Ukraine-watchers might be interested in knowing what former Odesa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili has been getting up to recently...
A day after announcing that he is an almost pure-blood Georgian, former President Mikheil Saakashvili had people scratching their heads after he updated his Facebook cover photo to show himself depicted as Gulliver enslaved by Lilliputians, a reference to Jonathan Swift's classic 18th century novel.
In the new cover photo, the ex-Georgian leader lies on the sandy shore, taken prisoner by the tiny Lilliputians and surrounded by watch towers. Saakashvili's official Facebook account has more than 1 million followers.
Read more here.
Here's another item from RFE/RL's news desk:
Ukraine President Signs Constitutional Amendment On NATO, EU Membership
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed a constitutional amendment committing the country to becoming a member of NATO and the European Union.
Addressing parliament on February 19, Poroshenko said he saw securing Ukraine's membership in NATO and the EU as his "strategic mission."
Ukraine should "submit a request for EU membership and receive a NATO membership action plan no later than 2023," the president told the Verkhovna Rada.
However, he acknowledged that his country needs to come a "long way" to meet the criteria of joining both institutions.
European Council President Donald Tusk attended the signing of the constitutional amendment in the parliament building.
Addressing the lawmakers in Ukrainian, Tusk, who is Polish, said that "there can be no Europe without Ukraine.”
He also warned Ukrainian politicians against using populist and nationalist tactics ahead of the March 31 presidential election, in which Poroshenko is running for a second five-year term.
"Go around temptations of radical nationalism and populism, as you have done so far," Tusk said in his speech.
The EU official also warned lawmakers against "internal conflicts," which he said only benefit "that third country," hinting at Russia.
Tusk is on a three-day visit to Ukraine, which is commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Euromaidan protests, which led to the ouster of Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
Following Yanukovych's downfall, Russia seized and annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in March 2014.
Moscow is also supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine in a conflict that has killed more than 10,300 people since April 2014.
With reporting by dpa, AFP, and AP
This tweet seems to reference a Euromaidan Press article from May last year, which you can find here.
ICYMI:
For what it's worth, here's what the Ukrainian open-source investigative site InformNapalm has to say about Beric:
The aggressor’s sniper pairs consist of both regular servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces and mercenaries trained in Russian military camps. However, it is necessary to distinguish the “propaganda snipers” from the real ones, who are there to perform actual combat missions. Both these categories have a role in the hybrid war and are dangerous in their own way.
There are several mercenaries who front as snipers in the Russian propaganda stories. One of them is the Serb Dejan Berić, call sign Deki. He constantly features in the propaganda stories distracting attention from the regular Russian military personnel present in Donbas. Four independent competent sources in Serbia have informed us that Berić is just a recruiter and a propagandist posing for the cameras, while real combat missions are performed by other mercenaries.
Berić, being a much hyped media character, helps to misinform and distract attention from the real operatives. The same role was performed by the “separatist warlords” Givi and Motorola; however when they got carried away playing tough leaders and lost their value for Moscow, these “heroes” were eliminated quickly and efficiently. The media activity of the Serbian “sniper” is a good example of military cunning, achieving both propaganda and disinformation objectives with a single asset.
Read more here.