This item from our news desk highlights some of the cultural fallout from the annexation of Crimea:
A Dutch court has granted Ukraine's request to be a party in the high-profile Scythian gold lawsuit.
Amsterdam's district court ruled April 8 that Ukraine is eligible to claims rights to the disputed objects.
Ukraine will now have to file an application to participate in the proceedings by May 20.
A collection of more than 1,000 gold items representing ancient Scythian civilization, was sent to the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam in February 2014 for an exhibition titled Crimea: Gold And Secrets Of The Black Sea."
The artifacts came from five Ukrainian museums, four of which are located in Crimea.
In March, following Crimea's annexation by Russia, the Ukrainian government demanded the entire collection be returned to Kyiv. Crimea's Kremlin-backed authorities have dismissed the claims.
The exhibition closed on August 31, but the items remain in the Netherlands.
In November, the four Crimean museums filed a lawsuit to a court in Amsterdam demanding that the Allard Pierson Museum return the Crimean part of the collection.
(TASS, Ekho Moskvy)
You might remember that, a couple of days ago, we mentioned reports of how a Siberian newspaper nixed an item about a Russian soldier who had been wounded in Ukraine. RFE/RL's Russian Service has now come up with some more details:
ULAN-UDE, Russia -- Journalists at a Siberian newspaper say they spent three days using scissors to cut an article about a Russian soldier who was wounded fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine out of 50,000 copies of the publication.
Tank crewman Dorzhi Batonmukuyev's accounts of fighting in eastern Ukraine have added to what Kyiv and NATO say is incontrovertible evidence of direct Russian military support for the rebels in a conflict with government forces that has killed more than 6,000 people since April 2014.
Russia denies it has sent troops or weapons into Ukraine.
The chief editor of Novaya Buryatia (New Buryatia), Timur Dugarzhapov, told RFE/RL on April 7 that staffers in recent days had cut an article about Batonmukuyev out of the newspaper's entire April 3 print run by hand and deleted it from the website.
Dugarzhapov said the paper had not been ordered by the authorities to remove the article, but that its management decided to do so after "too many hateful comments appeared on the Internet."
Moscow-based independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an interview last month in which Batonmukuyev, who suffered severe burns and remains hospitalized, described in detail how Russian armed forces had taken part in the battles in Ukraine.
Here's another update from our news desk:
Two Ukrainian soldiers and a pro-Russian separatist have been reported killed in the country’s east.
Army spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on April 8 that two troops were killed and four wounded in the past day.
The rebels said one of their fighters was killed and three were injured.
Both sides accused each other of violating a cease-fire agreed in Minsk in February in an effort to end a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people since April 2014.
Lysenko said separatists fired mortars and tank rounds at Ukrainian positions on more than 10 separate occasions near the government-held port city of Mariupol and the rebel-controlled provincial capital of Donetsk.
The separatists accused the Ukraine army of 45 attacks on their positions, including in the town of Spartak and Donetsk.
(Reuters, AFP)
Here's an update from our news desk:
Ukraine is making the crimson poppy flower a symbol of the victory over Nazi Germany, part of a shift away from Soviet imagery Kyiv says the Kremlin is using to influence neighbors and promote self-serving myths about World War II amid a conflict in eastern Ukraine.
First Lady Maryna Poroshenko attended a "Remembrance Poppy" ceremony on April 7 as part of events marking the 70th anniversary of the Nazi surrender in May 1945.
"The time has come when we have to look for the ideas that unite our country and nation," she said, according to a statement on the presidential website.
Russian celebrations of the World War II victory as the product of unity among Soviet republics are ringing wrong to many in Ukraine because of Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces in a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people.
The head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Volodymyr Vyatrovych, said that Soviet-era commemorations of the Allied victory had turned the "dreadful tragedy" of World War II into a celebration of the "triumph of communist ideas" and created a "cult of war."
"Last year, we saw that the myth about the Patriotic War, the Soviet War, had become not only an instrument of propaganda but also an instrument of war against Ukraine," he said, according to the website.
