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Lysychanskugol miners waiting outside Ukraine's energy ministry during negotiations last month.In eastern Ukraine, factories, steelworks and mines, whether in government-controlled or separatist-controlled territory, have shut down, gone on short time, or laid workers off on reduced pay. Military violence has hastened the shift from steady employment to precarity. Workplace-based trade unions have struggled to cope.

The Eastern Human Rights Group (EHRG) a lawyers collective that gives support to individuals, workplace collectives and community groups is working with other activists to set up territorially-based workers organisations that will embrace employed, unemployed and precariously employed people in the region.

Some of the largest factories just stopped paying wages, and thousands of workers are owed six months back pay or more, Pavel Lisyansky of the EHRG said in an interview. In these circumstances, people of course start looking for another job. Then the management doesnt pay them the back pay that they are owed. Why settle up with them, if they are leaving?

Nobody is interested in defending such workers rights, he added. Trade unions, traditionally industry- and workplace-based, and close to management, are indifferent to such workers problems. And it makes no sense for that worker to hire a lawyer independently; the cost might well be as great as the back pay he is owed.

This could be the beginning of the end for Ukraines old post-Soviet trade unions not only the old official unions, which originated in quasi-state Soviet structures, but also the post-Soviet independent unions set up to compete with them

Lisyansky reckons this could be the beginning of the end for Ukraines old post-Soviet trade unions not only the old official unions, which originated in quasi-state Soviet structures, but also the post-Soviet independent unions set up to compete with them. Indeed, membership is falling: a worker who has been ignored at his time of need in his old workplace is unlikely to sign up in his new one.

In response, the EHRG is working to establish territorially-based organisations, provisionally called working peoples unions, that will bring together all workers at any workplace or none in a particular locality. This will be a sort of alternative to trade unions [] to address the need for additional instruments for defending peoples rights in Ukrainian society.

Pavel Lisyansky of the EHRG, which is funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the German Consulate in the Donetsk region. Source: Facebook. The principle of solidarity is being lost, Lisyansky continued. If there are two workplaces, near to each other, that both build up debts to their workers, both groups of workers will stand a better chance of success if they join together.

The EHRG has pursued claims for back pay by workers who were effectively abandoned by their unions at some of the largest workplaces, including the Severodonetsk Azot chemical plant, whose 5,000 workers are owed six months wages; Lysychanskugol coal company, with 5,000 employees at four pits; Toretskugol coal company, with 2,500 employees at four pits; and the Donetsk railway network. Workers have protested with strikes and, at Lysychanskugol, with an underground sit-in and lobby of the energy ministry and cases have been taken up by the EHRG and some union officials.

Until the military conflict erupted in 2014, the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were Ukraines industrial heartland, accounting for about one-tenth of overall economic output, and a larger proportion of iron, steel, metallurgical products and chemicals production.

Now Russian-backed Peoples Republics have been formed in both regions, and the front line cuts straight through what used to be a highly integrated industrial complex. Supply chains have broken down, even between factories owned by the same companies. A trade blockade, initiated earlier this year by Ukrainian nationalist politicians and then taken up by Kyiv, has made things worse, leaving power stations short of coal.

The immediate impulse for the EHRGs formation on 27 July 2014 by a group of lawyers, themselves internally displaced persons, at Debaltsevo was the large number of breaches of human rights in the area of military operations, Lisyansky told me. He had himself had spent the previous decade in independent trade union organisations.

The EHRG set up four offices to provide civil liberties advice and support, but those at Debaltsevo and Uglegorsk were destroyed after Russian-backed separatists took control of those areas. Since January 2015, the group has been based at Lysychansk, in the part of Luhansk controlled by the Ukrainian government. There are smaller offices at Toretsk and Svitlodarsk.

The military activity is quieter, but hasnt ended by any means. People live in a state of permanent stress. Shots and explosions can be heard at all times, the whole regions is militarised

On top of the campaigns over back pay, Lisyansky believes the EHRG can count as one of its successes the release from prison in the Lugansk Peoples Republic of Aleksandr Yefreshin, who had fallen into a legal no-mans land. In 2013, Yefreshin was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years for his part in the theft and burning of a minibus a drunken prank. He began to work in prison, under a scheme that allows sentences to be cut by two-thirds for those who do so. But with the outbreak of war in 2014 he found himself in a separatist prison where Ukrainian law did not apply, and detainees were effectively used as slave labour. The EHRG, after publishing a report on the slave labour scandal in October 2016, was instrumental in securing Yefreshins release in March this year.

