A plane flying from Odessa, Ukraine made a crash landing in Donetsk, Interfax news agency said Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Some of the passengers onboard the plane escaped before it caught fire, Russia’s RIA news agency reports.
Tag Archives: Ukraine
Roof collapses at Chernobyl nuclear plant: Ukraine
A section of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine collapsed under the weight of snow, officials said Wednesday, raising new concerns about the condition of the facility that was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Phys.org
Chernobyl radiation unaffected after roof collapse
Ukrainian officials on Wednesday sought to reassure the public that radiation levels were unaffected at Chernobyl and there was no safety threat after a partial roof collapse at the exploded nuclear power plant.
A 600-square-meter (6,500-square-foot) section of the roof over the turbine hall at the fourth power block collapsed Tuesday, Chernobyl plant spokeswoman Maya Rudenko told The Associated Press. The collapse was caused by heavy snowfall, emergency authorities said.
Rudenko said the affected area is about 50 meters (165 feet) away from the “sarcophagus,” a shelter built shortly after the 1986 disaster to contain radiation emanating from the exploded reactor. Rudenko said the radiation levels were normal and there was no danger to the public.
“Everybody should be absolutely calm,” Rudenko said. “Yes, it is unpleasant, but there is no danger.”
The April 26, 1986, accident in the then-Soviet republic of Ukraine sent a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe and forced the evacuation of about 115,000 people from the plant’s vicinity. A 30-kilometer (19-mile) area directly around the plant remains largely off-limits.
A new giant arch-shaped confinement is currently being constructed over the old sarcophagus. The construction of the new shelter was not affected by the accident, said Anton Usov, spokesman for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which runs the $2 billion project co-sponsored by the bank and international donors.
“The old shelter was not affected, the new safe confinement was not affected either,” Usov said.
Vinci and Bouygues, two French construction companies who are contracted to work on building the new confinement, said they had evacuated about 80 workers as a precaution. They had not returned as of Wednesday.
Rudenko called that a standard measure of precaution and said the workers are expected to return as soon as an investigation into the accident is completed and the roof is reinforced in order to prevent water from getting inside.
She also added that Ukrainian workers at the plant have not been evacuated or ordered to implement any additional safety measures: “We are not wearing face masks, we have not been evacuated, which is what would have happened had there been danger.”
However, some environmentalists expressed concern.
Ukraine, Turkmens sign tentative natural gas deal
Ukraine reached a tentative agreement with Turkmenistan on Wednesday to resume imports of natural gas from the energy-rich Central Asian nation.
The deal marks a breakthrough for Ukraine, which is seeking alternatives to Russian imports to meet its energy needs. Until 2006, Turkmenistan supplied Ukraine with 36 billion cubic meters (1.3 trillion cubic feet) of gas annually in exchange for cash and goods.
However, completion of the deal between Ukraine and Turkmenistan would require the consent of Kazakhstan and Russia as transit nations. Kazakhstan will be unlikely to pose an obstacle, but Russia, which has sought to dominate gas supplies to Europe and engaged in bitter energy disputes with Ukraine in the past, may not be forthcoming.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Eduard Stavitsky said the agreement was signed after talks between Ukraine‘s President Viktor Yanukovych and his Turkmen counterpart, Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov. He would not give a specific volume.
Yuriy Boiko, Ukraine‘s deputy prime minister, told The Associated Press that Ukraine in the future could also help Turkmenistan develop its energy riches. According to official estimates, Turkmenistan holds more than 30 trillion cubic meters (1,059 trillion cubic feet) in total gas reserves. Ukraine may also resell gas to other European markets.
The pipelines running from Turkmenistan via Kazakhstan and Russia to Ukraine have had spare capacity since Moscow sharply reduced its purchases of the Turkmen gas in 2009 in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. But Russia may push Ukraine for concessions on other issues as a condition for allowing the transit of Turkmen gas.
Moscow long has pushed for control over Ukrainian pipelines carrying Russian gas to the EU and has prodded Ukraine to join a Russia-dominated economic bloc. Earlier this week, the Ukrainian edition of business daily Kommersant said that the countries have been holding talks on creating a joint consortium to manage the Ukrainian gas transportation system.
Meanwhile, Russia‘s state-controlled Gazprom gas monopoly has been demanding that Ukraine pay back a $7 billion debt, a claim Kiev disputes.
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Peter Leonard contributed from Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Ukraine Doesn't Consider "Reasonable" $7 Billion Payment To Gazprom-Report
Ukraine doesn’t see why it should pay a $7 billion bill from Russia’s OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS), Ukraine‘s energy and coal industry minister said Thursday, Interfax reported. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox Business Headlines
Ukrainian lawyer rushes to client, ends up in jail
On a snowy January day in 2011, attorney Oleg Nikolishen headed to a police station in the Ukrainian capital to defend a client accused of car theft.
Instead, he ended up behind bars himself.
