Crimean Tatar TV Counts Minutes To Impending Shutdown
SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- There is only one Crimean Tatar-language television channel in the world -- Simferopol's ATR television. But on April 1, this endangered species just might become extinct.
"We'll come to work as usual on April 1," ATR journalist Safie Ablyayeva says. "But we have no idea what we'll find, since we have just as much information as all Crimean Tatars."
ATR is currently broadcasting with a running countdown clock ticking down the seconds until the station's license expires. More than 190,000 people have responded to an online poll on the station's website, with over 99 percent expressing support for the channel.
Under Russian law -- which has been in force in the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea since Moscow's internationally unrecognized annexation of it in March 2014 -- ATR must register with the Russian telecoms oversight agency, Roskomnadzor, by April 1 or lose its right to broadcast.
But registering has turned out not to be as easy as one might have hoped. The Russian authorities have already sent ATR's paperwork back three times for corrections or additions.
"A month passes and then they give us some sort of formal objection," ATR General Director Elzara Islyamova told RFE/RL's Current Time television. "We either answer their question or make some sort of change and then resubmit and again we get a 30-day pause. You see, they can find such formal objections to delay the application for 100 years if they want." READ more
This ends our live-blogging for March 29. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Russian TV, with English subtitles:
EU officials postpone visit to Kyiv:
EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini has postponed a planned visit to Ukraine on March 30 after European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker did the same.
President Petro Poroshenko's office said on March 28 that Juncker told Poroshenko he was postponing his visit "due to unforeseen health conditions."
Poroshenko's office said the visit would be held at a later date.
Mogherini's visit was also called off.
Juncker and Mogherini had been expected to express support for Ukraine's pro-Western government, which is struggling with a Russian-backed rebellion in the east and severe economic troubles.
Former President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to spurn a major agreement with the EU in November 2013 led to protests that drove him from power.
Russia then seized Ukraine's Crimea region and lent support to separatists whose war with government forces has killed more than 6,000 people since April 2014. (with UNIAN, TASS, Interfax)
Soros ready to invest in Ukraine, with Western help:
Billionaire financier George Soros said he is prepared to invest $1 billion in Ukraine if Western countries help support private investment there.
In an interview published by Austrian newspaper Der Standard on March 30, Soros said, "I stand ready."
He said there were "concrete investment ideas, for example in agriculture and infrastructure projects."
Soros said the West could help make Ukraine more attractive to investors by protecting them against political risks -- possibly by providing financing "at EU interest rates -- very close to zero."
Ukraine is seeking cash and investment as it struggles with a Russian-backed rebellion in the east that has exacerbated its economic problems.
Chinese company CITIC Construction said on March 26 it would provide Ukraine with $15 billion in low-rate loans over 15 years to help support construction of affordable housing.
The International Monetary Fund approved a $17.5 billion bailout for Ukraine earlier this month. (Reuters, Kyiv Post, Emergingequity.org, AFP)
Ukrainian military says soldier killed, three wounded:
The Ukrainian military says that one soldier has been killed and three wounded over the previous 24 hours in the country's east despite a six-week-old cease-fire with Russian-backed rebels.
Colonel Andriy Lysenko, spokesman of Ukrainian armed forces fighting the separatists, said on March 30 neither tanks nor artillery were used over that period.
But he said the situation remained tense in the towns of Shyrokyne and Hranitne, near the key government-held city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region, and in the Luhansk region town of Tryokhizbenka.
He said rebels forces fired at Ukrainian units in or near those towns.
More than 6,000 people have been killed since April 2014 in the conflict between government forces and the rebels, who hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including their capitals.
Fighting has eased under a cease-fire agreement signed in February, but prospects for a settlement are clouded by disputes over the European-brokered deal. (with UNIAN and Interfax)