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Ukraine is preparing a lawsuit against Russian President Vladimir Putins bridge to Crimea, fearing that it will close off the waters of three other Ukrainian regions, Kiev-based news agency UNIAN reported Wednesday.

The bridge is mired in controversies already, without even having opened. It will be the first land link between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, a region Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 but that is still recognized as Ukrainian by U.N. General Assembly majority.

The 12-mile constructionis the project ofArkady Rotenberg's company. The Russian businessman is one of Putins closest associates and is under Western sanctions introduced because of the Crimea annexation. The bridge will cost Russia around $5 billion, Radio Free Europe estimated.

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Read more: Russias security forces blame Ukrainian spies as Crimea tourism season slumps

As well as being a link to an annexation considered illegal, Ukraines Ministry of Infrastructure fears the bridge, stretching across the narrow Kerch Strait, will also have another effectit will close the strait. The narrow waters of the strait link the large Black Sea with the Sea of Azov, which is shared by Russia and Ukraine.

Besides Crimea, three more Ukrainian regions sit on the Azov coastline, sea access to which will be obstructed by the bridge.

Ukraines Justice Ministry is in the process of drafting otherlegal action against Russianamely linked to issues with the annexation and supporting violent insurgencies in eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. According to Deputy Infrastructure Minister Yuri Lavrenyuk, the bridge, planned to open for car traffic next year, will be the specific focus of a suit.

At the moment, a summons is being prepared, and the financial losses from unreceived cargo for the Mariupol and Berdyansk commercial ports are being calculated, Lavrenyuk says.

This is a global, political and complex issue, but we will absolutely resolve it, he adds.

By December 2018, Russia hopes the road section of the bridge will be fully operational, with a rail link opening soon after.

The bridge has faced some backlash in Russia and Ukraine, where experts have queried the safety of the construction, some pointing to the collapse of the only previous attempt to link Russia with Crimea by bridge. This has not deterred current construction, however, as the failed project took place in 1944 and was much less expensive.

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Ukraine Ready to Fight Russia in Court Over First Land Link to Annexed Crimea - Newsweek

When the conflict in Ukraine began in early 2014, a disturbing number of armed groupsfrom looting gangs to militias with ties to European white supremacy movementssprang up from the chaos. Although the role and origin of those pro-Ukrainian militias has been hotly debated, one thing is clear: several years after the start of the conflict, the Ukrainian government has managed to stifle the independent armed groups fighting on its side. Its success offers lessons for other countries attempting to demobilize populations after a war.

At the start of the war in 2014, there were as many as 30 small armed groups made up of 50 to 100 people. This assortment quickly consolidated into five main militias: Right Sector, Azov, Aidar, Donbas, and Dnepr 1. These semi-independent groups absorbed most of Ukraines freelance fighters and small ethnic militias. Although each group had its own leadership, logistics, and funding, they had to negotiate access to the frontline with the Ukrainian government, and they depended on the regular army for artillery cover. Many of the volunteer fighters were internally displaced people from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, although some Russian far-right activists came to participate in the fight.

At the start of the war, when Ukraines standing army was weak and slow to mobilize, such groups were crucial to the defense of the territory. However, even from the start, there were major problems with their operations. They rarely coordinated with each other or the Ukrainian army on the battlefield or off. Furthermore, there was no legal supervision of their activities, as Amnesty International has repeatedly pointed out.

Volunteers for the Azov battalion at a ceremony in Kiev, October 2014.

The lack of coordination led to inefficiency and, sometimes, catastrophe. In August 2014, Aidar, which consisted of freelance fighters from the Lugansk region who joined after the Maidan protests and who had little military skill, failed to coordinate operations with the Ukrainian army in Lugansk in the infamous Battle of Illovaisk. The army and several other volunteer

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How Ukraine Reined In Its Militias - Foreign Affairs

NEW YORK On July 20, 2016, Pavel Sheremet, a prominent Belarusian-born journalist, was heading to work at the studios of Radio Vesti in Kyiv when the Subaru he was driving blew up at a busy intersection. Nearby windows shook, and birds scattered into the air. Sheremet, 44, died almost instantly, and the Ukraine Prosecutors Office quickly confirmed that a bomb had caused the explosion. But one year later, Sheremets murder remains unsolved.