At the station, Nikolishen was arrested and charged with his client’s alleged crime. He spent most of the next two years in jail awaiting trial. In December, he was released on bail for treatment of cancer he had developed in custody. Nikolishen claims his arrest was in retaliation for successfully defending clients in a country where prosecutors are used to getting their way.
The lawyer’s plight has brought attention to a judicial system widely regarded as repressive and unfair. Judges are seen as routinely acting as an extension of the police and prosecutors, leading to a conviction rate of over 95 percent. Suspects can remain in jail for months or even years awaiting trial. Opinion polls show nearly 70 percent of Ukrainians mistrust their country’s courts and nearly 65 percent have no faith in the police and prosecutors.
Nearly 60 percent of the Ukrainian legal cases attract complaints of unfair and drawn-out trials. Ukraine accounts for the fourth-largest number of complaints to the European Court of Human Rights. Criticism of the legal system is one of the main impediments to Ukraine‘s attempts to form better ties with the West and, eventually, join the European Union.
Nikolishen, 31, is accused of participating in the theft of 11 high-end cars in Kiev as part of an organized group that includes his client and 10 other people. Despite a law that allows only senior prosecutors to file charges against lawyers — a measure aimed at shielding attorneys from law enforcement pressure — the charges against Nikolishen were initially brought by a rank-and-file Kiev policeman and a low-level prosecutor.
Moreover, Nikolishen says, courts repeatedly refused to take into account his status as a lawyer because the document identifying him as one was confiscated during his arrest. Nikolishen says his clients are hardly saints, but he believes any man has a right to be defended by a lawyer — and he is being punished just for doing his job.
“People who defend other people and try to make sure that everything is done according to the law, they are not needed in this country,” the lawyer said in an interview a few hours after being released in December.
The court’s refusal to recognize Nikolishen’s special status, critics say, is part of a broader pattern of judges rubber-stamping prosecutors’ cases. Badly paid and poorly trained, judges are seen as reluctant to acquit defendants and release them from pre-trial detention, because prosecutors routinely file complaints and even legal actions against judges who rule against them.
“Judges are afraid to issue acquittals because if they do … they won’t hold their jobs for much longer,” said Ruslan Rozhenko, a retired Kiev judge who campaigns for legal reform.
The government says it realizes the problem. Last year, President Viktor Yanukovych called for a higher acquittal rate and parliament adopted a new criminal code that seeks to boost the rights of the defense and curtail some of the prosecutors’ powers in line with EU standards. But legal experts say it will not succeed in reforming Ukraine‘s judicial system unless judges are made truly independent from the executive branch and paid more so that there’s less of a temptation to take bribes — seen as rampant in the court system.
Nikolishen’s lawyer, Ihor Ivanov, says the charges against his client stem solely from the testimony of other defendants in the case, which he claims was obtained under torture.
Nikolishen, now undergoing treatment for the stage-four lymphoma that was left untreated in jail for more than a year, says he has a firm alibi in at least three of the thefts he has been charged with; in one case he was defending a client in court when the theft took place.
In addition, he claims that plainclothes police beat him and kicked him in the genitals for hours to try to force him to confess. “They didn’t succeed,” he said. “I had nothing to confess.”
Kiev police refused to comment on Nikolishen’s allegations of torture or explain why they filed charges against a lawyer in violation of the law. The policeman who initially charged Nikolishen has faced unspecified disciplinary measures, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutor Yulia Dmytriyenko would say only that the evidence against Nikolishen includes testimony by witnesses and other defendants in the case.
“As for the motive — its presence or absence — you should ask the defendant,” Dmytriyenko said. “I cannot make any assumptions about what the motives could have been for Nikolishen to take part in these crimes.”
Alexis Anagnostakis, a human rights expert with the European Criminal Bar Association, condemned Nikolishen’s treatment, saying it undermines respect for lawyers, a fundamental principle in any democratic society.
“Arbitrary prosecution, detention or conviction of a lawyer relating to his or her professional duties should not be tolerated in a European democratic society,” Anagnostakis said.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Russia mulls resumption of Georgian wine imports
A Russian official said Monday that Moscow may soon resume imports of Georgian wine, mineral water and fruit after a seven-year ban, the first tentative step toward repairing the ruptured ties between the two ex-Soviet neighbors.
Gennady Onishchenko, Russia‘s top sanitation official, said a first round of talks between delegations from both countries was successful Monday, and that a Russian delegation will visit Georgia this month to discuss issues related to restarting the import of wine and mineral water. He said that could happen by this spring and that fruit imports may follow.
Russia banned such trade in 2006 amid rising political tensions in the run up to a brief war with Georgia in 2008. An election in October made tycoon and philanthropist Bidzina Ivanishvili Georgia‘s new prime minister, and he pledged to normalize relations with Russia, where he had made his fortune.
The Kremlin, which has staunchly refused to talk to Georgia‘s pro-Western president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has shown a willingness to improve ties since his party’s defeat in the election.
