Iran plane crash: Ukrainian jet was 'unintentionally' shot down

Iran has admitted "unintentionally" shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board.

An investigation found that "missiles fired due to human error", President Hassan Rouhani said. He described the crash as an "unforgivable mistake".

The military said the jet turned towards a sensitive site belonging to Iran's Revolutionary Guards and was then mistaken for a cruise missile.

Iran had previously rejected suggestions that it was to blame.

The downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 on Wednesday came just hours after Iran carried out missile strikes on two airbases housing US forces in Iraq.

The plane came down shortly after taking off from Tehran

The strikes were a response to the killing of senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad on 3 January.

Iran initially denied reports that one of its missiles had brought down the Ukrainian plane near the capital, Tehran. But pressure quickly mounted after Western intelligence officials said evidence pointed to Iranian involvement.

The Ukrainian flight, which was en route to Kyiv, came down near Imam Khomeini Airport shortly after take-off. Victims included dozens of Iranians and Canadians, as well as nationals from Ukraine, the UK, Afghanistan and Germany.

What explanation did Iran give?

On Saturday morning, an Iranian military statement read on state TV announced that it had struck flight PS752 with a missile by mistake.

It said the plane had turned towards a "sensitive military centre" of the Revolutionary Guards, a force set up to defend the country's Islamic system. The statement said it had the "flying posture and altitude of an enemy target".

Because of heightened tensions with the US, Iran's military "was at its highest level of readiness", the statement added. "In such a condition, because of human error and in an unintentional way, the flight was hit."

The military apologised for downing the plane, saying it would upgrade its systems to prevent such "mistakes" in the future. It added that those responsible would be held accountable and prosecuted.

Iran had previously denied it was a missile strike that downed the Ukrainian jet

Ukraine International Airlines denies that the plane veered from its expected course before the crash. It says officials should have closed the airport.

Brig-Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guards aerospace commander, said the force took "full responsibility" for the crash.

He said a request had been made for a no-fly zone in the area before the incident but - for reasons that are unclear - this was rejected.

Gen Hajizadeh also said the aircraft was shot down by a short-range missile that exploded next to it. He said he informed the authorities about what had happened on Wednesday, days before Iran publicly admitted its involvement.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the military to investigate "the possible shortcomings or mistakes" that led to the crash.

In a statement, he said there was "proof of human error" and confirmed that he had "requested the relevant authorities to take necessary measures to prevent" it happening again.

Armed Forces’ internal investigation has concluded that regrettably missiles fired due to human error caused the horrific crash of the Ukrainian plane & death of 176 innocent people.
Investigations continue to identify & prosecute this great tragedy & unforgivable mistake. #PS752

— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) 11 January 2020

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif apologised to the families of the victims but laid part of the blame on the US. "Human error at a time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to [this] disaster," he said.

And Iran's ambassador to the UK, Hamid Baeidinejad, apologised for sharing "wrong findings" about the crash. He had said Iran was "confident" that a missile had not been launched.

"I conveyed the official findings... that [a] missile could not be fired and hit the Ukrainian plane at that period of time," he said. "I apologise."

An act of de-escalation

Analysis by Lyse Doucet, Chief international correspondent

This is a major admission at a crucial moment for Iran.

Taking responsibility for such a tragic error is highly unusual, but so is the crisis that now confronts the Islamic Republic.

Iran has decided it has to own this disaster to avoid it triggering another war of words with the West or exacerbating further anger and anguish among its own people, who are reeling from one calamity after another.

Make no mistake, this admission was an act of de-escalation.

The repercussions at home may soon be clear. Iran's foreign minister has already sought to shift blame by saying it was "a crisis caused by US adventurism".

But the big question now is: who took the decision to allow a civilian airliner to take off when Iran's airspace was shot through with such tension?

What has the reaction been?

There were 57 Canadian nationals on board the downed flight and the country's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the crash as "a national tragedy".

In a statement, he demanded "transparency and justice for the families and loved ones of the victims".

"We will continue working with our partners around the world to ensure a complete and thorough investigation," he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Iran to punish those responsible. "We expect Iran... to bring the guilty to the courts," he said.

