The Kremlin won't change the heads of the Crimean government before at least spring, thinks Crimean political scientist Dmytro Omelchuk.
“[Russian-backed de-facto head of Crimea Sergei] Aksyonov hasn’t exhausted the trust of the Moscow authorities or the man in charge [Putin]. He received certain guarantees and I think that all this talk is just political chatter. Maybe the need for change is long overdue, but nobody would do anything yet,” he said to RFE/RL Crimean desk.
Omelchuk doesn’t know who can take Aksyonov’s place.
“Most likely, it would be a Crimean citizen, but today no clear figures are seen in the monopoly of power of Aksyonov’s regime. So it is extremely difficult to make any predictions,” he said.
Information about U.S. plans to revoke its ambassador to Ukraine due to his critical remarks about the country's prosecutor general is fake, wrote a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in a statement for Ukrayinska Pravda.
“Many have asked [us] to comment on the spreading of rumors about statements allegedly made by Vice President Joe Biden. You can ask the office of the vice president again, but they will tell you the same thing -- these statements are fiction,” wrote Jonathan Lalley, the spokesperson, according to Ukrayinska Pravda.
RBK-Ukraina had earlier published parliamentarian Ihor Kononenko’s claim that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had criticized Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt’s harsh statements about the country’s Ofiice of the Prosecutor General. According to Kononenko, Biden promised to revoke Pyatt in February 2016.
Pyatt had said last month that the prosecutor general's office refusal to fight internal corruption is undermining the reforms conducted by Ukrainian authorities.
Video from our Ukrainian Service.
A Village Divided By War In Eastern Ukraine
In the Ukrainian village of Lobacheve, going to school or visiting relatives might require a treacherous boat trip to or from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic. While a cease-fire holds, locals are able to move freely between the two halves of the town: one controlled by government troops, the other by Russian-backed separatists.