The German intelligence service estimates the real losses in the Ukrainian civil war at 50,000 dead (civilians and servicemen), which is nearly 10 times higher than reported by the Kiev authorities, German media report. The information comes from a source in German intelligence, who spoke to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAZ) newspaper. [...]

Tuesday protests outside the president's offices in Kiev are just a part of a bigger picture of discontent grasping Ukraine, journalist Neil Clark told RT. With the economy worsening, former Maidan allies are now angered and splitting up. Is this a small pocket of discontent or are we seeing something wider here? [...]

The US is partially responsible for Ukraine’s indiscriminate use of cluster bombs in the country’s east, US Senator John McCain told Russia’s Sputnik news agency. According to McCain, it is due to the US failing to send Kiev other arms. “I think that if we had provided them with the weapons they need, they wouldn’t have felt they had to use cluster bombs. [...]

Ukraine's parliament has passed a law which authorizes commanding officers to use physical force against army defectors. It comes as the latest military draft has seen a lack of enthusiasm on the part of potential soldiers. Ukraine’s parliament voted on Thursday with 260 MPs in favor - only 226 votes were needed to pass the law. [...]

The hryvnia lost 34 percent against the US dollar after the head of the central bank signaled it can no longer support the currency with regular interventions and will allow greater fluctuations. The hyrvnia hit a historic low of 24.5 per 1 USD. “Get used to market volatility," National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor Valery Gontareva told reporters in Kiev on Thursday. [...]

A single day of warfare in eastern Ukraine drains the nation's ailing economy of millions of euros, the Ukrainian president told German media. Poroshenko is asking for money and arms, but so far no European state has agreed to supply weapons to Kiev. The military crackdown in the eastern regions of Ukraine, which has already claimed the lives of at least 5,300 people, is ruining Ukraine’s eco [...]

Some 8,000 Ukrainian troops are believed to be surrounded near the village of Debaltsevo in Donbass, as militia units cut off the only road linking the pocket to Kiev-held territory. The servicemen have been offered the chance to surrender. The forces of the People’s Republic of Donetsk (DPR) have stormed and captured the town of Uglegorsk, a stronghold of the Ukrainian army in the east of th [...]

Washington has been implementing its policy in Ukraine like it is part of the US even it is half way around the world, Richard Becker from the anti-war Answer coalition told RT. The Minsk agreements demand that both sides stop fighting and withdraw heavy weapons. But the US State Department suggested that supplying weapons to Kiev doesn't violate the spirit of the agreements.   [...]

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Barack Obama acknowledged that the United States had "brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine," thus admitting to the highest level of democratic impropriety imaginable. Before we consider Obama’s stunning remarks, and how the Ukrainian people sold their country for a song, let’s rewind to November 2013, when then-President Viktor Yanukovi [...]

Ukraine currently is a poor, uncontrollable and insolvent nation, which suits US interests but poses a colossal problem to Russia, the head of the Russian Presidential Administration has said. “Russia is interested in Ukraine being a friendly, independent state that is capable of providing for itself. Today’s situation causes a great concern on our part. [...]

Ukraine's subversive hacker group CyberBerkut has published documents allegedly exposing dreadful situation with the Kiev's troops attacking separatist forces in the East: war crimes, tremendous loss of lives and wholesale desertion of entrapped troops. The anti-government activists claim they have hacked personal computer of Ukraine’s Judge Advocate General and copied a number of classified [...]

Armed people in uniform speaking fluent English with no accent have been spotted in Mariupol in the aftermath of the rocket hit, fuelling allegations that foreign private military contractors are serving among Ukrainian troops. [...]

The armed coup in Kiev is painfully similar to CIA operations to oust unwanted foreign leaders in Iran, Chile and Venezuela, said US filmmaker Oliver Stone after interviewing Ukraine's ousted president for a documentary. Stone spent four hours in Moscow talking to Viktor Yanukovich, who was deposed from power during the February 2014 coup, the filmmaker wrote on his Facebook page. [...]

Ukraine's GDP shrank by 7.5 percent from January till November 2014, as foreign exchange reserves fell to their lowest level since 2009, and inflation jumped to 21 percent by November, admits the head of the Ukraine's National Bank, Valeriya Gontareva. The country’s foreign exchange reserves shrank to $9.9 billion, as Kiev gave Naftogaz an estimated $8.6 billion to buy gas and settle state gu [...]

Russia will supply coal and electricity to Ukraine without prepayment, Vladimir Putin's spokesman said. Ukraine is trying to cope with energy problems amid an ongoing crisis in the industrial east. This proves the president’s political goodwill and support, “particularly before New Year,” said presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Saturday, as quoted by TASS. [...]

The program imposed by the EU on Ukraine to diminish its alleged economic dependence on Russia is pushing this unstable country into a full scale crisis, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev writes in a newspaper article. The PM emphasized that the planned economic cooperation between Ukraine and the European Union looks very much like neo-colonialism. [...]

Russia's Foreign Ministry has decried the US Senate-backed Ukrainian support bill as "anti-Russian" in a statement released on Friday evening. It says that Washington is seeking to "destroy cooperation" between the two nations. The bill, titled,“An act to support freedom in Ukraine in 2014”, would provide Kiev with weapons, millions of dollars in military assistance, and other forms of aid, [...]

The lack of doctors and medicines in the eastern Ukrainian conflict zone is putting lives at risk says a new World Health Organization report, which describes the situation on the ground as "not just a humanitarian crisis." “No child has been vaccinated in the areas affected by conflict since September 2014, sending polio vaccine coverage down to less than 30-40 percent,” the WHO report rea [...]

The mother of a victim killed in the Malaysian plane crash in eastern Ukraine has started legal proceedings to sue the Ukrainian authorities in the European Court of Human Rights, demanding about $1 million for pain and suffering. The mother of “Olga L.”, a German citizen, submitted her case against Ukraine to the European Court of Human Rights last week. She is demanding €800,000 (roughl [...]

Ukraine's anti-government CyberBerkut hacker group published documents allegedly showing Kiev's detailed demands for money from the US military, and Washington agreeing to giving them support. According to hacktivists, who made the documents public on Tuesday, the Ukrainian military have recently been asking for and being promised financial support from the United States, worth hundreds of thou [...]

New radar data indicating that military aircraft were in the air near Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 has been released by a Russian air safety consultancy. The consultancy provided a snapshot representing the readings taken by a radar station located in Russia’s Rostov, near the Ukrainian border, shortly before and about 20 minutes after the MH17 c [...]

Just over a year ago, thousands of Ukrainians took to Kiev's main square, angry at oligarchs and corruption. But instead of "Europe" and prosperity, they got a coup, more oligarchy, and war. During the three-month “people power” spectacle in Kiev's Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) that began on November 21, 2013, one of the protesters' favorite chants was “Who doesn't jump is a [...]