Masked, armed troops take to streets of separatist-held Luhansk:
By RFE/RL
Armed men in unmarked uniforms have taken up positions in the center of Luhansk in what appears to be part of a power struggle among the Russia-backed separatists who control the city in eastern Ukraine.
Local television showed masked, rifle-toting men in camouflage, and the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta said they were blocking administrative buildings in the provincial capital.
Hours later, Luhansk separatist leader Igor Plotnitsky suggested that allies of the police chief he dismissed a day earlier were whipping up tensions and had put uniformed men into the streets.
"I can say with confidence that the attempts by certain people to stay in power by destabilizing the situation...are futile, and in the very near future will be neutralized," Plotnitsky said in a statement.
Parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions are held by Russia-backed separatists whose war against Kyiv's forces has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014, when it erupted after Moscow fomented unrest following the ouster of Russia-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
In a statement posted on the Internet before Plotnitsky's statement, police chief Igor Kornet dismissed what he called "rumors about my dismissal" and said that the situation in what the separatists call the Luhansk People's Republic was "under the full control of forces of the law enforcement structures."
In the statement, Kornet claimed that police had "thwarted the activity of a Ukrainian sabotage-and-espionage group" that he said tried to enter the separatist-held territory overnight to carry out "sabotage and terrorist acts." He said that several people were detained and that police forces were "looking for other members of the group and their accomplices."
Kornet said that a probe had been opened on the director of the Luhansk television and radio company, Anastasia Shurkayeva, on suspicion of cooperation with Ukrainian intelligence.
He also said that investigations had been opened into the chief of Plotnitsky's administration, Irina Teitsman, and the chief of the police unit responsible for security of members of the separatists' de facto government, Yevgeny Seliverstov, on suspicion of involvement in an alleged attempt to seize power in September 2016.
Kornet said that Plotnitsky gave the order to launch the investigations, but there was no immediate word from Plotnitsky himself on that claim. (w/Novaya Gazeta, Meduza, Reuters)
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
Update from our News Desk to our story about Ukraine marking the Day of Dignity and Freedom:
A day before the ceremonies, a senior prosecutor said that murder investigations launched in an effort to hold people responsible for the deaths of protesters are on hold because the cases have been transferred to a investigative body that does not yet exist.
Serhiy Horbatyuk, chief of the directorate for in absentia investigations at the Prosecutor-General's Office, said that cases involving corruption accusations against senior officials in Yanukovych's government were also effectively halted.
He said that by law, the murder probes were to be transferred from the Prosecutor-General’s Office to the State Investigation Bureau, but that the bureau has not yet been created.
However, Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko said on November 20 that his office would continue to investigate the Euromaidan killings and that the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) would continue handling cases against Yanukovych and his allies.
Ukraine Marks Fourth Anniversary Of Euromaidan Protests
By RFE/RL
KYIV -- Ukraine is marking the Day of Dignity and Freedom, a holiday commemorating the beginning of the Euromaidan protests that started in November 2013 and pushed President Viktor Yanukovych from power three months later.
President Petro Poroshenko and his wife, Maryna, Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman, and parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy placed flowers and lit candles at a monument on Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) on November 21.
The monument honors the "Heavenly Hundred," a term for protesters who were killed in crackdowns by security forces during the protests.
The Euromaidan movement began when protesters gathered in central Kyiv after Yanukovych announced he was postponing plans to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union and would seek closer economic ties with Russia.
In February 2014, Yanukovych signed a deal with opponents that was meant to end the crisis but abandoned office shortly afterward and fled to Russia.
Moscow responded to his downfall by seizing control of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014 and fomenting separatism across much of the country -- one of the causes of a war that has killed more than 10,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
Russia denies it has sent troops, weapons, and other support to help the separatists fight government forces, despite what Kyiv and NATO say is incontrovertible evidence.
Addressing paratroopers at a ceremony at Kyiv’s Mykhaylivska Square on November 21, Poroshenko thanked soldiers for their contribution in what he called the "fight against Russia's terrorist armed troops in Ukraine's east."
"We haven’t emerged from the zone of turbulence and we are still paying for two decades of strolling the sidewalks of the so-called 'Russian World,' but strategically we are on the right path,” Poroshenko said.
“Millions of participants in the Revolution of Dignity brought Ukraine to that path,” he added, referring to the massive Euromaidan protests. “They clearly identified the path on which our nation will enter the future.”
Poroshenko said that later on November 21 he would sign into law a bill to allocate state benefits to participants in the protests.
He announced that, from now on, November 21 will be marked also as Ukrainian Paratroopers Day.
During the ceremony, the paratroopers replaced their Soviet-style blue berets with dark red ones to symbolize what Poroshenko called "the blood shed by our paratroopers in battles against the Russian aggressors."
Ukraine has also changed the name of the paratroops force, seeking to break the association with Russia by dropping the initials VDV.
Kyiv police chief Andriy Kryshchenko said earlier that 2,000 additional security officers would be deployed in the city for the Euromaidan anniversary.
Kryshchenko said security would also be beefed up in other Ukrainian cities.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on November 21 that in the previous 24 hours, Russia-backed separatists had violated the long-standing cease-fire 17 times in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, killing one Ukrainian soldier.