Consider my source:
"20 inches of snow paralyze capital
KIEV — The city of Kiev has declared a state of emergency after the Ukrainian capital was paralyzed by a huge snowstorm that stalled car, railway, and air traffic. The city was hit by about 20 inches of snow Friday and Saturday, more than it usually receives per month during this season. Tractors, armored vehicles, and other heavy equipment were dispatched Saturday to clear roads blocked by miles-long traffic jams."
Related: Snow ties up European planes, trains, roads
You just forget about the "sudden dump of oddly late snowfall" and the floods that resulted because the agenda-pu$hing media is too busy hollering global warming.
"Ukraine Parliament erupts in turmoil" by Maria Danilova | Associated Press, April 05, 2013
KIEV — Ukrainian lawmakers held two competing Parliament sessions Thursday after pro-government legislators stormed out of the official Parliament hall and moved to a nearby building in response to a protest by opposition parties.
Opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk called the move a ‘‘coup d’etat,’’ branded the offsite parliamentary session unconstitutional and warned that the opposition was ready for an early parliamentary election.
The move was likely to throw Ukrainian politics into further turmoil. Parliament had been virtually paralyzed for months since the October legislative election, which gave a majority to the Party of Regions led by President Viktor Yanukovych. Opposition lawmakers have been paralyzing legislative work in protest of various government policies they consider to be undemocratic.
The president holds the power to dissolve Parliament and force a new election.
The most recent protest erupted Tuesday and continued through Thursday morning. Opposition lawmakers had swarmed the podium of the Verkhovna Rada preventing the Parliament speaker from starting a session in protest of the ruling party’s refusal to call a mayoral election in Kiev. Kiev authorities had come under harsh criticism for failing to properly respond to a severe snowstorm that paralyzed the capital last week....
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Related: Ukraine's Elections
"Group seeks end to Ukraine police abuse" by Maria Danilova | Associated Press, April 12, 2013
KIEV — Oleksandr Popov, an auto mechanic from a Ukrainian provincial city, says police beat, choked, and shocked him for hours, trying to extract a confession out of him. After they realized he was not the man they were looking for, they simply released him, covered with bruises and barely able to stand. When Popov complained, prosecutors refused to press charges.
Welcome to AmeriKa.
In a report released Thursday, Amnesty International said Popov’s story is typical for Ukraine, saying rampant beatings and torture at the hands of police go unpunished. The London-based human rights watchdog urged the government to set up an independent body to investigate the crimes and bring those responsible to justice.
It appears to be the standard operating procedure for all governments, because it happens over here all the time. They can kill you and not have to worry. Exhibit A: Todashev
Amnesty said that since prosecutors work in tandem with the police on daily cases, they cannot be trusted to objectively investigate cases of police abuse and they regularly cover up the crimes of their police colleagues. An independent body with broad powers and total independence from the police and prosecutors force is needed to oversee police actions, Amnesty said.
The same is so true in AmeriKa. Where is Amnesty's report on that? Or if they do put one out the funding gets cut off?
Interior Ministry spokesman Volodymyr Polishchuk questioned the figures, saying police abuse constituted just a small fraction of them and the rest were routine incidents, like a failure to respond to a complaint about noisy neighbors.
Polishchuk said the ministry is working to solve the problem and is planning to introduce an ethics committee to fight police abuse.
Popov, 33, said he dropped off his son at school one day in October when he was snatched off the street by a group of plainclothes officers and driven to a forest.
It's called rendering, right?
There, they handcuffed him, put two plastic bags over his head, and taped electrical wire to his ankles. For hours on end they punched and shocked him, asking him questions about a murder that took place three years earlier in a nearby town.
And they got the wrong guy like our law enforcement so often does.
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"European court condemns Tymoshenko’s jailing" by Maria Danilova and Lori Hinnant | Associated Press, May 01, 2013
KIEV — Ukraine’s jailing of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was a politically motivated violation of her rights, Europe’s human rights court ruled on Tuesday, dealing a harsh blow to President Viktor Yanukovych, who has insisted that the case against his top opponent was not political.