Elsewhere, the president of Ukraine International Airlines said: "We didn't doubt for a second that our crew and our plane couldn't be the cause for this horrible crash".

"These were our best guys and girls. The best," Yevhenii Dykhne said of the nine crew members who were on board.

Separately, Ukraine's top security official said his country's investigators had gathered conclusive evidence of a missile strike before Iran admitted responsibility on Saturday.

Oleksiy Danilov showed the BBC's Jonah Fisher photographs of the aircraft which he said proved it had been downed by a missile. The president's office also released images which it said supported this.

What happened before Iran's announcement?

The statement marks a stark departure from the denials of recent days. As recently as Friday, Iran was insistent that the plane had not been shot down.

"The thing that is clear to us and that we can say with certainty is that this plane was not hit by a missile," Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation (CAOI) chief Ali Abedzadeh said.

 On Thursday, government spokesman Ali Rabiei accused the US and its allies of "lying and engaging in psychological warfare" by speculating about the cause of the crash.

But as evidence pointing to a missile strike built, calls for a transparent investigation grew louder.

Video obtained by the New York Times appeared to show a missile streaking across the night sky and then exploding on contact with a plane.

On Thursday, TV images showed a mechanical digger helping to clear debris from the crash site, raising concerns that important evidence could have been removed.

In response, Iran promised a full investigation, inviting air accident agencies from Ukraine, Canada and the US to take part.

A missile strike on a passenger plane is not unprecedented. In 1988, an Iranian aircraft was shot down in error by a US navy warship and 290 people were killed.

And in 2014, a Russian-made missile hit a Malaysian civilian airliner over Ukraine, killing 298 people.

(Source: BBC)

Iran plane crash: Ukraine deletes statement attributing disaster to engine failure

No explanation has been offered after page vanishes from official site

Ukraine’s embassy in Iran has appeared to delete a statement suggesting technical problems were to blame for the crash of a passenger jet near Tehran on Wednesday morning.

That statement appeared to back up earlier assertions by Iranian officials that a faulty engine had led to the accident. 

“According to preliminary information,” the statement had read, “the plane crashed as a result of a technical failure of the engine. The possibility of a terrorist attack or missile strike are currently ruled out.” 

But by 10am local time, that page was no longer accessible from the embassy’s site, with no additional information given about the details of the crash. 

Later, a new statement appeared at the same web address saying that it was for an official commission to determine the cause of the accident. 

There was no immediate explanation for the apparent retraction. 

Flight PS752, a Boeing 737-800, took off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport at 6:12 am, losing contact two minutes later. The crash happened a few hours after Iran launched missile strikes on US military bases in Iraq.  

According to the Ukrainian Security Council, 177 people were registered on board the flight, the vast majority of them Iranians. Iranian authorities were quick to blame technical problems for the crash. 

Qassem Biniaz, a spokesman for Iran’s Road and Transportation Ministry, said the pilot “lost control of the plane” after a fire broke out in one of its engines.

But in a hastily arranged press conference on Wednesday, Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) discounted the possibility of technical problems. 

There was “nothing wrong” with the plane, insisted UIA's president Yevgen Dykhne – it was three years old and had only two days previously undergone a scheduled technical check. 

"We guarantee the safety of our aircraft and the high qualification of our crews," he said. 

The airline announced it would be suspending all flights to Iran until further notice. 

(Source: Independent)

Russia may have nuclear arms in Crimea, hacked EU cables warn

Diplomatic messages describe annexed area of Ukraine as ‘hot zone’ and Trump as ‘bully’

Brussels has launched an investigation into the apparent hacking of the EU’s diplomatic communications network after thousands of sensitive cables were made public, including descriptions of Donald Trump as a “bully” and Crimea as a “hot zone” where nuclear weapons may be present.

The dump of confidential cables on a public site laid bare the concerns of EU diplomats and officials over the Trump administration and its dealings with Russia and China.

Among the reports made public was a warning on 8 February that Crimea had been turned into a “hot zone where nuclear warheads might have already been deployed”.

Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian territory in 2014. In public, neither the EU nor the US has suggested there is any evidence of the presence of nuclear weapons.

