By Robert van Voren
Introduction
Again the world is watching while heavily armed unidentified men in green camouflage suits suddenly appear in Eastern Ukrainian towns, occupy police stations, buildings of the Ukrainian secret agency SBU and other governmental agencies, and take the lead of the separatist movement that is now enveloping this part of the country. And again the world tries to come to terms with what is clear from the very start: we are watching phase two of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, Putin’s major plan to carve out the juicy bits of this country, which will allow him to continue his master plan for the region: the reestablishment of the imperium that was, and that most of us believed would never be again.
Again the world is watching while heavily armed unidentified men in green camouflage suits suddenly appear in Eastern Ukrainian towns, occupy police stations, buildings of the Ukrainian secret agency SBU and other governmental agencies, and take the lead of the separatist movement that is now enveloping this part of the country. And again the world tries to come to terms with what is clear from the very start: we are watching phase two of the Russian invasion into Ukraine, Putin’s major plan to carve out the juicy bits of this country, which will allow him to continue his master plan for the region: the reestablishment of the imperium that was, and that most of us believed would never be again.
And like with the Crimea, which has now been swallowed up by Putin’s Russia in violation of all international norms and agreements, the world will realize what is actually going on by the time it is too late, when all the strategic buildings in Eastern Ukraine are in hands of the “proponents of federalism”, as Russia euphemistically calls them, a referendum is organized with active support of “brotherly Russia” and the outcome is an overwhelming majority in favor of joining Russia. Who knows, maybe even 123% of the population of Donetsk will vote in favor, like the 123% of the population in Simferopol. Who knows – Putin’s megalomania is without boundaries and the need to prove he is majestic has crossed all levels of normality.
Historical comparison
And again the comparison with 1938-1939 is shocking. Read how Czechoslovakia was eaten up by Hitlerite Germany and how the Western powers were not only onlookers, but with their appeasement and indecisiveness actually active participants, and you will be shocked, dismayed and angry that again we let this happen in front of our eyes.
Hitler took hold of a weak, disorganized and impoverished Germany that was struggling with economic hardships and hurt national feelings as a result of the First World War and the resulting Versailles Peace Agreement. He assumed power and immediately set himself to the task of “defending the interests of fraternal Germans” (very similar to Putin’s defense of Russians) and creating “Lebensraum”: a sort of breathing space for the German population to the East. He was a megalomaniac, disturbed and evil, and with his messianism he sent his people to utter disaster.
Putin and his cronies took hold of a Russia that found itself in a somewhat similar situation. The country was impoverished, the economy was in shambles, corruption was widespread and the national pride of large portions of the nation was deeply hurt. However, while Hitler was focusing his megalomania on the German race and was keen to create a huge German or Arian nation-state, the hurt feelings in Russia were very much focused on the loss of the imperial lands, the countries that they claimed to be “nasha”, “ours”. Lands, which in their view had been sold out by a bunch of crooks and renegades, in short: by Boris Yeltsin and his liberal friends.
Putin cleverly combined his own sense of loss (“the collapse of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century”) with the idea that Russia historically owned these lands, and that justice had to be done. Last year, at the annual discussion meeting in Veidai, he made very clear that he saw himself as the heir of the Russian Empire and the USSR at the same time, and while combining symbols of both imperia he created a soup that for many disenchanted Russians looked very attractive and, what is more, just. Because many Russians believe in the Slavophile idea that Russians are a chosen people, that they have a historic mission, and that the collapse of the USSR is indeed a historical crime that needs to be undone.
Putin’s business
However, there is a major difference. While Hitler was a true believer to his ideology, with its rabid anti-Semitism and racism, Putin combines his virile patriotism with very pragmatic business interests. Putin is not only in for the fame, he is also – and especially – in for the money. Putin sees the USSR as a business – his business.
In the 1980 the power of the criminal underworld in the Soviet Union increased rapidly while the country suffered from stagnation and political ossification. Criminal gangs belonging to “thieves in law” found themselves “protectors” in governmental agencies, of course in exchange for handing over a slice of the cake. These forms of protection, called “krysha” or “roof”, involved the highest level of authority. For instance, Brezhnev’s brother in law and deputy chairman of the KGB, Semyon Tsvigun, committed suicide in the early 1980s when it was disclosed that he was involved in these practices. In the Wild-West years of the 1990s, the criminal power and political power in the country basically merged, and became in many places identical. One of the results is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself, who started (or upgraded?) his thieving career while being advisor to mayor Anatoly Sobchak and in charge with the food-for-oil program, which resulted in the theft of close to one hundred million US dollars.
Putin is in fact in charge of a mafia, and has used his power to turn Russia into a criminal state. He plays the patriotic drum, knowing that his population buys it, but at the same time he is purely after his personal economic interests. When he raises the price of gas or oil, he actually fills his own pockets. When he threatens the West with restrictions on deliveries, he uses his own private business for political means. The West deals with the leader of a criminal gang while thinking it is negotiating with a politician, and thus it is from the onset disadvantaged.
Putinism and Sovietism
In a way, looking back we could have seen this coming. Those who know the region were surprised in 1990-1991 how silently and bloodlessly the USSR imploded, and ceased to exist. Those who know the region also soon realized that psychologically the USSR continued to exist, and that it would take generations before it would fade away. What we now see is a resurgence of the USSR, not just psychologically but materially as well, an attempt to reinstate what was already carried to the grave. The USSR is still there, in the heads of a large part of the population that has been kept deliberately stupid for almost a century, a population which was terrorized into obedience, into a state of permanent servitude. We see the intellectual level of for instance the leaders of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk”, an astonishing sight keeping in mind that these lost souls will determine the future of millions of people for a long time to come. What we are watching is a resurgence of Sovietism, but this time in the form of a special blend, created by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. We are watching Putinism.
I have no problem saying that Putin is a criminal. And I am saying that not only because he is a thief on a majestic scale, with an estimated personal property of 130 million dollars. He is a criminal also because without any empathy he brainwashes his population with an absurd mix of Soviet, fascist and racist propaganda; because he sends his people to war, against a nation that is so close, and with whom Russians have so many emotional and family ties; because he triggers a civil war in a country that is just about to recover from twenty years of thievery by another political elite. He is a criminal, because instead of building a new Russia he ruined it even more, letting the country rot while satisfying his own megalomaniac needs. He is a criminal, because with his policies the disintegration of Russia itself is quickly becoming inevitable, and the bloodshed that was so unexpectedly avoided in 1990-1991 will now envelop the country.
People, fasten your seatbelts. We are in for a horrible, bumpy and scary ride.
Robert van Voren is Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania) and Ilia State University (Tbilisi, Georgia).
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Putin on pause - Thoughts from Kyiv - 4 March 2014
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Wily Gatecrasher at White House Is a Red Fox
There's a new guest at the White House, but unlike most people who pass through the presidential residence, he wasn't invited.
The agreement designed to pull Ukraine back from the brink of civil war had been floundering around lunchtime on Thursday, so U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's Sergei Lavrov, a smoker, stepped outside for a private word in the open air.
Sadly, there's nothing new about the acts of violence that have shaken America in recent years, President Obama and Vice President Biden agreed Wednesday in a joint interview with CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett.
Both Mr. Obama and Biden had recently addressed communities torn apart by violence -- the president spoke Monday about Sunday's deadly shootings at two Jewish facilities in Kansas City, Mo., and Biden was in Boston on Tuesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing.
"I don't think there's anything new," Mr. Obama said, reflecting on those incidents and
other spasms of violence
that have claimed lives and headlines since he became president. "Sadly we've seen tragedies like this throughout our history."
"No, I don't think there's anything new," Biden agreed.
And consoling the families of victims and the communities affected, the president said, can be difficult.
"It's rare where you know that you're doing some good," he said. "Because no matter where you go, even if it's areas that didn't vote for you, even if generally people might have different political philosophies, they know that the president's coming to symbolize that the country cares. That America cares. That they're paying attention."
"A lot of times it's heartbreaking," he added. "It does make you think about how can we as a society deal with mental health issues, deal with gun violence issues, deal with the confluence of those two things more effectively. But when you actually go to the events, your first and primary job is just to let families know that they're in, not just our thoughts and prayers but the whole country's thoughts and prayers."
"When I go, I end up internalizing a lot of it because I know when I'm speaking to the families...I know how bittersweet the moment is," Biden explained. "The nation wants to embrace them. And whether it's the day, a year, a month, two months later, whenever it is, they have to relive the whole thing again...and everybody means well and we say, you know, we're gonna honor -- well, what it does is it conjures up the moment it happened for those people."
"I get incredible strength from watching the courage of these people," the vice president said.
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Updated April 18, 2014 11:45 a.m. ET
Dante's goal was 'to remove those living in this life from the state of misery and lead them to the state of bliss.' Above, 'Portrait of Dante Alighieri' by Attilio Roncaldier De Agostini/Getty Images
On the evening of Good Friday, a man on the run from a death sentence wakes up in a dark forest, lost, terrified and besieged by wild animals. He spends an infernal Easter week hiking through a dismal cave, climbing up a grueling mountain, and taking what you might call the long way home.
It all works out for him, though. The traveler returns from his ordeal a better man, determined to help others learn from his experience. He writes a book about his to-hell-and-back trek, and it's an instant best-seller, making him beloved and famous.
For 700 years, that gripping adventure story—"The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri—has been dazzling readers and even changing the lives of some of them. How do I know? Because Dante's poem about his fantastical Easter voyage pretty much saved my own life over the past year.
Everybody knows that "The Divine Comedy" is one of the greatest literary works of all time. What everybody does not know is that it is also the most astonishing self-help book ever written.
It sounds trite, almost to the point of blasphemy, to call "The Divine Comedy" a self-help book, but that's how Dante himself saw it. In a letter to his patron, Can Grande della Scala, the poet said that the goal of his trilogy—"Inferno," "Purgatory" and "Paradise"—is "to remove those living in this life from the state of misery and lead them to the state of bliss."
The Comedy does this by inviting the reader to reflect on his own failings, showing him how to fix things and regain a sense of direction, and ultimately how to live in love and harmony with God and others.
This glorious medieval cathedral in verse arose from the rubble of Dante's life. He had been an accomplished poet and an important civic leader in Florence at the height of that city's powers. But he wound up on the losing side of a fierce political struggle with the pope and, in 1302, fled rather than accept a death sentence. He lost everything and spent the rest of his life as a refugee.
The Comedy, which Dante wrote in exile, tells the story of his symbolic death, rebirth and ascension to a higher state of being. It is set on Easter weekend to emphasize its allegorical connection with Christ's story, but Dante also draws on classical sources, especially Virgil's "Aeneid," as well as the Exodus story from the Bible.
Dante's masterpiece is an archetypal story of journey and heroic quest. Its message speaks to readers, whether faithful or faithless, who are searching for moral knowledge and a sense of hope and direction. In its day, it's worth recalling, the poem was a pop-culture blockbuster. Dante wrote it not in the customary Latin but in Florentine dialect to make it widely accessible. He wasn't writing for scholars and connoisseurs; he was writing for commoners. And it was a hit. According to the historian Barbara Tuchman, "In Dante's lifetime, his verse was chanted by blacksmiths and mule-drivers."
Who knew? Not me. I always thought "The Divine Comedy" was one of those lofty, doorstop-sized Great Books more admired than read. Its intimidating reputation is likely why few people ever walk with Dante through the fires of the Inferno, climb with him up the seven-story mountain of Purgatory and rocket with him through the stars to Paradise.