Had this been a random car bombing, my organization, the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), would not have spent the last year investigating it or pushing the Ukrainian government for a full inquiry. But Sheremet was a tireless advocate for transparency and democracy, working as a journalist first in his native Belarus, then in Russia, and most recently, in Ukraine. Until his murder is solved, the truth that he sought in life will elude his countrymen in his death.

Murder is the ultimate form of media censorship. When journalists are slain, self-censorship seeps into the work of others. And when a country especially a country like Ukraine, which aspires to European Union membership fails to bring the killers to justice, its stated commitment to democracy and the rule of law rings hollow.

That is where things stand with Sheremets case. Over the last year, Ukrainian officials have made many pledges, but have made no arrests, identified no suspects, and presented no convincing motive for the killing. As CPJ found during a recent weeklong advocacy mission to Kyiv, the lingering impunity has hurt the medias ability to cover sensitive issues, including corruption, abuse of power, and the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Indeed, press freedom in Ukraine has come under increasing attack in the year Sheremet was murdered. Investigative journalism is branded unpatriotic, and reporters who challenge official policies, as Sheremet did every day, are threatened, harassed, or placed under surveillance.

Ukrainian officials insist they are still working Sheremets case. President Petro Poroshenko, who met with a CPJ fact-finding delegation on July 11, said he remains committed to bringing the killer(s) to justice. Poroshenko even proposed adding an international partner to his governments investigation, which could invigorate the probe. But while this is a welcome move, it comes very late, and after months of missteps that have shaken the publics trust.

Factually incorrect statements from top officials, including Ukraines interior minister, Arsen Avakov, have undermined the credibility of the investigation. Avakov has alleged Russian involvement in Sheremets murder and suggested that the case is unlikely to be solved. But in meetings with investigating agencies, the CPJ was told that Avakov has limited access to investigation files, and that his statements are unsupported by evidence. Our delegation was also told that the authorities are examining several motives, but have not ruled out or pinpointed any single one. Why, then, does Avakov continue to make contradictory statements and indulge in poorly sourced conjecture?

Equally worrying are reports that the investigation has been plagued by shoddy police work, including a failure to question key witnesses, check surveillance camera footage, or adequately explain the presence of a former internal security officer at the scene the night before the murder. The editor-in-chief of Ukraines leading independent news website, Ukrainska Pravda, told CPJ that in the months before his death, Sheremet and his partner, Olena Prytula, the sites co-founder, had been under surveillance. Moreover, the staff had received threats clearly meant to stop them from reporting on specific, sensitive stories. Yet Ukrainian authorities have not adequately responded to CPJs questions about their investigation of these allegations.

Taken together, these omissions and unexplained events raise serious questions about the integrity and legitimacy of the Ukrainian-led investigation. If Poroshenko is serious about solving Sheremets murder, changes are needed. Ukrainian officials must establish a clear hierarchy and assign someone to be responsible for resolving the case. Moreover, Poroshenko should publicly commit more resources to the investigation, and forcefully condemn any attack on journalists. And, most challenging of all, a new investigative ethos is needed to reduce the risk of departmental bias, especially if evidence points toward official or government entities, as some suggest it might.

Despite the presidents renewed engagement, we are not yet convinced that the Ukrainian government will pursue this case with the vigor it demands. That is why external pressure is also needed. The European Union is in a unique position to apply it. The EU, in declaring Ukraine a priority partner for deeper political and economic ties, has the leverage to hold the Ukrainian government to account. In 2014, the bloc pledged 12.8 billion ($15 billion) to Ukraine to bolster several key sectors, including law and civil society. Progress in both fields would be set back significantly by a failure to reach a conclusion in the Sheremet case.

Sheremet spent more than two decades reporting in three post-Soviet countries, and was relentless in uncovering corruption wherever he reported. For his tenacity, CPJ awarded him our International Press Freedom Award in 1998. But he was also threatened, imprisoned, attacked, and stripped of his citizenship in Belarus. Indeed, while Sheremet had many friends, who adored his charismatic personality, wit, and contagious optimism, he also had his share of enemies, who detested his uncompromising journalism.

Five years ago, Sheremet moved to Ukraine because he thought he would find a freer, safer environment in which to work. Today, as attacks on the media continue in his adopted homeland, and with his own murder unsolved, the faith he placed in Ukraine is not being repaid.

