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I came to Kyiv from Italy to visit some friends living here last summer. My intention was to spend a few days in the city, and then go on a long trip back to Rome, through Eastern Europe, via trains and buses. During those two weeks, I never left a two-mile radius in the old city. While Rome and Italy felt stale, stuck in their ways, overly touristic, dying on the vine, and emotionally unstable, Kyiv showed signs of hope, strength and newness—like a strong flower poking through the hard dirt. There was a feeling of optimism in the youth—passionate...

A federal judge is delaying ruling on a request to make public any criminal charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange..... Assange has instructed his lawyers to sue "The Guardian" newspaper in the UK for publishing a claim that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort..... Special Counsel Mueller's office claims that Manafort is lying to them, Manafort agreed to cooperate with Mueller's probe after being convicted in his first criminal trial. Meanwhile, President Trump tweeting Tuesday evening that: "The Mueller Witch Hunt is a total disgrace"..... GENERAL MOTORS WILL BE MAKING MORE CARS IN MEXICO.... That's the upshot of GM's restructuring...

Russia has released video of a group of captured Ukrainian sailors giving oral confessions to deliberately violating Russian territory. Russian security forces seized the sailors and their Ukrainian military vessels on Monday in the Kerch Strait in a maritime standoff which has seen tensions between the two neighbors spike. It was not clear whether the sailors' confessions, given in the custody of Russia's security services, were made under duress. Russia says the Ukrainian vessels sparked the confrontation by refusing to yield upon orders from Russian border forces to change their course in Russian territorial waters. Ukrainian officials insist it was...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged to Ukraine "full assistance, including military assistance," after Sunday's confrontation between Ukraine and Russia, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told CNN on Tuesday. Poroshenko told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that during a recent phone call, Pompeo pledged "full coordination" on protecting Ukrainian sovereignty following the clash with Russia. He also said the Ukrainian government was considering limiting Russians' ability to enter Ukraine during the period of martial law.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he may cancel his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Argentina because of Russia's maritime clash with Ukraine. "Maybe I won't have the meeting. Maybe I won't even have the meeting. I don't like that aggression. I don't want that aggression at all," Trump told the Washington Post in an interview. The Russian navy fired on two Ukrainian naval vessels and rammed a third on Sunday in the Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. It then captured the three vessels and the...

Russia over the weekend mounted its most serious aggression against Ukraine since President Trump took office, and America punted. Trump’s outgoing ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, described the chain of events that led to the current standoff at the Black Sea as an “outrageous violation of sovereign Ukrainian territory.” She vowed that Washington and its friends would stand with Kiev. So what’s the plan? “It is our expectation that our European partners will lead this effort through the Normandy Four format,” Haley said, referring to a toothless Barack Obama-era gabfest that has mostly served to legitimize Moscow’s illegal...

President Trump on Monday said the U.S. will cooperate with Europe to address escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia after the latter fired on and seized Ukrainian ships off the coast of Crimea. "We do not like what’s happening either way. We don't like what's happening, and hopefully it’ll get straightened out," Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a campaign trip to Mississippi. "I know Europe is not, they are not thrilled," Trump continued. "They’re working on it too. We’re all working on it together." U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said at a...

Krzysztof Szczerski, chief foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, was speaking after the Ukrainian navy said Russian special forces had seized three of its ships in the Sea of Azov on Sunday. "We consider the situation serious because it may have far-reaching consequences for both the internal politics of Ukraine and the entire region," Szczerski told Poland’s PAP news agency in an interview. The Sea of Azov is bounded by Ukraine to the north and west, and by Russia to the east. To the south it is linked by the Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea. The...

Ukraine’s Parliament voted Monday to declare martial law in areas bordering Russia, responding to an attack a day earlier by Russian forces who fired on and impounded three Ukrainian naval vessels, leaving several sailors wounded. The action by Parliament, which called it a “partial mobilization,” takes effect Wednesday morning, will last for 30 days and represents a further escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

NATO officials and diplomats are assembling for an “extraordinary meeting” on Monday with Ukrainian officials following a naval clash between Ukraine and Russia off Crimea’s coast, the military alliance announced. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg scheduled the NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting at the request of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, reports noted. Stoltenberg made contact with the commission and scheduled the meeting after Russian naval forces fired on Ukrainian vessels attempting to enter the Kerch Strait, which is a vitally important waterway that connects Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol to the Black and Mediterranean seas. Russia has steadily tightened its control of the...

