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It was all quite quick and comfortable, Timofey Matskevich, a small-business owner, said of transiting with his wife, Daria, through an airport serving Barcelona.

They asked no questions, they stamped our passports and said, Welcome to Spain, Mr. Matskevich said in an online chat from the apartment where he was staying, which he said had a marvelous view of the beach and the Mediterranean beyond.

Its a change in mentality, he said. You have more freedom to go somewhere, to see things. For the mentality of the country to change, to get rid of the Soviet legacy, you need to see other parts of the world.

While the visa waiver for Ukrainians is the largest shift of the kind for former Soviet countries, most of Ukraines 45 million people cannot afford to go on vacation abroad. Citizens of Georgia and Moldova already qualified for short-term visa-free travel to most of Western Europe, and those of the Baltic countries, which are members of the European Union, can come and go as they please.

Mr. Poroshenko celebrated the change by opening a symbolic door to Europe that had been set up on a stage at a border crossing with Slovakia. To help illustrate what lay to the west, the door was surrounded by walls depicting the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum in Rome, Dutch windmills and other European tourist sights.

Mr. Poroshenko called the visa waiver a final exit of our country from the Russian Empire, and he joked that the words Back in the U.S.S.R. would be heard only listening to The Beatles.

Three years ago, tens of thousands of Ukrainians, including Mr. Matskevich, took to the streets of Kiev to reject the pro-Russian government of the time, and to show support for a trade pact between Ukraine and the European Union called the Association Agreement.

Russia responded with a military intervention, annexing Crimea and deploying forces in two provinces of eastern Ukraine, in a war that has since killed more than 10,000 people. Amid this grinding crisis, the Ukrainian story line shifted to keeping Russia out, not to getting into Western Europe.

The European Union has kept pressing the government in Kiev to adhere to European norms, not only on technical matters such as agricultural standards but also by curbing corruption, to little effect.

In newspapers, disheartened Ukrainians read daily about members of Parliament or finance officials lining their pockets with public money.

The visa-rule change allowed Mr. Poroshenko to claim credit for one popular achievement of Ukraines shift toward the West, in the hopes more substantive measures will follow, said Kadri Liik, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

It greatly empowers the forces in society that push reforms, she said.

Visa-free travel is the first thing people received from the Association Agreement, Mr. Matskevich said. Its a step by our country into the normal world, into normal society.

The opening went smoothly, with a few exceptions. A woman who had no passport for her 8-year-old son tried to smuggle him over a land border with Poland in a suitcase. They were discovered, fined and deported.

Mostly, though, the change led to excited Ukrainians posting about their European vacations on Facebook.

Hurray! It works! one Ukrainian traveler, Ivetta Delikatnaya, wrote after sliding through passport control in Toulouse, France.

With the easing of travel restrictions, low-cost airlines are increasingly looking to Ukraine. Wizz Air recently began operating flights between Lviv and Berlin for as little as $22 each way. Ryanair is introducing flights to Kiev and Lviv.

Andriy Homanchuk, a veteran of the war in eastern Ukraine, posted on Facebook that he was, somehow, able to eke out a weekend in Brussels for less than $100, his first trip to Western Europe.

The visa-free regime works, he wrote excitedly from Belgium. You dont need documents, or even knowledge of any language. You can go for a weekend.

Iuliia Mendel contributed reporting from Kiev, Ukraine.

Originally posted here:
Europe Dismantles Ukraine's 'Paper Curtain' - New York Times

Two weeks ago, Stas called his mother to say he was on a bus entering Donetsk city, in the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine. He was planning to visit her and his grandmother the next morning. She was excited. Stas had been traveling for work for days in other parts of Ukraine, and she missed him. However, Stas did not show up at her home that morning. He has been missing since that phone call on 2 June, feared forcibly disappeared by the separatist Donetsk authorities.

I met Stas, 27, in Donetsk last year. A pro-Ukrainian blogger and a regular contributor to RFE/RL, he wrote under the name of Stanyslav Vasin. An underground reporter in an area controlled by Russia-backed separatists, Stas published compelling chronicles of life in the DPR, from shooting and shelling to local infrastructure and cultural events. With the war in eastern Ukraine dragging on for three years and no end in sight, his blog became a unique window into life on the other side of the line of contact for many Ukrainians who have no access to separatist-controlled areas.

