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People holding illegal arms and occupying government buildings are perfectly OK, as long as they are permitted to do so, believes Washington’s top diplomat in Europe. But doing exactly the same thing without permission is bad. This piece of infallible logic came from the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, as she refused to equate the situation in Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in February with the present one in eastern Ukraine. In both cases armed militias have seized buildings and refused to leave. “You can’t compare the situation in Kiev, where now everything that is still being held by protesters...

Slavyansk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Pro-Kremlin rebels in Ukraine braced Wednesday for a renewed military offensive by Kiev as US troops headed to region in a show of force after Washington again warned Moscow over the escalating crisis. The United States said it plans to deploy 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic states to "reassure our allies and partners" after threatening Russia with more sanctions. Ukraine's acting president Oleksandr Turchynov late Tuesday ordered a new "anti-terrorist" operation against separatists holding a string of eastern towns after the discovery of two "brutally tortured" bodies. One of the dead was a local...

Acting president orders new anti-terrorism operation after a local politician was found dead with signs of torture. Last updated: 22 Apr 2014 22:05 Ukraine's acting president has ordered a military operation against pro-Kremlin separatists in the east of the country, after the body of a local politician from his own party was found showing signs of torture. "I demand the resumption of effective counter-terrorism measures to protect Ukrainian citizens in the east from terrorism," Oleksandr Turchinov said on Tuesday, according to a statement from his other office as parliamentary speaker. Turchinov said that "brutally tortured" bodies had been found near...

The new governor of the Lugansk region of Ukraine Valery Bolotov took control of the courts and the police. This information was reported by the Ukrainian media. "People of Lugansk region has entrusted me with this high post of an Acting Governor. I will try to justify the confidence of people" quotes the media. Bolotov plans to create the "National Council of Lugansk region, which will include representatives from all cities in the region." "Reassignment of all the power structures of the region, particularly the courts and the Interior Ministry, will be carried out only by legal means said Bolotov....

China will be the "world's most Christian nation" in 15 years, according to a report from the London Sunday Telegraph. "It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change," Fenggang Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, told the newspaper. There are about 1.3 billion people living in the country, and in 2010, 58 million of them were Protestant Christians. Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, estimated that by 2025, the number of Christians will have...

Five people have been killed in a gunfight in Slavyansk, a city in eastern Ukraine held by anti-government protesters. The fatalities include three protesters and two attackers, who are believed to be from the Right Sector paramilitary. Read RT's live updates on Ukrainian turmoil The deaths came after a night attack on a protester checkpoint on the outskirts of the city. Four cars drove by the checkpoint and opened fire at the local residents manning it, killing two people and seriously injuring several others. “They approached with their high beam headlamps on. Our man went to them and asked not...

Russia's parliament has agreed to write off about $10 billion of North Korea's Soviet-era debt, in a deal expected to facilitate the building of a gas pipeline to South Korea across the reclusive state. The State Duma lower house in Moscow on Friday ratified a 2012 agreement to excuse the bulk of North Korea's debt. It said the total debt stood at $10.96 billion as of September 17, 2012. The rest of the debt - $1.09 billion - would be redeemed during the next 20 years, to be paid in equal instalments every six months. The outstanding debt owed by...

City's chief rabbi states pamphlet is fake, claiming it is meant to discredit pro-Russian protesters or Jewish community The barricades outside the Donetsk regional administration building are plastered with anti-fascist posters. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images The barricades that mark the entrance to the "Donetsk People's Republic" are plastered with anti-fascist posters, including an American flag with a swastika in place of the stars. The pro-Russian protestors who have set up their own government in the occupied administration building see the new Kiev regime as dominated by intolerant Ukrainian nationalists, which is why it was more than a little ironic when...

Ukraine is on the frontline of Russia v US superpower tensions, while a major naval base there makes it the bottom line underlying this confrontation, Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, told RT. RT: Is Crimea becoming a new battleground between East and the West? Richard Sakwa: Putin describes the things in his speech that he told about on March 18. There is a mixture of two things going on at the moment. There is the enlargement of the EU which in the past was considered fairly benign. What happened is its mixture...

Commenting on the recent recognition that NATO bombed Serbia without the permission of the UN Security Council , the Serbian president said yesterday that it is reasonable to expect that Serbia should be back on her feet by and with a compensation made ​​for injustice. Marking that the NATO bombing of Serbia 1999 was uncivilized method precedent " for ever , and for ages " , something which would shame even d barbarous nations from pre-Christian period , Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic in yesterday's speech on the occasion of the Day Of Army of Serbia at the central celebration in...