The EU’s secretariat said in response to the first report of the leak in the New York Times that it was “aware of allegations regarding a potential leak of sensitive information” and was “actively investigating the issue”.

The European commission’s vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis, a former prime minister of Latvia, said there was every “institution or country” was vulnerable to such attacks but he declined to comment on the leaks.

Russian jet fighters fly over a bridge connecting the Russian mainland with Crimea. Photograph: Pavel Rebrov/Reuters

Much of the content of the cables merely confirmed publicly stated worries in Brussels about the Trump administration, and the descent of the world’s rules-based order, but the security breach will be a major concern.

According to one note, European diplomats described July’s meeting in Finland between Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as “successful (at least for Putin)”.

In a press conference after the meeting, Trump had gone off-script. He appeared to offer the Russians the opportunity to question US intelligence agents in exchange for US interrogation of Russians indicted by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is investigating claims of collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Moscow.

According to a 20 July note, White House officials subsequently assured the EU that Trump’s agreement would be “nipped down”.

A second cable, detailing a discussion held on 16 July between European officials and Xi Jinping, quotes the Chinese president as comparing Trump’s “bullying” of his government over trade to a “no-rules freestyle boxing match”.

The account further quoted the Chinese president vowing that his country “would not submit to bullying” from the US, “even if a trade war hurt everybody”.

“China was not a backward country any more,” the European diplomat noted Xi as saying.

A cable in March quoted EU officials speaking of “messaging efforts” to mitigate “the negative attitude to the EU [of the Trump administration] in the beginning, which had created a lot of insecurity”.

Caroline Vicini, the deputy head of the EU mission in Washington, suggested that diplomats from member states continued to describe the US as “our most important partner”. The cable also recommended bypassing Trump by dealing with Congress.

The notes, covering three years of diplomatic activity, had apparently been posted online by hackers, where they were discovered by a security company called Area 1, who passed the information on to the New York Times.

The newspaper said the techniques deployed by the hackers resembled those used by a unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The leaked cables, of which 1,100 were passed to the New York Times, were only ‘restricted’ documents, however, rather than the EU’s most secretive communications which are held on a different network

The hackers are also said to have infiltrated the networks of the UN during the months in 2016 when North Korea was launching missiles. References are reportedly made to confidential meetings of the UN secretary general, António Guterres, with leaders in south-east Asia.

Blake Darche, co-founder of Area 1, said he believed that tens of thousands more such documents have been stolen. “We estimate that the ones we found are a small fraction of the overall operation,” he said. “From what we can see, the EU has a significant problem on their hands.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Ukraine bans Russian men aged 16-60 from entering country

Restrictions taken to prevent "private armies" forming on Ukrainian soil, country's president

Ukraine has banned Russian men of military age from entering the country for the duration of its state of martial law.

The move comes as the long-simmering conflict between the two nations escalated in the Black Sea on Sunday.

Russian border guards opened fire on and captured three Ukrainian vessels and their 24-member crew.

President Petro Poroshenko said the measures would stop Russia implanting “private army units … that are in fact subdivisions of the Russian army”.

Russia says the Ukrainians had violated its border while Ukraine says its ships were acting in line with international maritime rules.

Head of the border service Petr Tsigikal said his agency had been put on the highest alert and would apply checks to the entry of all foreigners, not only Russians.

There would be exceptions, but only for humanitarian reasons like funerals, he said.

The news comes on the back of other restrictions announced in connection with the application of martial law across 10 border regions this week.

On Thursday, Kiev announced that it would deny foreigners the right to enter Crimea via Ukraine. This means the only way of travelling to Crimea is via Russia, which Ukraine considers to be illegal. It is unclear whether exceptions will be made.

Friday’s measures are likely to complicate the lives of many living in border regions, especially those with relatives in Russia. Mr Poroshenko insisted the imposition of martial law would not affect the civic rights of Ukrainians.

The blanket travel ban would seem to be one area where that is not entirely true.

The Tass news agency on Friday quoted Russian government-appointed ombudswoman Lyudmila Lubina as saying the vessels’ commanders are being transferred to Moscow for interrogation. The other 21 remain in custody in Crimea.

A Crimea court earlier this week ruled to keep the Ukrainian seamen behind bars for two months pending the investigation.

