Macron Announces Major Ukraine Peace Summit In September
French President Emmanuel Macron says the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France will hold talks next month aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
"We think that the conditions exist for a useful summit," Macron said at the end of a Group of Seven (G7) summit in the southwestern French coastal resort of Biarritz.
Macron said the quadrilateral talks -- known as the Normandy format -- would be held in September, but did not give an exact date.
Ukraine has been locked in conflict with Russia-backed separatists in its east since Moscow forcibly annexed Crimea in 2014.
Macron has already met with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and invited Russia's Vladimir Putin to France for talks last week ahead of the G7 summit.
Russia was excluded from the club of the world's most advanced economies after the annexation of Crimea.
Macron said after his meeting with Putin that there was a "real opportunity" for peace in Ukraine following Zelenskiy's election.
Zelenskiy has offered to meet Putin in person for talks and has spoken to him by phone in recent weeks.
Moscow has said there is interest to renew peace discussions.
More than 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Ukraine's east since April 2014. The European Union, the United States, and other countries have imposed sanctions on Russia due to its actions there.
An additional 1.5 million people have been internally displaced, the largest migration of people on the European continent since World War II.
Sixty-six Ukrainian soldiers were killed through July of this year, according to Censor.net, a Ukrainian news portal.
Based on reporting by AFP and AP
Group Says Crimeans Who Show Ukrainian Identity Get 'Hunted'
By RFE/RL
People expressing any form of Ukrainian identity in Russian-annexed Crimea can expect prosecution or get on a “hit list,” say two members of the Crimean Human Rights Group (CHRG).
Displaying the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag or its colors on property can lead to civil fines, criminal prosecution, and land “Ukrainian activists” on an online forum where people “hunt” for them, Olha Skrypnyk, head of CHRG, and group member Volodymyr Chekryhin, told the public broadcaster’s Radio Culture program.
An online forum exists in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol, home of Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet, called “Burn the Banderites in our city,” a reference to devotees of the mid-20th-century Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera.
“There are open calls for the massacre of Ukrainian activists, information is collected -- there are 150 pages” on the forum, Chekryhin said. “There are photos of Ukrainian activists, addresses, information about where the families live, and the routes they take with their children to the kindergarten. And it is suggested to find them and deal with them.”
Hanging a Ukrainian flag or displaying its colors can lead to a civil fine, Skrypnyk said, and usually is prosecuted as an “unauthorized” demonstration.
If Ukrainian colors are painted on property, that could lead to criminal charges and jail time for committing “vandalism,” she said.
Other times, criminal cases are “fabricated,” Skrypnyk said, to imprison Ukrainians who “express any form of Ukrainian identity.”
Volodymyr Balukh was mentioned as an example.
Currently serving a five-year prison sentence in Russia, Balukh displayed a Ukrainian flag on his farmstead after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.
Balukh was originally arrested in December 2016 and convicted on a weapons- and explosives-possession charge in August 2017 that he said is false.
Rights groups like the Memorial Human Rights Center consider him a political prisoner and maintain the charge against him was trumped up.
“On the whole, there are risks in general with the manifestation of Ukrainian identity,” Skrypnyk said. “As for the flag and directly Ukrainian colors, it can very often be used for persecution.”
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
