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Donald Trump appears to have pushed for the Republicans to adopt a pro-Moscow policy over Ukraine just as his senior aides with meeting with Russias US Ambassador.

At the Republican National Convention last summer, the party agreed to insert language into its platform that opposed arming or providing Ukraine with weapons to take on pro-Russian rebels. At the time, Mr Trump told an interviewer he wasnt involved in it.

But now, a former adviser to Mr Trumphas revealed that the push to change the platform came after the direct intervention of the New York tycoon. Mr Trump had hinted as to his views on Ukraine during a speech in the spring of 2016, where the Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, was among the guests.

CNN said that Republican advisor JD Gordon had said the move to push the change in the partys policy was to make it align with Mr Trumps personal views.

Mr Gordon previously said that he did not speak publicly at the GOP national security sub-committee meeting, where the amendment was discussed. Originally the policy called for providing lethal defence weapons to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed rebels. It was changed to providing appropriate assistance to Ukraine.

The broadcaster said that Mr Gordon had now revealed that he and others advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels because this was in line with Trump's views.

Gordon says Trump said at the meetingthat he didnt want to go to World War Three over Ukraine, CNN said.

Trump says he still has 'total' confidence in Jeff Sessions

Mr Gordon also confirmed that he and another policy advisor to Mr Trump, Carter Page, met Mr Kislyak at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland last July. Mr Gordon did not respond to inquiries on Friday.

The development comes as Mr Trumps administration is facing further scrutiny over its alleged links to Russia.

This week, Mr Trumps Attorney General was forced to recuse himself from overseeing the federal inquiry into Russsias alleged interference in the US election and its possible links to members of Mr Triumps team, after it emerged he had twice met with Mr Kislyak. He had previously told senators while under oath that he had never done so. One of the meeting was at the RNC.

It also emerged that two other senior members of Mr Trumps team, former general Mike Flynn and policy adviser Jared Kushner, had met Mr Kislyak in December to establish initial contacts with the Russian government. Mr Flynn was in January forced to resign as his national security adviser after he lied about a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak - prior to Mr Trumps taking office - at which the issue of sanctions was discussed.

Mr Trump has never hidden his wish to try and reset the US-Russia relationship.

At the speech he delivered at Washington DCs Mayflower Hotel in April, Mr Trump said: I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia- from a position of strength only - is possible, absolutely possible. Some say the Russians wont be reasonable. I intend to find out.

Yet after the Republican position on Ukraine was changed that summer, Mr Trump he claimed he had nothing to do with it.

I wasn't involved in that, Mr Trump said in an interview with ABC. Honestly, I was not involved.

Several investigations are underway into Russias alleged interference in the 2016 election - an operation supposedly undertaken to benefit Mr Trump. Mr Trump has repeatedly denied that either he or any members of his team have had any contact with Russia, or colluded in anyway in its efforts to influence the election.

An unverified dossier presented to Trump in January by top US intelligence officials allegedthat Mr Trump agreed to sideline the issue of Russian intervention in Ukraine during his campaign after Russia promised to feed the emails it stole from prominent Democrats inboxes to WikiLeaks.

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Republicans adopted pro-Russia stance on Ukraine just after Trump officials met with Russian ambassador - The Independent

KYIV -- Ukraines tax and customs service chief has been suspended from his post amid a graft investigation that marks a rare attempt to prosecute a senior official on suspicion of corruption.

The government said on March 3 that State Fiscal Service (DFS) Director Roman Nasirov has been temporarily relieved of his duties.

Meanwhile, a special prosecutor tasked with fighting corruption said he will seek Nasirov's arrest on suspicion of "abuse of office leading to serious financial losses," voicing concern that he could try to flee the country.

The moves came a day after the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) said it attempted to serve Nasirov, who was in a Kyiv hospital, with a document identifying him as a suspect.

Minutes later, Nasirov was transferred to an intensive care unit after suffering what a doctor said was a heart attack.

WATCH: Ukraine Tax Chief Falls Ill As He Faces Corruption Charges

The Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutors office (SAP) says it suspects Nasirov might have helped fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko dodge taxes.