Mr Poroshenko has urged Nato to deploy warships to the Sea of Azov, while Russia warned that would worsen tensions.

Donald Trump has cancelled a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Argentina citing Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian vessels.

Critics suggested the US president’s abrupt decision not to meet his Russian counterpart was linked to domestic developments after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, revealed he had lied to Congress to cover up the fact he was negotiating a real estate deal in Moscow on Mr Trump’s behalf during the Republican presidential primary in 2016.

Theresa May also hit out at Mr Putin’s aggression in Ukraine ahead of the Buenos Aires summit.

The prime minister called on Russia to “release the ships and the sailors” it had seized after the clashes off the coast of its neighbour.

(Source: The Independent)

Ukraine has removed all 1,320 statues of Lenin

Monuments to the Bolshevik leader have been dismantled in every town, village and city controlled by the Kiev-based government

Ukraine has removed all 1,320 statues of the communist revolutionary Lenin following a government drive to rid the country of Soviet-era symbols.

Monuments to the Bolshevik leader have been dismantled in every town, village and city controlled by the Kiev-based government that brought down pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych three years ago, according to officials.

A crane manoeuvers a statue of a female worker away from the main Lenin monument in the newly named Liberty Square, formerly Lenin Square, in central Kiev. Ukraine led the other Soviet republics in a move to secede from the Union ( Getty Images )

The anti-Soviet initiative, which also orders the renaming of streets and cities, was made law by President Petro Poroshenko in May 2015, according to The Times.

Many places have been named after Ukranian heroes, however a Lenin Street in Zakarpattia, a western region, was renamed Lennon Street in a tribute to the Beatles.

Volodymyr Viatrovych, director of the Institute of National Remembrance, confirmed that every Lenin statue had been removed along with 1,069 other Soviet monuments.

Despite the policy, Communist relics still remain in the eastern parts of Ukraine controlled by Kremlin-backed forces.

According to United Nations figures more than 10,000 have died in Ukraine after Russia took control of Crimea in 2014.

(Source: The Independent)

Watching the World Cup in a war zone, where every goal matters

Headquarters for the 2nd Battalion of the 92nd Brigade of the Ukrainian Army is in a pummeled building that once housed the district road repair agency. War has left the building in even worse shape than the roads. At the entrances, sandbags and tires are stacked in fortification. Logs reinforce the basement ceiling against the shelling.

In the command center, a quarter mile from the front line of a simmering conflict, troop locations are shown on one television. There are blue triangles for the Ukrainian military, red diamonds for the Russian-backed separatists. A second television shows surveillance from cameras placed along the firing zone.

Oleg A., left, the commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 92nd Brigade of Ukraine’s army, talked with soldiers while Alexei Brodskyi, a radio operator, caught a glimpse of a World Cup match on Thursday.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

On Thursday evening, a third television tracked Russians, but these happened to be members of the country’s national soccer team playing the opening match of the 2018 World Cup in Moscow.

A peculiar and fragile normalcy has returned to the mining and steel region of eastern Ukraine after four years of fighting that has taken roughly 10,300 lives and displaced about 1.5 million people. Low-grade skirmishes continue daily, and people are still dying, but the Ukrainian military and the separatists have reached a treaty-enforced standstill, like boxers in a clinch.

On Thursday, for the first half anyway, the usual thud of nighttime shelling remained largely silent as some Ukrainian commanders, troops and townspeople watched Russia cruise to a 5-0 victory over Saudi Arabia, sports briefly distracting from politics and war.

The 2nd Battalion had screens in their headquarters highlighting various military activities, as well as the World Cup opener.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Oleg A., 40, the Ukrainian commander of the 2nd Battalion, who like many soldiers declined to give his full name, turned the television to soccer more out of obligation than curiosity. It was for the others, he said. He prefers Formula One auto racing.

“I don’t understand why 22 people run around with one ball,” he said.

A Diversion From War
Ukraine did not qualify for this year’s World Cup. Still, some soldiers said that they looked forward to watching the matches, if disruptions caused by a blocked Ukrainian television channel and slow local internet service could be resolved.