What a pity. They will never discover the surprisingly accessible beauty of Dante's verse in modern translation. Nor will they grasp how useful his poem can be to modern people who find themselves caught in a personal crisis from which there seems no escape. Dante's search for deliverance propels him on a purpose-driven pilgrimage from chaos to order, from despair to hope, from darkness to light and from the prison of self to the liberty of self-mastery.
Dante showed me how to do it too. Midway through my own life, my journey brought me back to my hometown, where, in the wake of my sister's death, I had hoped to start anew with my family. The tale of my sister Ruthie's grace-filled fight with cancer and the love of our hometown that saw her through to the end changed my heart—and helped to heal wounds from the teenage traumas that had driven me away.
But things didn't work out as I had expected or hoped. By last fall, I found myself struggling with depression, confusion and chronic fatigue—caused, according to my doctors, by deep and unrelenting stress. My rheumatologist told me that I had better find some way to inner peace or my health would be destroyed.
My guides were my priest, my therapist and, surprisingly, Dante Alighieri. Killing time in a bookstore one day, I read the first canto of "Inferno," in which the frightened and disoriented Dante comes to himself in the dark wood, all paths out blocked by savage animals.
Yes, I thought, that's exactly what this feels like. I kept reading and didn't stop. Several months later, after much introspective prayer, counseling and completing all three books of "The Divine Comedy," I was free and on the road to recovery. And I was left awe-struck by the power of this 700-year-old poem to restore me.
This will startle readers who think of "The Divine Comedy" only as the "Inferno" and think of the "Inferno" only as a showcase of sadistic tortures. It is pretty gory, but none of its gruesomeness is gratuitous. Rather, the ingenious punishments that Dante invents for the damned reveal the intrinsic nature of their sins—and of sin itself, which, as the poet says, makes "reason slave to appetite."
On the spiral journey downward into the Inferno, Dante learns that all sin is a function of disordered desire—a distortion of love. The damned either loved evil things or loved good things—such as food and sex—in the wrong way. They dwell forever in the pit because they used their God-given free will—the quality that makes us most human—to choose sin over righteousness.
The pilgrim's dramatic encounters in the "Inferno"—with tormented shades such as the adulterous Francesca, the prideful Farinata and the silver-tongued deceiver Ulysses—offer no simplistic morals. They are, instead, a profound exploration of the lies we tell ourselves to justify our desires and to conceal our deeds and motives from ourselves.
This opens the pilgrim Dante's eyes to his own sins and the ways that yielding to them drew him from life's straight path. The first steps to freedom require honestly recognizing that one is enslaved—and one's own responsibility for that bondage.
The second stage of the journey begins on Easter morning, at the foot of Mount Purgatory. Dante and his guide, the Roman poet Virgil, stagger out of the Inferno and begin the climb to the summit. If "Inferno" is about recognizing and understanding one's sin, "Purgatory" is about repenting of it, purifying one's will to become fit for Paradise.
Like all the redeemed souls beginning the ascent, Dante girds himself with a reed symbolizing humility. This is a truth every 12-stepper knows: Alone, we are powerless over our addictions.
But we aren't entirely powerless. On the Terrace of Wrath, where penitents must purge themselves, amid choking black smoke, of their tendency toward anger, the pilgrim meets a shade called Marco, whom he asks to explain why the world is in such a bad state. Marco sighs heavily and points to the poor choices that people make. "You still possess a light to winnow good from evil, and you have free will," Marco says. "Therefore, if the world around you goes astray, in you is the cause and in you let it be sought."
With these lines, the poet tells us to stop blaming other people for our problems. As long as we draw breath, we have it within ourselves to change.
Change is difficult and painful. But the penitents of Purgatory endure their purifications with joy because they know that they are ultimately heaven-bound. "I speak of pain," says a repentant glutton, now emaciated, "but I should say solace." The holy suffering of these ascetics unites them with Christ's example and sacrifice, which gives them the strength to bear it.
Dante's guide Virgil, who represents the best of human reason unaided by faith, can take the pilgrim to the mountaintop, but he cannot cross into Paradise. That task falls to Beatrice, the woman whom Dante had adored in life and in whose beautiful countenance young Dante saw a glimmer of the divine.
When he meets Beatrice at the summit, Dante confesses that after her death, he learned that he should set his heart on the eternal, on a love that cannot perish. But he forgot this wisdom and made his goal the pursuit of what Beatrice calls "false images of the good." This confession and his abject sorrow open the door for Dante's total purification, making him strong enough to bear the weight of heaven's glory.
"Paradise," which tracks Dante's rise with Beatrice through the heights of heaven, is the most metaphysical and difficult of the three books of "The Divine Comedy." It offers a vision of the Promised Land after the agonies of the purgatorial desert.
Allegorically, "Paradise" shows how we can live when we dwell in love, at peace with God and our neighbors, our desires not denied but fulfilled in harmonious order. It describes in rapturous passages how to be filled with the light and love of God, how to embrace gratitude no matter our condition and how to say, with the nun Piccarda Donati in an early canto, "In His will is our peace."
The effect all this had on me was dramatic. Without my quite realizing what was happening, "The Divine Comedy" led me systematically to examine my own conscience and to reflect on how I too had pursued false images of the good.
I learned how I had been missing the mark in my vocation as a writer. My eagerness to chase after new ideas before I had mastered old ones was a form of intellectual gluttony. The workaholic tendencies I considered a sign of my strong professional ethic were, paradoxically, a cover for my laziness; the more time I spent writing, the less time I had for the mundane tasks necessary for an orderly life.
Most important of all, reading Dante uncovered the sin most responsible for my immediate crisis. Family and home ought to have been for me icons of the good—that is, windows into the divine—but without meaning to, I had loved them too much, seeing them as absolute goods, thereby rendering them into idols. They had to be cast down, or at least put in their proper place, if I was going to be free.
And "The Divine Comedy" persuaded me that I was not helplessly caught by my failings and circumstances. I had reason, I had free will, I had the assistance of good people—and I had the help of God, if only I would humble myself to ask.
Why did I need Dante to gain this knowledge? After all, my confessor had a lot to say about bondage to false idols and about how humility and prayer can unleash the power of God to help us overcome it. And at our first meeting, my therapist told me that I couldn't control other people or events, but, by the exercise of my free will, I could control my response to them. None of the basic lessons of the Comedy was exactly new to me.
But when embodied in this brilliant poem, these truths inflamed my moral imagination as never before. For me, the Comedy became an icon through which the serene light of the divine pierced the turbulent darkness of my heart. As the Dante scholar Charles Williams wrote of the supreme poet's art: "A thousand preachers have said all that Dante says and left their hearers discontented; why does Dante content? Because an image of profundity is there."
That image is what Christian theologians call a "theophany"—a manifestation of God. Standing in my little country church this past January on the Feast of the Theophany, the poet's impact on my life became clear. Nothing external had changed, but everything in my heart had. I was settled. For the first time since returning to my hometown, I felt that I had come home.
Can Dante do this for others? Truth to tell, it is impossible for me, as a believing (non-Catholic) Christian, to separate my receptiveness to the poem from the core theological vision both Dante and I share.
But the Comedy wouldn't have survived so long if it were just an elaborate exercise in morality and Scholastic theology. The Comedy pulses with life, and it bears witness in its luminous lines and vivid tableaux to the power of love, the deathlessness of hope and the promise of freedom for those who have the courage to take the first pilgrim step.
Over Lent, I led readers of my blog on a pilgrimage through "Purgatory," one canto a day. To my delight, a number of them wrote afterward to say how much Dante had changed their lives. One reader wrote to say that she quit a three-decade smoking habit while reading "Purgatory" over Lent, saying that the poem helped her to think of her addiction as something that she could be free of, with God's help.
"I've had the sensation of maddeningly stinging, prickling skin during the nicotine withdrawal phase when I've tried to quit before," she said, "but reading Dante helped me to imagine the sensation as a cleansing fire."
Michelle Togut, a Jewish reader in Greensboro, N.C., told me that she was surprised by how contemporary the medieval Italian poet seemed. "For a work about what supposedly happens after you die, Dante's poem is very much about life and how we choose to live it," she said. "It's about spurning our idols and taking a long, hard look at ourselves in order to break out of the destructive behaviors that keep us from both G-d and the good life."
The practical applications of Dante's wisdom cannot be separated from the pleasure of reading his verse, and this accounts for much of the life-changing power of the Comedy. For Dante, beauty provides signposts on the seeker's road to truth. The wandering Florentine's experiences with beauty, especially that of the angelic Beatrice, taught him that our loves lead us to heaven or to hell, depending on whether we are able to satisfy them within the divine order.
This is why "The Divine Comedy" is an icon, not an idol: Its beauty belongs to heaven. But it may also be taken into the hearts and minds of those woebegone wayfarers who read it as a guidebook and hold it high as a lantern, sent across the centuries from one lost soul to another, illuminating the way out of the dark wood that, sooner or later, ensnares us all.
Mr. Dreher is a senior editor of The American Conservative, where portions of this essay first appeared. His most recent book, "The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming" (Grand Central), was published in paperback this week.
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Выхода юго-восточной Украины из состава страны и ее принятия в ряды Российской Федерации осталось ждать недолго. По мнению немецкого депутата, уже в начале следующей недели мир ждут новые территориальные изменения.
Член немецко-украинской парламентской группы Карл-Георг Вельман назвал точную дату окончания волнений на востоке Украины. «В Кремле существует планы, согласно которым уже 21 апреля юго-восток Украины должен объявить о своей независимости, после чего новое государство признает Россия. А референдум, проведение которого намечено на май, должен дать благословение этому шагу», - цитирует политика «Цензор.НЕТ».
Карл-Георг Вельман не уверен, что Россия в силах сопротивляться НАТО. «Ведь никто не знает, ограничатся ли русские Донецком, или же пойдут до Киева и Львова. НАТО уже дало понять, что не начнет войну. Но я не верю, что русские настолько круты, чтобы угрожать государствам, входящим в НАТО, и войти на территорию Балтии», - сообщил он.
Политик не видит Украину в рядах НАТО и советует России пересмотреть свое поведение. «С точки зрения целесообразности Путин должен быть заинтересован в том, чтобы совместно с западными странами стабилизировать ситуацию на Украине. Последней же стоит задуматься об отказе состоять в каких-либо блоках, исключить членство в НАТО, договориться насчет прав меньшинств. Также вполне разумной была бы и федерализация по немецкому образцу, поскольку исторические и культурные различия между украинскими регионами слишком велики», - заявил Карл-Георг Вельман.
По словам чиновника, Президент России Владимир Путин очень хочет вписать свое имя в историю и не сможет упустить такую дату, как 9 мая, для того, чтобы показать миру свое величие. «Так, многие считают, что Путин испытывает некий сакральный импульс по возвращению священных русских земель матушке-России. Кроме того, 9 мая в России будут праздновать победу над фашизмом, и нельзя исключать, что Путин хочет вписать себя в этот исторический контекст: после распада Советского Союза Путин опять привел страну к величию и славе», - отметил Карл-Георг Вельман.
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Somewhere along the way, once-hateful first lady Mellie Grant became the most complex, most fun character on 'Scandal.' Breakout star Bellamy Young tells us how she did it.
As anyone who has watched just five minutes of the crazy-popular ABC drama Scandal can tell you, the series is brimming with whiplash story developments and surprising moments that shake loyal fans to their core. Even knowing that, though, it’s unlikely that Scandal viewers were prepared for this season’s most shocking twist of all: that they were going to fall in love with Mellie.
Every Scandal fan has their own moment when they stopped loving to hate first lady Mellie Grant—who would result if Lady Macbeth hailed from Stepford and drank cocktails with Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf —and started to simply love her.