Onyshchenko, who fled Ukraine before being stripped of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution last summer, claims to have recorded conversations detailing corruption involving Poroshenko and his allies.

He is wanted in Kyiv on suspicion of fraud and of embezzling the equivalent of more than $100 million in tax revenues from natural gas delivery contracts.

Nasirov's lawyer, Oleksandr Miroshnik, said on March 3 that his client remained unconscious following surgery. He said that Nasirov had already been ill and that his hospitalization has nothing to do with the ongoing investigation.

Miroshnik added that NABU's "attempt" to hand the document to Nasirov to inform that he is a suspect was conducted illegally.

The pro-Western government that came to power after protests known as the Euromaidan pushed Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014 has been under pressure to tackle corruption and reform the economy.

Poroshenko has pledged to root out graft, but no senior official has been successfully prosecuted for corruption by his government.

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Ukraine's Tax Chief Targeted In Corruption Probe - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

Would it sound cruel to suggest that the world is better off because Ian Ihnatowycz had his dream of being a concert pianist crushed when he was 17 yearsold?

At the time this was the late 1960s Ihnatowycz was studying at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto under the revered Boris Berlin. I was told by him that I have the artistic interpretation, I play beautifully, with soul. But I dont have the technique, Ihnatowycz explains, sitting in the office of First Generation Capital, his private investment holding company, on the 35th floor of the Scotiabank Plaza in downtown Toronto. And you have to develop the technique by the time youre 10 or 12; by 17, its toolate.

He said, Youll make a good teacher. But youll never make it on the concert stage. Ihnatowycz chuckles sheepishly. I dont have the patience to be a teacher, so I said, Thanks but no thanks, and headed in a different direction. I went into science. And the science eventually turned intobusiness.

And the combination of science and business has served me extremelywell.

It has also served the Canadian cultural community rather well: Ihnatowycz is a noted art collector and philanthropist who has given significant sums to organizations such as no hard feelings the Royal Conservatory. He and his wife, Marta Witer, who also studied there, gave $5-million to the school in 2005 for the sparkling renovation of its Ihnatowycz Hall, and also endowed its Ihnatowycz Prize inPiano.

And now, he has gotten into the mucky business of film production, helping to shepherd Bitter Harvest a new romantic drama about a moment in history that continues to reverberate across newspaper front pages even today intoexistence.

Oscar nominated editor Stuart Baird, left, worked on Bitter Harvest with financier Ian Ihnatowycz,right.

Mark Tillie

After leaving music behind, Ihnatowycz worked for a time in pharmacology, earned an MBA at what is now Western Universitys Ivey Business School, and went into money management, starting his own firm, Acuity Investment Management, in 1991. (Some of the fruits of his success are on vivid display at his office: a number of alternately serene and striking canvasses by William Kurelek, Jack Bush, and OscarCahn.)

In 2011, Ihnatowycz and his partners sold Acuity for $339-million. So when the actor and first-time screenwriter Richard Bachynsky Hoover came knocking on his door with a script about the Holodomor Joseph Stalins campaign of oppression, forced starvation and purges that killed millions of Ukrainians and decimated the countrys political and cultural leadership in the early 1930s Ihnatowycz found himself drawn in: His parents had survived the genocide, fleeing Ukraine for Canada after the Second WorldWar.

He had never worked in film, but he realized that, while there were numerous very well-made documentaries about the Holodomor, no English-language feature had been made on the subject. Outside of Ukraine, almost no one knows about it, he said. And I thought, well, you know, this is too important a topic not to have a film made, Western-style, with Western actors, and cinematographers and editors, and people that can make a film for lack of a better term Hollywood quality, that would appeal to a Western audience. Ihnatowycz put up the entire budget a reported $20-million (U.S.) himself.

I felt connected to it emotionally, and I thought that it didnt really matter to me whether we made a lot of money. What was more important to me was that the film be made and it be seen by as many people in the West as possible, and let the chips fall where they may, in terms offinances.