“It unloads your brain,” said a soldier who gave his name as Nikolai. “When you are in the trenches, you can watch a match and the way the ball is passed and you forget everything.”

Many international observers wondered before the World Cup whether fighting would escalate or calm down during the tournament. As the opener began, Oleg A., the battalion commander, led a Times reporter, photographer and translator along a two-mile excursion of Ukrainian combat positions near the front line, to see if any of his troops were watching.

Graying and brawny, garrulous and darkly funny in the way of soldiers, Oleg A. carried an AK-47. The fields and forest felt empty, hushed. The loudest sounds seemed to come from the trilling of birds.

“I don’t think there will be any shooting for two hours,” he said of the rebels. “Russia is playing. Everyone will be watching, 100 percent.”

A soldier on patrol at a combat position near the front line in Avdiivka, Ukraine.
CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Near a bunker along a weed-strewn, defended highway, Oleg A. encountered four of his soldiers. Two were filling sandbags. One of them, Aleksandr I., 27, said, “We love football but we don’t have the capacity to watch. The internet is too slow.”

Oleg A. laughed and said, “We will only hear it.”

He looked toward a rebel position just over a mile away. “If those guys will be shouting, everything will be fine,” he said.

At the next Ukrainian position, an Orthodox church along a dirt road in the forest, soccer was again absent. Same problem with the internet.

Water was offered from a well.

“It’s holy water,” one soldier said.

“No,” another said, “it’s beer.”

One of the soldiers, Maxsim S., is a 35-year-old lieutenant who also coaches soccer. Asked what he felt about the Russian team, he replied: “I’m not against and I’m not for. They are people. There is a division between people and the government.”

“You’re starting to worry me,” his commander cut in. “You sound like a philosopher.”

Oleg A. and another soldier surveyed the situation at an abandoned church near the front line.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Six years ago, Ukraine played co-host to the last major international soccer tournament held in the region, when it shared the 2012 European championships with Poland.

The industrial city of Donetsk — only a few miles from the Ukrainian positions — hosted five matches, including a semifinal. The atmosphere was festive back then. Acrobats walked outside the stadium on stilts. Security personnel carried riot helmets in the crook of their arms, like baskets of flowers. A new airport opened for the tournament. The architectural tilt of Donbas Arena made it seem to lift off like a flying saucer.

But Donetsk is no longer controlled by the Ukrainian government. The city is rebel-held and the separatist area is known as the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic. The New York Times repeatedly requested permission to enter the rebel area during the World Cup but was denied.

Fighting here began in 2014, after Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, fled the country and separatist movements broke out in two eastern Ukrainian provinces. (Russia also annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine that year.) The airport in Donetsk was shelled to a husk. Donbas Arena was wounded, less seriously, by shrapnel.

The stadium now sits empty. Its former occupant, the Ukrainian champion soccer team Shakhtar Donetsk, now plays its home matches 200 miles away in Kharkiv.

Last month, after Shakhtar clinched its 11th title in the Ukrainian Premier League, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, wrote in a congratulatory message on Facebook: “I have no doubt that the time will come and this renowned football club will return to its home stadium in the de-occupied Donetsk and will glorify the Ukrainian state with new successes, including in the Champions League.”

Hard Feelings
In most countries, soccer and politics are inextricably connected, like a ball to a foot. Ukraine’s national public television network declined to broadcast the World Cup this year, saying it would amount to Russian propaganda. The Ukrainian soccer federation did not grant credentials to the country’s journalists or request its quota of tickets. There were calls by some politicians to boycott the tournament.

But Ukrainians are passionate about soccer, and there is no comparable international sporting event between mid-June and mid-July. Two other Ukrainian channels decided to broadcast the matches, and some 6,000 Ukrainian fans purchased tickets to attend games in Russia.

Still, Andriy Pavelko, the president of the Ukrainian soccer federation, said that he would follow the matches only on Italian or British television. “We must have some moral restrictions,” he told reporters.

Members of the Ukraine Volunteer Army of Dmitriy Yarosh, a nationalistic militia formerly known as the Right Sector, played a soccer game of their own on Wednesday in Avdiivka.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Local children also showed off their soccer skill at a neighborhood field in Avdiivka on Wednesday.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Yuri Zapisotsky, general secretary of the soccer federation, said in a statement that any broadcasts of the World Cup by Ukrainian channels would be considered collaboration “with the country-aggressor,” meaning Russia.