Some of it had to do with fatigue over the callously brazen affair between the show’s protagonists, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn). Much of it came as heartbreaking details about the ambitious—if embattled—character’s past came to surface and helped explain away the malicious wrath that seemed to be her guiding light. But, more than anything, the shift came as we all had the realization that the actress bringing Mellie to life, Bellamy Young, is just damned good at her job.
Brimming with all of Mellie’s elegant grace, but with humble warmth replacing her character’s occasionally vicious grit, Young’s been witnessing the shift in attitude toward her scene-stealing creation. “We’re not all good and we’re not all bad as people,” Young says. “We have good moments and bad moments. I’m so lucky that the writers didn’t just leave Mellie to play her darkest, ugliest moments. They’ve allowed her in to the sun for a little while. And they’ve allowed her a little joy.”
Don’t be fooled, though. It’s been a slow transition. This is a woman who’s done so much blackmailing, dastardly plotting, and betraying that even though her husband has been cheating on her before their eyes, fans still rooted against her. But Young has chewed into each storyline with not just her teeth bared, but also her soul. The result is that, especially once we started learning empathetic things about her past, Mellie’s actions started to not only become easier to relate to, but also root for.
We’ve watched her husband lie to her, the media vilify her after she was caught on camera bad-talking a congresswoman, swallow her pride to work with the woman having an affair with her husband, and we’ve learned that back when she and Fitz were young newlyweds, Fitz’s father raped her and possibly fathered her child.
But we’ve also seen her light shine through. “The writers have given her little pockets of love and light, not just the black, black dark,” Young says. We’ve watched her become empowered, and stand up for herself. For a brief stretch, she was the one carrying on an affair. (With her husband’s re-election running mate, naturally. This is Scandal.) And in the strange universe that Scandal creates, we were totally on board with it.
“It’s so interesting to see Mellie in different situations and figure out how she would live through different things… to see her be loved,” Young says. “Like how in the world would she respond to being loved?” But she’s quick to add, “Also, it worried me because I have dined out on and built the whole character on Mellie’s soul-crushing devotion to Fitz. But that’s great too because it makes her human.” She laughs. “She’s a hypocrite like everybody else.”
Not that Young judges her character. Quite the contrary. She is quick—and eloquent—to defend Mellie against her critics, which probably helps to explain how she’s turned what could be a one-note villain into one of Scandal’s most fully realized humans.
“To represent that particular kind of horror for a number of voiceless women was important for me, and how it played out in the story was important to me.”
Why is Mellie, or anyone, for that matter, merely satisfied with small acts of vengeance against her cheating husband? Why does she stand by her man when her man parades his philandering in front of her face, bluntly telling her that he doesn’t love her?
“You know how you just act the ugliest with the people you love the most?” Young says. “For some weird reason, they get all of you. You don’t just serve the good bits for the people who deserve the good bits. You give them everything. Mellie’s acting abhorrently because she’s at that place of no return where she loves him so much and perceives herself to be so rejected by him that all bets are off.”
Most of us just see the scorching, tortured feelings that Olivia and Fitz have for each other onScandal, where the love is fierce when there’s love and the hatred even fiercer when there’s hate. But Mellie feels that, too. “All’s fair in love and war, and she was pulling no punches,” Young says. “But it was always out of the pain, always out of the love. It was never a cold sort of unemotional villain. She’d be screaming something horrible to him, but underneath it’s like, 'Why don’t you love me anymore?’”
Then there’s the controversial rape scene. One camp saw it as necessary to understand why Mellie acts a certain way. But just as many thought of it as a cheap plot device used to, perhaps misogynistically, “humanize” Scandal’s female villain. They rejected the idea that a character’s rape be used to make her more empathetic or likable.
On a series that has depicted waterboarding, self-mutilation, dismembering, and one character chewing through her own wrists, it says a lot that the rape scene was one of the most unflinching and difficult-to-watch sequences Scandal has aired to date. And Young, once again with admirable eloquence, stands by it.
“To represent that particular kind of horror for a number of voiceless women was important for me, and how it played out in the story was important to me,” she says. “You know, if you look at her life as a pie chart, part of that pie chart is really frozen in time. Something traumatic causes a person to truncate himself or herself in that way. So, really, almost with a difficult truth it made my job easier, because it explains how she’s walking through her present.”
Give credit to Scandal’s writers and give credit to Young’s complex performance and nuanced characterization, though, because, with Scandal’s season finale set to air Thursday night, it's incredibly difficult to describe just how Mellie is “walking through her present.” The most basic question of all is the toughest one to answer: Is Mellie happy?
“I think the real question is, what would make Mellie happy?” Young counters. “Because she hasn’t even answered that question, and I think she wakes up every day trying to define the question in terms of the circumstances she has at hand.” But if she was actually forced to contemplate her happiness on a deeper level? “I don’t think she would allow herself to do that because it would be a tsunami of unaddressed guilt and grief and sorrow and rage, and she just doesn’t have the luxury, in such a crucible in the White House, the world is watching, and Mellie very much feels the burden of propriety.”
Someone who seems to definitively be able to answer the question of personal happiness, however, is irrefutably Bellamy Young, who erupts with choruses about how she’s the “luckiest girl in the world” easily a half-dozen times during our discussion about Scandal.
A journeyman actor with over 60 credits, but all mostly supporting roles, the most high-profile of which were in Mission: Impossible III and the short-lived series Dirty Sexy Money, Young was originally supposed to be on board for just three episodes of Scandal’s first season. Young counts her blessings that the series took a more character-driven than procedural direction in its second season, during which she became a series regular. “I think they found that Mellie was a lever, you know?” Young guesses. “As an engine of mischief and mayhem and much suffering.” In other words, she wasgreat TV.
“It’s like winning the lottery,” Young says. “I’m 44 and a woman in Hollywood, so a job this great is exponentially more unlikely because of my gender and my age.” More specifically, though, it’s the Shonda Rhimes Lottery she’s won, as the Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, and Private Practice creator has made a name for herself assembling TV’s most diverse casts--be it race, sexual orientation, or age.
“It’s about souls, not bodies,” Young says. “I’m a longtime Shonda Rhimes fan, and that’s what makes her work really resonate with people. Because people see themselves in it. She hires souls and then she lets those souls be as messy as we are, you know? You get to be ugly, and life is often ugly.”
The reverse, though, describes the brilliance of Bellamy Young, who took a character who used to be so ugly and, to our collective surprise, turned her into someone complicated. Even beautiful.
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· · · · · ·
Somewhere along the way, once-hateful first lady Mellie Grant became the most complex, most fun character on 'Scandal.' Breakout star Bellamy Young tells us how she did it.
As anyone who has watched just five minutes of the crazy-popular ABC drama Scandal can tell you, the series is brimming with whiplash story developments and surprising moments that shake loyal fans to their core. Even knowing that, though, it’s unlikely that Scandal viewers were prepared for this season’s most shocking twist of all: that they were going to fall in love with Mellie.
Every Scandal fan has their own moment when they stopped loving to hate first lady Mellie Grant—who would result if Lady Macbeth hailed from Stepford and drank cocktails with Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf —and started to simply love her.
Some of it had to do with fatigue over the callously brazen affair between the show’s protagonists, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and President Fitzgerald Grant (Tony Goldwyn). Much of it came as heartbreaking details about the ambitious—if embattled—character’s past came to surface and helped explain away the malicious wrath that seemed to be her guiding light. But, more than anything, the shift came as we all had the realization that the actress bringing Mellie to life, Bellamy Young, is just damned good at her job.
Brimming with all of Mellie’s elegant grace, but with humble warmth replacing her character’s occasionally vicious grit, Young’s been witnessing the shift in attitude toward her scene-stealing creation. “We’re not all good and we’re not all bad as people,” Young says. “We have good moments and bad moments. I’m so lucky that the writers didn’t just leave Mellie to play her darkest, ugliest moments. They’ve allowed her in to the sun for a little while. And they’ve allowed her a little joy.”
Don’t be fooled, though. It’s been a slow transition. This is a woman who’s done so much blackmailing, dastardly plotting, and betraying that even though her husband has been cheating on her before their eyes, fans still rooted against her. But Young has chewed into each storyline with not just her teeth bared, but also her soul. The result is that, especially once we started learning empathetic things about her past, Mellie’s actions started to not only become easier to relate to, but also root for.
We’ve watched her husband lie to her, the media vilify her after she was caught on camera bad-talking a congresswoman, swallow her pride to work with the woman having an affair with her husband, and we’ve learned that back when she and Fitz were young newlyweds, Fitz’s father raped her and possibly fathered her child.
But we’ve also seen her light shine through. “The writers have given her little pockets of love and light, not just the black, black dark,” Young says. We’ve watched her become empowered, and stand up for herself. For a brief stretch, she was the one carrying on an affair. (With her husband’s re-election running mate, naturally. This is Scandal.) And in the strange universe that Scandal creates, we were totally on board with it.
“It’s so interesting to see Mellie in different situations and figure out how she would live through different things… to see her be loved,” Young says. “Like how in the world would she respond to being loved?” But she’s quick to add, “Also, it worried me because I have dined out on and built the whole character on Mellie’s soul-crushing devotion to Fitz. But that’s great too because it makes her human.” She laughs. “She’s a hypocrite like everybody else.”
Not that Young judges her character. Quite the contrary. She is quick—and eloquent—to defend Mellie against her critics, which probably helps to explain how she’s turned what could be a one-note villain into one of Scandal’s most fully realized humans.
“To represent that particular kind of horror for a number of voiceless women was important for me, and how it played out in the story was important to me.”
Why is Mellie, or anyone, for that matter, merely satisfied with small acts of vengeance against her cheating husband? Why does she stand by her man when her man parades his philandering in front of her face, bluntly telling her that he doesn’t love her?
“You know how you just act the ugliest with the people you love the most?” Young says. “For some weird reason, they get all of you. You don’t just serve the good bits for the people who deserve the good bits. You give them everything. Mellie’s acting abhorrently because she’s at that place of no return where she loves him so much and perceives herself to be so rejected by him that all bets are off.”
Most of us just see the scorching, tortured feelings that Olivia and Fitz have for each other onScandal, where the love is fierce when there’s love and the hatred even fiercer when there’s hate. But Mellie feels that, too. “All’s fair in love and war, and she was pulling no punches,” Young says. “But it was always out of the pain, always out of the love. It was never a cold sort of unemotional villain. She’d be screaming something horrible to him, but underneath it’s like, 'Why don’t you love me anymore?’”
Then there’s the controversial rape scene. One camp saw it as necessary to understand why Mellie acts a certain way. But just as many thought of it as a cheap plot device used to, perhaps misogynistically, “humanize” Scandal’s female villain. They rejected the idea that a character’s rape be used to make her more empathetic or likable.
On a series that has depicted waterboarding, self-mutilation, dismembering, and one character chewing through her own wrists, it says a lot that the rape scene was one of the most unflinching and difficult-to-watch sequences Scandal has aired to date. And Young, once again with admirable eloquence, stands by it.
“To represent that particular kind of horror for a number of voiceless women was important for me, and how it played out in the story was important to me,” she says. “You know, if you look at her life as a pie chart, part of that pie chart is really frozen in time. Something traumatic causes a person to truncate himself or herself in that way. So, really, almost with a difficult truth it made my job easier, because it explains how she’s walking through her present.”
Give credit to Scandal’s writers and give credit to Young’s complex performance and nuanced characterization, though, because, with Scandal’s season finale set to air Thursday night, it's incredibly difficult to describe just how Mellie is “walking through her present.” The most basic question of all is the toughest one to answer: Is Mellie happy?
