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18 Ukrainian servicemen have returned home after undergoing medical treatment at hospitals in the Russian southern city of Rostov-on-Don, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vasyl Zvarych told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday, July 24.

The Communist Party of Ukraine will cease to exist on Thursday, the speaker of Ukraine's parliament announced. "We only have to tolerate this party for another day," Verkhovnaya Rada speaker Oleksandr Turchinov said on Wednesday in comments carried by online news portal Ostro.org. Discussion of the Communist Party's dissolution began in earnest in May, after party leader Petro Simonenko said that if he were in charge of the country, he would immediately call back the troops from eastern Ukraine, referring to the military operations taking place there as acts of "war against the people," RIA Novosti reported. Turchinov, who was...

A Russian television channel said on Wednesday it had lost contact with a British journalist reporting from conflict-torn eastern Ukraine. RT said on its website it had been unable to reach Graham Phillips since the early hours of Wednesday after he went to cover intense fighting around Donetsk airport. The channel said it received a text message from Phillips saying "All is fine" at around 2:00am, after which contact was lost. RT's editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, posted a link to the story on her Twitter account, saying "our stringer Graham Phillips has gone missing in Ukraine." RT said it had warned...

The Red Cross has made a confidential legal assessment that Ukraine is officially in a war, Western diplomats and officials say, opening the door to possible war crimes prosecutions, including over the downing of Malaysia Airlines MH-17. "Clearly it's an international conflict and therefore this is most probably a war crime," one Western diplomat in Geneva told Reuters. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the guardian of the Geneva Conventions setting down the rules of war, and as such is considered a reference in the United Nations deciding when violence has evolved into an armed conflict. "Within...

A team of Pentagon officials is heading to Ukraine to help the country rebuild its fractured military, a mission that lawmakers and analysts expect will result in recommendations for greater military assistance in the country’s fight against pro-Russia separatists amid international outrage over the downing of a commercial airplane. Within the next few weeks, a group of Defense Department representatives who specialize in strategy and policy will head to Kiev to evaluate specific programs that the United States may want to help bolster, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. Their objective is to work with Ukrainians to “shape...

The Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine agreed on Monday to declare a ceasefire in clashes with pro-Kiev forces in the radius of 40 kilometers (25 miles) around the crash site of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, according to a leader of the self-proclaimed state. “This should help to ensure safe work of experts [at the crash site],” Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic Alexander Boroday said during a news briefing. Boroday said a large group of international flight safety experts, including officials from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), is expected to arrive in Donetsk soon. It was...

Russia’s Defence Ministry dismissed accusations on Monday that pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine’s east were at fault for shooting down a Malaysia Airlines jet last week, alleging instead that Ukrainian warplanes had been flying close to the plane. The ministry also denied accusations that Russia had supplied the separatists with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems – which are known as “Gadfly” in NATO – or “any other weapons.” “Russian air space control systems detected a Ukrainian Air Force plane, presumably an SU-25 (fighter jet), scrambling in the direction of the Malaysian Boeing,” Lieutenant-General Igor Makushev of Russia’s Air Forces told a...

On July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas, as the Confederates referred to it) was fought outside of Washington D.C. in Virginia. Expecting the war to be a brief conflict to put down the rebellion, the Union Army instead was defeated at Bull Run and retreated in shambles to Washington. After the battle, both sides realized the Civil War would be a longer, bloodier conflict than most had previously expected.

Mary O'Melia left Ireland for America as a young widow with three children before she was hired as housekeeper at the White House of the Confederacy. An intimate witness to history, she also has been much of a mystery. That was until this year, when a woman with a distinctive Irish lilt to her voice called The American Civil War Museum. The housekeeper, the woman said, was related to her late husband, and she had in her possession a necklace that Confederate first lady Varina Davis gave O'Melia. But there was more. "What really took my breath away is she...

United Nations: The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today morning on Ukraine. Britain's UN Mission said yesterday it requested the meeting and later tweeted that it is set for 10 am today. The request follows Wednesday's downing of a Ukrainian air force fighter and yesterday's downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane carrying 295 people over eastern Ukraine. Britain has proposed a Security Council press statement calling for "a full, thorough and independent international investigation into the incident." The statement, obtained by The Associated Press, was circulated to all 15 council members, who must approve it before...