Not a day goes by without people asking for help [from the EHRGs lawyers], Lisyansky said. Just recently we restored pension payments for a girl who lost her father, a miner, but [the pension fund] didnt want to pay her a pension, although the law requires that they do so. There are many, many similar cases.

In response to my question about how ordinary people in the frontline areas are faring now, Lisyansky said:

The military activity is quieter, but hasnt ended by any means. People live in a state of permanent stress. Shots and explosions can be heard at all times, the whole regions is militarised, there are soldiers, weapons, checkpoints everywhere. So people are desperate, they hardly even think about day-to-day problems, they just want the war to end. [The factories are open, but people dont get paid, the back pay debts keep growing, but] people dont go out and protest, because the law enforcement agencies immediately accuse them of trying to destabilise the situation in the region.

I asked Lisyansky about the opposition by community activists to the railroad blockade inspired by right-wing nationalists earlier this year. There was very little support for the communities, he replied:

It was only us, and a group of trade unions and community organisations in the localities who spoke out against the armed right-wing radicals. We said no [to the blockade] emphatically, and called for people to sit and negotiate [to allow trade links to continue]. A storm of criticism and threats was unleashed against us. I was accused a puppet of bandits who were against the Ukrainian patriots [who started the blockade]; some of my co-thinkers were simply threatened. But the state supported the blockade nonetheless, and that put industry in eastern Ukraine on its knees. In the territory not under Ukrainian government control, many of the factories laid off workers and stopped paying wages. The separatists implemented nationalisation of factories belonging to the Ukrainian state, and those are now in a mess.

The EHRG has participated in a widespread protest against pension reforms being undertaken by the Ukrainian government at the behest of the IMF. The reform will strengthen the link between the level of contributions and what people receive, and effectively raise the statutory retirement age, by increasing the term over which a person must contribute from 15 to 25 years. Lisyansky said: Yes, I spoke out and will keep speaking out against this reform, which I think breaches peoples rights. Both official and independent unions had protested, but this had had little effect on the political process, he said.

Like other worker activists, Lisyansky is also concerned about the labour law reform now under discussion in parliament. This will give employers one more instrument to use against workforces. It is another means of driving working people into a corner. I think it may cause a general protest movement across the whole country.

I asked Lisyansky, who maintains contact with worker militants in the separatist-controlled areas, about reports that living conditions there are very bad. He commented:

Yes, they live in very bad circumstances. There is no law, no rights, people are defenceless. A person can be arrested for some contrived reason, for having a different political position, for insisting on his rights, because he competes somehow with someone [in power]. In the prisons [in the separatist-controlled areas] there is real slavery. Completely arbitrary rule. It makes me sick that this is happening in the place that I come from. I cannot return there. I am on hit lists, and if I went to the so-called Lugansk Peoples Republic [LPR] I might just be shot. I very much want to visit the grave of my father, who was a workers leader but I havent done so for three years. I worry a great deal about this.

There are no trade unions [in the separatist controlled areas]. There are just some structures designed to win international influence, to legalise those republics. Did you hear of any trade union protests in the LPR? I know of very small-scale protests that were put down by the Donetsk Peoples Republic [DPR]s armed forces. [] The level of pay is going down, up to 60% of the workforce has been laid off in the factories. They are either closing all together, or temporarily. New trade unions have been formed at these enterprises to control workers. Its painful to answer these questions.

The EHRG, like many civil society organisations in Ukraine, relies on funding from western Europe. Lisyansky said:

We are carrying out several projects on human rights that are supported by the German consulate in Donetsk region and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin. Support from these international donors is very important for us. In the first case, with the consulate, we run an integrated human rights project that includes monitoring breaches of human rights, offering legal advice, and the running of events highlighting human rights and organising to defend rights. In the second case [with the Rosa Luxemburg foundation] the project is directed at legal education for workers, trade union activists and leaders, and legal officers in trade unions in eastern Ukraine. [] We hope that by raising the level of legal understanding among ordinary people in this way, that we can resist the attacks on labour rights and social-economic rights.

EHRGs strategy is to develop legal advice and representation, to develop human rights defence organisations; to continue to monitor breaches of human rights in the areas where military conflict continues; to support the rights of internally displaced persons; and to develop conflict resolution in communities.

Its clear that the EHRG, and other activists struggling with the consequences of the military conflict, need solidarity and support over the long term from other workers organisations in Europe. Lisyansky has made some links with German trade unionists and asked me, through this interview, to offer his hand of greeting to workers organisations elsewhere.

Ukraine is not so far away. If international solidarity means anything, it means building relationships with organisations such as this.

How has the war in the Donbas changed Ukrainian society? Check out Kateryna Iakovlenko's essay on the "disconnected society".