Todays media landscape is littered with landmines: open hostility by US President Donald Trump, increased censorship in countries such as Hungary, Turkey, and Zambia, growing financial pressure, and the challenge of "fake news." In Press Released, Project Syndicate, in partnership with the European Journalism Centre, provides a truly global platform to frame and stimulate debate about the myriad challenges facing the press today.

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Ukraine's Imperiled Press Freedom - Project Syndicate

The Reading & Northern Railroad is participating in the large movement of coal to Ukraine that Trump administration officials announced Monday.

According to a statement released by the railroad, Xcoal Energy & Resources made the deal to ship 700,000 tons of coal for energy production to Ukraine by the end of the year.

Half of that tonnage will be Pennsylvania anthracite shipped from mines served by Reading & Northern Railroad. Reading Anthracite Co. of Pottsville has handled the acquisition of the 350,000 tons of anthracite.

In Ukraine for the announcement, Xcoal President Ernie Thrasher said, The U.S. coal will replace Russian origin coal at existing thermal power plants.

Reading & Northern will supply all coal cars used to handle the anthracite. To build the 100-plus car trains that Norfolk Southern will pick up at Reading Anthracite and deliver to CNX Terminal, Baltimore, Reading & Northern will serve as many as six loading points.

Reading & Northern is delighted to be partnering with Xcoal and Norfolk Southern on this wonderful opportunity, Reading & Northern CEO Andrew Muller Jr. said in the release. We have long been known as The Road of Anthracite and here is our chance to show the world how good our service is and how good Pennsylvania anthracite is. Our years of investment in coal cars, and our branch line rail system, pays off with our ability to turn on a dime and handle the movement of 30-plus unit trains in five months. Credit goes to the men and women of Reading & Northern for being up to the challenge.

Reading & Northern Railroad, with its corporate headquarters in Port Clinton, is a privately held railroad company serving more than 70 customers in Schuylkill, Berks, Bradford, Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northumberland and Wyoming counties. It has expanded its operations over the last 20 years and has grown into one of the premier railroads in Pennsylvania.

The railroad operates freight services and steam- and diesel-powered excursion passenger services through its Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway. It owns almost 1,200 freight cars and employs more than 200 people.

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Reading & Northern Railroad to ship coal to Ukraine - Republican & Herald

The button that could have started a nuclear holocaust is grey not red.

I learned this after climbing into a nuclear rocket command silo, 12 floors below ground, and sitting in the same green chair at the same yellow, metal console at which former Soviet officers once presided. Here, they practiced entering secret codes into their grey keyboards, pushing the launch button and turning a key all within seven seconds to fire up to 10 ballistic missiles. The officers never knew what day their practice codes might become real, nor did they know their targets.

This base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine about a four-hour drive from Kiev once had 86 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of destroying cities in Europe and the United States. Though the nuclear warheads have been removed, the command silo with much of its equipment, giant trucks that carried the rockets to the base and an empty silo were preserved so that people could see what had been secretly going on at nuclear missile bases in the former Soviet Union. The museums collection includes the R-12/SS-4 Sandal missile similar to those involved in the Cuban missile crisis and the RS-20A/SS-18 Satan, the versions of which had several hundred times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

An RS-20A/SS-18 Satan missile at the former Soviet base in Pervomaysk (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

This is what the tourists come to see, says Igor Bodnarchuk, a tour guide for SoloEast Travel, a Kiev company that specialises in tours of Soviet ruins. What else do we have to offer?

Tourists go to Paris to marvel at the majesty of the Eiffel Tower, to Rome to stroll the cobbled streets of the Vatican, to Moscow to behold the magnificent domes of Red Square. And while Ukraine has its own plethora of domed cathedrals, including monasteries with underground caves, thousands of tourists are trekking to this country for a uniquely Soviet experience. Here, they stand outside an exploded nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and rifle through the remains of a nearby abandoned city Geiger counter in hand. In Chernobyls shadow, they marvel at the giant Moscow Eye, an anti-ballistic-missile detector that rises 50 stories high and looks like a giant roller coaster.

Every day, a handful of travel companies ferry mostly foreigners to Chernobyls 19-mile exclusion zone. In 2016, SoloEast Travel hauled 7,500 people there, up from only one trip in 2000.

