Brothers and sisters, the overview of the events of April 17th.
The bad:
1. Vladimir Putin has departed to the astral world. It doesn’t seem that he is coming back.
His today’s direct Q&A is a protocol of feverish delusions. The story of East Ukraine as “Newrussia, that has its roots tied to Russia” tells a lot.
And what about his claims that Russian soldiers in the East Ukraine is a “lie”? In the same way, this Kremlin storyteller asserted that there are no Russian soldiers in Crimea. Afterwards, it became clear that there actually are 22 000 of them. Today, even Putin himself admits – yes, Russian soldiers stood behind the “self-defense units” in Crimea.
The question then is the following. Who still believes this constantly lying creature? In the wide world – nobody. Yet, his subjects sit in front of the TVs and dutifully nod – the tsar is telling the truth. It’s hard to tell, should one laugh or cry.
2. In the East, the actions of extremists continue. There is some trouble in Stakhanov (the homeland of one of the coordinators of our “IR” group). Pro-Russian puppies fool around in Donetsk.
There are also worries concerning other regions. Today, the representatives of the local government of Zaporizhia talked about potential extremists actions.
We have our own information on this issue. According to our findings, planes carrying “Putin’s tourists” have landed at the Saki airport in Crimea today. Then the “tourists” were moved to microbuses with vehicle registration plates of Zaporizhia. This doesn’t look good.
The good:
1. During the meeting of Ukraine, the EU, the US and Russia, some agreements have been reached, including ones concerning the freeing of captured Ukrainian buildings and the amnesty for extremists. It sounded like an announcement directed at the “sides” of the conflict.
The question is whether one can trust Russia. After all, it does not accept that all this madness started because of its actions. That is, all of its statements are empty. And even if Moscow admitted its role, there would still be no trust in its goodwill.
Therefore, it is still very much unclear what role these agreements will play. Personally, I regard them skeptically. I think that Moscow is participating in the negotiations because it wants to avoid new sanctions by the West. At the same time, it continues its dirty work. Well, we’ll see. After all, there’s at least some dialogue at the international level.
One more advantage is that under these circumstances we can be sure that there will be no Russian invasion tomorrow. It doesn’t mean that, relatively speaking, there will be none the day after tomorrow.
2. Somehow, the problem of our brother citizens who remained in Crimea has been abandoned. They want to move to the continent but are unable to. Apparently, they were of little concern to the state previously. Now, these people are simply forgotten.
That, of course, is far from positive. The positive thing is that because of the election campaigns, the situation might get better. Today, the candidate for the presidency of Ukraine, N. Korolevska visited Crimea and discussed the problems of such families.
We all know that social issues is her field, and this is what is important today. All the social guarantees are destroyed in Crimea. The link between the Ukrainian state and those citizens is incomprehensible.
Together with the social issues, there is the problem of physical safety of these people. Previously, Russia set out a condition – the residents of Crimea must decide on their citizenship until April 18th. Nobody knows what will happen to those who won’t accept Russian citizenship.
If the official Kiev is silent on this issue, the politicians must raise such questions, even if it is due to the electoral campaign. The most important thing is not to conceal them, because behind every problem there are people – our brothers and sisters.
3. Today, in Donetsk, 3 000 people came to a demonstration for unified Ukraine. In Luhansk, there came 1 000.
I don’t know if it’s many or few. But what I know is that these people are the most active patriots. There are hundreds of times more people that want to live in stable and unified Ukraine.