Stas made no secret of his pro-Ukrainian views and hopes for ultimate defeat of the Russia-backed separatists. I read his blog once in a while and on a work-trip to Donetsk I sent him a message introducing myself and suggesting we meet for a coffee. He asked me to call him Stas, short for Stanyslav, but it never crossed my mind this was his real name. Only after his disappearance did I find out from RFE/RL and other media that he had changed his surname for security purposes, but kept his first name as part of his Internet identity.

Stanislav Vasinhas been missing since June 2, 2017, feared forcibly disappeared by the separatist Donetsk authorities ineasternUkraine.

Late in the evening, we sat in an almost deserted caf for over an hour speaking mainly about the climate of raw fear in the DPR. He described himself as possibly the only person in Donetsk who dares speak his mind freely [online].

He said that he also knew a few others in the broader separatist-controlled territory who spoke critically of the de-facto authorities on social media but he had never met them in person. When I say I know these people, its not quite accurate, he explained.

Its rather that I know of them and they know of me. We dont know the real names. We dont know where the others live, except that were all on this side of the line of contact. The prerequisite of survival is total anonymity. I keep a super-low profile, stay away from people. Even my mother has no idea what I really do and how I live.

On 3 June, when Stas didnt show up, his mother, overcome with worry, went to the apartment Stas rented in Donetsk. The door to the apartment was locked. She waited until late at night, to no avail. The next day, the landlord opened the apartment for her. The place looked like it had been ransacked. She rushed to the police and filed a missing person report. She went to the DPRs Ministry of State Security to enquire if they had detained her son, but they refused to let her in. The Ministry is the most feared agency in the DPR, due to its reputation of operating without oversight, arbitrarily detaining people and holding them incommunicado.

Two weeks later, the police still have no information about Stas or at least none theyre willing to share. Neither Stas mother or editors know where to turn. Stas role as a pro-Ukrainian blogger and journalist, coupled with the DPRs disturbing record of detaining dissenters incommunicado for prolonged periods, give strong grounds to be concerned that local security officials have forcibly disappeared him. Human Rights Watch has documented numerous cases when DPR State Security ministry officials have forcibly disappeared people who were, or were thought to be, pro-Ukraine, holding them without acknowledging it for several weeks.

If Stas is indeed in DPR custody, the de-facto authorities should immediately end his forcible disappearance by acknowledging his detention, and release him.

Read more:
Pro-Ukrainian blogger disappears in separatist-controlled area of eastern Ukraine - Human Rights Watch

Ukraines president, Petro Poroshenko, shakes hands with the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, in Washington. Photograph: Tass / Barcroft Images

Russia has canceled a planned round of talks with the US in protest at new sanctions imposed this week over Moscows military intervention in Ukraine.

The deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, denounced the new sanctions, which expanded the list of individuals and organisations targeted by the US treasury, as the responsibility of avid Russophobes in Congress who were determined to derail US-Russian relations.

As a result, Ryabkov said he was cancelling a meeting with his US counterpart, Tom Shannon, in St Petersburg later this week which was supposed to have been part of a continuing dialogue between Washington and Moscow aimed at reducing irritants in bilateral relations.

The sanctions, Ryabkov said, had meant that the circumstances were not conducive to holding this round of dialogue, particularly as there is no agenda set out for it, as Washington does not to want to make concrete proposals.

In response, the state department expressed regret and said the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was open to future discussions.

However, in a bluntly worded response to Ryabkovs statement, the state department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, insisted the new measures were intended to reinforce existing sanctions and were designed to counter attempts to circumvent our sanctions.

Lets remember that these sanctions didnt just come out of nowhere. Our targeted sanctions were imposed in response to Russias ongoing violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbor, Ukraine, Nauert said.

If the Russians seek an end to these sanctions, they know very well the US position, she added, saying that Moscow would have to abide fully by the Minsk agreement for resolving the conflict in Ukraine and end its occupation of Crimea.

The cancellation of the St Petersburg meeting and the stern exchange of statements are part of a marked dip in US-Russian relations despite Donald Trumps efforts to improve them. In Congress, House allies of Trump have stalled a Senate bill that would intensify sanctions further and take the power to lift them out of his hands.

On Wednesday, a plane carrying the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, was approached by a Nato F-16 fighter over the Baltic Sea, prompting a Russian fighter jet to insert itself between the two planes and tilting its wings to show it was armed.

The mid-air incident came a day after another close encounter above the Baltic between US and Russian warplanes.