Russia‘s ban on Georgian products has dealt a painful blow to its economy.
Since the Soviet times, Georgian wine has been a popular tipple in Russia, accounting for about 90 percent of exports before the ban. The nosedive of Russian purchases forced many vineyards to close.
Since then, they have recovered as Georgia expanded sales to other markets, but at 23 million bottles last year the vineyards are still far behind 57 million bottles exported in 2005.
Ukraine, China and Poland have been among important new markets for the Georgian wine, though vintners also have made some inroads into the United States and Canada.
“You can’t depend on a single market,” Georgian Agriculture Minister David Kirvalidze said. “That was the mistake of producers who didn’t look for alternatives.”
Many officials believe the Russian import ban also forced them to crack down on bootlegging in Georgia‘s wine industry. Before 2006, Russian stores were flooded with counterfeit Georgian vintages made in response to their popularity and low price. While exploring new markets, Georgian vintners were forced to meet quality standards higher than those in Russia.
“The Russian embargo has played a positive role,” Georgian Wine Association official Tina Kezeli said. “The emphasis has shifted clearly toward quality.”
Wine has long been an important source of revenue in Georgia and an essential part of its national identity. The nation claims to be the world’s inventor of wine making 8,000 years ago and treats it with sacramental reverence. Its more than 500 grape varieties are used for wines ranging from golden to deep red, dry, and semi-sweet. Some of the tongue-twisting names have become internationally known, including Kindzmarauli, Usakhelauri, and Mukuzani.
Georgian culture centers hold sumptuous feasts during which a tamada, or banquet leader, initiates countless toasts with elaborate etiquette, praising parents, deceased loves ones and the nation itself.
Georgians often claim their wines are better than those produced in countries such as France, Italy, the United States and Australia.
For that reason Gela Gamtkitsulashvili, a proprietor at the Twins Old Cellar winery in the Kakheti region, predicted Russians would soon put aside such wines when they can once again buy Georgian ones.
Georgia hopes to increase annual wine production 50 percent to 40 million bottles by 2015, or even earlier if Russia soon drops its import ban.
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Dzhindzhikhashvili reported from Tbilisi, Georgia. Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this report.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Lithuania shivers as Russia ramps up heating costs
To save money during the harsh Baltic winter, Romanas Ziabkinas did something unremarkable: He turned off his central heating and installed a cheaper electric heater. Now he finds himself neck-deep in legal woes.
His utility company refused to recognize the switch and is suing him for some 25,000 litas ($10,000) in unpaid utility bills for his apartment in Lithuania‘s capital. “Splitting from the Soviet Union was easier than leaving this heating system,” he says.
Ziabkinas plight is extreme but his frustrations over heating costs are shared by a majority of Lithuanians, who have seen prices soar over the past several years, especially since the shuttering of its only nuclear power plant in 2009, forcing the country to import more Russian gas to keep warm. Lithuania‘s decision to scrap atomic power over safety concerns has put it under a new kind of threat: intimidation from Russia, which critics say shows no hesitation to use its energy dominance to bully former vassal states.
While gas prices have tended to fall globally in recent years thanks to deposits of shale gas in places like the U.S., Lithuanian households have looked on in horror in the past seven years as the retail cost of natural gas pumped from Siberia spiked 450 percent — or from $169 to $769 per 1,000 cubic meters.
Lithuania, a country of 3 million people, currently pays Russia a wholesale price of about $540 per 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas piped from Siberia, roughly 15 percent more than Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia and 25 percent more than Germany.
Many Lithuanians feel they are being punished by Russia for unsolved political issues, just as the Kremlin has used gas supplies to goad Ukraine and Belarus over political and economic disputes.
Lithuania has demanded compensation from Moscow for alleged damages incurred during the Soviet occupation from 1945 to 1991, and last year enacted a European Union directive to separate gas supply and distribution, a direct blow to Russia‘s commercial interests in the country. Estonia and Latvia, which also receive all their gas from Russia, have done neither — and are thus rewarded with cheaper prices.
Gazprom rarely comments on gas price deals with individual countries, using the secrecy to haggle with each individual nation separately — playing one off the other — in what is seen as an extension of Kremlin foreign policy.
Lithuania has a long-term supply agreement with Russia‘s state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom, which expires in 2015. Russia has justified the price rises by saying the deal allows it to index gas rates to oil prices. The catch is that Russia has given discounts to friendly nations, while sticking to the full price for those with which it has disputes.
“We believe Lithuania should pay a fifth less than it does now,” Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius recently told reporters.
Lithuania‘s previous center-right government sued Gazprom in international arbitration court for 5 billion litas ($1.9 billion) over gas price hikes and has called on the EU to investigate the company’s alleged unfair pricing policies. Butkevicius, however, is willing to scrap the litigation in exchange for cheaper gas.
