Poroshenko says no "private" armies for governors:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says the country’s governors will not have their own private armies, one day after armed men occupied the offices of the state-owned oil company Ukrnafta in Kyiv.
"As for territorial defense, it will be subordinated to the clear-cut military vertical and none of the governors will have their private armed forces," Poroshenko said at a March 23 meeting with military commanders.
Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Leshchenko suggested on March 22 that the armed men who occupied the Ukrnafta building were linked to billionaire oligarch and Dnipropetrovsk Governor Ihor Kolomoyskiy.
The Ukrainian government controls Ukrnafta, though Kolomoyskiy’s PrivatGroup holds a 43 percent share in the firm.
Ukraine's parliament this month passed a law on state firms that would eliminate PrivatGroup’s blocking vote on the board of Ukrnafta.
Earlier on March 23, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov ordered private security firms to give up their weapons within 24 hours and to withdraw from the streets.
"Private security groups [working for] businessmen and politicians will not roam the streets of cities," Avakov wrote on his Facebook page.
He said the order applied to everyone, including Kolomoyskiy and billionaire tycoons Viktor Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov. (RFE/RL, with TASS, Ukrayinska Pravda, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, and Reuters)
A war on oligarchs? Kolomoyskiy seems to be upping the stakes:
Ukraine's spy chief says deputy governors obstructing justice:
The chairman of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has accused two deputy governors in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region of obstruction of justice and financing criminal groups.
Valentyn Nalyvaychenko told reporters in Kyiv on March 23 that Deputy Governors Hennadiy Korban and Svyatoslav Oliynyk have threatened SBU investigators with armed groups in an effort to stop investigations into organized-crime activities in Dnipropetrovsk.
Nalyvaychenko added that an armed group that occupied the headquarters of the country's main oil company, Ukrnafta, in Kyiv overnight has links to the criminal groups in Dnipropetrovsk.
Nalyvaychenko said President Petro Poroshenko had ordered the disarming of the group at Ukrnafta.
On March 19, Dnipropetrovsk Governor Ihor Kolomoyskiy came to Ukrnafta after the company's monitoring council replaced its chief.
Kolomoyskiy was upset to see journalists at the site and verbally assaulted an RFE/RL reporter there.
On March 22, armed men occupied Ukrnafta and an armored personnel carrier blocked the entrance.
Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Nayyem says the armed men attacked and beat him on March 22 when he tried to enter the building. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
Ukraine has jailed an officer for spying:
A Ukrainian Air Force officer has been sentenced to 12 years in jail for spying for Russia.
A court in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhya on March 23 found the officer, whose name was not disclosed, guilty of high treason and committing espionage for Russia.
He was sentenced the same day.
The officer, who was born in 1983, was arrested in September 2014 while allegedly attempting to send classified information to Russia's Federal Security Service.
Investigators said the officer had collected information related to the operations of the Ukrainian Air Force. (UNIAN. Interfax)
Seven hurt in Ukraine clashes, rebels accused of Grad attack
Kiev, March 23, 2015 (AFP) -- Ukraine on Monday accused pro-Russian separatists of firing heavy Grad rockets in violation of a shaky ceasefire between the two sides, as seven people were reported injured in fresh clashes.
Six Ukrainian soldiers were wounded during fighting over the last 24 hours, army spokesman Andriy Lysenko said, stoking fears of an escalation in violence following a month of relative peace since the signing of the agreement.
The interior ministry also said that a civilian had suffered a shrapnel wound in the government-held town of Dzerzhynsk, after it came under mortar fire late Sunday.
Lysenko warned that "the situation remained unstable" along the whole conflict line, where rebels had used mortars, grenades and heavy weapons, against the terms of the ceasefire.
The army earlier reported that separatists had overnight Sunday fired 120mm mortars in the village of Pisky and used tanks in nearby Opytne, both close to the hotspot of Donetsk Airport.
Kiev also said its forces repelled an attempt to storm one of their positions in the village of Shyrokyne, close to the strategic port of Mariupol, the largest city still under government control in the conflict zone.
More seriously, they claim that rebels fired heavy Grad rockets on Orikhove, a frontline village north west of separatist stronghold Lugansk.
It is the second time that rebels have been accused of using the multiple rocket launchers since the peace deal came into effect on February 15.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, the two sides agreed to pull back their heavy arms to create a buffer zone of between 50 kilometres and 140 kilometres (31 miles and 87 miles), depending on the range of the weaponry.
Ukraine's interior ministry on Monday said a convoy of military equipment, including 10 tanks, had entered the rebel-held town of Gorlivka, 10 kilometres north of Donetsk.
Despite the recent lull in fighting that has claimed over 6,000 lives since April, experts from a Ukrainian think-tank warned that a new offensive could be launched "in the coming weeks".
According to the Kiev-based International Centre for Policy Studies, rebels are gathering troops "all across the front line."
Separatist forces currently comprise around 35,000 to 40,000 fighters, including up to 10,000 Russian fighters, it added.
Ukraine's defence ministry on Sunday said the near year-long conflict had claimed the lives of 1,750 Ukranian soldiers.