Ukraine's 'Project Wall' Digs In As Front Line Defense Against Russia
Ukraine is attempting to build a barrier along the whole of its 2,000 kilometer land border with Russia, to thwart any potential attack. "Project Wall" is ambitious and, so far, only partially constructed. RFE/RL's Current Time TV went to take a look.
RFE/RL's Anna Shamanska has written a new piece for our Current Time blog:
Behind Closed Doors: Ukraine's Panicked Meeting Ahead Of Crimean Seizure
Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council has published a previously top-secret transcript of a closed-door meeting it held on February 28, 2014 -- just a few days before Moscow’s seizure of Crimea.
The 37-page document shows the new authorities -- in power for less than a week -- in a state of near panic as they address how an unprepared Ukrainian army would deal with Russian aggression that appears to have caught them off guard.
The Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense says it released the document on February 22 to show the circumstances Ukraine faced as the annexation was beginning and what countermeasures the government had discussed taking.
"Lately there has been a lot of insinuation and speculation about this," committee head Serhiy Pashynskyy said at the meeting, referring to the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions. "Maybe in two more years we will tell how the war in the east began."
RFE/RL's Current Time television published the most important excerpts from the meeting:
Read more here