Regardless of the legal outcome, heating now seems a luxury many Lithuanians can’t afford — and with tragic consequences. Last winter a 77-year-old pensioner in the southern district of Alytus was found frozen to death in his house. In another case, an 80-year-old woman who lived alone died in her bed in 2011, her body stuck to the frozen bed sheets.
Many people who can’t afford their heating bill don’t pay it, resulting in an increasingly large income hole that utilities fear they’ll never recover. In Vilnius, the total amount of unpaid heating bills surpassed 40 million litas ($15 million) last year, while in Kaunas, Lithuania‘s second largest city, the number was $17 million.
Toma Gajauskiene, a 25-year-old Lithuanian language teacher, feels that she’s drowning in unpaid heating bills for her apartment in a high-rise building. She earns some 1,200 litas ($460) per month, and has a small child and an unemployed husband to support.
“Last December was not too cold, but the heating bill stands at 500 litas, almost half of what I make,” Gajauskiene said. “For January the bill will be at least double, but I simply cannot pay more than 300 litas for heating because my family will not have money to buy food.”
Lithuanians also pay more for heating due to insulation problems stemming from the Soviet era. In the years after World War II, some 80 percent of Lithuania‘s population moved in less than a decade from villages to cities, where they were placed in Soviet apartment blocks hastily and without regard for efficient insulation.
“To the Soviets, it was easier to build new towns and concrete multi-story houses with thin walls and then heat them without counting energy costs. Gas and oil was free those days, but now it’s simply outrageous,” said Vytautas Stasiunas, head of the Lithuanian District Heating Association.
Nearly all of Lithuania‘s leaders have vowed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in energy-saving housing renovations — promises that have gone unfulfilled.
“There are dozens of awful mistakes made in the energy sector by each and every cabinet since independence. These mistakes are affecting everybody in this country,” Stasiunas said.
Not surprisingly, Lithuanians — who have one of the lowest personal income levels in the 27-member EU — aren’t waiting around and are searching for alternatives.
Ivan Soloduchin, owner of small heating solutions company in Vilnius, says he can’t keep up with orders to help people shut down gas boilers and replace them with firewood boilers or heat pumps. Heating a private home of up to 100 square meters (1,070 square feet) requires up to 20 cubic meters of birch wood. That comes to less than 2,300 litas ($880) for a five-month heating season. Natural-gas users in the same size property would pay up to $500 during a particularly cold month.
“I’m getting up to 10 orders per week, and clients keep on coming even in the middle of winter,” Soloduchin said. “Ten years ago owners of new houses wouldn’t even look my way since firewood was considered dirty and old fashioned — everyone wanted gas boilers. Now things have changed.”
Nerijus Pienelis, who trades firewood in the Elektrenai town some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Vilnius, says that demand is growing every year.
“It used to be remaining farms and villages where people used my production,” he said. “Now most of the wood goes to the national capital, where even rich people burn it.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Murder on the Ukrainian Express
By Katya Soldak, Contributor Last month Ukraine’s state prosecutor accused the country’s ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko – already serving a seven-year term in prison for overstepping her authority – of the contract murder of a Ukrainian businessman that took place in 1996.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Gazprom Adds $16.9 Billion To Projected South Stream Costs
Russian gas giant OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) said it will invest 509.6 billion Russian rubles ($16.9 billion) expanding its pipelines to take gas to southeastern Europe via the South Stream, piling further costs onto a project aimed at bypassing traditional transit countries Ukraine and Belarus.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox Business Headlines
Food and Politics in Davos
By Katya Soldak, Contributor In the snowy mountains of Davos, Switzerland, during the week of the World Economic Forum, Ukrainian food was served to hungry economists and businesspeople: varenyky with cherries, chicken stuffed cabbage rolls, salted pork fat – known as salo – and other authentic dishes, prepared by Ukrainian cooks, with some appetizers such as dark bread and salo delivered straight from Ukraine. It was the 9th annual Ukrainian Lunch in Davos – the gathering hosted by a Ukrainian philanthropist and businessman, Victor Pinchuk.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Germany, Italy, US best at Nazi investigations
The Simon Wiesenthal Center ranks Germany, Italy and the U.S. as the most successful at investigating and prosecuting Nazi war crimes over the past year.
In its annual report covering April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012, released Thursday, the center said there was a fivefold increase in convictions from its previous report, from two to 10. Nine of those convictions were in Italy and one was in Germany.
As of April 1, 2012, the center’s Jerusalem office said at least 1,138 investigations, including preliminary inquiries, were being carried out in 10 countries, with the largest number in Germany at 528, Poland at 458, and 74 in the U.S.
Failing grades were given to 11 of 42 countries surveyed, including Australia, Austria, Canada, Estonia and Ukraine, for their lack of indictments or convictions.
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Full report http://www.operationlastchance.org/
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Ukraine hopes to resume purchase of Turkmen gas
Ukraine‘s foreign minister says he hopes his country will resume purchasing natural gas from the energy-rich Turkmenistan, thereby reducing its heavy reliance on Russian supplies.
Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhary said during a visit to the Central Asian nation Wednesday that Ukraine regretted its failure to preserve energy ties.
Up until 2006, Turkmenistan supplied Ukraine with 36 billion cubic meters of gas annually. Ukraine paid for the fuel in cash and goods.
Kozhary said assistance would be sought from Russia, through which Turkmen gas must transit to reach Ukraine, in reaching a new arrangement. Russia also buys gas from Turkmenistan, but spare pipeline capacity has been created due to flagging demand from Moscow.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is expected to visit Turkmenistan next month for talks likely to focus on energy.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Tymoshenko's lawyer faces legal action in Ukraine
The top lawyer for jailed former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko says he is under criminal investigation and fears imminent arrest.
Serhiy Vlasenko told reporters Monday that he stands accused of car theft, robbery and failing to obey a court ruling stemming from his divorce several years ago.
Vlasenko dismissed all the accusations as a campaign by Tymoshenko’s long-time political foe, President Viktor Yanukovych, to lock him in jail and leave Tymoshenko without a defense.
Last week, Ukrainian authorities stepped up their legal campaign against Tymoshenko, accusing her of organizing the murder of a businessman nearly 20 years ago.
Tymoshenko is serving a seven-year prison term on charges of abuse of office, a sentence that has been condemned by the West as politically motivated.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Romania turns up heat on cigarette smuggling
Armed with state-of-the-art sensors and surveillance cameras, authorities in Romania say they are gaining the upper hand against rampant cigarette smuggling along the country’s porous border with Ukraine.
Ukraine, to the north, is a hotbed of smugglers seeking to profit from vastly higher prices on the other side of the rugged border. A pack of cigarettes rolled in makeshift workshops can sell for as little as half a euro — and the price immediately doubles over the northern Transylvania and gets dramatically higher the closer they get to western capitals.
Some 9.7 million packs of cigarettes were confiscated in 2012 by police, who say they have busted 30 organized gangs. The patrols also stopped over 130 individual smugglers and recovered 268 stolen cars and vans.
The turning point in the daily battle — waged in diverse terrain ranging from steppe to rugged mountains — came in July when EU funds totaling some €2 million ($2.66 million) were invested in seismic sensors able to detect footsteps, surveillance cameras and other equipment.
Some €9 million worth of cigarettes alone have since been confiscated, officials say.
“We used to patrol through extreme weather, through cold and through rain, but the new technology makes our work much easier and the traffic has visibly decreased,” chief agent Olimpiu Breton told The Associated Press. He says the X-ray systems — known as Robo-Scan — are working night and day and can detect whatever may be stashed inside passing trucks.
Video obtained by the AP showed officials intercepting an oil tanker, filled with contraband cigarettes.
After Romania became an EU member in 2007, life in the quiet northernmost region some 650 kilometers (400 miles) north of Bucharest changed dramatically.
Many people went to work abroad; those who remained had little option but to seek easy money. The 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) of border make Romania the European state with the longest external frontier. And with it came not just smuggled cigarettes, but also drugs, cars and human trafficking. The smuggling has also been rampant in other Balkan countries, as a result of the wars of 1990s.
Struggling uphill alongside his horse, woodcutter Ionut Opris sighed at the thought of what until recently had been a crime zone: “Smugglers are Romania‘s biggest thieves! We work hard, in the forest, in rain and cold, for less than €150 per month and pay taxes, while these guys, with their cigarettes, do nothing but steal.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Ukraine reportedly seeking $15 billion IMF loan
Ukrainian news agencies are reporting that the government is seeking a fresh $15 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
They say that First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov told reporters Monday that he will hold negotiations on a new loan with IMF delegates arriving in Kiev next week.
Arbuzov’s office declined immediate comment.
Many economists say the Ukrainian economy is heading toward recession due to waning demand for the country’s main export, steel. The national currency, the hryvna, has also weakened.
Experts doubt a quick deal with the IMF is likely because of the government‘s reluctance to implement unpopular austerity measures, such as raising household gas prices.
Ukraine‘s previous IMF aid program was frozen over those disagreements.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Syrian activists report 13 killed in airstrike near Damascus
A Syrian airstrike slammed into a house in a rebellious suburb of Damascus early Monday, killing at least 13 people including eight children, activists said, as President Bashar Assad‘s regime ramped up its operations against the opposition strongholds ringing the capital.
Government forces have used warplanes and multiple rocket launchers over the past 24 hours in what activists described as some of the heaviest barrages of the Damascus region since the government launched an offensive in November to dislodge rebels from the capital’s outskirts. At least 45 people were killed in a government barrage on Sunday, opposition groups said.
The air raid early Monday struck a home in the southern suburb of Maadamiyeh when residents were still inside, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights and other activists said. Locals pulled 13 bodies — including those of eight children — from the rubble, the Observatory said, adding that at least seven more people remain trapped.
