Ukrainian servicemen ride in a tank close to the airport in the eastern city of Donetsk, a facility which has been the site of intense fighting for several weeks.
Video posted yesterday of a drive through what is purportedly Semeniivka following shelling.
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NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says at a Brussels conference on strengthening trans-Atlantic cooperation that "Russia's aggression against Ukraine demonstrates that freedom is not a given. Russia has ripped up the rule book and in doing it has undermined the international order that has been the foundation of our peace and prosperity."
He added: "We must make energy diversification a strategic transatlantic priority and reduce reduce Europe's dependency on Russian oil and gas. We must increase defense investment in Europe and we must strengthen our security cooperation in NATO."
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U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (file photo)
On a visit to Kyiv, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tried today to rebut Moscow's suggestions of excessive U.S. involvement in Ukraine, as well as to highlight the urgency of greater Russian cooperation in ending the unrest in eastern Ukraine. Here are some of her comments, via our Ukrainian Service:
"We've made very clear, first as the United States, but also as a G7 community, when the leaders met in Brussels last week, that it is unacceptable for the Russian Federation to be allowing the kind of fighters and weapons and materials that we've seen, and you saw in the G7 statement that came out of Brussels, that closing the border is one of the things that we are asking [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin to work with the Ukrainian government on an urgent basis."
"The United States has supported Ukraine since 1991, with about $5 billion in total. That is support in all areas from Chernobyl cleanup to people to people exchanges, to our economic support through the years including after the Orange Revolution."
"During the same period since 1991, the United States has spent close to $18 billion in the Russian Federation on similar programs including in the areas of non-proliferation."
"There was zero U.S. government financial support for the Maidan."
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Via Interfax:
The Ukrainian Parliament's commissioner for human rights, Valeria Lutkivska, has proposed holding a meeting with her Russian counterpart Ella Pamfilova in Kharkiv on June 13 in order to discuss the situation in Ukraine's eastern regions.
Lutkivska's press service told Interfax that an appropriate letter had been forwarded to Russia's human rights commissioner on Monday.
Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists and UN representatives should be present at such a meeting as well.
The press service also said that on May 28 human rights campaigners in Ukraine and Russia published an appeal to the two countries' commissioners, asking them to establish a joint mission to monitor the situation in eastern Ukraine and prevent violence there.
