Here's a new video from RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service:
Ukraine Takes Down Largest Remaining Lenin Statue
A city in Ukraine bid good riddance to the country's largest remaining statue of Vladimir Lenin. It took a crane to lift the 20 meter-tall, 40-ton statue of the Soviet leader from its pedestal in the city of Zaporizhia.
Russia celebrates Crimea grab, critics denounce "climate of fear":
By Tom Balmforth
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has traveled to an island off Crimea to celebrate two years since its seizure from Ukraine, while Western governments assailed Moscow over the annexation and Human Rights Watch described a "pervasive climate of fear and repression" on the peninsula.
The European Union decried Russia's "military buildup" in Crimea on March 18 and called on more countries to impose sanctions on Moscow, which took over the Black Sea territory in April 2014 through military force and a referendum declared illegitimate by 100 states in a UN vote.
A prominent Crimean Tatar leader likened Putin to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who deported the Crimean Tatar community en masse during World War II, and said he was visiting the scene of the crime.
EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini expressed "deep concern" at the "deterioration of the human rights situation" in Crimea, where activists say the Muslim Tatar minority and others who opposed Russia's takeover have faced discrimination, harassment, and violence.
"The European Union remains committed to fully implementing its non-recognition policy, including through restrictive measures," the European Council, which represents EU governments, said in a statement. "The EU calls again on UN member states to consider similar nonrecognition measures."
Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned what it called a "pervasive climate of fear and repression" that has gripped the peninsula, drawing attention to "enforced disappearances, attacks and beatings of Crimean Tatar and pro-Ukraine activists and journalists."
In Moscow and other cities, the state organized numerous celebrations to mark the annexation of what Putin has called "sacred" Russian land -- part of a Kremlin narrative aimed at pushing aside protests from Kyiv and the West and instill pride in Russians.
Thousands were set to attend a celebratory concert called "We're Together" outside St. Basil's Cathedral adjacent to the Kremlin to mark the second anniversary of the annexation, which was widely supported in Russia but ruined ties with Ukraine and set off the most severe tension between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
The State Duma, Russia's lower parliament house, said it would work a half-day to allow lawmakers to attend the pop concert by the Kremlin. Ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's LDPR party has called for March 18 -- the day a treaty was signed in 2014 that in the Kremlin's eyes made Crimea part of Russia -- to be made an official national holiday.
Putin -- who at first denied sending troops to Crimea but later emphasized that he personally oversaw the operation to annex the peninsula -- traveled to Tuzla Island, which lies in the Kerch Strait between Crimea and southern Russia. He visited the site of part of a bridge Russia is building to Crimea, whose only existing connections to the mainland are with southern Ukraine.
According to the state-run news agency TASS, the bridge is slated to cost 212 billion rubles ($3.1 billion) -- about six times what Putin said on May 17 was the amount Russia had spent on its military operation in Syria since launching air strikes in September.
Putin has rejected international criticism of the annexation and has said the transition to Russian rule was smooth.
But HRW said that the "space for free speech, freedom of association, and media in Crimea has shrunk dramatically" since the takeover.
Crimea's isolation has made it very difficult to conduct comprehensive human rights monitoring there," Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director for HRW, said in a statement. "But serious human rights abuses in Crimea should not slip to the bottom of the international agenda."
Crimean Tatars made up about 12 percent of the peninsula's population before the Russian takeover and largely opposed it, many of them boycotting the March 16, 2014, referendum in which Crimean residents were asked whether they wanted to join Russia.
Several Crimean Tatars have been abducted or disappeared, and the Mejlis -- the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body -- has had its property in Crimea confiscated and may soon be "banned" by the Russian authorities who control the peninsula.
Speaking in Prague on March 17, Crimean Tatar leader Refat Chubarov compared Putin to Stalin -- under whom the Crimean Tatar population was deported en masse to Central Asia during World War II, with many of them dying on the way or after arrival.
"A criminal is always drawn to the scene of the crime.... The world already knew one paranoiac of the 20th century, and we all know how that ended," Chubarov said. (w/ RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
HRW says Russia creating climate of fear, repression in Crimea:
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Russian authorities have created a pervasive climate of fear and repression in Crimea in the two years since it annexed the peninsula from Ukraine.
In a report released on March 18, the New York-based rights group said that since Russian's annexation in March 2014 the "space for free speech, freedom of association, and media in Crimea has shrunk dramatically."
HRW also said Russian-backed authorities have "harassed, intimidated, and taken arbitrary legal action against Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority who openly opposed Russia's occupation."