Bitter Harvest, which opened in select Canadian cinemas on Friday, stars the British actor Max Irons (Woman in Gold) as Yuri, a budding artist from the Ukrainian countryside. As a young boy under czarist and then Leninist rule, Yuri is counselled by his father (played by Canadian actor Barry Pepper) on the benighted history of their occupied homeland. They can never break your spirit, the father tells theson.

Max Irons and Samantha Barks in BitterHarvest.

Mark Tillie

But when Lenin dies, Stalin institutes a brutal campaign to crush Ukraines aspirations of independence that catches Yuri, his true love Natalka (Samantha Barks), his warrior grandfather Ivan (Terence Stamp) and their village in its pincers. As the people revolt against his orders to collectivize their farms and other property, Stalin orders all crops to be confiscated and the borders shut, dooming millions to death.

The film was shot largely in Ukraine, with a local crew who, Ihnatowycz says, were often overcome with emotion. Theyd say, Were filming a scene that reminds me of the stories that my grandfather or great-grandfather used to tell us about what happened during theHolodomor.

But if the story was well known to them, the filmmakers struggled with how to tell it to a Westernaudience.

To give you an example, there have been hundreds of films made with the Holocaust as the backdrop, Ihnatowycz notes. So when you have a film with that as the backdrop, all you really need is 10 seconds of a Holocaust scene, everybody immediately knows what the context is, and the director can focus on the story. We couldnt do that, because its not completely understandable to the viewer. We need to lay the historic backdrop. That made it twice as difficult, and we didnt want it to come across like adocumentary.

When they test-screened the first cut, Ihnatowycz says, the feedback we got from people who didnt know about the Holodomor was, they wereconfused.

Once he helped clarify the narrative, he says, he stepped aside and let the filmmakers make the necessary changes, including re-shoots, in an artistic way. Though he had initially signed on as an executive producer its just the fancy term for the guy who provides the money, he laughs everyone insisted I become an official producer. I moved from just being a financier to one who had an important impact on thestory.

From left to right: Max Irons, George Mendeluk, Samantha Barks and Ian Ihnatowycz attended the gala screening of Bitter Harvest in London, England on Feb.20.

Dave J. Hogan / GettyImages

The film isnt Ihnatowyczs only effort to spread the word about the Holodomor, the full truth of which was suppressed until the fall of the Soviet Union. He walks over to a credenza and picks up a keepsake that is distributed to Canadian schoolchildren as part of a new touring exhibit on the Holodomor he helped fund. Five small stalks of wheat are attached to an illustrated card that outlines the law Stalin passed against so-called misappropriation of collective farm property, even five stalks ofgrain.

If you were caught stealing as little as that, you were shot on sight, he says ruefully, handing over the keepsake. Many children were executed, actually, when they were trying to take that to makebread.

That detail wasnt included in the film, in part because even Ihnatowycz wasnt aware of it until recently. You learn more and more as you go along, heexplains.

At one point in the film, a stranger takes note of Yuris talent as an artist, and tells him that, as someone who can depict truth, he has a duty to tell the world about the horrors unfolding in the country. With Ukraine continuing to be a political football today, does Ihnatowycz feel Yuris responsibility? I suppose it is a duty, he says slowly, looking down at hisfeet.

Let me put it this way. One cannot really understand a country any country, not just Ukraine, any country unless you know its history, and you know the trials and the tribulations that its people have livedthrough.

In todays world, especially, there is a lot of misinformation, he adds. I just think that weve created something that I think will provide the foundation for better understanding. And hopefully will allow the leadership of the West to make the right decisions, goingforward.

Link:
Financier's dark dream goes to the big screen - The Globe and Mail

Avdiivka (Ukraine) - Olena Gorbatova gave birth to her third child in war-torn eastern Ukraine to the sounds of gunfire and exploding shells in the Kiev-held flashpoint town of Avdiivka.

The 40-year-old Gorbatova calmed herself by thinking the attacks were just a celebration of the baby girl she named Myroslava -- which in Russian and Ukrainian means "glory to peace".

The wartime birth was not unusual. The town in which dozens were killed in early February has seen a mini baby boom that doctors attribute to the fact that people want to couple in times of stress and a change in women's hormonal behaviour.

