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)
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)
A war on oligarchs? Kolomoyskiy seems to be upping the stakes:
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)