MOSCOW, September 25. /TASS/. Moscow regrets that Kiev has decided to terminate the friendship treaty with Russia, Russian diplomat Andrei Rudenko told reporters on Tuesday.

"Ukraine has decided not to extend the major treaty with Russia, certainly, we regret about this. Although this was a framework agreement, it set a tone for all other deals," said Rudenko, who heads the Foreign Ministry’s second department for the Commonwealth of Independent States.</s>When they first arrived in Lviv, a university rector told me, the students who came from Donetsk walked around in packs, speaking loudly in Russian. They didn't want to speak Ukrainian, as most inhabitants of this city do; they didn't want to integrate. Lviv is in western Ukraine, near the Polish border. Donetsk, more than 1,000 kilometres to the east, has been occupied by Russian-backed "separatists" since the Russian invasion in 2014. The new students were "internally displaced persons" — refugees in their own country.

But that first year ended, and the second year was different. By the third year, the rector told me, the students from western Ukraine and the students from eastern Ukraine were nearly indistinguishable — and they aren't alone. Four years have now passed since the invasion, and the 1.5 million Ukrainians displaced by the war are coping better than might be expected. Most of those who are of working age have jobs. The majority say they trust their neighbours.

The integration of the Donetsk refugees into schools and communities in the central and western parts of the country is also part of a broader story: the integration of the war into the consciousness of Ukrainians. Although it's no longer on front pages, the Russian-Ukrainian war continues. One of the Russian-backed separatist leaders was killed in a bomb attack in August. Skirmishes take place most days, and soldiers on both sides die most weeks; there have been more than 10,000 casualties since 2014. Some of Lviv's baroque churches have chapels dedicated to the victims.

Slowly, the never-ending conflict is altering attitudes here, leading to what a perceptive Atlantic Council report has called "the geopolitical divorce of the century": the separation of two countries that have been part of the same empire for centuries. Trade between Ukraine and Russia, whose economies have been intertwined since the Middle Ages, has plunged, replaced in Ukraine by trade with Europe and the rest of the world. India, not Russia, is now the largest buyer of Ukrainian food. Ancient religious links between the two countries are dying, too: The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has now formally split from Moscow. Even personal ties are fading: With travel now limited by bans on direct flights between the two countries, Ukrainians are less likely to live and work in Russia, and more likely to go to Poland instead.

Russian cultural influence, once all-powerful, is also disappearing, partly thanks to official decisions. Ukrainian radio stations — like those in Canada or France — are required to play a certain percentage of Ukrainian-origin songs, and many Russian state television stations are banned on the grounds that they carry war propaganda. Some want to go further: Foolishly, the regional legislature in Lviv last week declared it wanted to ban all Russian books and music, a measure that no one in this profoundly bilingual country will be able to enforce. Russian books were readily available at shops, at street stalls and at the city's annual Book Forum last week. I asked my own Ukrainian-language publisher what she thought of the ban. She texted back a single word: "Crazy."

These petty, discriminatory measures are an expression of frustration with a war that doesn't end. They are also pointless, because a more profound, tectonic shift is already underway. Thanks to the war, and to their anger at its perpetrators, Ukrainians themselves are choosing to speak Ukrainian — more say they do every year. Thanks to the war, the different regions of this vast country are drawing more closely together. Many complain that the war also gives Ukrainian politicians an excuse not to do things, not to make the radical economic and legal reforms that the country still needs. But thanks to the war, more Ukrainians also identify themselves as "European," in opposition to Russia, and more Ukrainians understand that this "Europeanness" means they need to be vocal and organized in their desire for change.

It is ironic that the Russian invasion, originally intended to punish Ukraine's Western-oriented government, has pushed the country in a dramatically different direction. It's also a reminder that the supposed strategic gifts of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, are in fact very limited. His interference in Ukraine has made a once-friendly neighbouring country into an enemy. His efforts to unite "Russian-speaking peoples" into a Eurasian bloc persuaded thousands of people to stop speaking Russian. And, of course, his interference in the U.S. election has produced more paranoia about Russia in the United States, and more opposition to Russia, than we've seen in half a century. Ukraine is an excellent reminder of how violence can have unexpected consequences.