On July 16, 1862, David Farragut became the first man in American history to be promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral in the United States Navy, in recognition of his actions in helping to capture New Orleans earlier in the year during the Civil War. He would later be promoted to vice admiral and then admiral prior to his death in 1870, the first man to hold those ranks in the Navy as well.

Speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Albuquerque in 2001, George W. Bush declared that, as Mexico was a friend and neighbor, “It’s so important for us to tear down our barriers and walls that might separate Mexico from the United States.” Bush succeeded. And during his tenure, millions from Mexico exploited his magnanimity to violate our laws, trample upon our sovereignty, walk into our country and remain here. In 2007, supported by John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Teddy Kennedy and Barack Obama, Bush backed amnesty for the 12 million people who had entered America illegally. The nation thundered...

<p>Russia is warning Ukraine of “irreversible consequences” after cross-border shelling from the battle-worn east struck Russian territory Sunday, reportedly killing one Russian citizen and injuring two others.</p> <p>“This incident highlights the extremely dangerous escalation of tensions in the Russian-Ukrainian border and may have irreversible consequences, the responsibility for which lies on the Ukrainian side,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday, calling the incident an “aggressive action.”</p>

Moscow strongly condemns Kiev forces shooting at Russian border guards and demands that such actions cease. Otherwise, Russia reserves the right to protect its territory and citizens, the Foreign Ministry has said. At around 3 am on Saturday, a vehicle with a squad of Russian border guards, on duty at the frontier between Russia and Ukraine, came under fire from the Ukrainian side, the Russian Ministry said in a statement. As a result of the incident in the Kuibyshev district of the Rostov region, the vehicle sustained damage: eight bullet holes were found in the vehicle’s chassis. “Only by good...

About 30 civilians have been killed in an artillery attack on Maryinka, a suburb of Donetsk, Igor Strelkov (Girkin), the defense minister of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), said at a press conference on Saturday. "We know about 30 dead people. But not all ruins have yet been cleared. So there might be more of them. Militia sites have not been affected by the shelling. There are no losses among our fighters," Strelkov said at a press conference on Saturday. DPR Prime Minister Alexander Borodai, who also attended the press conference, said the evacuation of civilians from Maryinka and other...

A Ukrainian Interior Ministry official said at least 30 servicemen were killed Friday after pro-Russia rebels fired on them with missiles. Zoryan Shkiryak, an adviser to the interior minister, said authorities would react swiftly to punish the perpetrators. "They will be destroyed or captured and be made answerable to Ukrainian law," Shkiryak said. Defense Ministry spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov said the attack was on a forward base in a village near the Russian border and confirmed there had been heavy casualties, but did not give any specific figure. The base was located near one of three border crossings whose closure Russian...

Washington and Lee University expressed regret Tuesday for the school’s past ownership of slaves and promised to remove Confederate flags from the main chamber of its Lee Chapel after a group of black students protested that the historic Virginia school was unwelcoming to minorities. President Kenneth P. Ruscio’s announcement was a surprising move for the small, private liberal arts college in Lexington, which has long celebrated its Southern heritage. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee served as the university’s president after the Civil War, his crypt is beneath the chapel, and the school has gingerly addressed its ties to the Confederacy...

Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko has signed decrees of ousting General Vasily Krutov from the posts of first deputy head of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and head of the SBU anti-terrorist centre. Respective papers have been posted on the Ukrainian president's web site. Vasily Krutov was appointed to these positions in the middle of April this year. The Ukrainian president has replaced Krutov with Vasily Gritsak, a Ukrainian police general-lieutenant and deputy chairman of the Ukrainian State Migration Service since April 2013. Petr Poroshenko has also dismissed Vladislav Bukharev from the position of SBU first deputy head responsible for the...

On July 4, 1864, four days after President Abraham Lincoln had surprised him by accepting his resignation, Treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase confided to his diary, “I am too earnest, too antislavery … [and] too radical.” Chase surely possessed each of these attributes – in excess – but they had little to do with his unexpected exit from Lincoln’s “team of rivals.” Rather, it was much more personal. Chase’s oft-repeated threat to quit had tested the forbearance of a beleaguered president once too often. Out of patience, Lincoln ended his tenure with the observation that “you and I have reached...

July 5th is the birthday of Admiral James Farragut, the first man to hold the ranks of rear admiral, vice admiral and admiral in the United States Navy. Farragut is notable particularly for his actions during the Civil War, including the capture of New Orleans in 1862. He continued to be on active duty until his death in 1870.