“I think the real question is, what would make Mellie happy?” Young counters. “Because she hasn’t even answered that question, and I think she wakes up every day trying to define the question in terms of the circumstances she has at hand.” But if she was actually forced to contemplate her happiness on a deeper level? “I don’t think she would allow herself to do that because it would be a tsunami of unaddressed guilt and grief and sorrow and rage, and she just doesn’t have the luxury, in such a crucible in the White House, the world is watching, and Mellie very much feels the burden of propriety.”
Someone who seems to definitively be able to answer the question of personal happiness, however, is irrefutably Bellamy Young, who erupts with choruses about how she’s the “luckiest girl in the world” easily a half-dozen times during our discussion about Scandal.
A journeyman actor with over 60 credits, but all mostly supporting roles, the most high-profile of which were in Mission: Impossible III and the short-lived series Dirty Sexy Money, Young was originally supposed to be on board for just three episodes of Scandal’s first season. Young counts her blessings that the series took a more character-driven than procedural direction in its second season, during which she became a series regular. “I think they found that Mellie was a lever, you know?” Young guesses. “As an engine of mischief and mayhem and much suffering.” In other words, she wasgreat TV.
“It’s like winning the lottery,” Young says. “I’m 44 and a woman in Hollywood, so a job this great is exponentially more unlikely because of my gender and my age.” More specifically, though, it’s the Shonda Rhimes Lottery she’s won, as the Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy, and Private Practice creator has made a name for herself assembling TV’s most diverse casts--be it race, sexual orientation, or age.
“It’s about souls, not bodies,” Young says. “I’m a longtime Shonda Rhimes fan, and that’s what makes her work really resonate with people. Because people see themselves in it. She hires souls and then she lets those souls be as messy as we are, you know? You get to be ugly, and life is often ugly.”
The reverse, though, describes the brilliance of Bellamy Young, who took a character who used to be so ugly and, to our collective surprise, turned her into someone complicated. Even beautiful.
Read the whole story
· · · · · ·
Olga Rudenko, Special for USA TODAY 8:18 a.m. EDT April 18, 2014
A pro-Russian protester holds icons as he stands outside a city hall bearing flags representing the Donetsk Republic in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, April 17, 2014. Three pro-Russian protesters were killed and 13 injured during an attempted raid overnight on a Ukrainian National Guard base in the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Ukraine's authorities said Wednesday.(Photo: AP, Sergei Grits)
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MARIUPOL, Ukraine – Pro-Russian separatists who have occupied administrative building in the east of the Ukraine for the past two weeks showed no sign of relenting Friday despite amnesty being offered by the Ukrainian government.
"Come out. Your time has passed," Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said at a meeting In the capital of Kiev in reference to separatist militants who have take over buildings in at least eight cities in East Ukraine.
Yatsenyuk said the government has drafted a law promising militants they would face no legal consequences if they leave seized buildings and give up their weapons.
The measure was drafted after diplomats in Geneva on Thursday agreed on a statement in which they called on all sides to stand down in the conflict. Among those agreeing was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose country has been accused by the United States of providing support to Ukraine militants who are demanding to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
Yet critically, the militants were not party to the agreement and on Friday had not abided by it.
"Lavrov did not sign anything for us, he signed on behalf of the Russian Federation," said Denis Pushilin, head of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic.
Militants forced their way into several buildings in Donetsk, an industrial city of about 1 million people in East Ukraine on the border with Russia.
The city a significant population of Russian-speaking ethnic Russians, and it is they who primarily have taken over buildings and are building barricades to prevent Ukraine security forces from driving them out.
Well-armed soldiers in matching uniforms and masks have been assisting the militants. Ukraine and anti-Russia residents of Donetsk say the soldiers are Russian military sent in by Russia President Vladimir Putin to create unrest as an excuse to invade as he did last month in the Ukraine province of Crimea.
On Thursday night, thousands of people who do not want to join Russia held protests in the city. Pushilin says he wants a referendum by May 11 to ask residents whether they want sovereignty.
In Mariupol, an eastern seaport city of some 460,000 people, the city hall has been occupied since Sunday. Militants have surrounded the building with barricades made of tires and bags filled with sand.
The several dozen men holding Mariupol's city hall are demanding a referendum in which people of the region can vote on joining Russia. That is the same tactic used by thugs in \Crimea who took over buildings with the help of Russian troops.
The referendum was held but and approved, and followed by annexation into Russia by Putin.
"It would be great if Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) took custody of us," said 26-year old Vitaliy Skovronskiy, standing on the city hall's balcony that was turned into a lookout post to watch out in case of police attack.
Police say they have not attempted to take back the building. A so-called "anti-terrorist operation," initiated by Ukrainian government on Monday to retake control of such buildings seems to have been put on hold or has not been successful.
A Ukrainian State Security Service spokeswoman, Maryna Ostapenko said Thursday the operation had not moved forward due to pro-Russian groups – some who she claimed were from the Russian military – using civilians as human shields. Some of these groups have been blocking roads into the cities and dared Ukraine troops to shoot at them.
The troops have not done so, and instead are parked alongside roads.
To keep more Russian military from getting into the country, Ukraine put travel restrictions on male Russian citizens between the ages of 16 and 60 from entering Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the week, some 11,000 Russians were restricted from entering Ukraine, according to State Security Service, with 117 of them were discovered to be previously involved in extremist activities.
Ukraine's prime minister said he expected Russia to immediately remove "diversionist groups" from the east of Ukraine, following the Geneva meeting.
"We in Ukraine can restore order on our own if Russia stops helping the terrorists," Yatsenyuk said.
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A 31-year-old lawyer who moved his family into the apartment of an elderly woman who mysteriously vanished in 2012 has now confessed to killing her, Russian investigators say.
The lawyer met the 72-year-old when she was seeking legal assistance to get back 10,000 rubles ($300) she had lent to an acquaintance, investigators in the city of Miass, on the southern edge of Russia's Ural Mountains, said in a statement Wednesday.
The lawyer even represented the woman in court. But later on, knowing that she didn't have any close relatives, his greed got the better of him and he decided to kill her to take her home, according to investigators.
Although the opportunistic lawyer was the primary suspect in the woman's disappearance, the case moved slowly until just recently, when the man broke down during questioning and confessed, eventually leading investigators to where he hid the body in a forest, the statement said.
The lawyer, whose name has not been disclosed, now must prepare for the trial of his career, as he faces more than a decade in prison on murder charges.
Laurent Dubrule / ReutersNATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen holds a news conference at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels April 16, 2014.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has denied an allegation made by President Vladimir Putin that he recorded and leaked a private conversation between them.
Speaking at an annual televised call-in with the nation on Thursday, Putin said that Rasmussen, during his term as Danish prime minister, secretly recorded a discussion that the two men were having, before passing it on to the Danish media.
Rasmussen's spokesman on Friday dismissed the allegations as "complete nonsense," Danish daily Politiken reported.
NATO also rubbished Putin's comments.
"To divert attention away from its own illegal and illegitimate actions in Ukraine, Russia has leveled a series of accusations against NATO which distort the facts," NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said, Reuters reported.
Sergei Porter / For VedomostiPutin and Yanukovych at the 6th Russia-Ukraine Intergovernmental Commission in the Kremlin in December.
Update: This was a spoof article for April Fool's Day. Read more here.
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has accepted a position in President Vladimir Putin's administration as an adviser on the country's affairs with Ukraine, according to a source close to the Kremlin.
The official's surprise announcement comes at the height of tensions between Russia and Ukraine over Russia's recent annexation of the Crimean peninsula last month.
"We need to understand how the bandits who seized power in Kiev think," the source said Monday. "We thought Viktor Fyodorovich [Yanukovych] could give us insight about how to deal with this new crowd."
The source added: "The illegal coup in Kiev put an experienced professional on the street. We reserve the right to rectify this violation of Mr. Yanukovych's fundamental right to employment."
A Kremlin spokesman refused to comment on whether Yanukovych had been offered a job. But the appointment was indirectly confirmed by an official in the presidential property department, who said Yanukovych was expected to move into a Kremlin-owned estate.
Yanukovych, whose whereabouts remain murky after he fled Kiev under pressure from opposition protesters in late February, has not made any public comments about a new job.
Although the West has recognized the acting Ukrainian government, voted in by parliament after Yanukovych's ouster, Russia maintains that the new authorities obtained power illegally.
Yanukovych, for his part, has warned of dangerous elements among the new authorities.
After days of speculation regarding his whereabouts, Yanukovych resurfaced in Russia on Feb. 28 requesting protection from "extremists."
At a news conference in Rostov-on-Don in early March, he reiterated his unwavering support for Russia, which likely swayed the Kremlin's decision to hire him, according to the source.
"The usurpers who seized power will try to shift the responsibility on me," Yanukovych said. "And perhaps even on Russia. I will never agree to this."
Yanukovych told reporters last week that every Ukrainian region should hold its own referendum, a statement that was denounced as an attempt to exacerbate strife and political rifts within the country.
The Kremlin property department official said that Yanukovych would be housed in an estate on Moscow's posh Rublyovskoye Shosse from April 1.
"We are expecting a shipment of art work and vintage furniture smuggled out of the Mezhyhirya residence at any moment," said the official, who sought anonymity so he could speak candidly. "We are closely following Mr. Yanukovych's instructions for the interior design of his home, which will be free of any orange, a color he finds hideous."
The property manager also said that an enclosure would be constructed to accommodate a few exotic pets for Yanukovych, who abandoned the animals at his private zoo at his former Mezhyhirya estate outside Kiev before fleeing Ukraine.
The residence was taken over by opposition protesters, journalists and members of the general public after it was found abandoned in late February. Many of Yanukovych's belongings — among them a botanical garden, a petting zoo and a replica pirate ship — have been subject to intense scrutiny for what many see as exorbitant costs at taxpayers' expense.
Among the animals at his new Rublyovskoye residence will be pheasants, peacocks and at least one ostrich, the property department official said.
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В Симферополе в офис "Единой России" бросили "коктейль Молотова" <a href="http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5141/23_main.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5141/23_main.jpg</a> <a href="http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5141/23_tn.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.segodnya.ua/img/article/5141/23_tn.jpg</a> 2014-04-18T15:34:37+03:00Крым Окно, в которое неизвестные кинули горючую смесь, заклеено фанерой
Причиной пожара оказалась бутылка с горючей смесью. Фото: investigator.org.ua
В Симферополе сегодня ночью горел штаб республиканского отделения политической партии "Единая Россия", сообщает Центр журналистских расследований. Пожар произошел в здании по улице Аксакова в Симферополе. По предварительным данным, никто не пострадал.
По информации источника в правоохранительных органах, причиной пожара оказалась бутылка с горючей смесью, которую ночью кто-то кинул в окно офиса.
От огня пострадала только кухня, остальные помещения наполнились дымом. Площадь пожара составила около 5 квадратных метров.
В настоящее время возле офиса находятся сотрудники ЖКХ. Окно, в которое неизвестные кинули горючую смесь, заклеено фанерой.
Напомним, крымские "регионалы" стали "Единой Россией".