Anne Applebaum wrote this for The Washington Post</s>Reader of Third Secret of Fatima, Malachi Martin, said the Fatima Secret involves Russia and Ukraine. Signs of Fatima Prophecy emerging in Ukraine.



On September 20, 2018, the Russian Orthodox Church warned that Ukraine’s bid for spiritual independence could lead to bloodshed and a schism in the eastern church, as it froze ties with Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople – traditionally the “first among equals” in the Orthodox world.

Russian clerics are furious over Bartholomew’s apparently favourable response to Ukraine’s request that he grant full independence to its church, which is currently divided between rival patriarchates that are loyal to Moscow and Kiev.

The split occurred after a sovereign Ukraine emerged from the Soviet Union in 1991, and animosity between the country’s Moscow and Kiev patriarchates has intensified since the start of its bloody but undeclared war with Russia in 2014.

Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko appealed to Bartholomew in April for church independence – also known as autocephaly – and he says the formation of a national church is a crucial step in Ukraine’s bid to escape centuries of Russian domination.

Earlier this month, the Istanbul-based patriarchate said it was dispatching two bishops to Ukraine “within the framework of preparations for the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine”.</s>MOSCOW (AP) — The head of the Russian Orthodox Church chaired a meeting of top priests Friday to decide how to respond to the move by Orthodox Christianity’s leading body to send two envoys to Ukraine.

The Russian church claims authority over the church in Ukraine. But many Ukrainian parishes are rejecting the Moscow Patriarchate and have formed a separate church that is pushing for recognition as a self-governing, or autocephalous, institution. The church in Ukraine has been tied to Moscow Patriarchate for hundreds of years.

Calls for self-government have accentuated since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

Last week, those advocating self-government received a fillip when the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate said it was sending two bishops to Ukraine as a step toward declaring ecclesiastical independence for the church there.

The move by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is considered the “first among equals” of Eastern Orthodox clerics, followed a meeting last month with Russian Orthodox Church’s head, Patriarch Kirill, which failed to narrow their differences.

Patriarch Kirill strongly condemned the move while opening Friday’s meeting of the Holy Synod and compared it to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s actions during the split in the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s.

Metropolitan Onufriy, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that answers to Moscow Patriarchate, told the Holy Synod via a video call that the bishops sent by Bartholomew I had already arrived in Ukraine and established contacts with the heads of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has urged the Istanbul-based Patriarchate to grant Ukrainian Orthodox clerics full ecclesiastical independence from Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Friday that “worrying information about possible decisions regarding the church in Ukraine causes concern.”

Peskov noted that “the state can’t interfere in the church affairs,” but added that “preservation of the Orthodox unity is the only preferable scenario for Moscow, as well as for the entire Orthodox world.”

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>STAMFORD-Ukraine’s first lady and the wife of Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations will visit the Ukrainian Museum on Glenbrook Road Tuesday.

U.S. Secret Service agents and a security team from Ukraine have inspected the museum and will accompany Maryna Anatolyivna Poroshenko, the wife of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Iryna Yelchenko, wife of Volodymy Yelchenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, during their tour Tuesday.

Msgr. John Terlecky, who served as pastor of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Ukrainian Catholic church in Ansonia, will welcome the group while Lubow Wolynetz, the museum’s curator will perform the tour.

Presently the museum features an exhibit of photographs, documents and artifacts commemorating the 100th anniversary of Ukraine’s 18-month independence in 1918. That exhibit will run through Nov. 1. It is open to the public Wednesdays through Fridays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Later Tuesday Wolynetz, the Stamford museum’s curator, will receive a presidential medal for her contributions to preserving and encouraging interest in Ukrainian Culture and Folk Arts in the U.S.