"In recent years, we have managed to deliver babies from older families who are now in their 40s," gynaecologist Svitlana Khomchenko told AFP in the dilapidated and partially abandoned town of less then 20,000 people.

"They had been trying without success for many years. And now families who were considered sterile have children," said Khomchenko.

"It turns out that stress is a factor."

MAKING LOVE, NOT WAR?

Gorbatova's 38-year-old husband Sergiy had to make it past a series of road blocks to reach the maternity ward where his wife was resting.

A part of it has been turned into a military hospital. Women about to give birth lie side by side with the wounded from the 34-month revolt in the pro-Russian region that has killed more than 10,000 people and left nearly 25,000 others injured.

Sergiy laughed off local jokes that the rising birth rate is down to the large number of Ukrainian soldiers defending the town.

He admitted that many people tried to convince him not to bring more children into the Ukraine's unsafe world.

"But we still decided to do it," he said.

The fog of war means that no real scientific study can explain why couples have more sex and women appear to be more fertile when disaster strikes.

Gynaecologist Khomchenko simply cites the statistics she has.

The year the war broke out in 2014 there were 45 births in Avdiivka compared with 110 babies born in 2016 -- more than double the figure despite people fleeing the region for more peaceful parts of the ex-Soviet state.

Khomchenko recalls scenes of horror as women were hidden in basements to shield them from exploding shells that blasted out windows and mortar rounds that landed in the hospital's garden.

The city's heating system is periodically not working and the doctor says she has had to take many deliveries by candlelight.

A power generator has been recently installed and the windows replaced.

'GLORY TO PEACE'

The maternity ward stayed open even during the frightening days in early February when constant clashes between rebels and government troops claimed 35 lives in Ukraine's east.

"We worked while people were dying," said Khomchenko.

"But we were forced to move some of the women in labour to neighbouring towns because there was no heat or water."

Now the fighting has eased and the hospital is preparing to bring more babies into the world.

"The situation has normalised -- if, of course, you call a war a normal situation," the gynaecologist said.

Gorbatova and her husband Sergiy say they are preparing for tough times but are still filled with hope for their baby daughter.

"It will be difficult," Sergiy said. "We will have to deny ourselves many things."

But he added with a smile: "We want her name to give people a signal -- enough war and glory to peace."

Excerpt from:
Stress under shelling produces baby boom in Ukraine - Channel NewsAsia

By: AFP | Kiev | Published:March 3, 2017 9:57 pm Photographers take photos as sex worker holds a banner reading Sex work is work in front of Cabinet of Ministers in Kiev, Ukraine, Friday, March 3, 2017. A few dozens of sex workers held a rally to demand the legalisation of their work. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Dozens of sex workers and human rights campaigners gathered in Kiev Friday demanding the legalisation of prostitution in Ukraine. Some 50 activists holding red umbrellas and wearing red plastic helmets staged the first-ever march through the capital with the goal of revoking a legal ban on sex work in the post-Soviet state.

Wearing white plastic masks, the protesters held placards reading Sex work is work, We stand for decriminalisation of sex work, and My work is my choice.

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It is the first time that we have had the courage to come out and say that we exist, Yuliya Dorokhova of Legalife. a Ukrainian non-governmental organisation for sex workers, said standing in front of the parliament building.

We ask the authorities to lift the punishment for sex work. We would like to pay taxes rather than fines, she added.

According to human rights campaigners, there are some 80,000 sex workers in Ukraine who feel vulnerable -particularly to police abuse due to their profession being outside the law. Being illegal in Ukraine, prostitution is punishable by a fine up to 255 hryvnias ($9/euros).

We want our state to protect us. If a woman was able to sell sex legally, she would pay money to the state budget, Dorokhova said.

The women who work in existing brothels have to hand police their her earnings as protection money, she added.

Due to the legal ban on prostitution, Ukraines police are often accused of demanding money from sex workers to avoid fines and even beating them.

We often suffer from fines and even physical abuse (by the police), sex worker Valya, 30, told AFP wearing a white plastic mask to hid her face.

Continued here:
Sex workers march in Ukraine demanding legalisation - The Indian Express