June 11:
Russia is responsible for "ongoing violations" of the Minsk II ceasefire signed earlier this year with Ukraine, a top U.S. diplomat has charged. In a speech before the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, Ambassador Daniel Baer, the Obama administration's envoy to the Organization, detailed a pattern of destructive behavior by Russia and its proxies in eastern Ukraine. According to Baer, "combined Russian-separatist forces have violated the ceasefire up and down the line of contact during the past week."
These actions belie the Kremlin's true intentions. "In violating the agreed ceasefire, Russia and the separatists it backs are not only undermining the Minsk agreements but are seeking to further destabilize eastern Ukraine," Baer contends. If Moscow were truly "acting out of concern for the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk," he noted, then it "would be working toward a peaceful resolution of the violence in eastern Ukraine through full implementation of the Minsk agreements."
June 13:
The Pentagon could soon deploy heavy weaponry in Eastern Europe as a deterrent against further Russian aggression. According to UPI, U.S. and allied officials are currently mulling a plan to pre-position enough military equipment in Eastern Europe to outfit a contingent of 5,000 ground troops. The equipment being considered "would include about 1,200 vehicles -- including about 250 M1-A2 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and armored howitzers," the news agency reports.
A statue of Feliks Dzherzhinsky, the architect of the Soviet police state, may be returned to its former home in front of the FSB building at Lubyanka square in Moscow, reports Radio Free Europe. Protestors originally tore down the statue in 1991 following the attempted August coup that year against Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. The campaign to rehabilitate the Dzerzhinsky statue began in recent years as an initiative of the Communist Party of Russia (KPRF), but has since gained the support of noncommunist politicians like former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov. This growing approval was reflected in the recent ruling of the Moscow City Election Commission, which voted on June 11th to permit a referendum on whether the statue should be restored to the site.
June 14:
Russia's government is poised to impose significant restrictions on abortion practices. Germany's Deutsche Welle reports that a new bill currently being reviewed by the Duma would, if enacted, remove state funding for abortions - which are currently "free and available" for all until the twelfth week of pregnancy, and permitted for "social" or medical reasons thereafter until the 23rd week of pregnancy. However, supporters of the measure, including the Russian Orthodox Church and pro-life groups, see it as just the first step in a larger project: a "total ban" on abortions within the Russian Federation.
[EDITORS' NOTE: The push to ban abortions in Russia isn't just a social issue - it's also a demographic one. Supporters of restrictions on the practice argue that curtailing abortions is essential to stabilizing Russia's troubling population trends. "If we manage to cut the number of abortions by 50 percent we would have stable and powerful population growth," Kirill I, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, argued publicly in a floor speech in the Duma earlier this year.]
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