Thousands of people in Ukraine, Russia and around the world took to the streets to mark the first anniversary of the Odessa massacre. Last year, 48 activists were killed and over 200 injured as radicals set the local trade unions house on fire. The commemoration ceremonies for those who died in the fire on May 2, 2014 proceeded without serious incident in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa. & [...]

Ukraine has the fastest falling economy of 2015 according to the British periodical The Economist. The country has seen its GDP shrink by 6.5 percent since last April, with countries like Libya and Macau performing better. The Ukrainian economy showed the most significant deepening recession compared to the rest of the world, according to the data, published on Wednesday by the head of the anal [...]

Russian President Putin did not agree to a possible deployment of peacekeepers in eastern Ukraine, his spokesman said in response to Kiev's claims to the contrary. Moscow insists that all points of the Minsk agreement are fulfilled first. The peacekeeper initiative was discussed on Thursday in a phone conversation between the so-called Normandy Four - the leaders of France, Germany Russia and U [...]

Citing an anti-Russia policy brief, US lawmakers approved $200 million for providing "lethal weapons of a defensive nature" to the Ukrainian government as part of the $600 billion Pentagon budget proposal for the fiscal year 2016. The House Armed Services Committee passed its proposal for the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with a bipartisan vote of 60 to 2, in what Defense News [...]

Smoke from burning forests in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is capable of spreading contaminants across great distances, even after the fire has been stopped, ecology experts told RT. The forest fire near the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant started on Tuesday and triggered an emergency alert, with police and National Guard mobilized to bring the flames under control. [...]

It is impossible for Canadian military personnel in Ukraine to weed out far-right militants when training, as some of the groups have been absorbed into the military, James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria told RT. The Canadian government seems confident that it can weed out far right extremists from the troops they will be training. Do you share that opti [...]

There are no officially registered far-right organizations in Ukraine, the security service head said. Foreign observers have repeatedly pointed out that ultra-right extremists are actively participating in Kiev's military operation in the east. “We have no information available about any kind of radical far-right parties, organizations or groups,” the head of the Central Investigation Depa [...]

Retired General Waldemar Skrzypczak, an influential figure in the Polish military, says he withdraws all words of support for Ukraine due to the country's sliding towards nationalism. Earlier he advocated supplying heavy weapons to Kiev. The angry U-turn in attitudes towards the Ukrainian government was published on Friday in the Gazeta Prawna newspaper. [...]

The recent killings in Ukraine are reported in Western media in a completely distorted way says investigative journalist Tony Gosling. It's a dangerous situation that may provoke further killings and less reporting of certain points of view, he told RT. Opposition journalist Oles Buzina was killed near his home in Kiev on Thursday. Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has ordered a full investi [...]

The journalist and ex-MP who were gunned down in Kiev this week were on an ‘enemies of the state’ database – a social media website supported by the aide to Ukraine's interior minister. The bloggers also have a Twitter account to share "successes." [...]

Ukrainian MPs have passed a law banning communist and national-socialist totalitarian regimes, and all their symbols. Another bill celebrates 20th-century nationalists accused of links to Nazi Germany, granting them social benefits. A new law equating communism to Nazism by banning both regimes was passed in the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on Thursday. [...]

The $17.5 billion loan approved by the IMF won't save Ukraine from hopeless poverty; instead, it will inflict a blow on the country's population already living on the breadline, said the ex-head of the National Bank of Ukraine Sergei Arbuzov. None of the options proposed by the IMF would improve the economy, said Arbuzov to Izvestia, adding that the biggest mistake made by the government was wo [...]

The chief prosecutor of Russia's Crimean Republic says Ukrainian law enforcers threatened her with prison and death for accepting the post, but failed to make her fear them. “Agents from the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office called me and threatened me, said that they would throw me in prison, that they would kill me, tear me into pieces,” Natalya Poklonskaya told TASS in an interview [...]

A top NATO European commander’s exaggerated comments on the Ukrainian conflict are ‘dangerous propaganda,’ and put the West at risk of losing credibility, sources in the German Chancellor’s Office told Der Spiegel. General Philip Breedlove made [...]

Despite President Obama’s claim on Monday that he has not yet made a decision about supplying defensive weapons to the Ukrainian army, which is battling Russia-backed separatists who want an independent region within that country, the Russian media is full of predictions. They’re warning of the terrible impact further U.S. involvement in the conflict might have. [...]

The West, particularly NATO states, have launched an aggressive and sophisticated propaganda war accusing Russia for the Ukraine crisis in order to get public support, Patrick Heningson of 21 Century Wire.com, told RT's In the Now. Why don’t facts seem to go anywhere in this Ukraine crisis? [...]

The EU is resisting calls from hotheads to supply arms to Ukraine, saying it won’t be pulled into a confrontation with Russia. Europeans cite the progress in implementing a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine between Kiev and local rebels. The idea of providing lethal aid to Kiev is popular among many NATO officials and American politicians. [...]

The US perceives the Ukrainian crisis as an opportunity to damage Russia and bring Ukraine into NATO, says Srdja Trifkovic Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles Magazine. He says a decision to ship lethal weapons to the Kiev regime has already been made. Despite an improving situation in Ukraine, we are still witnessing aggressive rhetoric from some US officials. Why is that? [...]

A Polish government spokesperson has criticized the deputy prime minister's remark on Ukraine‘s disintegrating economy, calling it “unfair.” Janusz Piechocinski painted a black scenario for the country gripped by hyperinflation and currency plunge. [...]

A curious thing happened today. To quiet protests over food, president Petro Poroshenko ordered the minister of the food reserve to fill the shelves of stores with flour, sugar, canned meat, and buckwheat from the reserve. Well guess what? There was no food in the reserve. It has either been looted (like the vanishing gold), or it was fed to the army. [...]

Security forces in Kiev are blocking entry to Ukraine’s eastern regions, the parliamentary speaker of Donetsk People’s Republic said on Tuesday. "Ukraine has completely blocked Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. No one can leave without a pass," Andrey Purgin told Rossiya-24 television news channel, noting that even with a pass people are not allowed to leave eastern territories. [...]

Poland may follow the UK's lead and send military advisers to Ukraine to help train the country's troops. An aid to the Polish defense minister says a final decision will be made in March with the number expected to be under a hundred. Poland has been a staunch ally of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Warsaw says the number of military advisers will range from around a dozen to several [...]