More:
Eastern Ukraine: We need new ways of organising - Open Democracy

UPDATED: Thu., Aug. 3, 2017, 10:15 p.m.

WASHINGTON The U.S. government has reportedly sought to send Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine. But its an idea two years too late for todays battlefield, an expert on the conflict said.

As tensions mount over the order by Russian President Vladimir Putin to expel U.S. diplomatic and technical staff from Russia, Defense Department and State Department officials have pushed to arm Ukrainian troops with lethal aid to counter Russian-backed separatists fighting for the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic and Luhansk Peoples Republic.

But it remains unclear what, if anything, the delivery of an unknown number of Javelins could do to alter a battle that has mostly been relegated to artillery bombardment and nighttime skirmishes in no mans land.

This idea doesnt flow from a policy or strategy and may point to a political decision rather than military necessity, said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Ukrainian conflict and a senior fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon and State Department are looking to the White House to authorize the delivery of Javelin antitank missiles and other lethal aid to Ukrainian allies, a new wrinkle in a conflict that the United Nations has said cost about 10,000 lives since 2014.

The State Department told The Washington Post that it has not provided Ukraine with what it calls defensive weapons, a characterization not typically assigned to antitank missiles like the Javelin, but it has not ruled out the option to do so.

We are examining how to best use our security assistance going forward to bolster Ukraines ability to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity, a senior State Department official said.

Army Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman, offered a similar statement.

The Journal reported officials in Kiev are confident the weapons would be used in emergency defensive situations away from the front.

A delivery of weapons, which the Journal said could also include antiaircraft weapons, aligns with Pentagon plans earmarked in the 2018 defense budget to deliver half a billion dollars of equipment to Ukrainian troops, itself an escalation over the mostly nonlethal aid, such as Humvees, night vision goggles and surveillance drones, it has sent in previous years.

U.S. soldiers have trained alongside Ukrainian counterparts since the conflict began.

The Javelin is a shoulder-fired antitank guided missile system that uses infrared to lock on and track its targets at an effective range of just under three miles. At about 50 pounds, the warhead is light enough for a soldier to carry. It can acquire a target after parsing heat signatures by as little as a few degrees.

The Javelin fires a missile at a steep angle to rain down on top of a target, which is especially valuable when targeting tanks, Kofman said, due to relatively thinner armor at the top of the vehicles.

But tank skirmishes are relatively rare and have been since the height of fighting in 2015, Kofman told The Post. Tanks provided to separatists by Russia are now typically used as mobile artillery, far from where Ukrainian troops could feasibly infiltrate and target with Javelins, Kofman said.

There is also another befuddling issue the cost, he said. There are a host of antitank weapons already in Ukraine, like the locally made Stugna-P laser guided missile launcher, or the 9M119 Refleks.

Those are acquired at a lower cost than the Javelin, Kofman said, which had a unit cost of $246,000 as late as 2015.

The high cost and doubtful utility on the current battlefield suggest the Javelin procurement is about sending a message of strong deterrence from Washington.

The Ukrainians want the U.S. to provide them with a weapon as a meaningful signal in Kiev and the Kremlin, he said.

Otherwise, Kofman said, there are other urgent priorities such as encrypted communications systems and surveillance drones which would shore up the U.S.-provided aid already in the hands of Ukrainian troops, but is less advanced than the equipment used by Russian-backed separatists.

Russia has emphatically denied it lends support to the separatists.

The Russians provide equipment, some of their most modern equipment, and they provide proxy forces with advisers, said Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the top U.S. and NATO military commander, according to the Journal.

Russias response to scattering Javelins among Ukrainian ground forces should factor into the decision, Kofman said.

The Russians have a very clear policy of reciprocity, as we saw in the recent diplomatic purge. They see this as a premise of the U.S. wanting to kill Russians, Kofman said.

The answer to this wont come in Ukraine.

Updated: Aug. 3, 2017, 10:15 p.m.

See the article here:
US reportedly mulls sending antitank missiles to Ukraine - The Spokesman-Review

Russia is not happy that Congress and not President Donald Trump now holds sway over U.S. sanctions imposed on it. Russias Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev even went as far as accusing Trump of weakness portending an impending ouster on social media. Russias official Twitter page responded with a vow and a video.

Whoever comes to us with #sanctions, from sanctions will perish, the page declared, dramatically beneath footage of medieval reenactors, swinging spears at a folk festival in Zaraysk. We dedicate this video to those who try to hurt us with new sanctions!