Syrian state media, however, refuted that account, and blamed rebels for the deaths in Maadamiyeh. The official SANA news agency said “terrorist” fired a shell at the neighborhood from nearby Daraya, hitting a residential building and causing casualties.
“The noise from the bombardment is astounding today,” a fighter who identified himself as Iyad said by satellite phone from an area near Maadamiyeh.
“The regime is using all kinds of weaponry, they are shelling Maadamiyeh from nearby mountains and we are hearing that there are a lot of casualties,’ he said, adding that telephone lines to the area have been cut.
An amateur video posted online by activists showed young men walking over piles of rubble, searching for people as women, apparently trapped inside buildings, could be heard wailing and crying for help. A voice in the background said the video is of Maadamiyeh.
A man cried “God is great” as the camera closed in on what appeared to be a child’s body covered in rubble. The child is face down on the ground next to another body, with a hand sticking out from under the rubble.
In another video, the bodies of at least two children could be seen, their faces bloodied from what appear to be wounds to the head. One of the two children, a toddler, was lying on a gurney partially covered in green blankets as a woman is heard crying and screaming : “Why? Why, oh God, why?”
The caption says the children were less than a year old and were killed in the Maadamiyeh attack Monday.
The videos appeared consistent with activist reports from the area.
Fighter jets also carried out fresh airstrikes on the suburb of Daraya, a strategic suburb close to a key military air base. Last week, the government said it has regained control over more than half of the suburb.
Iyad, the fighter outside Damascus, said the regime on Sunday dispatched reinforcements to Daraya. The fresh troops were trying to advance and hold the territory, but have been unsuccessful.
Monday’s attacks come a day after airstrikes and heavy shelling killed at least 45 people in the Damascus area.
The deadliest attack was reported in eastern Ghouta district, where 24 people, including eight children, were killed by government air and artillery strikes. The rest of the casualties, including 13 rebels killed in clashes, were in other neighborhoods outside the capital.
Regime warplanes also bombed targets in the north Monday, hitting rebel positions inside a sprawling air base in Idlib province in an effort to regain control of the facility.
Rebels captured the Taftanaz helicopter base, which includes an airstrip, on Friday, dealing a major blow to Assad’s forces that have relied on its airpower in the fight against the opposition.
The Observatory said the rebels retained control of the Taftanaz base that had been used by the Syrian government to carry out airstrikes nationwide and transports troops and supplies around the country.
A shell fired from Syria landed on an empty field near the Turkish border village of Akcabaglar, in Kilis province late Sunday, damaging an olive tree, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported. No one was hurt.
NATO has begun deploying Patriot missiles along Turkey‘s southern border with Syria to protect the NATO ally country from any possible spillover from the civil war in Syria. The six Patriot anti-missile systems are scheduled to become operational later this month.
In recent months, Turkey fired artillery across the frontier to retaliate for Syrian shells hitting Turkish soil, after five civilians were injured in October.
It was not clear however, whether Turkish troops had retaliated to Sunday’s shelling.
The fighting has rage in Syria at a relentless pace despite a recent diplomatic push to try to secure a peaceful settlement to the nearly 2-year-old conflict, which the U.N. estimates has killed more than 60,000 people.
In a speech earlier this month, Assad dismissed international calls to relinquish power and vowed to continue fighting rebels.
The speech was condemned by the U.S. and its Western and Gulf Arab allies, while Assad’s backers in Russia and Iran said his proposal should be considered.
Those fighting to topple the regime, including rebels on the ground, have repeatedly said they will accept nothing less than the president’s departure, dismissing any kind of settlement that leaves him in the picture.
Russia‘s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized Western demands that Assad step down. While acknowledging that the initiatives to talk to the opposition, “probably don’t go far enough,” Lavrov called on the opposition to come up with their plan to end the bloodshed.
“If I were in the opposition’s place, I would put forth my own ideas in response on how to establish a dialogue,” Lavrov said Sunday during a visit to Ukraine.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Gazprom's EU partners anxious for price cuts
Russian energy giant Gazprom is spending billions to expand its already massive footprint in Europe. But it will have to tread carefully at a time when global natural gas supplies are surging and prices are falling, giving European utilities and businesses more leverage in negotiating supply contracts.
At a lavish ceremony in December to mark the start of construction of a new pipeline to Europe, Gazprom put on a show of its industrial might to match the project’s €1 billion ($20.92 billion) price tag. On the Black Sea coast, 600 miles south of Moscow, the company built a eight massive steel-framed marquees to house Russia‘s President Vladimir Putin, Gazprom’s executives and various European partners — all for a two-hour ceremony in which two short sections of the new South Stream pipeline were welded together.
