Russia, West clash during UN session on Ukraine's language law:
By RFE/RL
A United Nations Security Council meeting over Kyiv's move to declare Ukrainian the national language of Ukraine turned into a war of words between Moscow and the West.
Russia denounced the language law during the July 16 meeting, saying Ukraine's "struggle for national identity should not violate the rights of the Russian-speaking minority," while the West used the session to air a series of grievances against Moscow.
"We are not speaking out against the Ukrainian [language]," Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, told the Security Council. "We want to defend Russians.
Meanwhile, the United States, Britain, and France used the session to demand an end to the "occupation" of Crimea by Moscow and a ceasing of efforts to restrict minority rights on the peninsula, which was unilaterally seized and annexed by Russia in 2014.
"Russia must end its occupation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula," U.S. diplomat Rodney Hunter said.
"Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine and our sanctions against Russia for its aggression in eastern Ukraine will remain in place until Russia fully implements the Minsk agreements," he added, citing agreements signed in 2015 in the Belarusian capital designed to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The Western powers also demanded that "justice be served" on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 that killed all 298 aboard in a region controlled by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
In addition, the United States and its allies demanded the release of 24 Ukrainian sailors and their vessel detained in December 2018 by Russian forces during a naval incident off the coast of Crimea.
The UN session had been called to discuss a law put into force by Kyiv on July 16 to declare Ukrainian "the only official state language in Ukraine," a move that expands quotas for Ukrainian-language content on broadcast media and in print.
It says that "attempts" to introduce other languages as the state language would be considered efforts to "forcibly change the constitutional order."
The new law defines what it calls the "public humiliation of the Ukrainian language" as a punishable offense under the country's Criminal Code.
Ukrainian becomes mandatory in all official documents, court records, elections and referendums, international treaties, and labor agreements.
Ukrainian is the native language of some 67 percent of Ukraine's population of almost 45 million, while Russian is the native language of almost 30 percent. Russian is spoken mostly in urban areas. Almost 3 percent of Ukraine's inhabitants are native speakers of other languages.
Russia had called for "urgent consultations" on the law to be held in the Security Council, and Russia's mission to the Council of Europe has also called on the rights body to react to the new piece of legislation.
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko endorsed the language law two months ago before leaving office.
Ukraine's new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who was inaugurated on May 20, has criticized the law as a set of "prohibitions and punishments" that will complicate bureaucratic procedures and "increase the number of officials instead of reducing them." (w/RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, AP, and AFP)
This ends our live blogging for July 16. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Victims' families, nations commemorate MH17 tragedy:
By RFE/RL
Families of victims and their countries' embassies are marking the fifth anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine, amid mounting evidence of Russia's involvement in shooting the passenger plane out of the sky.
The airliner flying between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a Buk missile on July 17, 2014, over territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists, killing all 298 people on board, including 80 children.
In the Netherlands, which lost 193 citizens, commemorations began on July 16, when family members of 15 of the victims assembled in the town of Hilversum for a vigil.
It was led by a priest who grows sunflowers from seeds brought from eastern Ukraine where the plane was shot down.
A separate MH17 conference took place in the Netherlands on July 16, as well as a roundtable in Washington, D.C.
Speaking in Washington, George Kent, deputy assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, said that "Russia set the stage for the shoot-down of MH17 by financing, organizing, and leading proxies in eastern Ukraine."
He also said that "Russia continues to deny the presence of its forces and materiel" in non-government-controlled parts of Ukraine.
Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement in the MH17 tragedy.
Nine embassies whose citizens perished on the flight plan to hold a memorial on July 17 in Malaysia, which lost 43 citizens.
Another memorial is taking place at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam that is closed to the media.
Investigators from the Dutch-led Joint Investigative Team (JIT) have concluded that a Russian antiaircraft-missile brigade transported the sophisticated projectile system from and back to Russia into Ukraine.
The JIT in June furthermore indicted three Russians with military and intelligence backgrounds and a Ukrainian man with no prior military experience on murder charges.
The four suspects are scheduled to be tried starting in March 2020 in the Netherlands, although all are believed to be in Russia.
And investigators promised to continue investigating suspects, including those in the "chain of command."
Western states imposed sanctions on Russia after the incident, bolstering existing measures that were put into force after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.
Dutch prosecutors might get to question a possible key witness of the events after an elite Ukrainian unit on June 27 detained Volodymyr Tsemakh at his home in a separatist-held city in the Donetsk region.
Tsemakh oversaw an air-defense unit in a town near the crash site.
His lawyer and daughter told local media that Ukrainian authorities are charging him with terrorism that carries a maximum 15-year prison sentence.
Meanwhile, Tsemakh's wife sent a pro-Moscow separatist official a picture of her husband after he was arrested with a bandaged wound on his forehead, according to online open-source sleuth Bellingcat.
TV footage uncovered by Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA, showed Tsemakh claiming that he was in charge of an antiaircraft unit and that he helped hide the Buk missile in July 2014.
He furthermore shows the interviewer where the civilian airliner fell.
A July 15 RFE/RL report also outlined how Russian and Moscow-controlled media in nongovernment-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine first reported that separatists had downed a Ukrainian military plane during the time when MH17 was downed. (w/Todd Prince in Washington, Current Time, AFP, and the Kyiv Post)