Reaction from Moscow, via our newsroom and Russian news agencies, to Ukraine's announcement that Russian nationals will have to present international passports to enter Ukrainian territory from next month.
Presumably that would apply to Russians entering from annexed Crimea, since Ukraine has no border checks in place there anymore:
Moscow has urged Kyiv not to implement a decision requiring Russian citizens to show foreign-travel passports in order to enter Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry announced on February 3 that for security reasons, as of March 1 Russians would no longer be able to use domestic identifcation documents known as "internal passports" to cross the border.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on February 4 that it believes it is important that Kyiv maintain the current border-crossing rules for Russian citizens for "humanitarian reasons."
The ministry said Russia had not yet received official notification from Ukraine about the change, which Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk signed off on in a decree on February 3.
The change will require thousands of Russians who live or work near the Ukrainian border and cross it often to apply for passports.
Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax
From the Financial Times piece:
It was late August and Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, was running out of time: separatist rebels backed by thousands of Russian troops were pounding Ukrainian forces in the east of his country. He needed Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire — and fast. So he played what he thought was his trump card.
Mr Poroshenko told the Russian president that if there were no ceasefire, his staff would post on the internet hundreds of dog tags seized from Russian soldiers captured or killed in Ukraine. They would also contact the Russians’ wives and mothers to explain where their husbands and sons were.
And later:
As the other guests left, Mr Poroshenko and Mr Putin retired to a separate room — for their first solo face-to-face meeting as presidents. Mr Poroshenko opened by demanding Russian troops leave Ukraine, an official present in Minsk said. Mr Putin made his much-practised denial that any Russian troops were there. Then he added menacingly that if he really wanted to invade, he had 1.2m soldiers armed with the world’s most sophisticated weaponry. They could be in Kiev in two days — or in Tallinn, Vilnius, Riga and Bucharest, all capitals of EU and Nato countries.
Sharing this video from our sister station VOA. In it, VOA's Al Pessin visits a small group of internally displaced Ukrainians in a church hall in the Donetsk region city of Artemivsk, just 40 kilometers from the front line.
From our newsroom:
The OSCE chairperson-in-office, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, has called for a truce in the besieged eastern Ukrainian town of Debaltseve to allow for the evacuation of civilians.
Dacic's February 3 statement called "on all actors in and around the Debaltseve area to establish a local temporary truce for a minimum of three days, taking immediate effect."
Dacic said the truce should be used first to evacuate noncombatants from the area but should also lead to "the immediate resumption of consultations with the aim of securing a sustainable cease-fire."
The Debaltseve area has been the scene of fierce fighting for more than two weeks between Ukrainian government forces who hold the town and pro-Russian separatists who control most of the territory surrounding it.
Amnesty International released a statement on February 3 calling the situation in Debaltseve "catastrophic," with thousands of residents “desperately sheltering from heavy shelling" and in need of running water, food, electricity, and basic medical supplies.