Poroshenko, Ukraine’s President who is in New York for meetings at the United Nations, will present the medal during a private ceremony at the Ukrainian Institute of America in Manhattan.

Ukraine’s first attempt at independence lasted just 18 months before Russia overran the country and made it part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It remained there until August 24, 1991 when Ukraine once again declared independence following the break-up the Soviet Union.

Hostilities resumed in 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimea area. That was followed by ongoing fighting in Donetsk and Lugansk, regions which claimed independence from Ukraine.

The Stamford visit by Ukraine’s first lady marks the second time in a month a Ukrainian world leader will be there.

In August Major Archibishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the leader of the world’s six million Ukrainian Greek Catholics visited the museum, St. Vladimir’s Cathedral on Wenzel Terrace and St. Basil’s Seminary on Glenbrook Road before being feted at a fundraising dinner at the Sheraton Stamford Hotel.</s>(CNN) — The US Coast Guard plans to transfer two former 110-foot Coast Guard ships to Ukraine during a ceremony on Thursday in Baltimore.

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Michael McAllister and Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko are expected to attend the transfer ceremony.

The transfer of the two armed Coast Guard cutters come as tensions between Ukraine and Russia in the Sea of Azov have increased in recent weeks, with Kiev and the US accusing Moscow of interfering with Ukrainian shipping in the region.

“The United States condemns Russia’s harassment of international shipping in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait,” State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement late last month.

“Russia has delayed hundreds of commercial vessels since April and in recent weeks has stopped at least 16 commercial ships attempting to reach Ukrainian ports,” she added.

A US defense official told CNN that the cutters Drummond and Cushin were purchased by Ukraine from the Pentagon’s Excess Defense Articles program.

The Island-class cutters are typically armed with a 25 mm machine gun mount and four .50-caliber machine guns.

Follow @WJZ on Twitter and like WJZ-TV | CBS Baltimore on Facebook</s>Seagulls whirl over the docks of Ukraine's port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov as huge cranes once used to unload ships' cargoes stand idle.

The uncharacteristic quiet is the product of rising tensions in the small sea, the waters of which Russia and Ukraine agreed to share more than a decade ago, but is now the latest theatre in the bitter conflict between the two nations.

Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 means ships must now pass through a narrow strait bordered by Russian-controlled territory on both sides, while Kremlin-backed rebel regions of eastern Ukraine are uncomfortably close to Mariupol.

In a growing crisis, Kiev and the West accuse Russia of deliberately blocking ships from entering the sea.

"The whole time I've worked here, I've never seen anything like it," said Sergiy Kostyrko, a tanned foreman who has worked at the Mariupol docks for 23 years. "Ships have become very rare visitors to our port."

Ukraine criticises what it sees as a deliberate move by Moscow to block the Kerch Strait, the only shipping route into the Azov Sea, where Ukraine's commercial ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk are crucial gateways for its metallurgy industry exports.

Kiev has warned that Russia could even launch an attack on Mariupol.

Russia is trying to block Ukraine's ports on the Sea of Azov acting "to escalate tensions and, it cannot be ruled out, to carry out a military operation (including) attacks on Mariupol", Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko declared in July.

In a sign of the conflict's growing scale, the United States has condemned Russia for impeding maritime transit as part of a campaign "to undermine and destabilise Ukraine".

"We call on Russia to cease its harassment of international shipping in the Sea of Azov," the US Department of State said in a statement late August.

The European Union's delegation to Ukraine said earlier this month that Russia "has increasingly and deliberately hindered and delayed the passage of vessels, including vessels from EU member states".

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova insisted this week that "Russia's actions in checking ships are aimed solely at security."

"It is precisely Kiev's actions, those of its uncontrollable radicals, that force Russia to strengthen security measures," she said.

The problems started upon Russia's completion this spring of a bridge over the Kerch Strait connecting its southern mainland to Crimea.

The link spanning 19 kilometres (12 miles) was one of Moscow's mega-projects personally endorsed by President Vladimir Putin, who opened it in May at the wheel of a lorry.

