Ukrainians Rally In Support Of Anticorruption Bureau
Protesters demonstrated in front of Ukraine's National Anticorruption Bureau on August 17 amid a growing conflict between that body and the Prosecutor's Office, which raided the bureau last week.
Prominent Russian Lawyer Barred From Leaving Russia
By RFE/RL
Prominent Russian human rights lawyer Mark Feygin has been barred from leaving Russia in a move he says is aimed at preventing him from defending Crimean Tatars at an Organization for Security and Cooperation event in Warsaw.
Feygin posted a photograph of the order barring him from leaving on Twitter on August 18 and said it also is intended “to block my visits to Ukraine."
Feygin was one of the main defense lawyers for Ukrainian military aviator Nadia Savchenko, who spent nearly two years in Russian custody after being captured in Ukraine.
The document that Feygin posted indicates that Russian court bailiffs ordered the travel ban because he is a “debtor from the Russian Federation.”
Feygin did not comment on the nature of the purported debt.
Ukraine President Warns Of Conflict Escalation, Possible 'Martial Law'
Ukraine’s president has said the likelihood of an escalation of the conflict with Russia and Russia-back separatists in eastern Ukraine “remains significant” and said he cannot rule out “a full-scale Russian invasion.”
Speaking in the Lviv region on August 18, Poroshenko said that if the situation in eastern Ukraine and the region of Crimea, which Russia forcibly annexed from Ukraine in 2014, continues to deteriorate, “we will have to impose martial law and order mobilization.”
Poroshenko accused “the enemy” of trying to undermine the Minsk peace process aimed at settling the conflict and of making “absolutely irresponsible statements” about possibly withdrawing from the so-called Normandy format of talks.
Earlier, the military said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed in fighting against the Russia-backed separatists.
Military spokesman Oleksanr Motuzyank said separatists fired more than 500 mortar shells and over 300 artillery shells in the last 24 hours in what he said was “a similar level of intensity of fire” to what the country experienced a year ago.
According to the UN, more than 9,500 people have been killed in the conflict since it began in early 2014.
Based on reporting by Interfax and AFP
Ukraine Objects To CIS Plan To Monitor Russia Election In Crimea
Ukraine has protested to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) over the organization’s plans to send monitors to the Russian State Duma elections in the region of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry on August 18 published a statement saying the CIS “has been formally notified about the Ukrainian stance regarding the Russian intention to spread [the elections] into the temporarily occupied territory” of Crimea and the Crimean city of Sevastopol.
It noted that the elections “will not have any legal consequence” and added that any monitoring of the “farce election will be seen as an unfriendly move.”
The CIS is an organization of some former Soviet republics. Nine of them -- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- are full members, while Turkmenistan and Ukraine are associate states.
Georgia withdrew from the CIS after the war against Russia in 2008.
