Our news desk has issued this item on U.S. plans to expand its drone program, which could also be peripherally significant for Ukraine:
The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. military is planning to drastically increase the number of drone flights it carries out in foreign airspace during the next four years.
The Pentagon plan aims to boost intelligence and air strike capabilities across a growing number of conflict zones, raising the number of daily flights from the current level of 61 to as many as 90 by 2019.
The move would provide extra surveillance in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, the South China Sea, and North Africa.
It also would expand the Pentagon's capacity to carry out deadly air strikes.
The U.S. Air Force currently carries out most drone missions.
The new plan would lead to more drone flights carried out by the U.S. Army, Special Operations Command, and government contractors.
The move represents the first significant expansion of the U.S. drone program since 2011.
(The Wall Street Journal, AFP)
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with this item from our news desk about some intense fighting in the port city of Mariupol:
An intense artillery duel has rocked the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, with residents describing the battle as the heaviest fighting there in more than three months.
Correspondents say the fighting on August 17 was between government forces on the eastern side of Mariupol and artillery positioned to the east of the city in territory under the control of pro-Russian separatists.
Reports say houses were destroyed in the village of Sartana about five kilometers east of Mariupol, and that an oil depot has also been damaged.
The fighting comes after a week of intensifying clashes between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists near the government-held coastal city on the Sea of Azov.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on August 16 warned that the situation in eastern Ukraine is "explosive," saying urgent talks are needed to prevent "a new military escalation spiral."
Mariupol sits along a strategic coastal route linking separatist-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine with Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March 2014.
(Reuters, BBC, Interfax, TASS, Bild am Sonntag)
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Sunday, August 16. Check back here tomorrow morning for more of our continuing coverage. Thanks for reading.
U.S. Presidential Hopeful Trump On Ukraine's Possible NATO Entry: ‘I Wouldn’t Care’
By RFE/RL
U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, the brash businessman who has upended the field of Republicans vying for their party’s 2016 nomination, has responded with blunt indifference to Ukraine’s possible membership in NATO.
“I wouldn’t care. If [Ukraine] goes in, great. If it doesn’t go in, great,” Trump said in an interview with NBC on August 16.
In the wide-ranging interview, Trump spoke briefly about Ukraine, which has been locked in a 16-month-long war with Russian-backed separatists that erupted after the Kremlin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.
NATO’s eastward expansion has long incensed Moscow, as have pronouncements by Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders and NATO officials about Kyiv’s possible membership in the military alliance.
In his interview, Trump also said that Europe should bear the brunt of the responsibility for standing up to Russia in the Ukraine conflict.
“I don’t like what’s happening with Ukraine. But that’s really a problem that affects Europe a lot more than it affects us. And they should be leading some of this charge,” he said.
The United States and the EU have spearheaded international efforts to punish Russia with sanctions over its Crimea land grab and the war in eastern Ukraine, where some 6,400 people have been killed since the violence erupted between Kyiv’s forces and the rebels in April 2014.
Trump accused Germany -- whose chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been a stinging critic of Russia in the conflict -- of “sitting back” and “accepting all the oil and gas that they can get from Russia” while the United States is “leading Ukraine.”
The EU gets about 30 percent of its natural gas from Russia, which increased its gas supplies to Germany by nearly 50 percent in the second quarter of this year, Bloomberg reported on August 14.
“Why are we leading the charge in Ukraine?” Trump said.
Trump, a real-estate developer and reality TV personality who has never run for public office before, is leading polls nationwide amid a Republican field of candidates that includes former and incumbent governors and senators.
He is nonetheless widely seen as a longshot to win the Republican nomination due to his outspoken statements about women and Mexican immigrants, which some believe may render him unelectable.
In an August 14 campaign event, Trump said U.S.-Russian ties have become “pretty well-destroyed” under President Barack Obama and that if elected, he “would have a great relationship with Russia and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Asked whether he would roll back sanctions against Russia, Trump said: “It depends, depends. They have to behave also.”
With reporting by AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, and c-span.org