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Editor's note: Christopher S. Chivvis is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and expert in European and Eurasian security issues. You can follow him @cchivvis. Bonny Lin is an associate political scientist at RAND and an expert on Asia-Pacific security issues. The views expressed are their own. At Sunday night's emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, Western countries denounced Russian efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine. Depending on your reading of its statement, China either refused to do the same, or refused to back Russia. Either way, the meeting was just the latest example of how the Ukraine...

The Easter Miracle of Slovyansk today, Soldiers sent for war end up laying down their weapons, eating with the people and enjoying the spring day in the sun. The Alternative? Bombs and Massacre on an empty stomach. If all armies acted like this, World Peace would be the order of the day.

On Monday, April 14, 2014, the Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious award in American journalism, was awarded to the Washington Post and (UK’s) The Guardian for their coverage related to the revelations of spy, Edward Snowden. Apparently, for those on the Pulitzer committee, it’s still ethical to betray your country and carry water for the Russian military and intelligence. Still ethical? Yes. At a press conference held at the Women’s National Republican Club prior to the announcement, Accuracy in Media, a journalistic watchdog based in Washington, D.C., recounted the circumstances around another Pulitzer Prize, to Walter Duranty. Speaking at the...

Lawmakers in Moldova's pro-Russian breakaway region of Transdniestr on Wednesday passed a resolution calling on Moscow and the United Nations to recognise its independence. Transdniestr, a strip of land bordering Ukraine, broke away from Romanian-speaking Moldova following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Some analysts suspect Russia is eyeing the territory, which consists mostly of Russian speakers, in the wake of last month's annexation of Crimea. The resolution adopted unanimously by Transdniestr's self-appointed parliament on Wednesday called on the international community to recognise the region as a "sovereign independent state". "According to the universally recognised norms of international...

(Reuters) - Separatists flew the Russian flag on armored vehicles taken from the Ukrainian army on Wednesday, humiliating a Kiev government operation to recapture eastern towns controlled by pro-Moscow partisans. Six armored personnel carriers were driven into the rebel-held town of Slaviansk to waves and shouts of "Russia! Russia!". It was not immediately clear whether they had been captured by rebels or handed over to them by Ukrainian deserters. Another 15 armored troop carriers full of paratroops were surrounded and halted by a pro-Russian crowd at a town near an airbase. They were allowed to retreat only after the soldiers...

Slavyansk (Ukraine) (AFP) - An operation by Ukrainian forces to reassert control over its eastern regions floundered Wednesday in the face of pro-Russian resistance, a day ahead of international talks on the escalating crisis. A concerned NATO said it planned to deploy more forces in eastern Europe and called for Russia to stop "destabilising" the former Soviet satellite, which has been in deep turmoil since the ouster of the pro-Kremlin leadership in February.

WASHINGTON — Ukraine’s military has an urgent need for nonlethal military assistance like body armor, night-vision goggles, communications gear and aviation fuel to defend against a potential Russian attack, according to a new analysis by a former NATO commander and a former Pentagon official. But wary of provoking Russia, the Obama administration has been reluctant to provide it, they say. (snip) The new interim government in Ukraine submitted a request to NATO nations last month for military assistance, including vehicles, mine-clearing equipment, communications gear, medical supplies, fuel and the sharing of intelligence. The United States has sent 300,000 M.R.E. —...

(Reuters) - Armored personal carriers driven into the eastern Ukrainian city of Slaviansk had been under the control of Ukrainian armed forces earlier on Wednesday, pictures taken by Reuters photographers showed. A soldier guarding one of six troop carriers now under the control of pro-Russian separatists told Reuters he was a member of Ukraine's 25th paratrooper division from Dnipropetrovsk. "All the soldiers and the officers are here. We are all boys who won't shoot our own people," said the soldier, whose uniform did not have any identifying markings on it. "They haven't fed us for three days on our base....

Reports from Slavyansk say that the army troops sent to the eastern Ukrainian city for an “anti-terrorist operation” are leaving en masse. Some troops are openly voicing support for the eastern Ukrainians, while others are speaking out against a war. According to Interfax, citing local self-defense activists, some 300 Ukrainian troops agreed to lay down their weapons and “go home” following negotiations in Slavyansk. “We managed to negotiate with them. About 300 military – only some of those who closed around the city – decided to lay down their arms and go home,” a self-defense activist was quoted as saying....

