U.S. State Department condemns arrests of Crimean Tatars by Russian authorities:
By RFE/RL
The U.S. State Department has condemned the arrests of 23 Crimean Tatars in Russian-annexed Crimea.
In a March 28 Twitter statement, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino called on Russia to release the arrested men "and the 70+ other unjustly imprisoned Ukrainians."
A court in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, said on March 29 that since March 27, 23 Crimean Tatars had been arrested and placed in pretrial detention until May 15, on charges of belonging to the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group.
Crimean Solidarity, a human rights group that has members in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine, said earlier that at least 25 homes of Crimean Tatars were searched on March 27 in Simferopol, and nearby districts.
Since Russia seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014, Russian authorities have prosecuted 31 Crimean Tatars for allegedly belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir.
In February, the branch of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in the Black Sea region launched probes against eight alleged members of the group accused of plotting to seize power in Crimea.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global organization based in London that seeks to unite all Muslim countries into an Islamic caliphate.
The group can operate legally in Ukraine. However, Russia's Supreme Court banned it in 2003, branding its supporters "extremists."
Rights groups and Western governments have denounced what they describe as a campaign of repression by the Russian-imposed authorities in Crimea who are targeting members of the Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar community and others who have spoken out against Moscow's takeover of the peninsula.
Russia took control of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops, seizing key facilities, and staging a referendum dismissed as illegal by at least 100 countries. Moscow also backs separatists in a war against government forces that has killed some 13,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. (w/TASS)
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for March 28, 2019. Check back here tomorrow for more of our continuing coverage.
Ukrainian Presidential Front-Runner Did Not Declare A 15-Room Italian Villa, Journalists Discover
By Christopher Miller
KYIV -- Ukrainian journalists have discovered that comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a political novice whose campaign has blurred the lines between the everyman leader he plays on a popular television sitcom and his front-runner position ahead of Ukraine’s presidential election, has a 15-room villa in Italy that he failed to disclose in his public asset declaration.
Slidtsvo.Info, a Kyiv-based investigative journalism group, reported on March 28 – just four days before Ukraine’s presidential election -- that the 41-year-old Zelenskyy paid an Italian company 3.8 million euros in 2017 for the luxurious home, which sits roughly 600 meters from the beach in Forte dei Marmi.
In a post on Instagram, Zelenskyy's campaign called the report "fake" and an attempt to "discredit" the candidate days before the election.
The Tuscan seaside town has been dubbed by pro-Russia media as Italy’s “Moscow Province” for being a preferred destination of such Russian oligarchs as Oleg Deripaska and Roman Abramovich, according to the Slidstvo journalists.
Zelenskyy’s public asset declaration says he is the owner of four apartments in Kyiv and a country home outside the capital city, as well as apartments in Yalta, Crimea, and the United Kingdom. But his declaration does not mention the villa in Italy, which, according to the journalists, he owns with his wife, Elena.
Zelenskyy currently stars in the popular television comedy series Servant Of The People, where he portrays a regular schoolteacher who becomes president.
That a successful businessman who runs an entertainment company and stars in a hit television show makes millions of dollars is unsurprising. But two things that may anger Ukrainian voters – who polls show deeply distrust their politicians and government – are the facts that the villa was kept secret and that keeping it hidden undermines the antiestablishment and transparent image Zelenskyy has projected throughout his campaign.
Slidstvo.Info is an award-winning group of journalists known for their documentary film Killing Pavel, which uncovered new details about the July 2016 car-bomb killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kyiv.
News of Zelenskyy’s villa broke shortly after the release of the last presidential polls allowed ahead of the election, so it is difficult to say how the news will affect the vote just days away.
Pollster Rating Group on March 28 showed Zelenskyy with 26.6 percent of the vote, followed by President Petro Poroshenko tied with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko at 17.2 percent.
A Democratic Initiatives Foundation poll the same day put the comic in the lead with 27.6 percent, followed by Poroshenko at 18.2 percent and Tymoshenko at 12.8 percent.
A record 44 candidates registered for the presidential election. Thirty-nine candidates remain after five dropped out. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote – which is most likely, polls suggest -- the top two will face each other in a runoff set for April 21.
Zelenskyy, who has run an unorthodox campaign built around social media and his celebrity, will spend the last days before the election performing with his comedy troupe, Kvartal 95.
Season three of his popular television show, Servant Of The People, aired on March 27. On March 30, he will narrate a television documentary about another actor who ran for -- and won -- the presidency: Ronald Reagan.