists.
(AP, Reuters)
Yet "convoy" sounds weird in this situation RT “@RFERL: This is what Russia's aid convoy looks like. http://t.co/SyCrOEIswK”
— Natalia Melnychuk (@pravolivo) August 12, 2014
Chrystia Freeland has been writing for Politico about how it looks like "Ukraine is winning the war (But will Putin invade?):
The fog of war, the ADHD of cable news and the smears of Russian propaganda have combined to obscure some important good news in this dismal summer. In the historic fight over the future of democracy in Ukraine, Kyiv is winning and the Kremlin is losing. That is good news for Ukrainians, but also for Europeans, for the rest of the world—and ultimately for Russians, too.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and Syria have taught us that even in conflicts where it is easy to spot the villain, virtuous actors can be much harder to find, and effective virtuous actors can be rarer still. That’s why the early success of the new Ukraine is so significant.
Of course, it’s also true that at every stage in this crisis, Ukraine’s democratic victories have had the perverse consequence of escalating pressure from the Kremlin. That pattern has now led to possibly as many as 45,000 Russian troops once again massed on Ukraine’s border, as Moscow considers how to check the success of the Ukrainian military in re-establishing control over the eastern Donbass region where Russian-backed fighters have been trying and failing for months to create a breakaway republic. NATO and Ukraine’s leaders are warning there’s a significantly heightened threat of Russian invasion.
Russia’s bellicose brinksmanship has made Ukraine’s eastern border the world’s most dangerous tripwire—it is no exaggeration to worry we could be on the edge of the greatest conflict since the World War II. But in determining how to respond, it is essential to understand this standoff has been created by the surprising and growing strength of Ukrainian democracy—and by Vladimir Putin’s refusal to allow a peaceful democracy to exist on his western border.
This crisis is not about an American power play in the former Soviet Union— indeed, it often seems as if President Barack Obama privately wishes Ukraine’s democracy revolution would just fade away. This is entirely about the Ukrainian people’s decision that they were no longer willing to live in an authoritarian kleptocracy—and the annexation and invasion of their territory that was the Kremlin’s response. Ukraine could only have avoided this struggle by not choosing democracy, or by failing in the effort to build it.
No matter how hard Putin tries to spin it (or to turn from attack line into a reality), Ukraine isn’t a failed state, prey to domestic extremists and weakened by civil war. This is a young country swiftly uniting around the democratic idea in the face of foreign aggression. Ukraine’s new leaders aren’t angels. Their ranks include oligarchs with checkered biographies and politicians who were members of past, failed governments. But, after 23 years of chaotic post-Soviet independence, Ukraine now has a wired and educated civil society prepared to fight for democracy and a leadership that knows how the West works and wants to emulate it.
Which is why the right parallel when thinking about how the West should respond to this crisis isn’t with the West’s past decade of military misadventures in the Middle East, it is with Eastern Europe in the 1980s, where civil society overthrew communist regimes and produced leaders who were, albeit with plenty of mistakes and hardship along the way, able to build capitalist democracies in their place.
The first success is the consolidation, maturity and determination of Ukraine’s civil society. Remember all of those warnings from Putin and other Russians about the dangerous power of the far right and the worries that the euphoria of the pro-Europe protesters who rallied in Kyiv’s Maidan Square last winter would give way to rule by armed, brown-shirted militias?
The May 25 presidential election, in which Petro Poroshenko, a Russian-speaking centrist businessman from the south, won a strong majority on the first ballot in a field of 17 candidates, gave the lie to that putative threat. Ukraine’s two far-right candidates polled less than 2 percent each, far less than the hard right polled in European Union parliamentary elections held on the same day.
Ukrainians didn’t elect Poroshenko for his charisma or his barnstorming speeches. They voted for him because he backed the Maidan protesters from the start, he was the frontrunner, and he is competent. His most effective campaign slogan—which appeared with no photo or visual image, just words, on billboards across the country — was “to stop the war, let’s elect a president on the first ballot.” Ukraine is normally a sort of Slavic Italy—a disputatious society that revels in political disagreement and debate. It is a measure of the gravity of the moment that Ukrainians accepted Poroshenko’s argument and, for the first time since independence, chose a president on the first ballot and with strong backing from across the country.
Read the entire article here
206 voted (226 needed) for sanctions against Russia. let's keep asking other countries to suffer and do nothing ourselves. this Rada must go
— Natalia Melnychuk (@pravolivo) August 12, 2014
Chaly pres admin: talking about crossing point for aid between Belgorod and Kharkiv pic.twitter.com/MgAqIdjKuF
— Ian Bateson (@ianbateson) August 12, 2014
!!! BREAKING !!!
A Ukrainian military spokesman says no humanitarian aid will be allowed into Ukraine until the Red Cross has established the region's needs in a week's time. (Reuters, AP)
It seems Putin's surging popularity in Russia is turning his carefully cultivated strongman image into a very marketable brand:
ICYMI These Putin t-shirts sold like hot cakes in the GUM yesterday -and there's also an iPhone case! by @UMauder pic.twitter.com/482hUEJx71
— Nikolaus von Twickel (@niktwick) August 12, 2014
And here is a video from RFE/RL's Russia Service about this new "titanium Putin" iPhone:
