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The Ukrainian government announced on Sunday that it will nationalize PrivatBank, the country's biggest lender, in one of the biggest shake-ups of the banking system since the country plunged into political and economic turmoil two years ago. In a statement late on Sunday, the government made no mention of the size of the potential burden to the state budget, but said it would ensure a stable transition and the smooth functioning of the bank. The Finance Ministry will take over PrivatBank, which is part-owned by one of Ukraine's richest men, the powerful oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk said...

RUSSIA has massed 55,000 troops along their eastern border as they prepare to unleash a "frightening war" upon Europe. -------- Military bosses claim Vladimir Putin has sent his mighty army to disputed frontiers along Eastern Europe. Putin’s mass military deployment comes as Russian lawmakers threatened a looming “frightening war” unless their enemies back down over the annexation of Crimea. Russia has been at loggerheads with NATO ever since it seized the peninsula on the Black Sea in 2014. Shockingly earlier this year Russia withdrew from the International Criminal Court after the organisation branded its occupation illegal and said it was...

WARNING: Profanity Victoria Nuland, Asst. Sec. of State for Europe, phone call to US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, in a phone call leaked to the news media on 4 February 2014. [expletive] the EU What's really important here is the level of planning for the coup that overthrew the elected President Viktor Yanukovych, which brought to power (as heard on the recording) a group of select individuals described as "moderate democrats." In fact, most of them, including Oleh Tyahnybok (whom Nuland insists the new head of state consult four times weekly), are a far-right nationalist faction with overt and...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to arrive in Berlin on Wednesday as part of a summit hosted by Chancellor Angela Merkel on the Ukraine conflict. Merkel’s spokesperson Steffen Seibert announced on Tuesday that Putin would arrive for the summit alongside President François Hollande of France and Petro Poroshenko, the leader of Ukraine. It will be Putin’s first visit to Berlin since Russia annexed the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, leading to EU sanctions against Moscow. Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine will hold the summit in Berlin on Wednesday to “evaluate the implementation” of the Minsk peace accords for Ukraine, the...

Full title: Thousands Upon Thousands Of Nazis Take The Streets Of Kiev In Ukraine, Praise Nazism And Express Their Hatred And Rage Against Christianity Thousands upon thousands of Nazis took the streets of Kiev in Ukraine, praising Nazism and expressing their absolute hatred for Christianity. They shouted praises for Stephan Bandera, a Ukrainian Nazi responsible for the butchering of 100,000 people in Poland. Anyone who praises Nazism and Nazis, are expressing hatred for Christianity. The story is just another sign of the rise of Nazism. To add to this subject, I made a video that illustrates the war that is...

Moscow — Leaders of Turkey and Russia signed a long-delayed deal Monday to build the TurkStream gas pipeline under the Black Sea to deliver Russian gas to Europe's doorstep within three years. The rapid warming trend in Russo-Turkish relations holds deep implications for Syria's immediate crisis, which dominated the talks and the subsequent headlines, but the fallout from that pipeline deal is a potentially crushing blow to struggling pro-Western Ukraine and may be rearranging strategic realities around the region for many years to come. Analysts say that if TurkStream goes ahead it will enable Moscow to cut its former main...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump already has a contentious relationship with Kiev, irking the Ukrainian public and government officials with his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow-friendly views on the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. Now, invited to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week, Trump’s campaign didn’t even bother to send Kiev an RSVP. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian presidential administration told Foreign Policy they reached out to both Trump and his Democratic rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to meet with...

From 2009 up to 2013, the year the Ukrainian crisis erupted, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which is headquartered in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, a new report claims. In 2008, Viktor Pinchuk, who made a fortune in the pipe-building business, pledged a five-year, $29-million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a program that works to train future Ukrainian leaders “to modernize Ukraine.” The Wall Street Journal revealed the donations the fund received from foreigners abroad between 2009-2014 in their report published earlier this week .

A Russian fighter jet zoomed within just 10 feet of a U.S. Navy spy plane over the Black Sea on Wednesday, the latest in a string of daring maneuvers involving Russian aircraft and the U.S. military, a defense official with knowledge of the incident told Fox News. The Russian Su-27 Flanker jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft used primarily for anti-submarine warfare while on routine patrol in international airspace, defense officials said. The Russian defense ministry accused the Navy plane of flying with its transponder—which emits an identifying signal—turned off. A U.S. defense official...

The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland agreed on Sunday there should be greater international efforts to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters. He said there had not been sufficient progress in implementing the Minsk agreement. Western officials were talking with Russia and Ukraine to encourage them to implement measures already agreed in the Minsk process, including communal elections, he said. "We have to work for a de-escalation of the situation," he said.

Eastern EU countries on Friday pushed for the bloc to create a joint army as they met with Germany for talks on sketching Europe’s post-Brexit future. “We must prioritize security, and let’s start by building a common European army,” Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orban, said at talks with Czech, German, Polish and Slovak leaders. […] Leftist Czech Premier Bohuslav Sobotka, for his part, said that “we should also begin a discussion about creating a common European army.” […] In an early response to Britain’s shock vote to exit the EU, Poland’s powerful rightwing leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski called for EU...

Framed by a tiny cutout in the fortified bunker, this particular piece of no-man's land is tinted a blood-reddish orange by the setting summer sun. It's hot as hell, and it's about to get hotter. When the sun goes down, the guns start blazing. And all that separates the men at their triggers is a grassy patch of land the size of a soccer field that is heavily mined. If you're a Ukrainian soldier here, you don't need binoculars to observe the enemy -- you just look in his direction.

Working with dubious sourcing, a group close to NATO's chief military commander Philip Breedlove sought to secure weapons deliveries for Ukraine, a trove of newly released emails revealed. The efforts served to intensify the conflict between the West and Russia. Most of the 1,096 hacked emails date back to the dramatic 12 months of the Ukraine crisis after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014. Thousands died in the skirmishes between Kiev's troops and Moscow-aligned separatists. More than 2 million civilians fled eastern Ukraine. Breedlove sought counsel from some very prominent people, his emails show. Among them were Wesley Clark, Breedlove's...

It is not only American generals who are irresponsible and declare on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that “Russia is an existential threat to the United States” and also to the Baltic states, Poland, Georgia, Ukraine, and all of Europe. British generals also participate in the warmongering. UK retired general and former NATO commander Sir Richard Shirreff, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe until 2014, has just declared that nuclear war with Russia is “entirely possible” within the year. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3596977/The-outbreak-nuclear-war-year-West-Putin-entirely-plausible-says-former-NATO-chief-promoting-novel-2017-war-Russia.html My loyal readers know that I, myself, have been warning for some time about the likelihood of nuclear war....

Further attacks against Ukrainian forces near Avdiivka, Maryinka, Luhanske Russian-backed militants continue intensive shelling of Ukrainian army positions near the town of Avdiivka in Donetsk regions, reports the press centre of Anti-Terrorist Operation. "The illegal military groups do not stop their shelling of Ukrainian troops in the combat zone. Today we recorded eight cases of enemy's violating the ceasefire," the press centre said. Read also More Ukrainian servicemen wounded in Donbas The most aggressive militant attacks were observed in the direction of Donetsk, including the city suburbs. The Russian-backed militants used small arms, grenade launchers, heavy-calibre machine guns, and 82mm-calibre...

OSCE says it currently has no precedent for an armed mission Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug says that a decision on the possible deployment of an armed OSCE mission in Donbas, Ukraine's east, should have the backing of all 57 OSCE participating states during the OSCE Permanent Council. "The SMM is an unarmed monitoring mission. We are not a party to this conflict. We do not take sides. We do in fact have the political backing of all 57 OSCE participating states, representing every conceivable position and view in relation to this conflict. Our only objective is to bring...

U.S. Vice President Biden told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in a call on Friday that the United States is prepared to move forward with a third loan guarantee agreement to support reforms against corruption, the White House said. The United States promised the third $1 billion loan guarantee in November, but it was contingent on progress on reforms and fighting corruption. Biden also welcomed the appointment of a new prosecutor general in Ukraine as "an important first step to bringing much needed reform," to the prosecutor general office. Ukrainian lawmakers on Thursday appointed Yuriy Lutsenko, a close ally of Poroshenko,...

Volodymyr Groysman served as mayor of Vinnytsia where he doubled the city's budget in three years before becoming the first openly Jewish speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament. The Jewish speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, has been elected prime minister after a months-long political crisis. The parliament on Thursday voted 250-57 for Groysman, who was nominated by President Petro Poroshenko. The outgoing prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, resigned earlier this week after weeks of pressure for him to step down. He had survived a no-confidence vote in February. Groysman has been perceived as a conciliatory figure after the governing coalition...

When Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko ran for the top office in 2014, he promised voters he would sell Roshen, Ukraine’s largest candy business, so he could devote his full attention to running the country. “If I get elected, I will wipe the slate clean and sell the Roshen concern. As President of Ukraine I plan and commit to focus exclusively on welfare of the nation,” Poroshenko told the German newspaper Bild less than two months before the election. Instead, actions by his financial advisers and Poroshenko himself, who is worth an estimated US$ 858 million, make it appear that the...

Two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas region, Ukraine remains a nation in peril. Russia considers its annexation of Crimea a fait accompli, has taken steps to consolidate its position in the Black Sea, and has created a frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine. Despite an official cease-fire, war is a day-to-day reality in the Donbas region, and Crimea remains under Russian occupation. Ukraine’s economic reforms remain incomplete; corruption continues to be a virulent and hardy foe. The U.S. needs to stay engaged in Ukraine. This means implementing policies that help the Ukrainians to defend themselves...