Читайте также:
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Крымские "регионалы" стали "Единой Россией"
Одесская милиция: активистов Евромайдана не арестовывали, но нашли "коктейли Молотова"
Как в Киеве горел офис КПУ: подробности
Крымские "регионалы" стали "Единой Россией"
Юлия Тимошенко
4 Апреля 2014, 14:49
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4 Апреля 2014, 14:49
Высшая квалификационная комиссия судей Украины предлагает уволить судью Родиона Киреева, который в 2011 году в ходе судебного процесса арестовал Юлию Тимошенко и приговорил ее к семи годам лишения сво
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Вы сейчас просматриваете новость "В Симферополе в офис "Единой России" бросили "коктейль Молотова" ". Другие Новости Крыма смотрите в блоке "Последние новости"
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Published on Jan 12, 2013
Иван Ребров/ Ivan Rebroff- Дорогой длинною / Такие дни (снято во Франции в нач.70х)
Иван Ребров (Ivan Rebroff, настоящее имя — Ханс Рольф Рипперт) родился 31 июля 1931 года в поезде между Варшавой и Парижем (официально местом его рождения указан Берлин) — немецкий певец с диапазоном голоса в 4,5 октавы (от сопрано до баса). Пел в хоре донских казаков Жарова, профессионально стал выступать после окончания консерватории в Гамбурге. Исполнял русские песни и романсы, народные песни многих других стран, оперы, литургии, арии из опер. В активе певца 49 "золотых" дисков и 1 "платиновый", из которых тридцать шесть посвящены русскому песенному фольклору. Давал в год до 200 концертов. В 1960-х и 1970-х годах дважды посещал Россию с частными визитами. Умер 27 февраля 2008 на 77-м году жизни в клинике Франкфурта на Майне после тяжелой болезни.
Иван Ребров (Ivan Rebroff, настоящее имя — Ханс Рольф Рипперт) родился 31 июля 1931 года в поезде между Варшавой и Парижем (официально местом его рождения указан Берлин) — немецкий певец с диапазоном голоса в 4,5 октавы (от сопрано до баса). Пел в хоре донских казаков Жарова, профессионально стал выступать после окончания консерватории в Гамбурге. Исполнял русские песни и романсы, народные песни многих других стран, оперы, литургии, арии из опер. В активе певца 49 "золотых" дисков и 1 "платиновый", из которых тридцать шесть посвящены русскому песенному фольклору. Давал в год до 200 концертов. В 1960-х и 1970-х годах дважды посещал Россию с частными визитами. Умер 27 февраля 2008 на 77-м году жизни в клинике Франкфурта на Майне после тяжелой болезни.
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Фотогалерея - Карикатуры западных СМИ на тему российского вторжения в Украинe
Фото: Аргумент
Мы собрали в нашей галерее карикатуры на тему российского вторжения в Украинe, какой ее видят западные СМИ.
Participants of the four-party talks in Geneva intend to continue meetings in various formats, and it is hoped the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe will take their wishes into account, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
The separatists of Ukraine's Donetsk region will be prepared to surrender their weapons if certain conditions are met, the protesters' representative Myroslav Rudenko told Interfax by phone on Friday.
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Pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk say they will not leave the government building there, defying the Kyiv authorities and threatening a new international deal on Ukraine.
Pro-Russian militiamen who control government buildings in eastern Ukraine are showing no sign of relenting despite a deal between Moscow and Kyiv.
What Ukrainians and the rest of the world see as Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees as Novorossiya, or New Russia.
That Novorossiya is Ukrainian is a historical injustice, Putin said, in his hours-long live television question-and-answer session on April 17.
“I will remind you, using the terminology of the czarist times, this is Novorossiya: Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolayiv, Odesa were not part of Ukraine in czarist times. These are territories that were passed on to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet government.” Putin said. “Why did they do it? God only knows.”
After comments like these and others dismissing Ukraine’s sovereignty, is there any wonder why Ukrainians fear they will soon face a full-scale military invasion from the east?
Pro-Russian supporters stand on top of a barricade near the local police station captured by insurgents in Sloviansk on April 13.
Ukraine, of course, has another term for what is going on: Kremlin-sponsored terrorism.
“Russia has started exporting terrorism to Ukraine. It seems that only one country in the world, Russia, does not see that its sabotage groups are committing terrorist acts in Ukraine,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the Cabinet of Ministers on April 16. “Conduction of all these terrorist operations by Russian secret services is not just unacceptable, it is an international crime.”
“Russia has started exporting terrorism to Ukraine. It seems that only one country in the world, Russia, does not see that its sabotage groups are committing terrorist acts in Ukraine,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told the Cabinet of Ministers on April 16. “Conduction of all these terrorist operations by Russian secret services is not just unacceptable, it is an international crime.”
Putin has already done a considerable amount to correct what he sees as an injustice. Crimea, invaded by Russian troops on Feb. 27 and officially annexed by Russia on March 18, was the start. But this seems to be only the first step in his plan, no matter what diplomatic concessions his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, made on April 17 in Geneva.
“The issue is to defend the lawful rights of Russians and Russian-speaking citizens in the south and east of Ukraine,” Putin said. “These territories are gone, but the people remain.”
Many fear that Putin do everything possible to destabilize Ukraine, and may even promote the breakup of the entire nation. The evidence to back up these concerns is becoming more overwhelming by the day.
Taras Berezovets, a political analyst and founder of BERTA Communications, says Putin’s return to jingoistic, warrior-like rhetoric is “new proof that he has in his head an imperial project.”
Taras Berezovets, a political analyst and founder of BERTA Communications, says Putin’s return to jingoistic, warrior-like rhetoric is “new proof that he has in his head an imperial project.”
In his speech, Putin belatedly admitted that his army backed separatists in Crimea. A similar scenario is unfolding in Donetsk and Luhansk regions at the moment.
About a dozen cities in Donetsk Oblast, home to 10 percent of Ukraine’s 45 milliion people, are at least partially controlled by Kremlin-backed separatist troops led by Russia’s well-trained, well-equipped and well-financed special forces. They have used live shields of women and children to fend off potential attacks by Ukrainian troops since the government announced the launch of its anti-terrorist operation early in the week.
Russian military and Kremlin-backed militias are on the march in Ukraine’s eastern oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, with 15 percent of the nation’s population, after having annexed Crimea, or 5 percent of the nation.
On April 16 in Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast’s second-largest city, an unarmed teenager was left guarding the only entrance to the barricade around city hall, made up of tires and sandbags. Mariupol’s City Hall had been taken by pro-Russian protesters the previous day.
Inside the building, the unemployed Vyacheslav Sobolev, 45, talks about why that happened. “We have only one demand – a referendum. Let the people vote for Russia or Ukraine. Personally, I want to join Russia, but if people decide differently, so be it,” he says.
His sentiment is echoed by many in the region who feel the current government does not represent their interests. Dangerously for the new government, some of those people with separatist views are in Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and even its military.
In Kramatorsk, for example, when 10 armed men took over a tower that retransmits television channels, the police did not bother to show up. The day before, an airborne brigade in the city of Slovyansk gave up their weapons to Russian separatists and switched sides. On April 17, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov called them traitors who will bear full responsibility on.
The Ukrainian army, already short of trained soldiers and reliable equipment, lost six armored personnel vehicles to the separatists in Kramatorsk on April 16. They were a part of the anti-terrorist operation, but had taken the wrong route that day, said Viktoria Siumar, deputy chief of the National Security and Defense Council.
Many Ukrainians, including senior government officials, express privately their fears that should Putin’s divisive plan for Ukraine succeed, there could be two Ukrainian armies fighting against each other in the east and south of the country – in other words, civil war.
Odesa may be the next hot spot.
Odesa may be the next hot spot.
On April 6, Russian-backed separatists began popping up throughout eastern Ukraine. Since then, pro-Russian insurgents have seized government buildings and Ukrainian military equipment in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
A separatist group, called Anti-Maidan in opposition to the EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled Viktor Yanukovych as president on Feb. 22, proclaimed an independent republic in the region online and said the power only “belongs to the residents of the region.”
The government disagreed, and moved to strengthen defenses there, while pro-Kyiv activists set up six checkpoints on the roads leading into the region to prevent a Donetsk-style scenario where major roads were taken over by separatists.
The Kyiv government also fears attacks, and has been inspecting bomb shelters around the city that were built by the Soviets during the Cold War era. Volodymyr Bondarenko, the capital’s administrator, said “all necessary measures are being implemented aimed at preventing terrorist attacks at strategic facilities of vital importance for Kyiv.”
In the meantime, Ukraine’s parliament appealed to Turchynov to consider restoring army drafts in Ukraine, as well as military training at schools and universities. It was canceled last year, when Ukraine moved to adopt a contract-based army.
The army, however, remains dirt-poor after years of looting. Arkadiy Stuzhuk, head of Defense MInistry’s supplies department, said it only has 30-40 percent of the equipment it needs. The shortage of bullet-proof vests and helmets is one of the biggest problems.
He said regular Ukrainians have donated Hr 100 million to the army in recent weeks, of which Hr 51.8 million has already been used to buy supplies.
Apart from attempts to strengthen its own army, Ukraine has moved to weaken the ability of Russian agents to penetrate its territory. Thousands of people have been stopped at the border, and the Security Service of Ukraine has captured some 40 Russian military intelligence officers.
The government has also banned most Russian male nationals, aged 16 to 60, from entering Ukraine unless they have documents proving they have relatives, or business in Ukraine, Russia’s Aeroflot airline announced on April 17. The same rules now apply to Ukrainian nationals registered on the Crimean peninsula.
The government has also moved to cut off some of the financing for separatist groups in the east. In the last 45 days, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, one unnamed Russian bank alone illegally converted some $3.75 million in cash, allegedly to facilitate the Kremlin-backed separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.
The SBU is investigating the bank for violating the law on “crime and terrorist financing.”
Moreover, the general prosecutor’s office has launched a criminal investigation into 14 banks that allegedly helped finance separatism, including Sberbank, a state-owned Russian bank and that nation’s largest lender. The bank’s payment cards were carried by the captured Russian intelligence agents.
In a statement released on April 17, the Russian bank’s local subsidiary denied the accusation stating that “Sberbank of Russia is a Ukrainian commercial bank that operates strictly under Ukrainian law. The bank does not have any relation to the situation.” Other Russian banks operating in Ukraine made similar, fervent denials.
In a statement released on April 17, the Russian bank’s local subsidiary denied the accusation stating that “Sberbank of Russia is a Ukrainian commercial bank that operates strictly under Ukrainian law. The bank does not have any relation to the situation.” Other Russian banks operating in Ukraine made similar, fervent denials.
The State Border Guard Service has also reported detaining Russian and Ukrainian individuals carrying cash on several occasions that was allegedly meant to finance separatist activities, according to the agency. On April 17 alone three Ukrainians were detained for carrying almost Hr 5 million in cash from Crimea to Dnipropetrovsk, hidden between double walls of a suitcase.
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Гражданин Российской Федерации Игорь Безлер принимал участие в захвате здания УСБУ в Донецкой области и райотдела МВД Украины в Горловке
Службой безопасности Украины установлена личность члена диверсионной группы - гражданина Российской Федерации Игоря Безлера, 1965 года рождения. По достоверным данным, до 2002 года Безлер проходил службу в подразделениях ГРУ ГШ ВС РФ, закончил службу в звании подполковник. После этого был направлен в Украину.
Как сообщает пресс-служба СБУ, в феврале 2014 года с Безлером была восстановлена связь со стороны сотрудников ГРУ ГШ ВС РФ. Для выполнения их указаний он выехал в АР Крым, где принимал участие в силовых акциях по захвату воинских частей, органов власти и управления. В апреле 2014 года Безлер по заданию российской военной разведки в составе диверсионной группы принимал участие в захвате здания УСБУ в Донецкой области, а позже в захвате райотдела МВД Украины в городе Горловка.
"В настоящее время Безлер, вероятно, находится в г. Горловка в помещении захваченного террористами районного отдела милиции. Передвигается по городу в сопровождении группы охранников, вооруженных автоматическим оружием. Служба безопасности Украины предупреждает, что указанное лицо является опасным преступником. Просим информировать о его месте пребывания правоохранительные органы Украины", - говорится в сообщении СБУ.
