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The Finnish foreign ministry announced on Tuesday that back in June the United States and Russia held secret talks over Ukraine on Boisto Island in Finland. This startling announcement and synchronised information about the result – a ‘24-Step Plan to Resolve the Ukraine Crisis’ - were clearly timed to coincide with the meeting in Minsk between, among others Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. There were a number of crucial differences between the peace initiatives and one key similarity. Despite the Finnish report, the Boisto meeting, albeit sponsored by Finland’s foreign ministry, was between Russian and US...

Grzegorz Kostrzewa-Zorbas, Polish journalist and former diplomat, writes that Poland has also been through a ‘humanitarian convoy’ crisis. It came through it unscathed by refusing to allow the convoy in. Georgia was less fortunate. Kostrzewa-Zorbas explains that the Soviet tactics used in 1991 to get into Poland through camouflage, distortion of reality and psychological pressure were similar to those now seen in Ukraine. it would be easier, he suggests, to counter what he calls the Russian military operation “humanitarian convoy” if politicians, as well as public opinion in Ukraine, in the EU and NATO remembered that the Soviet Union tried...

There is more and more evidence that Russian soldiers are fighting – and dying – on Ukrainian territory, and that the so-called ‘humanitarian convoy’ may have been used to take the dead back to Russia, including paratroopers from Pskov killed near Luhansk A day of mourning has been declared in the Russian city of Pskov on Aug 26. This comes five days after the Ukrainian armed captured two armed personnel carriers and reportedly discovered documents identifying men as paratroopers from the Pskov airborne brigade No. 74268. It has long been known that a large number of Russian mercenaries, as well...

It looks extremely likely that at least some of the considerable number of men from the Caucuses long known to be fighting on the side of the Kremlin-backed militants in eastern Ukraine are or died as soldiers of the Russian Army. The Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers in the Stavropol area has drawn up a list of around four hundred Russian soldiers killed or injured. The head of the Committee Ludmila Bogatenkova told TV Dozhd that the list was put together from various sources in the armed forces which, for obvious reasons, she cannot reveal.. The names are from several mechanical...

In its editorial comment, Vedomosti.ru warns that “in the conflict in the south-east of Ukraine the Russian authorities are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the Soviet regime”/ It asks: “Is Russia fighting in Ukraine and if so, then on what grounds? If not, then who is in those freshly-dug graves or giving testimony at SBU interrogations?” Even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s KGB predecessors were unable to keep the death of large numbers of people secret, though they certainly tried. Efforts are still underway in Pskov and other parts of Russia to conceal the death or injury of a...

A day after RUSSIAN JOURNALISTS claimed they were ATTACKED at a Pskov, Russian cemetery while investigating reports that PARATROOPERS recently buried there had been killed in Ukraine, the GRAVE MARKERS featuring the troops' NAMES have been MYSTERIOUSLY REMOVED, Russian media reported. Wreaths and other decorations marking the spot have also been removed, according to the independent Dozhd television channel. It was unclear who might have removed the markings. Prior to the apparent gravesite tampering, Russian journalists Vladimir Romensky of Dozhd TV and Ilya Vasyunin of the Russkaya Planeta news site said they were ATTACKED, threatened and told to leave town...

In the Luhansk region the SBU detained a Private of the 9th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, which is deployed in the Rostov region. This is stated by the press service of the SBU, Censor.NET reports. Read also: BTR-80 with the Emblem of Russian Troops Exploded on a Land Mine Near Novoazovsk. The Crew Escaped - Interior Ministry Russian soldier Petr Khokhlov, born 1995, during the questioning said that his military unit transfers military equipment and ammunition, in particular, multiple rocket launchers BM-21 Grad, IFVs (BMP-2) and APCs (BTR-80) to terrorist organizations LPR and DPR. Read also:...

Kiev on Wednesday said a massive convoy of tanks and heavy weapons from Russia was travelling towards a government-held town in restive east Ukraine. A convoy of "up to 100" tanks, armoured vehicles and rocket launchers was seen travelling on a road toward Telmanove, a town about 50 miles south of rebel stronghold Donetsk and 15 miles from the Russian border, Ukraine's army said in a statement.

There are two things happening between Ukraine and Russia right now. First, Russian and Ukrainian leaders are meeting in Belarus to negotiate a peace deal in the Ukrainian conflict that Russia insists it has nothing to do with. Second, Russian military forces are crossing the border into Ukraine in what is clearly a hostile invasion and act of war. That includes Russian artillery, Russian tanks, Russian-trained irregular forces, and even uniformed Russian soldiers who have admitted on camera that they are Russian military ordered to invade by their commanders. But the first piece of that is obfuscating the second. Getting...

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel sounded the tocsin last week about ISIS, saying "they are beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of ... military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything we've seen."He also described them as “an imminent threat to every interest that we have.”The threat, however, is not unprecedented. Western Civilization has faced this before. Its failure to quickly kill it led to the suffering and death of tens of millions, although freedom ultimately prevailed.ISIS today looks like the 1919 version of the Bolsheviks. Will ISIS elevate itself, as the Communists did,...

MOSCOW/ NOVOAZOVSK Ukraine (Reuters) - On Monday, a resident of Novoazovsk in south-eastern Ukraine said she saw a column of armored vehicles approach the town and start shooting. "It all started at 8:00 this morning, tanks appeared, no fewer than seven of them," the woman, who gave her name only as Lyudmila, told Reuters by telephone. "Right now I can hear rumbling, explosions ... the residents are hiding."

Current political situation suggests that the silent permission of West for a federalization of Ukraine may be already a fact. Russia is restoring its political, military and economic influence on one more state closer to the border with the Pre-1989 West. It may not be unrealistic to think that if the pragmatic Germany sold Ukraine to Putin, unimpressed by the incredible price it paid in blood for an independence of the KGB regime in Moscow, Berlin can also trade the other political achievements of Ronald Reagan with Russia.

Nato is to deploy its forces at new bases in eastern Europe for the first time, in response to the Ukraine crisis and in an attempt to deter Vladimir Putin from causing trouble in the former Soviet Baltic republics, according to its secretary general. Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the organisations's summit in Cardiff next week would overcome divisions within the alliance and agree to new deployments on Russia's borders – a move certain to trigger a strong reaction from Moscow. He also outlined moves to boost Ukraine's security, "modernise" its armed forces and help the country counter the threat from...

The Kremlin is counting on acquiescence from the BRICS quintet as it confronts the West, and counting on capital from China to offset the loss of Western money. This is a pipedream. China's Xi Jinping drove a brutal bargain in May on a future Gazprom pipeline, securing a price near $350 per 1,000 cubic metres that is barely above Russia's production costs. Pieties aside, the two countries are rivals in central Asia, where China is systematically building pipelines that break Russia's stranglehold. China has large territorial claims on Far Eastern Russia, land seized from the Qing Dynasty in the 19th...

Video Shows Column of Russian Vehicles, Manned By Chechen Fighters, On Ukraine's Border 19:21 (GMT) In the video below, an enormous column of Russian military vehicles is seen in an unidentified location. The dialogue suggests that they are waiting to enter Ukraine. We have not yet been able to geolocate the video, but we note that there is a column of smoke visible at around 24 seconds in. The men speaking in the video identify themselves as Chechens. Amongst the vast quantities of military hardware seen are T-90 tanks, MT-LB armoured personnel carriers and 2S19 Msta self-propelled artillery. The men...

Unidentified, heavily-armed strangers with Russian accents have appeared in an eastern Ukrainian village, arousing residents' suspicions despite Moscow's denials that its troops have deliberately infiltrated the frontier. .... While they wore no insignia, their appearance or behavior bore striking similarities to a group of Russian troops detained in Ukraine in the past few days, and to Russian forces which occupied Crimea earlier this year, the witnesses said. The men had white arm bands, the same identifying mark that was worn by 10 men captured a few kilometers (miles) away by Ukrainian forces and who, in video released on Tuesday, said...

MOSCOW/ NOVOAZOVSK Ukraine (Reuters) - On Monday, a resident of Novoazovsk in south-eastern Ukraine said she saw a column of armored vehicles approach the town and start shooting. "It all started at 8:00 this morning, tanks appeared, no fewer than seven of them," the woman, who gave her name only as Lyudmila, told Reuters by telephone. "Right now I can hear rumbling, explosions ... the residents are hiding." In Kiev later that morning, Ukrainian officials said the column was an incursion by Russian troops which it alleges are fighting alongside pro-Moscow separatists, a claim Russia quickly dismissed as disinformation. That...

This video is all over social network... President Poroshenko looks as if he can barely stand to look at "Li'l" putin: http://coub.com/view/3233d

A group of Russian servicemen detained in eastern Ukraine did not get lost, but were carrying out a special task, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) spokesman Andriy Lysenko has said.

Russian soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces entered Ukraine by mistake, a Defense Ministry source has told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. “The soldiers were patrolling the Russian-Ukrainian border when they most likely crossed accidentally at an unequipped and unmarked checkpoint,” said the unnamed source. On the evening on Aug. 25, the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, said it had captured 10 Russian soldiers in the village of Dzerkalny, Donetsk Oblast, roughly 14 kilometers from the Russian border in a statement on its website. The capture of the Russian soldiers comes at a time when border tensions between Ukraine...