Ukrainian Diary – digest of the most important news over the past week (Audio)

Pro-Russian separatists keep shelling the Ukrainian positions in Donbas

This week the violence somehow decreased, with the Donetsk and Mariupol directions witnessing most of the attacks. Separatists also shelled residential districts in the town of Marianka (Mariupol direction), seven houses were damaged, no one was hurt.
   
Andriy Lysenko confirmed that the command of militants in the Donbas allowed illegal armed formations to take down OSCE unmanned aerial vehicles. He said, “According to the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine's Defense Ministry, the command of the so-called «7th Brigade» of the separatists granted permission to militants to shoot down OSCE mission UAVs. This will be done by snipers from disguised positions. These measures are caused by the enemy's desire to hide their systematic violations of the Minsk agreements.”
   
Russia continues disrespecting the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Donbas by sending the 69th column with the so-called humanitarian aid, this time for children.  Ukraine’s Border Service and Customs have never been allowed to check the trucks with the so-called humanitarian cargo. The cars allegedly carry arms, ammunition and other weapons, according to the proofs the Ukrainian side has. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has been calling upon Russia to stop violating the sovereignty of Ukraine. In the meantime on September 25 the UN Human Rights Office issued a new report on human rights situation in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. According to the report the human rights situation in Crimea has significantly deteriorated under Russian occupation. Grave human rights violations, such as arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment and torture, and at least one extra-judicial execution were documented. The report said people without Russian citizenship who hold a residency permit in Crimea are now "deprived of important rights" and "do not enjoy equality before the law." Now they cannot own agricultural land, vote and be elected, register a religious community, apply to hold a public meeting, hold positions in the public administration, and reregister their private vehicle on the peninsula." The document also says hundreds of prisoners and pretrial detainees "have been transferred to the Russian Federation" in a practice that is "strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law."
   
Meanwhile, the city of Kalynivka, Vinnytsia region, Western Ukraine has returned to normal life after strong fire destroyed arms depot located in the city. Mine clearance in Kalynivka and its suburbs will be completed in several days, according to Mykola Chechotkin, head of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. He said, “There are 20 pyrotechnic crews in Kalynivka, that have already started demining the territory of settlements. I think that in the next few days we will clear the land and people will be able to return to a normal life. Also, in the future, we are completing a plan for the further demining of the territories that are not inhabited by people.” The Emergency Service announced the restoration of automobile and railway traffic in the areas where it had been previously stopped due to explosions in ammunition depots in the Vinnytsia region. On the 26th of September, at 10 p.m. Kyiv time, ammunition explosions in the Kalynivka arsenal broke out. About 30 thousand people were evacuated from the danger zone. According to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, two people were injured. The explosions in the depots were defined as sabotage by law enforcers.


Ukraine Commemorated Victims of Babi Yar
   
On Friday, Sep. 29 Jewish leaders in Ukraine have unveiled a new project to line a route to the site of an infamous Holocaust massacre with tombstones rescued from a disused Jewish cemetery in the capital, Kyiv. The innovative heritage project will lead to Babi Yar, a ravine where Nazi soldiers shot and killed 33,771 Jews in two days in September 1941, one of the worst massacres of the Shoah. Before the war, Ukraine had one of Europe’s largest Jewish populations, but the vast 26 hectares of the Lukianivka Jewish Cemetery in the city soon became a site of atrocities, and by the end of the war it had been destroyed, with graves transferred and tombstones demolished. In recent months, however, volunteers and workers at the Babi Yar National Historical Memorial Preserve and the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre have uncovered more than 70 memorial plates and tombstones from the bottom of the nearby Repyakhiv Yar. These will now be displayed in a new lapidarium – a place where stone monuments and fragments of archaeological interest are exhibited – to create a “road of sorrow” from the cemetery’s former office to the Menorah memorial.
   
Leaders of the Ukrainian state honored the memory of the Babyn Yar massacre victims on Friday. President Petro Poroshenko called it ‘a common tragedy of Jewish and Ukrainian people’. ‘Babyn Yar is one of the deepest wounds inflicted by the Holocaust. It is our joint tragedy, first of all that of the Jews and Ukrainians. May the deceased innocent rest in peace,’ he posted at Facebook. Babyn Yar (Babi Yar) tragedy is credited as probably as the toughest war crime in the WWII. In September 1941, this ravine, located in Kyiv, became the graveyard for thousands of Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Roma, Soviet POWs, political opponents and insane people. On September 29 and 30 alone, the Nazis murdered over 3,000 Jews.  Ukrainian historian Andriy Rukas said, “Babi Yar witnessed mass executions of victims of the Nazi regime in Kyiv.  The first executions were carried out there in late September 1941 before the occupants started shooting the Jews. And they kept shooting and burying there people until Nov 6, 1944, when the Soviet troops recaptured Kyiv. According to the official statistics, in this period of time some 100 000 people were massacred in Babi Yar, and 70 % of them were the Jews, who became the first victims of the Nazi here.”


World Community Condemned Sentensing of Ilmi Umerov
   
Axel Fischer, PACE rapporteur for the Monitoring Committee in respect of Ukraine, strongly condemned the sentencing of Ilmi Umerov, Deputy Chairman of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, by Russian appointed judges in Crimea. "It is unacceptable that the Russian authorities prosecute and detain Ukrainian citizens for their opposition to the illegal annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. I therefore call for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr Umerov by the Russian authorities," stated Axel Fischer. The EU earlier called the verdict for Ilmi Umerov by the occupational court in Crimea as a violation of international humanitarian law. This is according to the statement released by the EU Delegation to Ukraine. "The sentencing of Mr Umerov is a serious violation of his human rights, another example of persecution of the Crimean Tatar community, and a further and clear illustration of the severe deterioration of human rights in the Crimean peninsula, as most recently documented by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in his report published earlier this week," - said EU officials. The document also states that the European Union continues to support the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. “We once again call for the immediate release of all citizens of Ukraine, who are illegally detained in the Crimean peninsula and in Russia,” the statement reads. After the delivered verdict, Ilmi Umerov speaking to those who came to support him near the building of the Simferopol court, said, “Despite this situation, I once again declare that I do not change my convictions, I do not change my opinion, and I remain a strong supporter of the return of Crimea to Ukraine. I consider annexation as annexation, occupation as occupation, and the current authorities as criminals.”
   
On the 27th of September, the Simferopol District Court controlled by Russia found Ilmi Umerov guilty in his appeals to violate the territorial integrity of Russia and sentenced him to a two-year imprisonment. He was also banned to execute public activities for 2 years. The arrest, search and prosecution, as well as being held at a psychiatric hospital for the forced forensic examination of  Umerov, who has a poor health, have caused an international resonance.

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