Напомним, 14 апреля сепаратисты штурмовали здание городского управления милиции в Горловке, руководитель которого Андрей Крищенко, отказался им подчиниться. Он скинул с козырька входа в здание сепаратиста, пытавшегося уничтожить украинский флаг, после чего сепаратисты забросали первый этаж здания коктейлями Молотова и начали штурм. 10 правоохранителей были травмированы в ходе столкновения, Крищенко был жестоко избит.
После этого захватчики построили часть милиционеров, которые, по их словам, перешли на сторону так называемой "Донецкой республики". Человек в камуфляже, представившийся подполковником российской армии из Симферополя и предъявивший российский паспорт "представил" в качестве нового начальника горловской милиции человека в штатском, назвав его Шульженко Александром Федоровичем.
Донецкий СМИ сообщили, что подполковник является местным криминальным авторитетом по имени Бевзлер. Он возглавлял в Горловке коммунальное предприятие ритуальных услуг "Простор", из которого был уволен в 2012 году за хищение 38 оград и памятников, а также за вымогательство денег у пожилых людей за место на кладбище.
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Under the agreement, all parties, including separatists and their Russian backers, would stop violent and provocative acts, and all illegal groups would be disarmed. A joint statement made no mention of the presence of what the United States has said are 40,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders. But Kerry said it made clear that Russia is “absolutely prepared to begin to respond with respect to troops,” provided the terms of the agreement are observed.
In Washington, President Obama said Russia’s stated commitments were only the beginning of a process.
“My hope is that we actually do see follow-through over the next several days, but I don’t think, given past performance, that we can count on that,” Obama said during a White House press conference. “We have to be prepared to potentially respond to what continue to be, you know, efforts of interference by the Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine.”
Obama threatened further economic sanctions and stressed American economic and diplomatic support for the Western-oriented government in Kiev. He ruled out a U.S. military response to help Ukraine fend off Russian incursions.
Obama spoke to British Prime Minister David Cameron later Thursday and the White House said the two leaders “stressed that Russia needs to take immediate, concrete actions to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine, including by using its influence over the irregular forces in eastern Ukraine to get them to lay down their arms and leave the buildings they have seized.”
“We will look for the Russians to quickly follow through on their commitments in Geneva in this regard,” a statement from the White House said.
Expectations for the four-way diplomatic session in Geneva were always low, although it marked some diplomatic progress for the Russian and Ukrainian ministers to negotiate directly for several hours. Moscow insists the Kiev government took power in a coup and is illegitimate.
Obama praised the Kiev government’s response to the political unrest and violence in Russian-speaking areas of the country, but sounded unconvinced that Russia intends to do anything to roll back the crisis.
“The Russians signed on to that statement,” Obama said of the agreement in Geneva. The question now becomes: Will in fact they use the influence that they’ve exerted in a disruptive way to restore some order?”
The goal, Obama said, is national elections next month and economic reforms promised by the interim Kiev authorities. The election would bring in a new president to replace Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Moscow president who fled the country in February. Russian moved to annex Crimea from Ukraine shortly afterward.
The situation remained tense across eastern Ukraine late Thursday. In the port city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian forces engaged pro-Russian separatists on Wednesday night, bloodstains marked the asphalt where three militants were killed and 13 wounded after a siege of a military base there. Remains of molotov cocktails were scattered inside the entrance to the base, where nervous young soldiers tried unsuccessfully to keep onlookers from gazing at the wreckage.
“A mob of 300 militants, wielding guns, molotov cocktails and homemade explosives, attacked the Ukrainian military outpost in the city overnight,” Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a statement.
Yet the clash did not appear to signal a newly aggressive stance for Ukrainian forces, who have been treading lightly to avoid giving Russia a pretext to more directly intervene and who suffered chastening losses on Wednesday when militants seized Ukrainian armored personnel carriers near the city of Kramatorsk.
The military set up checkpoints around the city, and officials said newly arrived Ukrainian special forces in Mariupol were still pursuing pro-Russian militants. But there was no immediate sign of an attempt to reclaim the occupied City Hall, though rumors spread of an imminent operation to liberate it. Anti-Kiev militants who seized the building last week were patrolling the grounds and playing Russian folk songs Thursday.
“Let them come, we’ll be waiting,” boasted a 54-year-old factory worker and pro-Russian militant who would only give his first name, Viktor.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Border Service said it would begin imposing entry restrictions on Russian men aged 16 to 60. The move prompted outrage in Moscow, and in the eastern city of Donetsk, a group of 60 pro-Russian activists marched on the city’s international airport in protest.
Rejecting intolerance
In addition to disarmament of “illegal groups,” the seven-paragraph agreement called for the return of “all illegally seized buildings . . . to legitimate owners” and said that “all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.”
As Ukraine’s interim government has previously offered, the agreement also grants amnesty to protesters, “with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.”
Referring to a portion of the agreement that “rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-Semitism,” Kerry noted that “just in the last couple of days, notices were sent to Jews in one city indicated that they have to identify themselves as Jews, and obviously the accompanying threat implied is, or suffer the consequences.”
“In the year 2014 . . . this is not just intolerable,” he said, “it is grotesque.” Reports of the anti-Semitic notices first surfaced in Israeli publications early Thursday, with reports saying the fliers had been distributed by separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
Reached Thursday, Judah Kelerman, deputy head of the Jewish Community Association in Donetsk, said that three men wearing balaclava masks distributed a few dozen of the leaflets near the city’s main synagogue on Tuesday. But Kelerman said the incident appeared to be an isolated act and was not being treated as a legitimate threat.
The name of an armed pro-Russian group that took over Donetsk’s regional administration building last week appeared on the pamphlet. But Kelerman said the militant’s leader had disavowed the leaflets Wednesday, and said the group had “no problem with the Jewish community.”
“We are often a target during periods of unrest,” he said. “But we have no idea who these men were.”
Call for accountability
The deal reached in Geneva also included agreement that the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe, whose monitors are already on the ground in Ukraine, should “play a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation of these deescalation measures . . . beginning in the coming days.” It said that the United States, the E.U. and Russia would all provide monitors.
It voiced support for the constitutional reform process currently underway in Ukraine, and insisted that it be “inclusive, transparent and accountable.” The process, it said, “will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.”
Kerry called the document “a good day’s work,” but emphasized that “words on paper” were no substitute for action.
“On laying down of weapons,” he said, the responsibility will lie with those who have organized” the separatists, “equipped them with weapons, put the uniforms on them and been engaged in the process of guiding them over the course of this operation…we’ve made it clear that Russia has a huge impact on all of those forces.”
Gearan reported from Washington. Anthony Faiola in Donetsk, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
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- Advance is first time 'therapeutic cloning' of adults has been achieved
- Technique has sparked controversy since 1997 creation of Dolly the sheep
- In 2005, the United Nations called on countries to ban it
- New study was funded by a foundation and the South Korean government
By Leon Watson
Published: 22:08 EST, 17 April 2014 | Updated: 02:38 EST, 18 April 2014
Scientists have moved a step closer to the goal of creating stem cells perfectly matched to a patient's DNA in order to treat diseases, they announced yesterday.
The advance, described online in the journal Cell Stem Cell, is the first time researchers have achieved 'therapeutic cloning' of adults.
Technically called somatic-cell nuclear transfer, therapeutic cloning means producing embryonic cells genetically identical to a donor, usually for the purpose of using those cells to treat disease.
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Breakthrough: Scientists have announced they have achieved 'therapeutic cloning' of adults
But nuclear transfer is also the first step in reproductive cloning, or producing a genetic duplicate of someone - a technique that has sparked controversy since the 1997 announcement that it was used to create Dolly, the clone of a ewe.
In 2005, the United Nations called on countries to ban it, and the United States prohibits the use of federal funds for either reproductive or therapeutic cloning.
The new study was funded by a foundation and the South Korean government.
If confirmed by other labs, it could prove significant because many illnesses that might one day be treated with stem cells, such as heart failure and vision loss, primarily affect adults.
Patient-specific stem cells would have to be created from older cells, not infant or fetal ones. That now looks possible, though far from easy: Out of 39 tries, the scientists created stem cells only once for each donor.
Outside experts had different views of the study, which was led by Young Gie Chung of the Research Institute for Stem Cell Research at CHA Health Systems in Los Angeles.
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Cloning has sparked controversy since the 1997 announcement that it was used to create Dolly, the clone of a ewe
Stem cell biologist George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute called it 'an incremental advance' and 'not earth-shattering.'
Reproductive biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, who developed the technique the CHA team adapted, was more positive.
'The advance here is showing that (nuclear transfer) looks like it will work with people of all ages,' he said in an interview.
A year ago, Mitalipov led the team that used nuclear transfer of fetal and infant DNA to produce stem cells, the first time that had been accomplished in humans of any age.
In therapeutic cloning, scientists use a zap of electricity to fuse a grown cell, usually a skin cell, with an ovum whose own DNA has been removed. The egg divides and multiplies, and within five or six days it develops into an embryo shaped like a hollow sphere.
The interior cells are 'pluripotent' stem cells, which have the potential to develop into any kind of human cell.
If the embryo were implanted in a uterus, it could develop into a clone of the DNA donor, which is how Dolly was created.
'Without regulations in place, such embryos could also be used for human reproductive cloning, although this would be unsafe and grossly unethical,' said Dr Robert Lanza, chief scientist of Massachusetts-based biotech Advanced Cell Technology and a co-author of the new study.
The goal is to grow these embryonic stem cells in lab dishes and coax them to turn into specialized cells for therapeutic use against an illness the DNA donor has, such as Parkinson's disease, heart disease, multiple sclerosis or type-1 diabetes. Because the cells are genetically identical to the donor's, they would not be rejected by the immune system.
Despite more than 15 years of trying, scientists' single success at producing human stem cells through this cloning technique came a year ago.
Mitalipov's team at Oregon had fused fetal and infant cells with donated eggs whose DNA had been removed and got them to develop into about 150-cell embryos.
One key to Mitalipov's success was letting the engineered eggs rest for 30 minutes before zapping them to start dividing.
Chung and his colleagues waited two hours before triggering the egg to start dividing, which Lanza believes was a key to their success: 'It gives you time for the massive amount of genetic reprogramming required' to turn back the calendar on adult DNA so that it can direct the development of an embryo, he said in an interview.
It worked: They generated two healthy embryos, one from each adult donor, aged 35 and 75.
If each stem-cell line has to be created from scratch for each patient, the low success and expected high costs means that 'only a few wealthy old men could do it,' said Lanza.
A big barrier to producing patient-specific stem-cell lines for tens of millions of people this way is that few women want to donate eggs, a sometimes painful process.
But it may not be necessary to make a unique cell line for each patient. Many people have genetically similar immune systems, Lanza said, so just '100 human embryonic stem cell lines would generate a complete match for over half the (U.S.) population,' he said.
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KIEV/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Armed pro-Russian separatists were still holding public buildings in eastern Ukraine on Friday, saying they needed more assurances about their security before they comply with an international deal ordering them to disarm.
The agreement, brokered by the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union in Geneva on Thursday offered the best hope to date of defusing a stand-off in Ukraine that has dragged East-West relations to their lowest level since the Cold War.
Enacting the agreement on the ground though will be difficult, because of the deep mistrust between the pro-Russian groups and the Western-backed government in Kiev, which this week flared into violent clashes that killed several people.
The fact any deal was reached at all came as a surprise, and it was not immediately clear what had happened behind the scenes to persuade the Kremlin, which had up to that point shown little sign of compromise, to join calls on the militias to disarm.
In Slaviansk, a city that has become a flashpoint in the crisis after men with Kalashnikovs took control last weekend, leaders of the pro-Russian gunmen were holding a meeting early on Friday inside one of the buildings they seized on how to respond to the Geneva agreement.
