Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council:
A news item just in from our correspondent in Brussels, Rikard Jozwiak:
EU Court Upholds Some Sanctions On Russian Businessman
BRUSSELS -- An EU court has partly upheld sanctions imposed on Arkady Rotenberg, a Russian businessman and close associate of President Vladimir Putin.
Rotenberg was added to the EU travel ban and asset-freeze list in the summer of 2014 for his role in the Ukraine crisis.
In its November 30 ruling, the EU's General Court annulled the sanctions against Rotenberg for the period July 2014 to March 2015 because the EU legal reasoning was at fault, a statement said.
However, the Luxembourg-based court said the two additional grounds cited in March 2015 justified the restrictions.
The additional reasons provided included the fact that Rotenberg is the owner of the company Stroygazmontazh, which received a Russian state contract to build a bridge from Russia to Crimea.
He is also the chairman of the board of directors of the publishing house Prosveschenyie, which was behind a campaign to persuade Crimean children that they are now Russian citizens living in Russia.
Rotenberg has two months to appeal the ruling.
An excerpt:
There is no consensus among Ukrainian experts as to what Trump’s victory will mean for relations between Washington, D.C. and Kyiv. On the one hand, Trump’s election is perceived as a threat to Ukraine due to possible détente between the U.S. and the Russian Federation, elements of which would be a recognition of the annexation of Crimea as well as informal consent for Russian domination in the post-Soviet area. Future U.S. support for Ukraine’s reforms is being called into question, too. The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, which put effective pressure on Ukraine’s authorities, has so far played a key role in the implementation of these reforms. On the other hand, it is suggested that expectations of Clinton were too high, and the positive aspects of Trump’s election are underlined. This is because the potential need for Ukraine to implement reforms on its own would allow it to become less dependent on the assistance of external partners. However, it is unlikely that the Ukrainian authorities will demonstrate enough political will to introduce wide-ranging changes in the country without external pressure, including from the United States. Besides, U.S. support will be crucial for Ukraine’s further macroeconomic stabilisation. Nevertheless, it is currently difficult to define how future U.S. policy towards Ukraine will shape up.
An excerpt:
Two days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Artem Sytnik, the head of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, announced that his office would end its investigation of Paul Manafort, a former chairman of Trump’s campaign who is still in contact with the president-elect’s team. Ukrainian officials previously alleged that Manafort had been designated to receive undisclosed cash payments totaling $12.7 million from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, a pro-Russian group that came to epitomize the corruption that contributed to Yanukovych’s ouster during the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution. Sytnik said his bureau had abandoned the case because it had “enough of its own officials” to prosecute. But the subtext of his remarks was clear: continuing to investigate Manafort might have threatened Ukraine’s standing with the next U.S. administration.