Merkel To Meet Putin In Sochi For Talks On Iran, Ukraine, Nord Stream 2
By RFE/RL
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on May 18 for talks expected to focus on the Ukraine conflict, Europe's response to the U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and the construction of a pipeline bringing gas from Russia to Germany.
Merkel's visit is her first to Russia in a year.
Germany has been at the forefront of the European Union's push for sanctions against Russia since Moscow seized Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and threw its support behind separatists in eastern Ukraine, helping start a war that has killed more than 10,300 people.
However, despite taking a hard line against Russia in recent years, Merkel has defended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, which carries Russian natural gas to Germany but bypasses Ukraine, arguing that Germany badly needs to secure its gas supplies.
The $11 billion project would double the amount of natural gas Russia can funnel to Western Europe from newly tapped reserves in Siberia.
In recent months, Germany gave its final approval for Russia to expand the pipeline, although Kyiv has argued that the project undermines EU sanctions against Russia. The pipeline is due to go online at the end of next year.
A senior U.S. diplomat has also warned that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline raises security concerns and risks triggering U.S. sanctions.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary Sandra Oudkirk, an energy policy expert at the State Department, said on a visit to Berlin May 17 that the United States opposes the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and could impose sanctions on it because of its potential to increase Russia's "malign influence" in Europe.
"We are exerting as much persuasive power as we possibly can" to stop the project through diplomatic means first, she said, but she noted that Congress has given the government authority to impose sanctions on such Russian pipeline projects if necessary.
"Any pipeline project -- and there are many multiple pipeline projects in the world that are potentially covered by this sanctions authority -- is in an elevated position of sanctions risk," she said. "We would be delighted if the project did not take place."
With Europe's largest economy, Germany is the world's largest importer of natural gas and it is planning to increase reliance on gas to generate power as it phases out its nuclear power plants.
The German government has said that at a time of strong disagreements between Russia and the West over Ukraine and other matters, Berlin views the pipeline as well as a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran as "islands of cooperation" with Moscow.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that Washington was leaving the agreement under which Iran curbed its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Germany, Britain and France, along with the other two signatories -- China and Russia -- have been scrambling to save the accord.
Ahead of Merkel's visit to Russia, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged Merkel to also use her meeting with Putin to press for the release of "wrongfully" held human rights activist Oyub Titiyev and to raise other "key human rights issues."
"Merkel’s principled voice has never been needed more than now," Wenzel Michalski, Germany director for the New York-based rights group, said in a May 16 statement. "She can use that voice to help free [Titiyev] and to make clear that the new level of repression in Russia will never be accepted as 'the new normal.'"
HRW said the "current Russian government has been the country’s most repressive since the Soviet era."
"The government has forcibly registered human rights and other civic groups that engage in public advocacy as 'foreign agents' if they accepted even the smallest amounts of foreign funding, prompting many to close and pushing others near bankruptcy," the groups said.
In the past 18 months, it also said, police have arrested "thousands of peaceful protesters and beaten many."
And in recent years, authorities have "unjustifiably prosecuted dozens of people for criminal offenses on the basis of social-media posts, online videos, media articles, and interviews, and shut down or blocked access to hundreds of websites and web pages."
With reporting by AP, dpa, AFP, and Reuters
Polish President Asks UN To Deploy Peacekeepers In Eastern Ukraine
By RFE/RL
Poland's president has asked the UN Security Council to deploy a UN peacekeeping force in eastern Ukraine throughout the zone of conflict with Russia-backed separatists and along the border with Russia.
"We are advocating the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission," Andrzej Duda told a news conference in New York late on May 17 after delivering a similar plea before the UN Security Council, where Poland holds the rotating presidency for the month of May.
"First, those forces should be deployed along the internationally recognized border between Ukraine and Russia," he said.
"I also stressed in the strongest terms that if that happened, those forces should deploy across all territory which today is in the hands of separatists," he said.
Ukraine has supported the introduction of United Nations peacekeepers as long as they are placed along the border with Russia to monitor and ensure Russian troops and weapons do not come over the border to aid the separatists.
Russia made a much narrower proposal in September, saying it would support a limited UN peacekeeping mission to protect around 600 observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who are on the ground in eastern Ukraine.
Russia drafted a UN resolution that would authorize lightly armed peacekeepers to protect the OSCE monitors along the demarcation line between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia fighters.
But that was unacceptable to Ukraine and its allies in Europe and the United States. The Security Council never formally debated either sides' proposals.
As president of the council this month, Poland's UN representative may bring Warsaw's proposal up for debate. But it could face a veto from Russia, which has strongly opposed placing armed UN peacekeepers along its border with Ukraine.
More than 10,300 people have been killed in the conflict between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia separatists since the insurgency broke out in April 2014 following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
Clashes erupt regularly despite a 2015 peace agreement forged in Minsk that laid down a process for establishing peace in the region but has been little heeded by either side.
With reporting by AP and AFP
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Thursday, May 17, 2018. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage. Thanks for reading and take care.
Ukraine Court Orders Russian Journalist Held On Suspicion Of Treason
By RFE/RL
A Ukrainian court has ordered the head of a major Russian state news agency's branch in Ukraine held for two months on charges of high treason in a case that drew angry criticism from Moscow and expressions of concern from media watchdogs.
The Kherson City Court in Ukraine’s south ruled on May 17 that the director of RIA Novosti Ukraine, Kirill Vyshinsky, be held until July 13 pending investigation of the charges against him.
Vyshinsky was detained in Kyiv on May 15 by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and his apartment and the news outlet's office were searched. He was later transferred to Kherson.
The SBU accused RIA Novosti Ukraine of participating in a "hybrid information war" waged by Russia against Ukraine.
SBU officials said Vyshinsky, who has dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship, received financial support from Russia via other media companies registered in Ukraine in order to disguise links between RIA Novosti Ukraine and Russian state media giant Rossia Segodnya.
Russia said it “categorically rejects such treatment of its citizens."
The OSCE's representative on freedom of the media, Harlem Desir, called on Ukrainian authorities to “refrain from imposing unnecessary limitations on the work of foreign journalists.”
The U.S. State Department said Washington shares Ukraine's concern about Russian propaganda but added that Ukraine must ensure it abides by the law, including international human rights law.
Tensions between Moscow and Kyiv have risen sharply since Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 and threw its support behind separatists in eastern Ukraine, helping start a war that has killed more than 10,300 people.
Ukraine's pro-Western government is wary of Russian media outlets, accusing Moscow of distributing disinformation aimed at sowing tension and destabilizing the country. Kyiv has banned more than a dozen Russian television channels since 2014, accusing them of spreading propaganda.
With reporting by RIA, UNIAN, TASS, AFP, AP, Interfax, and pravda.ua
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