On the street, there was little change. In front of the Slaviansk mayor's office, men armed with Kalashnikovs peered over sandbags which had been piled higher overnight. Separatists remained in control of the city's main streets, searching cars at checkpoints around the city.
"Are we going to leave the buildings so that they can come and arrest us? I don't think so," said a man guarding the road to the security office, another building the separatists seized, who identified himself as Alexei.
But he acknowledged that the Geneva talks had changed the situation.
"It turns out Vova doesn't love us as much as we thought." said Alexei, using a diminutive term for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president viewed by many of the separatist militias in eastern Ukraine as their champion and protector.
Putin overturned decades of post-Cold War diplomacy last month by declaring Russia had a right to intervene in neighboring countries and by annexing Crimea.
Moscow's takeover of the Black Sea region, followed the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovich, after months of street protests prompted by his rejection of a trade deal with the EU.
In the capital, Kiev, people on the Maidan, the local name given to Independence Square which was the center of protests that eventually toppled Yanukovich, said the barricades would not come down until the May 25 presidential election.
"People will not leave the Maidan. The people gave their word to stay until the presidential elections so that nobody will be able to rig the result. Then after the election we'll go of our own accord," said 56-year-old Viktor Palamaryuk from the western town of Chernivtsi.
"Nobody will take down our tents and barricades," said 34-year-old Volodymyr Shevchenko from the southern Kherson region. "If the authorities try to do that by force, thousands and thousands of people will come on to the Maidan and stop them."
The Right Sector, a far-right nationalist group whose violent street tactics in support of the Maidan helped bring down Yanukovich in February, saw the Geneva accord as being directed only at pro-Russian separatists in the east.
"We don't have any illegal weapons and so the call to disarm will not apply to us. We, the vanguard of the Ukrainian revolution, should not be compared to obvious bandits," said Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadsky.
ORDER RESTORED?
President Barack Obama said the meeting in Geneva between Russia and western powers was promising but that the United States and its allies were prepared to impose more sanctions on Russia if the situation fails to improve.
"There is the possibility, the prospect, that diplomacy may de-escalate the situation," Obama told reporters.
"The question now becomes, will in fact they use the influence they've exerted in a disruptive way to restore some order so that Ukrainians can carry out an election and move forward with the decentralization reforms that they've proposed," he said at the White House.
The Geneva agreement required all illegal armed groups to disarm, it demanded an end to the illegal occupation of public buildings, streets and squares, and gave a leading role to overseeing the deal to monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Geneva that if by the end of the weekend there were no signs that pro-Russian groups were pulling back, there would be costs for Moscow, a reference to further EU and U.S. sanctions.
"It will be a test for Russia, if Russia wants really to show willing to have stability in these regions," said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia.
Moscow has denied any involvement with the unrest in eastern Ukraine and rejects allegations that it has agents running clandestine operations on Ukrainian soil.
The Geneva deal contained no mention of Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula.
Asked about the absence of any language in the document condemning Russia's intervention in Crimea, Western diplomats said they remained firm that Russian had acted illegally, and denied they had dropped the issue.
The fact the agreement did not address Crimea could put pressure on Ukraine's interim government from its own supporters who are adamant that everything should be done to bring the peninsula back under Kiev's control.
The United States and European Union have so far imposed visa bans and asset freezes on a small number of Russians, a response that Moscow has openly mocked. However, the Western states say they are now contemplating measures that could hurt Russia's economy more broadly.
But some EU nations at least are reluctant to press ahead with more sanctions, fearing that could provoke Russia further or end up hurting their own economies.
Speaking in Geneva, Kerry also took the opportunity to condemn as "intolerable" suggestions in the eastern city of Donetsk that Jews had been ordered to register with authorities.
NOT LEAVING
Pro-Russian militants control buildings in about 10 towns in eastern Ukraine after launching their uprising on April 6.
Separatists occupying a local government building in the city of Donetsk said they would not leave until supporters of Ukraine's new government quit their camp around the Maidan.
Asked how his group will react to the accord in Geneva, Alexander Zakharchenko, a protest leader inside the Donetsk regional government building, told Reuters by telephone:
"If it means all squares and public buildings, then I guess it should start with the Maidan in Kiev. We'll see what they do there before we make our decision here."
In Luhansk, another city where pro-Russian separatists are occupying public buildings, a militia member called Andrey said his group had no plans to withdraw.
"Everything on the ground is the same as it was yesterday and the day before and the day before that. We're not leaving."
Seeking to reassure its eastern allies, NATO announced it was sending warships to the Baltic, while the United States approved more non-lethal military support for Ukraine.
Speaking on Russian television Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an "abyss".
Kiev fears he will use any violence as a pretext to launch an invasion of eastern Ukraine by Russian forces.
"Instead of realizing that there is something wrong with the Ukrainian government and attempting dialogue, they made more threats of force ... This is another very grave crime by Kiev's current leaders," Putin said in his annual televised question-and-answer session with the Russian public.
"I hope that they are able to realize what a pit, what an abyss the current authorities are in and dragging the country into," said Putin.
(This story has been corrected to change day from Monday to Friday in paragraph 5)
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Tom Miles, Arshad Mohammed and Catherine Koppel in Geneva, and Alexei Anishchuk in Moscow; Writing by Christian Lowe and Richard Balmforth; Editing by Anna Willard)
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Though it seldom breaks fresh news, President Vladimir Putin's annual telethon is always a useful reality check on the man, his state of mind, and his intentions.
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And Mr. Putin was in fine form Thursday, as he used the nationwide town hall event, honed by Kremlin handlers over his 15 years in power, to showcase his forceful personality, hands-on style of leadership, and magisterial command of details.
In just under four hours – far short of the nearly five hours he talked last year – Putin cheerfully responded to an exhaustive range of questions. Among them, the rising price of bread and train tickets, the perennial threat of flooding in Russia's Far East, and the dreadful state of roads in distant provinces. Putin had clear, firm, and optimistic answers for each.
Putin, whose public approval ratings have surged past 80 percent, always gets a bounce out of these telethons, experts say.
"Direct engagement with the public like this suits a politician [if he does it well] because it shows him involved and responding to peoples' concerns. I expect Putin's ratings to go up after this," says Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the Levada Center, Russia's only independent polling agency.
In response to an apparently serious query from a pensioner about taking back Alaska, which was once part of the Russian Empire, he joked "my dear, what do we want Alaska for?" To another, he insisted that he does not want to be "president for life," but would rather have the chance to retire to his home town of St. Petersburg one day. And he gave what sounded like a hopeful bottom-line assessment on the state of US-Russia relations by telling a young girl that, yes, if Putin were drowning, he thought Barack Obama would jump in to save him.
He also scoffed away a question about his plans, if any, to remarry, saying that he'd need to find a husband for his recently divorced wife Lyudmila first.
Actions in Ukraine
But the main subject of the day was the escalating crisis in Ukraine and, of course, a symbolic welcome to about 2 million new subjects of the Russian Federation in the freshly-annexed territory of Crimea. From a seashore studio in the Crimean naval base of Sevastopol, a crowd of grateful new citizens chanted "thank you" while Putin addressed their special questions. Among other things, he pledged that Crimean living standards would be raised to Russian levels "step by step," without breaking Russia's budget, but "it will take time."
Putin also admitted that Russian special forces did play a major role in securing the territory before last month's referendum, a fact the Kremlin had vigorously denied at the time. "Behind the back of self-defense forces of the Crimea, there were our military men, and they were acting correctly, firmly, and professionally," he said.
But just minutes earlier Putin had strenuously denied Western allegations that Russian agitators are presently involved in the unrest rocking eastern Ukraine. "It's all nonsense, there are no special units, special forces, or instructors in the east of Ukraine," he said.
He reminded Russians that he has parliamentary permission to use force on Ukrainian territory, but added: "I really hope that I don't have to exercise this right and that we are able to solve all of today's pressing issues via political and diplomatic means."
Talks on Ukraine's future opened in Geneva today, with representatives of Russia, the US, the European Union, and Ukraine hoping to hammer out some kind of negotiated settlement for the country's deepening woes. Putin argued that the sides might be closer to agreement than the crossfire of heated public rhetoric suggests.
"People in the east are talking about federalization. Kiev is talking, thank God, about decentralization. What's behind these words? It's necessary to sit at the negotiating table, to try to understand what's being implied, and find a solution. Order in the country can be established only through a dialogue, in the course of democratic procedures, rather than through the use of the armed forces."
Otherwise, Ukraine is heading into "an abyss," he added.
"Putin was at some pains to show that we have achieved success, without negative consequences," says Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the independent Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. "But he made it clear that [the Ukraine crisis] is not over, and he's keeping his options open. He might recognize the results of the coming Ukrainian elections, or he might not. He might introduce troops into Ukraine, or maybe not. No commitments were made."
Oddities
There were a couple of unusual notes. In a distinctly strange aside, Putin accused the current secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, of secretly tape-recording him during a private conversation several years ago when Mr. Rasmussen was prime minister of Denmark, and then leaking the recording to the media.
"I couldn’t believe my ears and eyes – what nonsense!" Putin said.
And in a well-crafted moment, newly minted Russian resident Edward Snowden asked the Kremlin leader by video-link whether Russian authorities spy on their own citizens as the US government does at home.
"Mr Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy. I used to work for the intelligence service, so we are going to speak together in one professional language," Putin said, before going on to insist that Russian special services do everything by the book and never target an individual without a court-ordered warrant.
"This is our law and therefore there is no mass surveillance in our country," Putin said.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Obama will never be best friends, but Putin is fairly confident Obama would at least toss him a lifebuoy if he were flailing in open water.
Near the conclusion of the marathon four-hour (around the three hour and 48 minute mark) Ask Putin Things on Russian Television special, Putin read a question aloud from someone curious whether he thought Obama would save him from drowning. The question was met with laughter and applause.
(EPA/ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/RIA NOVOSTI/KREM)
Despite their strained relationship, Putin, according to the English translation from RT, gave Obama the benefit of the doubt.
“In addition to intergovernmental relations, there are some personal relations,” Putin answered. “I don’t think I have close personal relationship with Obama. I think Obama is a courageous and good person and he would for sure save me.”
The Loop has reached out to the White House for confirmation of Obama’s hypothetical altruism.
And Putin, let it be noted, was not asked whether he in turn would save Obama.
April 17, 2014 4:04 p.m. ET
DONETSK, Ukraine—Leaders of the antigovernment uprising in this southeast Ukraine city have denied any involvement in an incident in which unknown men handed out anti-Semitic leaflets outside a local synagogue this week.
Three men in camouflage outfits appeared outside a Donetsk synagogue on Tuesday during Passover festivities, where they handed out leaflets allegedly signed by the "people's governor" Denis Pushilin, who is leader of the pro-Russian uprising that has taken over the city's main regional administration building, according to a statement on the website of the Donetsk Jewish Community. By the time the police had arrived, the men had left, the statement said.
The leaflets demanded that all Jews over the age of 16 come to the seized building, register their ethnicity and pay a fee of $50 "in connection with the fact that leaders of the Jewish community in Ukraine have been supporting the. junta in Kiev." The letter threatened to confiscate Jews' property, take away their citizenship and exile them from the region if they didn't comply.
"The residents of Donetsk are tolerant people—we live with them side by side, practically without any conflict," the region's head rabbi, Pinchas Vyshedsky, said in the statement posted on the Jewish community website. "What happened, of course, smells like a provocation. Who is behind it is an open question. But seeing as it is only a provocation, it should be treated accordingly."
Mr. Pushilin has denied any involvement in drawing up or commissioning the leaflets, which claimed to be a directive from the People's Republic of Donetsk, the name that local rebels have given their antigovernment uprising.