It used to be sort of extreme travel, says Sergei Ivanchuk of SoloEast Travel. You were very brave to go to Chernobyl in 2000. Now, not so much.

Ivanchuk insists that people who go to Chernobyl are not morbid. They are intelligent people who want to learn something new, and are often interested in nuclear power, he says.

Gennadiy Fil, once a Soviet army officer stationed at the base, is now a tour guide (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

Likewise, people who venture to the missile base at Pervomaysk are interested in the Cold War. Its a place to remember like the Holocaust about a dangerous time in history and what it means to have nuclear weapons, he says.

Earlier this year, Russia deployed a new cruise missile, apparently violating its 1987 arms-control treaty with the United States. In light of that event, the Soviet ruins in Ukraine seem all the more relevant.

The day I visit the former 46th Rocket Division in Pervomaysk, silver engines gleam in the sunlight and missiles stick out of the snow. Nearby is a surface-to-air missile similar to the one that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in July 2014.

The museum tour guides are all former Soviet officers who once worked at the missile base. Ours, Gennadiy Fil, once manned the nuclear controls. When American tourists dally, snapping photos of the rockets above ground, he barks: Ledz go!

Then he darts through a heavy door of a squat building, down a series of winding stairs and through an underground tunnel, navigating by memory through the narrow, 500-foot-long passageway to the control centre in a silo. The narrow cylinder is suspended from the ground theoretically, to withstand the shock of a counterattack.

From this seat at the former Pervomayskmissile base, an officer could launch up to 10 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

In six-hour shifts, Fil and another officer would descend in a tiny elevator (maximum capacity: three people) to the bottom of the silo. Stationed at metal consoles in an 11-by-11 control room, they would read secret codes from Moscow that flashed on a computer screen, then quickly tap them into a dingy yellow monitor. Then, they pressed a small, grey button and turned a key on the opposite side of the terminal to launch up to 10 nuclear rockets at once.

You dont launch just one missile, because the other side is going to shoot back and destroy you, explains Elena Smerichevskaya, our Ukrainian interpreter. An intercontinental ballistic rocket fired at New York, she explains, would take about 25 minutes to hit its target.

Fil, 55, says he never knew when he would be ordered to input real codes. It was his job, he says and shrugs. He says he had no moral objections to pushing the button. Launching nuclear missiles was a political decision, something that people on top of the ground decided, not him.

He admits that he was scared about the possibility of nuclear war. Youd have to be crazy in the head not to be scared, he says.

But just in case Fil or a fellow officer (two officers were required to launch a rocket) refused to push their buttons, reserve officers could be called up from a compartment beneath the control centre.

For officers like Fil, there were both mental and physical challenges. The compartments were hermetically sealed, and Fil says there was immense pressure on their ears. There were also concerns about the psychological impact of being isolated in the chambers. While the Soviets kept enough food and water on hand for 45 days, some men started to become batty after only two or three days inside the silo bunker, Smerichevskaya says.

Because the government took out windows from many of the buildings in Pripyat, the interiors were exposed to the elements (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

While Fil is glad the world didnt implode under his watch, he says he is sad to have lost his job behind the missile controls.

In 1994, three years after Ukraine became independent, it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to dismantle its 1,900 Soviet missiles. At the time, Ukraine boasted the worlds third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads after Russia and the United States. Ukraine shipped its nuclear warheads to Russia and dismantled its silos, often blowing them up or filling them with cement. The control silo at Pervomaysk was the only one spared so it could become a museum. The 46th Rocket Division, part of the Soviet 43rd Rocket Army, was disbanded in 2001.

As a child growing up in the Cold War who was taught to hide under her school desk in case of a nuclear attack, its surreal to meet a man who at the same time had his fingers on the triggers of the Soviet Unions nuclear warheads.

Fil shakes his head at how things have changed. I never thought Id be standing here talking to an American, he says, his eyes wide with amazement. I never thought Id be having my picture taken. That was absolutely forbidden. And now ... its okay.

The museum claims that its silos are very similar to those still in operation in Russia. The Satanis still part of Russias weaponry, although an improved version is set to be operational in 2018. Before Russia invaded Crimea and backed the separatistswar on Ukraines eastern front, Russian soldiers frequently took their families to Pervomaysk to show them what they did at work, museum tour guides say. The missile sites in Russia remain secret.

