-- The UN General Assembly has passed a resolution that affirms Ukraine's territorial integrity.
-- The IMF has announced "a staff-level agreement" with Kyiv on assistance of $14 billion-$18 billion in conjunction with a reform program that will "unlock" up to $27 billion over the next two years, pending final approval next month. Tthe U.S. Congress has also passed an aid bill for Ukraine.
-- Ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko has announced plans to run for president.
-- Members of the Right Sector have been holding a demonstration outside the Ukrainian parliament building to vent their anger at the killing of prominent member Oleksander Muzychkoearlier in the week.
-- Six Ukrainian military officers detained by pro-Russian troops in Crimea have been released, including Colonel Yuliy Mamchur, but five others are still being held captive.
-- Anonymous sources quoted by CNN say U.S. intelligence "concludes it is more likely than previously thought that Russian forces will enter eastern Ukraine."
-- U.S. President Barack Obama, in the keynote speech of his visit to Europe, chided Russia for its use of "brute force" in Ukraine and vowed that a determined alliance of the United States and Europe will prevail over time.
*NOTE: Times are stated according to local time in Kyiv
Meanwhile in Belarus... Alyaksandr Lukashenka, meeting today with top education authorities, used Ukraine as an object lesson for the insidious nature of corruption. Interfax reports that Lukashenka blamed economic collapse and "dreadful " corruption for Ukraine's disintegration.
"If you fail to draw appropriate conclusions from the events in Ukraine, you're an idiot," he said. "God forbid we come across corruption at our universities."
10:2811.3.2014
Two independent consultants who advised Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili after that country's five-day war with Russia in 2008 say in the "Washington Post" that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "redefining 21st-century warfare."
In Crimea, Molly K. McKew and Gregory A. Maniatis argue, Russia has launched "a pop-up war -- nimble and covert." Putin has mobilized a "hidden army [that] appeared out of nowhere," cyber tactics and a sweeping "information battle," and "financial markets as a polemical tool."
They conclude bleakly:
For years, Putin relied on the heavy, Soviet-style hammer. His recent actions suggest that traditional military and intelligence are no longer the means by which he feels he has to fight. While the West is focusing on the best response to his recent steps, Putin is most likely on to the next stages: determining which, if any, international protocols apply to his actions and how his tactics can be used elsewhere.
It’s time to give up the decadent belief that continental wars are over. Going forward, the terms by which the world is playing are Putin’s — a reality we all must recognize and for which we need an effective response.
The fact that the West is unlikely to recognize his region’s independence doesn’t seem to bother Aksyonov at all. “On what grounds should America tell us what to do?” he demands. “Independence is what we want. It is what Crimeans want.” And whatever the legality of his methods, Aksyonov is now the man steering them toward Russia’s embrace.
10:3311.3.2014
Ukraine Security Services (SBU) chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko told the Verkhovna Rada today that SBU forces have detained members of the Russian Defense Ministry's GRU intelligence wing, who are believed to organized beatings and riots, particularly in Ukraine's east.
Russian intelligence is believed to be behind a number of recent provocations in Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv, including the defiling of the Ukrainian flag, beatings and riots, and covering a statue of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko with graffiti and epithets on March 9, the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes has been summoned to Ukraine's Prosecutor-General's Office for questioning as a supsect in unspecified criminal proceedings.
Kernes announced the summons himself, via Instagram. Ukraine's UNIAN news agency suggests that Kernes may face charges of attempted overthrow of constitutional order (Article 109 of the Ukrainian criminal code) and encroachment on Ukraine's territorial integrity (Article 110).
Mykhaylo Dobkin, the former Kharkiv governor, was detained March 10 on suspicion of violating Article 110. Kernes and Dobkin, both members of the Party of Regions, were earlier reported as attempting to flee Ukraine to seek shelter in Russia.
11:3011.3.2014
Members of a pro-Russian "self-defense" unit in Crimea check a passenger's documents at the train station in Simferopol on March 11. Armbands, random stops, nationalism (albeit to a foreign power), thugs. Where have we seen this before?
11:5111.3.2014
Nursultan Nazarbaev and U.S. President Barack Obama have discussed the situation in Ukraine in a telephone conversation.
A statement from the U.S. Embassy in Russia said the two leaders "reaffirmed their common interest in defining a peaceful settlement" that will nonetheless help "maintain the territorial integrity" of the country.
Nazarbaev has also held conversations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin. As an energy superpower and a key member of Putin's much-desired Eurasian Union, is Nazarbaev looking like the West's inside man?
