U.S. Accuses Russia Of Stoking Conflict In Ukraine
By RFE/RL
The United States has accused Russia of stoking the conflict in Ukraine by disregarding its commitments under peace accords.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement on February 13 that Russia continues to deny its direct involvement in the violence that erupted in April 2014 and has seen more than 10,300 people killed by fighting between Kyiv's forces and the separatists who control parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Cease-fire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords -- September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed to resolve the conflict -- have failed to hold.
“Sadly, Russia continues to disregard its commitments under the Minsk agreements, stoking a hot conflict in Ukraine,” the statement said.
Earlier in the day, Ukraine said one of its soldiers had been killed and two wounded in clashes in the country's east.
The Defense Ministry added that Russia-backed separatists violated a frequently breached cease-fire 11 times during the previous 24 hours, firing machine guns, grenade launchers, and mortars.
Meanwhile, the separatists claimed that Ukrainian government forces violated the cease-fire nine times using the same types of weapons.
A new cease-fire agreement was reached in late 2017 and was meant to begin on December 23, but both sides have accused each other of repeated violations since then.
Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the United States and the European Union have imposed asset freezes, travel bans, and related financial restrictions on a number of Russian people and companies, as well as separatist leaders in the region.
On January 26, the U.S. government hit 21 people and nine companies linked to the conflict with new economic sanctions in the latest effort by Washington to put pressure on groups most actively involved in the nearly 4-year-old conflict.
“Working closely with France and Germany, the United States continues to urge the Russian government to cease its aggression in Ukraine,” the U.S. State Department statement said.
“The United States takes this opportunity to reiterate that our sanctions will remain in place until Russia fully implements its commitments under the Minsk agreements. Our separate Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns the peninsula to Ukraine,” it added.
With reporting by Interfax and TASS
U.S., NATO Urge Hungary, Ukraine To Settle Language-Law Dispute
By RFE/RL
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and the United States are urging Hungary and Ukraine to resolve their differences over Ukraine's new minority language law, which prompted Hungary to block a NATO ministers' meeting with Ukraine this week.
Stoltenberg said on February 13 that he has urged the leaders of both Hungary and Ukraine "to find a solution" to their disagreement over Ukraine's law restricting schooling in the languages of ethnic minorities -- including Hungarian minorities -- which Hungary strongly opposes.
"We are aware of the challenges related to the language law," Stoltenberg said ahead of a scheduled NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels on February 14-15.
He said Kyiv and Budapest should "find a balance between minority rights to learn a minority language" and the "right" of the state to ensure children learn the state language.
"NATO will continue to work with Ukraine, continue to provide support to Ukraine," despite the cancellation of a ministerial-level meeting with Ukraine at the NATO gathering this week at Hungary's behest, Stoltenberg said.
Hungary has vowed to block Ukraine's bid for closer cooperation both with NATO and the European Union due to the minority-schooling law, which Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed into law in September.
Under the law, minorities -- including the children of the 140,000 ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine -- will not be able to receive schooling in their mother tongue beyond primary school.
The law is seen as mostly an effort to reduce Russian influence in Ukraine. Russian is the most commonly spoken second language there and Kyiv has been fighting a Russia-backed separatist insurgency in the country's east.
The United States and other NATO countries also are urging Hungary to stop blocking Ukraine's NATO aspirations out of concern that could bolster Russia's power in the region.
"We should not be unable to have a NATO-Ukraine Council, because it is an important NATO effort to try to keep the boundaries of Ukraine and to allow them to hopefully be able to have a stable government and a place where they are not encroached on by Russian intervention," U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said on February 13.
She said she hoped Hungary and Ukraine would "sit down under the rules of international law" and "work something out that is in their interest."
With reporting by dpa
NATO Says More Members Plan To Reach Spending Goal By 2024
By RFE/RL
Fifteen of NATO's 29 members have laid out plans to meet the alliance's defense spending goal by 2024, overall increasing spending by $46 billion, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
"This is substantial progress, and a good start," he said on February 13 ahead of a NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels this week. "After years of decline, since 2014 we have seen three years of increasing defense spending across European allies and Canada."
Stoltenberg's comments come as U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to pressure U.S. allies in Europe to increase military spending to levels targeted by NATO, fulfilling a key commitment sought by U.S. President Donald Trump.
NATO has set a goal of each member spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, but until recently only a few of NATO's 29 members met that target.
Stoltenberg said that in 2014, only three allies met the goal, but the number has increased to eight this year. The increase in the last four years has added $19 billion to spending on weapons and equipment for the alliance, he said.
An additional seven NATO members have laid out plans to meet the goal by 2024, he said.
"This should lead to significant improvements in our forces and their readiness," he said, "but we still have a long way to go."
According to NATO, Britain, Greece, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have met the 2 percent goal, while France and Turkey are among the countries set to reach it soon.
France is envisioning a dramatic increase in spending of more than one-third by 2025. But important NATO members remain far short of the goal.
A large projected increase in military spending by Germany will not be enough to take Berlin up to 2 percent by 2024. Spain, Belgium, and Italy also have said they will not meet the target by 2024.
Trump has since taking office last year pushed hard for greater burden-sharing by Europe and Canada. The United States for decades has borne the biggest defense budgets and accounted for the lion's share of NATO spending.
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said on February 13 that Washington will continue to push for higher spending by NATO partners.
"We talk 2 percent, but that's because in the overall, that is what we need to have the capabilities and the ability to withstand any kind of threat," Hutchinson said.
Mattis is also expected to take a tough stance at the NATO gathering, said Katie Wheelbarger, principal U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.
"He will address those who don't have national plans to meet 2 percent and suggest they really need to develop those plans," she told reporters on February 13.
U.S. officials say Trump set an example this week by proposing a $1.7 billion increase in U.S. military spending in Europe in his 2019 budget.
With reporting by dpa and Reuters
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Tuesday, February 13, 2018. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage. Thanks for reading and take care.
Saakashvili Interview: 'It's Either Us Or Them'
Mikheil Saakashvili, Ukrainian opposition figure and former Georgian president, has vowed to push ahead with his struggle against Ukraine's leadership. Speaking to Current Time TV in Warsaw on February 13, Saakashvili blamed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for his deportation to Poland and said the main response will come "from the people of Ukraine."
After Dramatic Expulsion From Ukraine, What’s Next For Saakashvili?
By Christopher Miller
KYIV -- Mikheil Saakashvili has left Ukraine in much the same dramatic fashion that he returned in September after being stripped of Ukrainian citizenship: hauled across the Ukrainian-Polish border.
After several failed attempts to silence or lock up the stateless former Georgian president-turned-Ukrainian-opposition leader, authorities in Kyiv on February 12 finally nabbed him in -- of all places -- a Georgian restaurant and rushed him onto a chartered flight to Warsaw.
CCTV footage published overnight on Saakashvili’s YouTube channel showed more than a dozen armed and masked agents in camouflage sprinting into Kyiv’s Suluguni restaurant and scuffling with two men, one of whom appeared to be Saakashvili. Moments later, the agents are seen dragging Saakashvili out by his clothing and hair. A few hours after that, he was on Polish soil.
The operation was set in motion after a Kyiv appellate court rejected Saakashvili’s political asylum appeal last week, opening a legal way for his expulsion or extradition from Ukraine.
The country’s Border Guards Service said it chose expulsion “in compliance with all legal procedure.”
So what’s next for Saakashvili?
Read more here.