Daily Ukraine Crisis Updates – August 27, 2014
News | August 27, 2014
- Ukraine appealed for NATO's help after reporting that a huge convoy of tanks and weaponry from Russia was moving through the southeast of the country.
- (ITAR-TASS) Talks between Ukraine and Russia in Minsk on August 26 were fruitless, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a government meeting.
- (ITAR-TASS) Separatist militias claimed to have made further advances, inflicting heavy losses on the Ukrainian troops. At least 129 servicemen of the Ukrainian army and the National Guard have surrendered to the militia in the settlement of Starobeshevo.
- Russian servicemen who had been detained in the Donetsk region of Ukraine have been delivered to a Kyiv detention facility, Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said.
- Caught off guard by the crisis in Ukraine, NATO plans to create a "spearhead" rapid deployment force and a "more visible" presence in Eastern Europe to assuage concerns about Russian intentions, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
- Moscow said it will take steps to respond if NATO begins regular troop rotations in the easternmost NATO-member countries.
- (ITAR-TASS) UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic will arrive in Ukraine on August 28 to present a report on the human rights situation in the country, the UN said.
- (RIA Novosti) The Kyiv government must launch a nationwide dialogue in Ukraine immediately to make sure that the rights of all ethnic groups and minorities are equally respected, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
- (Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian government plans to endorse a Ukraine-NATO action program for 2014 at its Wednesday session.
- (ITAR-TASS) Russia’s Red Cross said it will accompany a second relief aid convoy to Ukraine if the government decides to send the cargo.
- (Interfax Ukraine) The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry stated that it believes that before making a decision on the sending of humanitarian aid from Russia it is necessary to hold consultations with the participation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the trilateral contact group and the OSCE.
- Russian journalists claimed to have been attacked while investigating reports that soldiers were secretly buried after being killed in Ukraine. There has been no official confirmation of the deaths of paratroopers allegedly buried outside Pskov. However, a military official in Voronezh, a city close to the border with eastern Ukraine, said that an elite airborne platoon commander from Pskov, Anton Korolenko, has been buried there.
- (ITAR-TASS) Russia, Ukraine and the European Union will meet in Brussels on September 12 to discuss the Association Agreement between Kyiv and the EU.