The prosecution of Tymoshenko, the country’s most vocal opposition leader, has strained the former Soviet state’s ties with the European Union and the United States. Tuesday’s ruling put fresh pressure on Yanukovych to ensure Tymoshenko’s release if he wants to sign a key cooperation agreement with Brussels later this year.
There was no immediate comment from the government, other than a promise to closely analyze the ruling.
Tymoshenko, a heroine of Ukraine’s 2004 prodemocracy Orange Revolution who was instantly recognizable with her blond braid wrapped around her head like a crown, was sentenced to seven years in prison in October 2011 after being convicted of exceeding her powers as premier while negotiating a gas contract with Russia.
Related: There She Is....
She's a western agent, folks. That's why they are making a fuss.
The West has condemned Tymoshenko’s jailing and other legal cases against her as politically motivated and insisted on her release. Tymoshenko has accused Yanukovych of masterminding the legal campaign against her to keep her out politics. She insists her rights were violated when she was first jailed in August 2011 during her trial on charges of contempt of court. The Strasbourg-based court agreed unanimously her jailing was ‘‘for other reasons’’ than those permissible by law.
How would you feel if some outside group of nations meddled in our justice system, Americans? Now imagine how the Ukrainians feel.
Oh, yeah, and never mind that she insulted the judge. I know that always goes over well in courts here.
In Kiev, Tymoshenko’s defense team called on Yanukovych to honor the ruling and free her from jail soon. Her daughter Eugenia said that the ruling will be like the ‘‘first ray of sunlight’’ for her mother, undergoing treatment for a spinal condition in a hospital ward.
The Ukrainian government’s response to the ruling was muted. In Strasbourg, Ukraine’s permanent representative to the Council of Europe, Mykola Tochytskyi, stormed out of the courthouse after the ruling was read out.
That sounds pretty loud to me.
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Related: The Ladies of the Ukraine
Hope this article makes you happy:
"Kiev court bans gay pride rally" by Maria Danilova | Associated Press, May 24, 2013
KIEV — A Ukrainian court banned Thursday what would have been Ukraine’s first gay pride demonstration, upholding a suit by city authorities who argued the rally would disturb annual Kiev Day celebrations and could spark violence.
The ruling dashed the hopes of members of Ukraine’s gay and lesbian community, who planned to use the event to fight discrimination and derogatory stereotypes of gays. Last year, organizers canceled the event at the last minute when skinheads gathered at its planned location, intent on beating up the participants. Still, two leading activists were brutally beaten by radicals in subsequent weeks.
While the recognition of gay rights advances in much of the West, antipathy toward homosexuals remains strong in Ukraine and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Homosexuality was a criminal offense in the USSR, and societal resistance to it remains strong two decades later.
The highly influential Orthodox Church strongly opposes gay rights. A small gay pride rally in the capital of Georgia last week was attacked by a large mob that included Orthodox priests; attempted rallies in Moscow in recent years attract crowds of bellicose Orthodox conservatives.
The gay community is now pondering whether to hold the event at a location far from Kiev Day celebrations or merely hold a press briefly on the banning of the rally.
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UPDATE:
"Ukraine officer a suspect in gang rape" by Maria Danilova | Associated Press, July 03, 2013
KIEV — A police officer suspected in the brutal gang rape of a young woman in Ukraine was detained Tuesday after protesters stormed and burned a police station in the southern part of the country over the authorities’ reluctance to place him in custody.
Residents of Vradiyevka, some 200 miles south of Kiev, smashed windows, broke doors, and set fire to the building late Monday, while police fought back with tear gas. The protests continued Tuesday.
The case has caused widespread anger among Ukrainians, who say that corruption, lawlessness, and the impunity of government officials and their wealthy friends have increased markedly since President Viktor Yanukovych came to power three years ago. It has also prompted an outcry among lawmakers in the opposition.
Officials finally caved in to public pressure and detained the officer late Tuesday, according to an Interior Ministry spokesman, Serhiy Burlakov. A court was to decide whether to keep him under arrest or to release him on bail or a pledge not to leave his place of residence.
The victim, a 29-year-old local woman, was returning home from a bar last Wednesday when, she said, she was shoved into a car, driven to the woods, raped, and savagely beaten by two police officers, aided by a driver. The woman remains in the hospital in serious condition, having sustained multiple fractures to her skull and bruises all over her body.
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