In an interview with a local television channel, Mr. Pushilin said the leaflet is clearly fake because he has never called himself the "people's governor" and the logo for the People's Republic of Donetsk is doctored. "And we have no antagonism toward Jews whatsoever," he said.
The Donetsk rebels say the incident was evidence that someone was trying to smear them. "It's not just black PR, it's slander," said Kirill Rudenko, a spokesman for the People's Republic of Donetsk, which is calling for a referendum on the future of the southeast Ukraine region. Its leaders say they won't vacate the occupied building until such a vote occurs.
Mr. Rudenko said the uprising's leadership "didn't write any such letters and won't be writing any such letters," describing the leaflets as an obvious attempt by an outside party to discredit the Donetsk movement, which has seized the building as a protest against the new government in Kiev.
Though the Donetsk rabbi, Mr. Vyshedsky, has played down the incident and called for people to "close the issue and put a period at the end of it," U.S. officials brought it up again on Thursday and denounced the action.
In Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the distribution of such leaflets. "In the year 2014, after all of the miles traveled. this is not just intolerable, it's grotesque," Mr. Kerry said. "It's beyond unacceptable."
Ben Rhodes, the White House Deputy National Security Adviser, took to Twitter to denounce the incident. "Reports of Jews being forced to register by pro-Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine are chilling, outrageous and must be universally condemned," a message on his Twitter feed said.
—Jay Solomon contributed to this article.
Write to Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com
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Updated April 17, 2014 3:58 p.m. ET
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, meets with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya, right, to discuss the ongoing situation in Ukraine on Thursday in Geneva. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
GENEVA—Ukraine and Russia, backed by the U.S. and Europe, agreed Thursday to steps to de-escalate tensions, including demobilizing militias, vacating seized government buildings and establishing a political dialogue that could lead to more autonomy for Ukraine's regions.
The agreement, reached during more than six hours of talks in Geneva, could mark the first tangible step to defuse the political and security crisis in Ukraine since its Crimean region was annexed by Russia last month. (View hotspots along the Ukraine-Russia border in an interactive map.)
However the deal left many issues unanswered. It didn't commit Russia to back next month's Ukrainian presidential elections, nor did the U.S. and Europe pledge not to expand their punitive sanctions.
And while it calls for international monitors to "play a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities" on implementing the deal, how that would actually work was unclear. (Follow the latest updates on the crisis in Ukraine.)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday that an agreement reached after high level talks among representatives from Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and the EU on the crisis in Ukraine called for all sides to "refrain from the use of violence." Photo: Getty Images
The chosen group—the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—has frequently stepped into conflict zones but usually to monitor elections and agreements rather than enforce them. Their officials are unarmed and therefore ultimately depend on persuasion rather than force.
Since Moscow claims it is not behind the actions of the separatists, it may claim it can do nothing to persuade them to back down or surrender their weapons.
The deal doesn't require Russia to pull its troops back from the border with Ukraine, nor to renounce the right Russian President Vladimir Putin reasserted Thursday to send them into Ukraine if Moscow deems it necessary to protect ethnic Russians and Russian speakers there.
Western officials said however that the agreement calls for immediate de-escalation, and it will soon be clear if Moscow abides by the spirit of the accord.
Ukraine's acting Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia gave no pledge of pulling his country's troops back from the eastern regions, where they were sent this week for what his government called an antiterrorist operation. But he said if there is real de-escalation, they "might not be involved in this operation fully."
He said Kiev will give the OSCE time to try and persuade the separatists to disarm and clear government buildings. Kiev authorities "will not use force first."
"The Geneva meeting on the situation in Ukraine agreed on initial concrete steps to de-escalate tensions and restore security," the participants in the talks said in a joint-statement. "All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions."
As a result of the agreement, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington would hold off from imposing new economic sanctions on Russia for now, for what Western countries allege have been the Kremlin's efforts to destabilize Ukraine. He said the U.S. would wait until it could assess whether the situation on the ground was improving.
Russia has denied any meddling in eastern Ukraine, a position also reiterated on Thursday by Mr. Putin.
The EU had already decided to expand the list of Russian officials to whom it applied asset freezes and travel bans following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region. It wasn't immediately clear if that will now go ahead. The U.S. extended its list of targeted individuals on Friday.
However the accord will almost certainly sideline for now Europe's consideration of much broader economic sanctions
Mr. Kerry said the Obama administration viewed the agreement as a test of whether Mr. Putin was serious about de-escalating tensions in Ukraine.
"We expect in the next few days…some of these steps need to be seen and be evident," Mr. Kerry said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represented Moscow in the Geneva talks. European Unionforeign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, also attended along with Mr. Deshchytsia.
The meeting was the highest-level direct talks between Moscow and Kiev since the annexation of Crimea last month. One official said the talks started off tense but quickly grew focused, with Moscow bringing ideas to the table.
Mr. Kerry has held regular talks with Mr. Lavrov on the Kiev crisis since protesters forced out former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, a Kremlin ally, in late February. U.S. officials have voiced frustration in the past with Mr. Lavrov, unclear if he had the power to cut deals on behalf of Mr. Putin.
Some protesters in primarily Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine have sought to follow the path of Crimea and hold a referendum on whether to secede from Ukraine.
Two of the biggest issues now are whether Ukraine will back off action against the separatists and if Moscow will relax its opposition to the May 25 election to choose a successor to Mr. Yanukovych, whom Moscow has insisted remains Ukraine's legitimate president. The ballot is seen as key to creating a fully legitimate new government in Kiev.
In his news conference, Mr. Lavrov gave no hint that Moscow would support the vote noting that "there is no mention of this election" in the statement.
Both Mr. Kerry and Ms. Ashton said they received assurances from Ukraine's government, including the president and prime minister, that they were committed to constitutional changes that would give far greater autonomy to Ukraine's regions. They said they believed this process could serve as platform to defusing the political crisis in Ukraine.
—Greg White in Moscow contributed to this article.
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GENEVA/MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union called after crisis talks on Thursday for an immediate halt to violence in Ukraine, where Western powers believe Russia is fomenting a pro-Russian separatist movement.
President Barack Obama said the meeting in Geneva between Russia and western powers was promising but that the United States and its allies were prepared to impose more sanctions on Russia if the situation fails to improve.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking in Moscow, accused Ukraine's leaders of committing a "grave crime" by using the army to try to quell unrest in the east of the country, and did not rule out sending in Russian troops.
Putin said he hoped he would not need to take such a step, and that diplomacy could succeed in resolving the standoff, the worst crisis in East-West relations since the Cold War.
The comments came hours after separatists attacked a Ukrainian national guard base and Kiev said three of them were killed in the worst bloodshed yet in a 10-day pro-Russian uprising.
Ukrainian, Russian and Western diplomats were seeking to resolve a confrontation that has seen pro-Russian fighters seize official buildings across eastern Ukraine while Moscow masses tens of thousands of troops on the frontier.
"All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions," a joint statement said.
"All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated," it added.
"There is the possibility, the prospect, that diplomacy may de-escalate the situation," Obama told reporters.
"The question now becomes, will in fact they use the influence they've exerted in a disruptive way to restore some order so that Ukrainians can carry out an election and move forward with the decentralization reforms that they've proposed," Obama said at the White House.
It was unclear if Russia would meet Western demands for it to stop stirring unrest in the east and withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border. Moscow denies it is active in Ukraine.
"It will be a test for Russia, if Russia wants really to show willing to have stability in these regions," said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia.
The U.S. State Department said the talks had achieved more than some people had expected.
But a spokeswoman added: "But again, it's not a breakthrough until this is implemented on the ground, and we need to see the Russians follow up these words with actions."
SCEPTICISM
There was skepticism over whether the agreement could work.
"Diplomacy cannot succeed if there is no room for compromise," said Ulrich Speck, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe. "The Kremlin is dedicated to get Ukraine under its control, one way or another. It feels that it has well advanced on that goal, and is not ready to back down. The West simply cannot agree to those conditions."
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said there would be additional sanctions on Russia if it did not act to calm tensions in Ukraine.
"If ... we don't see a movement in the right direction, then there will be additional sanctions, additional costs as a consequence," Kerry told reporters.
The United States and European Union have so far imposed visa bans and asset freezes on a small number of Russians, a response that Moscow has openly mocked. However, the Western states say they are now contemplating measures that could hurt Russia's economy more broadly.
But some EU nations at least are reluctant to press ahead with more sanctions, fearing that could provoke Russia further or end up hurting their own economies.
Kerry also took the opportunity to condemn as "intolerable" suggestions in the eastern city of Donetsk that Jews had been ordered to register with authorities.
Kerry and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the United States and the EU still had a significant difference with Russia over the status of Ukraine's Crimea region, annexed by Moscow last month.
STREET PROTESTS
Moscow's takeover of the Black Sea peninsula followed the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Moscow president, Viktor Yanukovich, after months of street protests prompted by his rejection of a trade deal with the EU.
Seeking to reassure its eastern allies, NATO announced it was sending warships to the Baltic, while the United States approved more non-lethal military support for Ukraine.
Speaking on Russian television Putin accused the authorities in Kiev of plunging the country into an "abyss".
The Kremlin leader overturned decades of post-Cold War diplomacy last month by declaring Russia had a right to intervene in neighboring countries and by annexing Crimea.
Kiev fears he will use any violence as a pretext to launch an invasion of eastern Ukraine by Russian forces.
"Instead of realizing that there is something wrong with the Ukrainian government and attempting dialogue, they made more threats of force ... This is another very grave crime by Kiev's current leaders," Putin said in his annual televised question-and-answer session with the Russian public.
"I hope that they are able to realize what a pit, what an abyss the current authorities are in and dragging the country into," said Putin.
At the Ukrainian national guard headquarters in Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, there was evidence the building had come under attack.
A grey police jeep was inside the compound on Thursday morning with broken windows, flat tires and bent doors. The gates of the compound had been flattened. There were shell casings outside the gates and several unused petrol bombs.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said an armed group of about 300 separatists attacked the base with guns and petrol bombs. Three separatists were killed and 13 wounded, he said.
SATELLITE LINK
Putin's televised chat, in a talk show format with satellite link-ups and applauding audiences across Russia, lasted for several hours. His words were clearly directed both at a domestic audience and at a world still grappling with the implications of his new doctrine, which the West says dispenses with customary limits on the use of armed force.
He also acknowledged for the first time that Russian troops had played a direct role in Crimea, assisting local militia.
The broadcast even featured a cameo appearance from Edward Snowden, the former U.S. security contractor given asylum in Russia after leaking information about surveillance by U.S. and British spy agencies. Snowden, patched in by video link, asked a question about Russian surveillance. Putin denied that Moscow carried out mass collection of citizens' data.
Pro-Russian militants control buildings in about 10 towns in eastern Ukraine after launching their uprising on April 6.
Separatists occupying a local government building in the city of Donetsk said they would not leave until supporters of Ukraine's new government quit their camp around Kiev's main square, known as the Maidan.
Asked how his group will react to the accord in Geneva under which illegal occupations of buildings and squares must end, Alexander Zakharchenko, a protest leader inside the Donetsk regional government building, told Reuters by telephone:
"If it means all squares and public buildings, then I guess it should start with the Maidan in Kiev. We'll see what they do there before we make our decision here."
(Additional reporting by Richard Balmforth in Kiev, Stephanie Nebehay, Arshad Mohammed and Catherine Koppel in Geneva, Christian Lowe and Alexei Anishchuk in Moscow and Jeff Mason, David Brunnstrom and Mark Felsenthal in Washington; Writing by Peter Graff and Giles Elgood; editing byDavid Stamp)
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