NATO's anti-Russian political rhetoric has surpassed the propaganda of the times of the aggression against Yugoslavia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. In recent time, NATO issued some publications, in which the Alliance tried to present causes of the crisis in Europe in its usual tendentious manner, traditionally shifting responsibility to Russia, the ministry noted. Russia not afraid of NATO expansion - Putin Russia never evaded cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance, proposing to build it on the basis of equality. "Despite disagreements (NATO expansion, deployment of missile defense systems and the alliance’s non-compliance with international laws), Russia during...

Opportunities for the West to hurt the Russian economy are limited, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. Europe cannot stop buying Russian gas without inflicting pain on itself, and if the US tries to lower oil prices, the dollar will suffer. If the West tries to damage Russia’s influence in the world energy market, efforts will likely backfire, the Russian President said during his twelfth annual televised question and answer session. To really influence the world oil market a country would need to increase production and cut prices, which currently only Saudi Arabia could afford, Putin said. The president added he...

Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada/Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov has instructed the Defence Ministry to disestablish 25th separate airborne brigade of the High Mobility Assault Forces of the Armed Forces, he has told a parliament session. "25th separate airborne brigade, whose military showed cowardice and surrendered arms, will be disestablished... The Defence Ministry has received this instruction," he said. Moreover, Turchynov says this brigade's servicemen will stand trial; he says the Prosecutor-General's Office has received a corresponding order too. As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Defence Ministry refutes 25th separate airborne brigade of the High Mobility Assault Forces of the Armed...

China's minister of public security warned Thursday of new threats to member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a post-Soviet Eurasian security bloc, and proposed setting up a joint security center to deal with the challenges. The Chinese side is prepared to study, together with all the SCO member states, the possibility of establishing an SCO center to fight against challenges and threats to security, Guo Shengkun told a meeting of SCO security officials in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The Chinese minister said there has been increased activity of militant Islamist groups, including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and warned of...

(Reuters) - Separatists flew the Russian flag on armored vehicles taken from the Ukrainian army on Wednesday, humiliating a Kiev government operation to recapture eastern towns controlled by pro-Moscow partisans. Six armored personnel carriers were driven into the rebel-held town of Slaviansk to waves and shouts of "Russia! Russia!". It was not immediately clear whether they had been captured by rebels or handed over to them by Ukrainian deserters. Another 15 armored troop carriers full of paratroops were surrounded and halted by a pro-Russian crowd at a town near an airbase. They were allowed to retreat only after the soldiers...

Reports from Slavyansk say that the army troops sent to the eastern Ukrainian city for an “anti-terrorist operation” are leaving en masse. Some troops are openly voicing support for the eastern Ukrainians, while others are speaking out against a war. According to Interfax, citing local self-defense activists, some 300 Ukrainian troops agreed to lay down their weapons and “go home” following negotiations in Slavyansk. “We managed to negotiate with them. About 300 military – only some of those who closed around the city – decided to lay down their arms and go home,” a self-defense activist was quoted as saying....

Dozens of Ukrainian army defectors rode into the disputed eastern town of Slovyansk today on a column of armoured troop carriers bearing the Russian national flag. The defectors, including highly trained paratroopers. were said to have switched sides after being persuaded to defect by pro-Russian insurgents in nearby Kramatorsk, where they were part of a Ukrainian force that secured a military airfield yesterday. With Russian flags flying, the soldiers headed on a convoy of six troop carriers into Slovyansk, stopping first outside city hall, which has been occupied by pro-Russian protesters for several days, before entering the police station.

A public petition asking to broaden the legislative limits of self-defense has been rejected by the Interior and Justice Ministries, but activists intend to continue the campaign and promise pickets near the government HQ and rallies across the country. The petition entitled “My home is my fortress” has collected over 100,000 signatures of Russian citizens on a dedicated web-site which officially gave it legislative legs. If the draft was passed any action of a citizen inside his or her home against an intruder would be qualified as necessary self-defense, which, in turn, could lead to the withdrawal of murder charges...

Ukrainian troops are storming an airfield in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, said anti-Maidan activists as cited by RIA Novosti. The activists added that several people were injured. Ukrainian troops approached the military airfield in armored personnel carriers between the eastern cities of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, the people’s militia located at the airfield told RIA Novosti on the phone. “They started negotiating with the people’s militia, which is in control of the airfield. The shooting started unexpectedly. There are injured among the people’s militia, and there may be deaths,” they said. Other members of the militia have blocked the entrance...

Writing in Facebook Apr. 15, VR lawmaker Lesya Orobets says: “50% of police officers in Luhansk sided with the separatists, 50% remained loyal to Ukraine. All weapons and ammunition had been handed out to the police. All roads in Luhansk oblast are blocked by pro-Ukrainian police checkpoints.” “The crime rate has grown up by 300% as the police is busy defending precincts and checkpoints. The unemployment also went up, leading to the higher crime rate.” “In Donetsk, the local police have sided with the separatists. Almost all road checkpoints are controlled by the separatists. There has been a full-fledged Russian...