State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who is being held by Russia and whose hunger strike is entering the fourth week:
"We welcomed the exchange of some detained persons in December; hundreds remain in captivity. We reiterate our condemnation of Russia's continued detention of Ukrainian hostages inside Russia, including a Ukrainian member of Parliament, Nadiya Savchenko, and film producer Oleg Sentsov. We understand that Ms. Savchenko is on a hunger strike to protest the terms of her detention and is suffering additional health problems. We call for her immediate release, as well as other Ukrainian hostages held by Russia."
Handle with care.
"Newsweek" feature on "How Russians Are Sent To Fight In Ukraine," piggy-backing off the Yekaterinburg interview with a retired Russian army officer describing the process in detail:
While he says his fighters are “volunteers” rather than mercenaries, they are paid salaries: from $1,000 per month for a low-ranking enlisted man to $2,000 to $4,000 for officers. Yefimov did not answer the reporter’s question about who pays the salaries.
Ukraine's government says more than 10,000 Russian mercenaries form the bulk of the Russian proxy forces that the Kremlin has used to sponsor the creation of the separatist "people's republics" in parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Lugansk provinces. Many fighters are motivated by the propaganda of the Kremlin-controlled media, Yefimov says....
Russian fighters were first sent into Ukraine as “escorts” for Red Cross aid trucks, Yefimov says, and they now are sent via “humanitarian aid” convoys supervised by the paramilitary Ministry of Emergency Situations.
In an interview published the day after Yefimov’s, the director in Moscow of the Red Cross, Igor Trunov, says the dispatch of Russian "humanitarian convoys" to Ukraine is a violation of international humanitarian law, and says the "Putin convoys" are likely to have carried weapons to the [separatist] militia-controlled area of Donbas.
Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, appears to be pulling an ironic Putin by turning up outside Kyiv for some target practice with an automatic weapon. Too cold to go shirtless, I suppose.
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
Ukraine's annual inflation rate reached nearly 25 percent during 2014, the highest rate seen there in 14 years.
Ukraine’s State Statistic Service said on January 6 that consumer price inflation soared to 24.9 percent during 2014 compared to 0.5 percent in 2013.
Major factors driving up inflation included the conflict in the country’s east, which hit major exports such as steel and forced imports of coal and electricity, and the government's decision to raise the domestic price of natural gas.
The falling purchasing power of the hryvnia currency, which lost half of its value in 2014, also contributed to rising prices for food, fuel, and services.
Ukraine's 2015 budget envisages annual inflation of just over 13 percent.
But Central Bank Governor Valeriya Hontareva has said inflation is likely to rise to as much as 18 percent if the government further increases the price of natural gas for home consumption.