Three Ukrainian soldiers killed by mine:
Three Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and two wounded in a land-mine explosion in separatist eastern territories.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on April 4 that the casualties happened near the town of Avdiyivka, referring to a government-held town north of rebel-held Donetsk.
The announcement came on International Mine Awareness Day.
The UN Children's Fund says unexploded mines and ammunition pose a special threat to children in eastern Ukraine, where government forces have fought pro-Russian separatists.
Lavrov urges withdrawal of more weapons from eastern Ukraine:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has proposed that both sides in the conflict in Ukraine withdraw weapons of under 100 mm caliber from the line of contact as a way of boosting confidence in a February cease-fire.
Lavrov made the comment in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, where he was holding talks with officials and attending festivities to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Bratislava's liberation by the Red Army in World War II.
Lavrov said it was necessary to monitor mainly the military part of the February Minsk agreement that established a cease-fire between Ukrainian government soldiers and pro-Russian separatist fighters in the east of Ukraine.
The Mink agreement committed both sides to withdrawing larger weapons of 100 mm caliber or more and to creating a security zone of at least 50 kilometers wide within 14 days. (Reuters, Interfax, TASS)
Leonid Reshetnikov, a retired SVR general, director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), and an advisor to Vladimir Putin, says that there is no possibility that Novorossiya will be part of Ukraine ever again because “the people of the south-east do not want to be Ukrainians.”
He also rules out the likelihood that the territories of the Donetsk Peoples Republic and Luhansk Peoples Republic, with their “millions of people,” could become something like a Transdniestria, a partially recognized country within the borders of another country recognized by most.
And thus he suggests that the immediate future is more war and the longer term future is the annexation of these areas and ultimately the rest of Ukraine and much of the former Soviet space into a new Russian state that will combine “the best features” of the pre-1917 Russian Empire and the USSR.
These are just some of the views that Reshetnikov offers in the course of a wide-ranging interview he gave to Aleksandr Chuikov, a journalist for “Argumenty Nedeli” (rgumenti.ru/toptheme/n481/394395).