Three Ukrainian Navy vessels, two gunboats and a tug, approached a restricted zone in the Sea of Azov Sunday which lies between Russian and Ukrainian territory. Russia blocked the Kerch Strait with a cargo ship and special forces were used to take the Ukrainian ships by force. The vessels were seized at around 8-830pm local time Sunday (12 Noon-1230 pm Eastern US time) Ukraine says six were injured. Russia says three. Russia says all three vessels are being detained. Ukraine is proposing martial law for 60 days. Protesters were outside the Russian Embassy in Kiev Sunday night with some throwing...

The U.S. needs to acknowledge and understand the religious motivation grounding the aggression of adversaries like the Taliban, ISIS, and Putin against U.S. interests. This is not only because certain kinds of conflict will not be ultimately won with tanks and airplanes alone, but also because a lack of understanding promotes dangerous policy mistakes. The plight of Christians in the Middle East gives but one example: Putin and Assad have maneuvered to become the explicit protectors of Eastern Christianity in situ. Moscow is back as their shield and Orthodoxy’s patron. He didn’t sidle up to the Russian church in recent...

The Ukrainian president has proposed the imposition of martial law after Russian forces shot at and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Black Sea, injuring six crew members according to Kiev, in a major escalation of tensions between the two countries. On Monday, Ukrainian MPs will vote on whether to declare nationwide martial law in response to the attack following an emergency war cabinet held by the president, Petro Poroshenko. He said that the imposition of martial law would not imply a declaration of war and is only intended for defensive purposes. Ukraine has also requested an emergency UN...

Russia’s effort to keep Ukraine under its thumb prompted a revolution in 2014 and a war that has claimed more than 10,000 lives. It also prompted, on Monday, what may be one of the most serious splits in Christendom since the Great Schism between Rome and Constantinople in 1054 and the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. This new crisis has deep historical roots, and could shape religious and secular ties among many countries for years to come. Here’s what happened: The Church of Russia announced this week that it was breaking ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which has...

Many Ukrainians comfort themselves with the observation that Vladimir Putin can’t live forever and that after him relations between Russia and Ukraine will improve, former Soviet dissident Iosif Zisels says; but in fact, the leaders who will emerge after Putin leaves the scene may treat Russia even worse than he does. “It isn’t Putin who is waging war against us; rather it is the Russians who are,” Zisels says. And it is critically important that Ukrainians and others understand that. Putin didn’t “make this Russia;” in a real sense, this Russia made someone like him the kind of leader it...

Ukraine says Russia has opened fire on its ships in the Black Sea and captured three vessels. Two sailors have been wounded after two boats were hit in the strikes, the Ukrainian navy said. The Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has called an emergency session of his war cabinet in response to the incident. "Today's dangerous events in the Azov Sea testify that a new front of [Russian] aggression is open," Ukrainian foreign ministry spokeswoman Mariana Betsa said. "Ukraine [is] calling now for [an] emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council." It comes after a day of rising tensions off...

The Ukrainian navy has accused Russia of opening fire on some of its ships in the Black Sea, striking two vessels and wounding two crew members. The navy made the statement after a day of rising tensions during which Russia stopped three Ukrainian navy vessels from entering the Sea of Azov via the Kerch Strait by placing a huge cargo ship beneath a Russian-controlled bridge.

Ukraine is marking the 85th anniversary of the Stalin-era famine, known as the Holodomor, in which millions of people died of starvation. The Holodomor took place in 1932 and 1933 as Soviet authorities forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other food products. In a statement released on November 23, the U.S. State Department said the victims were "deliberately starved to death by the regime of Josef Stalin." Estimates of the famine's death toll range from 3 million to 7 million. Moscow denies any systematic effort to target Ukrainians, arguing a "poor harvest" at...

Oksana Ostapenko was 12 years old and facing death from hunger when a stranger saved her life by taking the girl into his family and sharing the last of their food. Today, aged 97, the Ukrainian's voice trembles when she recalls the terrible famine that hit her country in the 1930s due to policies enforced by Joseph Stalin's police. "They came and took away all our grain..." The death toll of the famine - known as the "Holodomor" in Ukrainian - remains debated among historians. But Kiev authorities estimate the number of those who died at around four million, or...

For President Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church does not have the same significance that the Ukrainian church has for Ukrainian politicians. For Putin, the Orthodox Church is a global, not a national, project. Orthodoxy has always been part of Russian rulers’ global designs, and today’s Kremlin is no exception. The Russian church also serves as a proxy for most Russians’ identification as Russians. The share of those polled who call themselves “Orthodox,” about 75 percent, routinely coincides with the share of the ethnically Russian population of the Russian Federation. “Orthodoxy is a substitute for ethnic identification,” the sociologist Natalia Zorkaya...