Sort of a reverse of the Cuban missile crisis.
Related: Russia Orders Retreat From Ukraine
You can scroll back through the links if you want.
"Captive observer freed in Ukraine city; 7 still held" by C.J. Chivers and Noah Sneider | New York Times April 28, 2014
SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — The self-appointed mayor of this breakaway city in eastern Ukraine on Sunday displayed eight detained members of a European military observer mission and later released one for health reasons, but otherwise refused to discuss conditions under which the others might go free beyond mentioning a possible prisoner exchange.
In an afternoon of political theater, the de facto public authority here, Vyachislav Ponomaryov, had the detainees led into an auditorium by masked gunmen, who placed the observers in seats once used by the city’s administrators.
He then yielded the floor to the German officer leading the observers, Colonel Axel Schneider, who held a long question-and-answer session with journalists.
With erect posture, the colonel began by referring to himself and his team as “guests” under Ponomaryov’s “protection,” and said the team had suffered no violence at its captors’ hands since being seized on Friday.
“We are not prisoners of war,” he said.
In Washington on Sunday, Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said new penalties expected this week against Moscow for its actions against Ukraine will affect high technology exports to the Russian defense industry and the companies controlled by those closest to President Vladimir Putin.
Blinken says the United States and its allies will designate new sanctions against people in Putin’s inner circle and the companies they control that have ‘‘a significant impact on the Russian economy.’’ President Obama has said Russia isn’t abiding by a deal reached to ease tensions between separatists and the new government in Kiev.
During the display of prisoners in Slovyansk, Schneider noted toward the end of the conference, “I cannot go home on my free decision.”
He said the observers were performing a diplomatically accredited inspection in a rented bus when they were stopped at a checkpoint about 2 miles south of Slovyansk, the stronghold of the anti-Kiev armed militias in eastern Ukraine.
The team was held in a basement for one day and then moved on Saturday to better quarters, he said.
The observer mission included seven military officers — three from Germany and one each from Czech Republic, Denmark, Poland, and Sweden — and a German interpreter, along with five members of the Ukrainian military as escorts.
Schneider flatly rejected Ponomaryov’s claims that the observers were spies, and he dismissed allegations that the team carried ammunition and reconnaissance equipment.
“The only thing we had was a regular business-type road map, scale 1:1 million,” he said. He added that they also had “small-scale cameras.”
His team’s mission, he said several times, had diplomatic status under the so-called Vienna Document 2011 of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which allows member nations to invite military observers from other member states to monitor internal security conditions.
“I have no overlap with any other action executed in this region,” he said. “It is forbidden.”
Then why wasn't anyone told about it?
Knowing what interests are behind AmeriKa's propaganda pre$$, we can safely conclude it was a team of agent provocateurs meant to commit some sort of false flag.
The detention of the team has led to intense diplomatic activity seeking their release. Russia’s representative to the security organization has publicly said that the team should be freed.
But Ponomaryov, who referred to members of the team as “prisoners of the situation,” said he has heard nothing directly from Russia.
He gave no timetable for any decisions, but insisted that the observers had been and would be treated well.
“We understand that these are officers before us,” he said. “And as we are also servicemen, we are required to abide by the officers’ code of honor.”
At another moment, Ponomaryov said the display was intended in part to reassure the observers’ families that the men were in good health.
And later in the day, he released Major Thomas Johansson, a Swedish officer with diabetes, for health reasons, said a spokeswoman for Ponomaryov. (At the end of the conference, Johansson noted that he was not ill and had access to medicine during his captivity.)
As the news conference continued, Schneider gradually expanded on his descriptions of the teams’ circumstances, making clear that its members were detainees.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"US announces more sanctions against Russia over Ukraine" by Mark Landler and Peter Baker | New York Times April 29, 2014
WASHINGTON — In Ukraine on Monday, unidentified gunmen opened fire on the mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, seriously wounding him with at least one bullet to the back while he was riding a bicycle near a major highway, municipal officials said.
The shooting potentially shifts the crisis in the east of the country onto new and perilous ground.
Some are sure hoping, and it's pretty obvious the CIA has loosed the assassination squads.
The mayor, Gennady A. Kernes, had been regarded as seeking to steer a middle course as pro-Russian militants conduct a campaign of occupations of key facilities in eastern cities that is widely believed to be aimed at drawing the region closer into Moscow’s orbit or prompting a Russian intervention similar to the events that led to the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea.
Gotta reinforce and reemphasize the narrative after initially providing a distortion.
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The mayor’s death would be the first assassination of a major politician in the east and present a new challenge to the interim authorities in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, who have seemed largely powerless to dislodge pro-Russian militants and regain control of the east.
(Blog editor shaking his head and near speechless at the spin. It's a self-inflicted challenge because it is their agents and its supporters doing it.)
Kernes has said he supports a united Ukraine and opposes Russian intervention. But he was a supporter of the deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych, and has called the new government tyrannical and illegitimate.
Not really a middle course as described before, and more of a decoded clue regarding who was behind the killing due to the vagueness of the report and the initial distortion.
Also Monday, Konstantinovka became the latest city to fall in eastern Ukraine when militants raised the flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic above the city administration building.
Fewer than a dozen armed men, wearing camouflage and black masks and carrying rifles and a grenade launcher, guarded the building’s entrance here as a work crew erected barricades along the sidewalk. “We want a referendum,” the group’s commander said, declining to give his name.
Also, negotiations for the release of a European military observer team held by militants in Slovyansk resumed with the return to the city of diplomats from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe....
They mean spy team, but you know....
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Did you know Exxon Mobil had major investments in Russia?
UPDATES:
Local Ukrainians share their stories
Chernobyl?
The Cold War’s silver lining
We couldn't have done that anyway? It was necessary to throw away trillions and build weapons that will destroy life on earth because we would not have peacefully cooperated to develop such things? It was worth the lives of millions so technology could advance (and a few profit)?
If such is the mindset of our leaders and their mouthpieces, then we are all doomed.
