Edward Lucas has not pulled his punches in writing his valedictory column for European Voice. Here's a taster:
I have a fair claim to be the first to see the current crisis coming. I wrote a book in 2007 called “The New Cold War”. It was widely mocked as scaremongering when it was published; fewer people do that now. Since the Ukraine crisis broke, I have written the column exclusively (some might say monotonously) on the grim topic of European security.
It is grim because we are losing. We are not willing to spend money on defence. We are not willing to take risks. We are not willing to use force. We are not willing to accept economic pain. We are not willing to deal with Kremlin information warfare. Worst of all, we are not yet willing to accept even that Russia is a revisionist power which wants to change the rules.
This is not an east-west split. Some of the countries falling fastest into Putin’s orbit, such as Hungary, are those which suffered greatly at the hands of Soviet occupiers. Some of those that are his most stalwart opponents, such as Sweden, are not even members of NATO. The European Commission has emerged as a formidable adversary for the Kremlin, particularly on energy, just as the disastrous administration of Barack Obama seems set on America’s eclipse as a European power.
I hope still that we are in the darkness before dawn. It is not too late to bolster the Baltics, to save Ukraine, and to punish the Putin regime with real sanctions—directed at the money looted from the Russian people, and the Western bankers, lawyers and accountants who helped launder it.
Read the entire column here
UN warns human rights threatened by cease-fire violations:
UN officials say they are increasingly worried that a dire human rights situation in parts of eastern Ukraine is likely to deteriorate further because of violations of a February cease-fire agreement.
Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on April 17 that there were reports of an "intensification of fighting, especially in the vicinity of the Donetsk airport and near the village of Shyrokyne" in the Donetsk region.
Shamdasani said mortars, artillery, and tanks "are reportedly extensively used" in violations of the Minsk agreement.
She said the violations were reported by both government forces and Russian-backed separatists.
Shamdasani also said the killings in Kyiv of a former parliament deputy, Oleh Kalashnikov, and of two journalists, Oles Buzyna and Serhiy Sukhobok, were "very disturbing and must result in a swift, independent, and credible investigation."
Here is today's map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