In spite of all the public praise heaped on Gazprom at the event, there was recognition behind the scenes that the company is losing some of the clout it holds over Europe. While the region will remain heavily dependent on natural gas piped from Russia for decades to come, its ability to demand better prices is improving. That’s because Gazprom is facing competitive pressures around the globe as gas production grows in the U.S., Australia, the Middle East and Africa. In other words, it needs Europe more than ever before.
Born out of the Soviet gas ministry in the rush of Russian privatizations in the late 1980s and ’90s, Gazprom is effectively the country’s gas industry, accounting for about 80 percent of the country’s natural gas output. The company, which posted some $5 billion in net profit in the second quarter of 2012, holds a monopoly on Russia‘s gas export market and has first choice of which fields to operate. Gazprom exported some 238 billion cubic meters of natural gas around the world last year.
The vast majority of those exports arrive in Europe. The company supplies a quarter of the 27-country European Union’s gas needs, some 124 billion cubic meters, according to Eurostat, the EU‘s official data service. Europe still tethers itself to Gazprom because, at the moment, it is almost impossible to find enough gas from other sources to replace the sheer amount the company exports.
The South Stream pipeline — jointly funded by Gazprom, Italy‘s Eni, France’s EdF and Germany’s Wintershall — was conceived in 2007. South Stream is due to start operating in 2015 and will bring up to 63 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year to the Balkans, Austria and Italy.
However, the market for natural gas has changed dramatically since South Stream was first thought of. Natural gas reserves and export facilities are springing up around the world. European energy groups have already started importing gas from Qatar and will have more and more suppliers to choose from as more facilities come online.
Over the past few years, Gazprom has been locked in disputes with its European clients over its pricing policies. The big European energy companies — such as Germany’s E.ON, France’s GdF Suez or Poland’s PGNiG — are unhappy with what they believe are rigid contract terms: High tariffs linked to oil prices and the take-or-pay clause which leaves energy firms locked with the volumes they may not need.
In 2012, Gazprom exported gas to Europe at an average price of $381 per 1,000 cubic meters — or $10.88 per 1,000 cubic feet. That is higher than the two most important European benchmarks for gas prices, the U.K. and Amsterdam, which had average prices for gas of $9.47 per 1,000 cubic feet and $9.42 per 1,000 cubic feet respectively, according to Platts, a global energy information provider.
In the first half of 2012, Gazprom has paid some 133 billion rubles ($4.3 billion) in “retroactive discounts” to settle these contract disputes with its clients, according to its earnings report. And the Europeans are hungry for more.
Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italy‘s Eni which owns 20 percent in South Stream, said his company would not need as much gas from Gazprom this year as it is bound to buy under the take-or-pay obligations because of weak market conditions.
Eni managed to get a lower price from Gazprom last year, and Scaroni told the AP that he does not see “any reasons why they should not be changing the prices in the future and adapt them to market conditions.”
“Russian gas should be extremely cheap to produce, so it’s going to be competitive with any gas in the world,” he said.
One of the biggest long-term threats to Gazprom comes from the U.S., where the country’s natural gas industry has grown rapidly thanks to recently perfected drilling techniques known as “fracking” — that have allowed drillers to extract from underground shale deposits.
U.S. natural gas production rose to a record 1.78 billion cubic meters (63 billion cubic feet) per day on average in 2012, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s up 24 percent since 2007, when drillers were first beginning to tap enormous reserves of gas trapped in shale formations under several U.S. states. The U.S., once thought to be in need of additional natural gas imports, is now expected to become an exporter within a few years.
That’s a big turnaround from five years ago when Gazprom was working on supplying liquefied natural gas to the U.S. market. The International Energy Agency expects U.S. gas production to rise to overtake Russia in 2017.
“The shale gas boom in North America and the U.S. in particular has a double-sided impact for Gazprom,” said Andrew Neff, a senior energy analyst at IHS Energy. Not only does the company lose a customer, it also has to find somewhere to sell the gas it had set aside the U.S.
On top of this, Neff warns that “North American LNG exports could potentially compete with Russian gas.”
Gazprom’s South Stream pipeline is being built to secure Russia‘s gas supply to Europe following a series of clashes with Ukraine, to whom Gazprom currently pays about $2 billion a year in transit fees. In 2006, Russia cut off its supplies to the Ukraine after the two countries clashed over the price of gas and the transit fees. Russia kept shipping gas to the EU through Ukraine. However, to cope with a spell of severe cold weather, Ukrainians siphoned off some of that supply. European customers started reporting a drop-off in supplies as a result.
The dispute escalated in the winter of 2009 when Gazprom again cut off supplies to Ukraine after talks over a new gas contract failed. Again, Europe started experiencing a fall in supplies. In spite of Ukraine denying this time that it had siphoned off Russian gas, tens of millions of Europeans were left without gas for three weeks in the depths of winter.
Going through the Balkans, Austria and Italy, South Stream will avoid Ukraine, which will still get its supplies from the existing pipeline but won’t get the extra transit fees.