Read More: Russian agents say Ukrainian spies are ruining summer in annexed Crimea

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The sanctions in question mostly stem from Russias annexation of Crimeaand continued fightingin eastern Ukraine. Catching wind of Russias Twitter declarations, Ukraines verified Twitter account issued a stinging retort.

If you'd respected international law, you would've avoided sanctions & would've been sending missions to Mars now, not running with sticks, the account, operated by the Ukrainian presidents press service, answered.

This is not the first time the two accounts have feuded on Twitter , going at it in May over the claiming rights of an 11th century princess.

After Russian President Vladimir Putin described Anna Yaroslavna as Russian Anne, Ukraines Twitter account decided to distinguish between the kingdom of Kiev that the noble belonged to and the largely underdeveloped lands around Moscow.

"When @Russia says Anne de Kiev established Russia-France relations, let us remember the sequence of events," Ukraine wrote. The tweet described the noblewomans lifeand reignin Kiev; "Meanwhile, in Moscow.." the tweet concluded, attaching a picture of an uninhabited forest.

Russia replied with a call to be proud of our common history next to the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian flags, which the account claimed share the same historical heritage which should unite our nations, not divide us.

Suspecting nefarious motives or possibleflashbacks to thepolitical application of such rhetoric, Ukraines retort was short and direct: You really don't change, do you? beneath which, a gif from the Simpsons, which shows a Russian ambassador at the United Nations laughing sinisterly as he flips his name plate from Russia to Soviet Union.

See more here:
Ukraine and Russia Clash on Twitter Over Trump Sanctions - Newsweek

HUMANITARIAN AND DEVELOPMENT NEXUS

As the conflict in eastern Ukraine continues, humanitarian and development actors need to work closely together to support IDPs and the conflict-affected population in order to promote durable solutions, maximize resources, build upon a wide range of expertise, and ensure that their programmes are complementary and sustainable.

This note aims to encourage humanitarian and development actors to work closely together to ensure a rights based approach to assistance in their programs. This New Way of Working for humanitarian and development actors was highlighted in Secretary-General Bans Agenda for Humanity, prepared for the World Humanitarian Summit and reflected in a joint Commitment to Action. It is included in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework Guidance that takes into account the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which incorporates more integrated and interconnected programming by bringing closer development, humanitarian, human rights and peacebuilding agendas.

ENSURING A RIGHTS BASED APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENT

Protection has been at the centre of the humanitarian response in Ukraine and it is important that a rights based approach is integrated into the early recovery and development response as well. Many protection issues inform development response and are integral to durable solutions. The need for sustainable livelihoods, employment opportunities, affordable housing and security of tenure, non-discriminatory access to social services, public transport and access to education and health care, are all areas where the development community can play an active role. The need to rebuild and repair essential infrastructure including hospitals, schools, water and energy supply systems, which have been targeted by shelling, is another area where there is a need for development and humanitarian actors to work closely together.

Peacebuilding and reconciliation is also an area where humanitarian and development actors need to work closely together in order to strengthen social cohesion. A growing number of internally displaced people report an increase in discrimination as IDPs and host communities compete for resources within a fragile economy.

A sharp increase in poverty levelsin eastern Ukraine (20% to 74% in Luhansk and from 22% to 65% in Donetsk) highlights how the conflict, coupled with a deteriorating economic situation and high levels of unemployment, has further heightened the vulnerability of conflict-affected and displaced people. Unemployment and poverty are the issues most frequently cited by people in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts as contributing to feelings of insecurity above shelling and mines.

Read the original:
Ukraine: Protection for Development Actors - August 2017 [EN/UK/RU] - ReliefWeb

Pentagon spokesperson US Army Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza told CNN that "The United States has neither provided defensive weapons to Ukraine nor ruled out the option of doing so."

Baldanza added that the Pentagon is "not going to comment about what may or may not be part of internal policy deliberations."

But a US defense official said there is a discussion at higher levels on possibly sending weapons to Ukraine. The official said this is a notion that was repeatedly discussed under the Obama administration.

The Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 18 that US European Command was preparing a proposal about what a "lethal defensive aid might look like" for Ukraine.

"It will be more than just a military recommendation. This will be a policy choice on whether or not we're going to give the Ukrainian government the tools they need to defend themselves against what we believe to be a Russian-supported insurgency movement in the Donbass," Selva said.

State Department spokesman Heather Nauert was asked on July 25 about arming Ukraine. She said, "there was a headline that implied that we were in the process of doing what you just described. We are not there yet. Let me take out the word 'yet.' We are not there. The United States has not provided defensive weapons nor have we ruled it out to provide to the Ukrainians."

Read this article:
US considers option of arming Ukraine - CNN