The Pentagon spokesman, Capt Jeff Davis, said: Due to the high rate of speed, the poor control that the Russian pilot had of his aircraft during the intercept, the aircraft commander of the [US reconnaissance plane] RC 135 determined it to be unsafe. Such unsafe actions have the potential to cause serious harm and injury to all involved.

Sweden also reported that a Russian plane had come close to one of its military aircraft over the Baltic on Monday.

The Russian defence minister put out a statement saying that two US spy planes had been making provocative manoeuvres.

In Syria, meanwhile, Moscow has announced it had suspended a hotline between the US and Russian militaries in Syria and that it would view as targets any coalition planes flying west of the Euphrates river. The Pentagon has played down the threat, saying it continued to operate west of the Euphrates.

Public statements aside, we have not seen the Russians do any actions that cause us concern. We continue to operate, making some adjustments for prudent measures, Davis said.

Maxim Suchkov, a political analyst and editor of al-Monitors Russian coverage, said Moscows decision to cancel the St Petersburg talks is explained by that given the recent events in Syria and Ukraine, Russia wants to raise the stakes and attempts to take its own position of strength vis-a-vis Washington.

Id say its a risky move on the Russian side, since in Washington the message to suspend the talks may be read differently from what Moscow intended it to sound, Suchkov said.

Read the original post:
Russia cancels talks after US imposes new sanctions over Ukraine conflict - The Guardian

KIEV, June 22. /TASS/.KIEV, June 22. /TASS/. Europe has brought Ukraine to its knees, and the country should not count on any help from it, ex-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma said, speaking at the international forum dubbed "The dawn of Europe: conformity to the laws of history in civilized advancement."

"We rejoice at our free choice, Europe, and trade with it (the EU), but what do we sell to it - nothing but wheat and honey, and quotas are very stringent," he stressed.

"We have used up our quota for the first quarter, so now the Europeans are bringing us to our knees, telling us to chop wood and bring it to them. Where is their help to Ukraine? Once we are poverty-stricken, wholl need us?"

Kuchma also stated that everyone in Europe had already forgotten about Ukraine. "Look at the European mass media, nobody mentions anything about Ukraine there," he pointed out.

All of this is happening, according to Kuchma, because the Verkhovna Rada and politicians are engaged "in the same quarrels and all are betting on Donbass."

"Why have we never been a state?Today many, even in Ukraine, consider us not a political object, but a political subject. War is raging in the country, and we have no consistency within the political elite, which does not exist as well," the ex-president acknowledged.

At the same time, he added, "the economy has been totally neglected." "We are falling apart, there are no advanced technology sectors left, no missile industries and no aviation," Kuchma noted.

The nations science faces a similar situation: "How is the academy of sciences financed? We are turning into a raw material colony. We have only chemical and agricultural industries left. Where are we going?" he lamented.

The ex-president called on Ukraine to start "dealing with its own problems.""Enough walking around the world with hat in hand, our budget is 70% credit-supported. Ukrainian debt is up to 70% today, and we take (money) from the International Monetary Fund and immediately pay them back, with interest," the former president concluded.

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Ex-Ukrainian president lambastes Europe for 'brining Ukraine to its knees' - TASS

KIEV, June 22. /TASS/. A Swiss bank has frozen Ukraines 15 million-euro guarantee for hosting the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest, UA:PBC (Ukraines National Public Broadcasting Company), the contests Ukrainian organizer, said in a statement.

"The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) informed Ukraines National Public Broadcasting Company that the Geneva Debt Collection Office had frozen the money. However, in its message to the EBU, the Office did not clarify the reasons for the freeze," the statement reads.

Ukraines National Public Broadcasting Company added that it had hired a law firm to tackle the matter.

Ukraines capital of Kiev hosted the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest on May 9-13. The contest involved as many as 42 countries. However, Russian contestant Yulia Samoilova could not participate as the Ukrainian Security Council (SBU) had issued a three-year travel ban against her, citing her performance in Crimea on June 27, 2015. Following the ban, Russias Channel One cancelled the broadcast of the contest.

On May 4, Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group Chairman Frank-Dieter Freiling said that sanctions could be introduced against Ukraine and Russia for breaching contest rules. According to him, Kiev should have ensured the participation of all the entrants but violated this obligation by banning Samoilova to enter Ukraine, while the Russian delegation failed to attend various compulsory meetings held early in the year.

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Swiss bank freezes Ukraine's 15 million-euro guarantee for hosting Eurovision - TASS