However, analysts are concerned that Gazprom could be overreaching with its pipelines. On top of the South Stream project, the company in October opened Nord Stream, a new pipeline under the Baltic Sea, directly linking Germany with Siberia’s vast natural gas reserves with the capacity of 55 billion cubic meters. The construction of South Stream and expansion of Nord Stream will mean Gazprom’s capacity will exceed expected demand by between 50 billion to 100 billion cubic meters, according to analyst estimates.
Alexei Kokin, an oil and gas analyst at Moscow-based UralSib investment bank, is skeptical of the reasoning behind the South Stream, adding that for Gazprom and the other investors, the project “is pretty much a waste” of capital expenditure.
“The timing of South Stream looks bad for Gazprom,” said Andrew Neff, a senior energy analyst at IHS Energy.
Gazprom officials, however, defend the Balkans-bound pipeline despite its estimated cost of €16 billion ($20.6 billion).
“If that wasn’t profitable for our partners, we would not go ahead with this project,” Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller said in December.
Miller explained that Gazprom would be saving a lot of money by not having to pay the $2 billion in transit fees to Ukraine: “With South Stream, we will be paying these transit fees to ourselves,” he said jokingly.
As well as battling to maintain its clout in Europe, Gazprom is also fighting on the political front in the region. European officials have warned Gazprom that it would have to allow third-party gas producers to use South Stream to comply with European laws that ban suppliers from owning transit facilities such as pipelines. Gazprom and its European partners in the project are lobbying for South Stream to be exempted from the law.
The company is also facing an EU probe to determine whether it violated competition rules by linking gas prices with prices for oil.
Putin strongly criticized the EU energy regulations as he sat down for talks with European leaders in Brussels last December. “It creates confusion and undermines confidence in our mutual work,” he said.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Ukraine: Corrupt and Stoic
By Katya Soldak, ContributorIt seems to be a bit of a cliché to look back at the ending year and summarize the results but there is no better way to monitor the progress — or lack thereof. Looking at various 2012 rankings for Ukraine, the picture can be described as “one step forward, […]
Source: Forbes Latest
AP photo essay: Ex-Soviet immigrants change Israel
In parts of Israel, it’s hard to find a single Hebrew sign in a sea of Cyrillic. Shopkeepers address customers in Russian, and groceries are amply stocked with non-kosher pork, red caviar and rows of vodka. Russian pop beats thump at bars, and in some homes, people will as likely be hunched over a chessboard as a computer keyboard.
The Soviet Union crumbled 20 years ago, and in the aftermath, more than 1 million of its citizens took advantage of Jewish roots to flee that vast territory for the sliver of land along the Mediterranean that is the Jewish state. By virtue of their sheer numbers in a country of 8 million people and their tenacity in clinging to elements of their old way of life, these immigrants have transformed Israel.
Israel has the world’s third-largest Russian-speaking community outside the former Soviet Union, after the U.S. and Germany. Russian-speaking emigres may not conjure up the same recognition as the country’s black-hatted Orthodox Jews or gun-toting soldiers, but they are just as ubiquitous — maintaining habits more suited to the “old country” than their adopted Mideast homeland, like wild mushroom foraging or winter dips in the Mediterranean, the closest substitute to frigid Siberian waters.
Today, Russian-speaking emigres and their children occupy virtually every corner of Israeli society, from academia and technology to the military and politics. A political party formed by Israel‘s recently resigned foreign minister to cater to Russian-speaking immigrants like him has grown from a marginal force in politics to one of its major powers.
The Russian-speaking community also wields an outsized influence in other aspects of Israeli life. Every fourth employee in Israel‘s flourishing high-tech industry is a Russian-speaking immigrant, as is every other engineer. The world’s second-ranked chess master, Belarus-born Boris Gelfand, lives in Israel, and about a quarter of Israel‘s Olympic coaches grew up in the former Soviet Union.
Not all newcomers found work in their professions. Many artists became janitors or teachers. One Moldovan trapeze artist now operates a crane.
“I love the circus very, very much, but my work is like the circus,” said Irena Zagoruyko, speaking by cellphone atop a 56-meter (185-foot) crane.
While the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union is widely regarded as successful, there were also frictions.
Religion is a sensitive subject. Many immigrants have tenuous Jewish lineage or none at all.
There is also a certain disdain on both sides, with some immigrants saying they brought talent to a cultural backwater, and some Israelis saying the Russian-speaking immigrants brought prostitution, corruption and crime.
To some degree, many Russian speakers have insulated themselves from the broader Israeli society with Russian bookshops, Russian restaurants, Russian television and Russian newspapers.
And they never forget the beloved Chekhov and Dostoyevsky of their motherland.
“That’s why Soviet immigrants never connected to Israeli society all the way,” says Roman Bronfman, a former Israeli lawmaker born in today’s Ukraine. “They felt they were connected to one of the most glorious cultures in the world.”
Source: Fox World News