Footage posted online purports to show pro-Russian activists in a Lada confronting a Ukrainian tank. The car's occupants pursue the tank across a field - apparently in the Donetsk town of Sloviansk - and instruct its driver to "turn the engine off". Eventually, the tank driver shakes the hand of one of the crowd and switches the engine off. However, an argument ensues, with the Russian speakers demanding to know the tank driver's "mission". The video, which cannot be independently verified, was uploaded on 14 April

Natalya Rudenko's ears were still ringing from being shouted at by a father demanding that the Ukrainian-language school she has run for 17 years in Crimea's capital now teach in Russian when local officials turned up at her office to dismiss her.

Doorstep statement by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen following the meeting of the North Atlantic Council Good afternoon. We have just taken further measures to respond to the crisis in Ukraine. We agree that a political solution is the only way forward. NATO fully supports the Geneva talks and all the efforts of the international community to find a political solution, which fulfils the democratic aspirations of the entire Ukrainian people and respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. We call on Russia to be part of the solution. To stop destabilising Ukraine, pull back its troops from...

For the past month, the Russian government, with Vladimir Putin its spotlight propagandist, has repeatedly declared that brutal anti-Russian ethnic violence as a prelude to ethnic-based civil war is imminent in Eastern Ukraine. That's a lie. What Eastern Ukraine really faces is a Russian military invasion -- and more on that in a moment. Kremlin claims of anti-Russian ethnic violence in Eastern Ukraine reprise the false accusations Putin made in February to provide media camouflage for the Russian seizure of the Crimean peninsula. Given the dire life-or-death threat, the Kremlin had to take all necessary military and humanitarian actions required...

Mozaffar Khazaee, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen who worked for defense contractor Pratt & Whitney, was arrested last week for allegedly trying to smuggle boxes of documents related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the plane expected to be the Pentagon’s next generation fighter jet. He was picked up in New Jersey on his way to Iran.

Dozens of Ukrainian army defectors rode into the disputed eastern town of Slovyansk today on a column of armoured troop carriers bearing the Russian national flag. The defectors, including highly trained paratroopers. were said to have switched sides after being persuaded to defect by pro-Russian insurgents in nearby Kramatorsk, where they were part of a Ukrainian force that secured a military airfield yesterday. With Russian flags flying, the soldiers headed on a convoy of six troop carriers into Slovyansk, stopping first outside city hall, which has been occupied by pro-Russian protesters for several days, before entering the police station.

Jordan’s air force has destroyed military vehicles trying to cross from Syria, Jordanian state television said Wednesday

Soldier Says Ukrainian Unit Switched to Pro-Russian Side, But Can't Be Confirmed SLOVYANSK, Ukraine—An armored column of military vehicles flying a Russian flag and carrying dozens of heavily armed fighters motored into this eastern Ukrainian city early Wednesday, a day after the Ukrainian army launched an operation to clear out pro-Russian separatists who had taken control of cities in the region. It wasn't immediately clear whether the men were Russian soldiers or local militants who had gotten their hands on military vehicles. A soldier on one of the vehicles said the unit was part of the 25th brigade of Ukraine's...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Kerry: Our Goal is Not Eliminating Iranian Nuclear CapabilityPosted By Daniel Greenfield On April 15, 2014 @ 7:30 pm In The Point | No Comments Sometimes a choice of words can be extremely revealing. That was the case with Kerry’s contentious testimony in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Under pressure, Kerry tends to slip and say revealing things. That was how the infamous, “for it and against it” clip was born. Kerry dismissed breakout as “just having one bomb’s worth, conceivably, of material, but without any necessary capacity to put it in anything,...

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz likes to say that if you are for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, basic freedoms of speech, press, association, open democracy, and an independent judiciary, there is only one country in the Middle East that espouses those values you support: Israel. And he is absolutely correct. But there appears to be a major disconnect among American Jews. Today, too many Jewish Americans are ambivalent about Israel, or even openly hostile towards it, believing erroneously that Israel acts in ways that contradict their “progressive” or “liberal” ideals. Jews are even at the forefront...

Dozens of Palestinian protesters and an Israeli policeman were wounded Wednesday morning on the Temple Mount after the site was opened to Jewish visitors. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP that Palestinians threw “stones and firecrackers” at police when they opened the walled compound’s gates. Police responded with stun grenades, Rosenfeld said, and closed the complex to the Jewish visitors after a small number had toured the site. An AFP correspondent at the scene said dozens of Palestinians were wounded by rubber-coated bullets and stun grenade canisters, and were staying inside the Al-Aqsa mosque out of fear they would be...