The bridge's 35-metre arches are too low for some ships to pass under and there are also restrictions on length.

In addition, ships heading under the bridge now face lengthy checks by Russian maritime border guards, causing additional financial losses for both ports and shipping companies.

"The check takes three to four hours but waiting for the inspectors takes up to five days," said Mariupol port director Oleksandr Oliynyk. Previously "the ships would be stopped for maybe 10 hours."

The result for Ukraine is a significant drop in shipping traffic and subsequent economic losses.

Shipping companies lose between $5,000 and $15,000 with each day of delay for a cargo in the Kerch Strait, Oliynyk said. "At some point, the ship's owner will say 'That's it, I'm not interested'."

Ukrainian media reported that the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk saw earnings fall by almost a quarter during the first seven months of this year, compared with the same period last year.

So far this is purely a trade conflict, but there is a risk it could escalate into a military standoff between Ukraine and Russia, on top of Kiev's ongoing four-year war with Kremlin-backed rebels in the east that has claimed more than 10,000 lives.

Mariupol is located just 20 kilometres west of the frontline with Russian-backed separatists.

Russia moved an additional five ships into the Sea of Azov in May, the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research institute, wrote in a report.

Kiev in July claimed Russia had some 40 warships in the Sea of Azov.

This month, following an emergency meeting of Poroshenko's top brass, Ukraine bolstered its naval force in the Sea of Azov with two gunboats.

The gunboats were deployed "to prevent the illegal stopping of ships by an aggressor country," deputy infrastructure minister Yuriy Lavrenyuk said.</s>KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The United States special envoy for Ukraine said Saturday that Washington would consider providing more armaments to the country, whose army is fighting with Russia-backed separatist rebels in the east.

U.S. President Donald Trump this year reversed the Obama administration’s refusal to provide lethal aid to Ukraine and has sent more than 200 Javelin anti-tank rockets.

Envoy Kurt Volker told reporters in Kiev that Ukraine has improved its defense capabilities in recent years, but “there are still some gaps in those capabilities. And wherever those gaps are, we are prepared to sit down and talk with Ukraine about what their needs are. They can buy things through our foreign military sales.”

Volker said the United States is concerned about the expansion of Russian naval operations in the Sea of Azov, which borders Ukraine, Russia and the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

“We do not accept Russian claims about territory in the waters. We believe the presence of Russian military forces has become a provocative, aggressive step, so we are very concerned about that,” he said.

The separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine have long threatened the Azov port of Mariupol; taking the city would be a key step toward their establishing a land corridor between Crimea and Russia.

The U.S. envoy also criticized the elections that separatist leaders have called for November in two eastern regions, saying any voting would be a “completely illegitimate exercise.”

He criticized Russia’s resistance to full deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping mission in eastern Ukraine, where the fighting between the separatists and Ukrainian forces has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014.

“Russia is insisting this be negotiated directly with the proxy entities,” Volker said, referring to the self-declared separatist governments in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

“Russia is, in fact, the decision-maker” in eastern Ukraine, he added..

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>"The US signed the Certification Report for Russia’s Tu-214 Open Skies aircraft on the margins of the Open Skies Consultative Commission meeting in Vienna today," Pahon said.

The certification was carried out by more than 70 experts from 23 member states of the treaty on September 2-11. The United States was the last member-country to sign the final certification protocol on Monday.

READ MORE: US Decisions on START Treaty Will Depend on Russia's Actions — State Department

"The certification of a new observation aircraft allows us to expand the capability for effective observation flights, including over the territories of Great Britain, the United States and Canada," the head of Russia's National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, Sergei Ryzhkov, said, commenting on the US decision.

The treaty allows the member states to openly gather information on respective armed forces and their military activities during scheduled observation flights. The signatories include most of the NATO states, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and several others.
Russia acknowledges that it was notified of Ukraine's decision not to renew the Russian–Ukrainian Friendship Treaty.