The city of Pripyat was once a secret Soviet city, closed to anyone but workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and their families. Now the city, an hour-and-a-half drive from Kiev, is a nuclear ghost town. Forty-nine thousand people were forced to evacuate the day after Chernobyls Reactor No4 exploded on 26 April 1986.

The floor of a school in Pripyat is littered with gas masks meant for schoolchildren, but, according to tour guides, were never used (Cheryl LReed/Washington Post)

Nearly all the first responders and soldiers died from radiation poisoning while trying to contain the graphite fire and the radioactive particles spewing from the destroyed reactor, explainsBodnarchuk, our tour guide. Officially, only 31 firemen and soldiers were killed. But some believe that the disaster claimed at least 10,000 lives as wind carried radioactive material into Belarus and northern Europe.

Even though critics have said that the designs of Chernobyl are outmoded and inherently unsafe, Russia reportedly is still using 11 similar nuclear reactors.

Today, visitors can stand across the street from the damaged reactor at Chernobyl, which recently was covered by a huge, $2.3bn (1.7bn) shield. But the highlight of the tour is, by far, the crumbling city of Pripyat. Though tour operators are warned to stay out of Pripyats buildings, tourists routinely stomp through the city, including the hospital where dying first responders were taken.

Tourists stick their Geiger counters against tatters of clothing in the hospital lobby and watch their machines shoot up to shockingly high levels 85 microsieverts per hour. The normal range is 0.09 to 0.30 microsieverts per hour, according to the tour company. Most guides carry their own Geiger counters; many tourists come with their own.

Tour operators claim that a visit to Chernobyl is no more dangerous now than a flight from Ukraine to North America. This calculation includes spending 10 minutes in front of the burned-out reactor and no more than two hours in Pripyat.

SoloEast Travel has a video that shows how it came up with such mathematics. Those calculations, however, dont factor in hovering over a firefighters highly radioactive clothing that has been dug up from deep in the hospital. Nor do they specifically include driving through the red forest near the Chernobyl reactor where the radiation burned up all the trees, which were then bulldozed and buried. Our Geiger counters went crazy as we drove through the new-growth forest, registering 26 microsieverts per hour.

Our guide tried to calm fears about our exposure to radiation by assuring us that any high levels on our body would be detected by the machines we had to pass through on the way out of Chernobyls exclusion zone. Those machines old Soviet steel contraptions that look like retro airport metal detectors hardly inspire confidence.

To amplify tourists shock, guides have embellished some of the Pripyat remains.Amid hundreds of crumbling gas masks spread over the floor of a school, a baby doll has been placed on a chair wearing a gas mask. A hospital nursery has been outfitted with plastic dolls, placed in cribs with blankets, to make the scene appear even more macabre. Outside a village school building, old toys are scattered about. One-eyed teddy bears and dolls with missing limbs sit on bed springs at a village orphanage. Tables are set with plates and pots.

The most eerie scenes include an abandoned amusement park with its empty, lonely looking Ferris wheel and bumper cars filled with leaves; a swimming pool with cracked tiles, its deep end filled with trash and an old shopping cart; school hallways cluttered with books; school desks laid out with science experiments; posters of Lenin and other Soviet leaders adorning classroom walls; and a broken baby carriage abandoned in a decaying community centre.

Visitors are exhausted by the time their tour bus leaves Pripyat and turns down a one-lane road through a thick forest. Hiding there is the Moscow Eye, also known as the Russian Woodpecker, an enormous metal structure silhouetted against the sky like a vertical Stonehenge.

Using over-the-horizon radar, the Moscow Eye was the receiver for a powerful radio broadcast sent from elsewhere in Ukraine. Some say that the signals short, repetitive tapping noise soundedlike a bird thus the woodpecker moniker. Others sayit soundedmore like a machine gun. From 1976, until it went off the air in 1989, the unexplained radio signal interfered with many broadcasts. Listeners speculated that it was a method of Soviet mind control. Only in the past three years have tourists discovered its sublime metal architecture rising from the forest floor near Chernobyl, an anachronistic remnant from a not-so-distant era.

Washington Post

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The booming Soviet tourist industry in radioactive Ukraine - The Independent