Eastern Ukraine, though, is far from politics in the distant capital of Kiev. Many people in this region have cultural or familial ties to Russia. In Avdiivka (pronounced av-DEEV-ka) there appears to be little, if any, stigma in rooting for the Russian national team.

“It’s only football,” Inna Koslova, 50, a resident, said as she walked home from a convenience store. “We don’t divide people here.”

The town has a population estimated between 20,000 and 34,000. Life is a jarring mix of the routine and the disrupted. Children and soldiers play soccer at the local stadium, ignoring jagged shrapnel in the grass.

Artyom A., the leader of a unit affiliated with an ultranationalist Ukrainian volunteer battalion known as the Right Sector, picked up a piece of spiky metal and said, “Don’t worry, it won’t explode.”

There are two smaller soccer fields, with artificial turf, where children and adults play in late afternoons in the center of town. Like others strolling in the evening and sitting on park benches, they ignore the sound of mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and tubelike, anti-tank weapons known as SPGs that ritualistically begin to boom like fireworks in the distance.

“It’s not heavy shelling,” said Dima Belous, 13. “You get used to it.”

Nina Kovalyova, a resident of a front-line neighborhood in Avdiivka, outside her house which has been damaged by shelling numerous times over the past several years.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

The last heavy fighting here occurred in February 2017, evidenced by the punch-drunk apartment blocks with their pockmarked facades at the city’s edge. Along Yasinovatskyi Lane, leading to the 2nd Battalion headquarters, most everyone has left behind their battered homes, their cherry and apricot trees and even some of their pets. “Looking for a cat,” says a sign spray-painted on a wall.

The home of Nina and Evgeni Kovalyova is typical on this street: shrapnel holes in the metal gate, plastic covering the windows, replacement tin on the shelled roof, no gas for heat in the winter, only well water to drink.

The couple, both pensioners, left for a time when the fighting began, but returned to protect their belongings, to renew their sense of place. “Where to go?” Nina Kovalyova, 64, said. “How to move?”

In a way, she feels lucky. She took visitors to a neighbor’s empty house across the street, saying looters had stolen nearly everything there, “even the spoons and forks.”

She would like to watch the World Cup, she said, if the available Ukrainian television channel is unblocked. But she especially misses traveling to Donbas Arena with her daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law to watch Shakhtar Donetsk.

“Everything is good when it is close to home,” Ms. Kovalyova said. “When it flees, it’s not the same.”

The building being used as the command headquarters for the 2nd Battalion housed a district road repair agency’s offices before the war.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Fireworks in Two Cities
Up the road, Oleg A. returned to 2nd Battalion headquarters at halftime of the World Cup opener, ferried in a combat ambulance. The driver, Capt. Valentin Kocherzhuk, 56, said he expected shooting from the rebels whether Russia won or lost.

“It’s better to hope for 0-0,” he said.

At headquarters, the score was relayed. Russia was already ahead 2-0.

The match was being shown on a Russian television channel. Capt. Dima Shvets, 29, sat in a lounge chair the color of camouflage. He seemed to be the biggest soccer fan at headquarters and said he would love to attend a World Cup.

Even in Russia?

“I’d rather go to Brazil,” he said.

Oleg A. talked with soldiers during the game. An uptick in fighting demanded their attention while the game was in its second half. CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Others chose not to watch. It was a matter of principle, said Lt. Alexei J, who is 34. He pointed to his arm and lifted his olive drab T-shirt to show his scars, including a thick pink line along his abdomen.

“All of my 100 shards are telling me not to watch football,” he said.

Lt. Dmitry Yarovoy, 28, the battalion chief of staff, also did not plan to watch. Games seemed too frivolous when enemy soldiers faced one another only 40 or 50 meters apart. “We are not in the right place and the right time to watch football,” he said.

He spent much of the second half in front of a television, observing surveillance cameras along the front line. The Ukrainians had received small-arms fire from the rebels during the first half, he said. Now a sniper and eight or nine other separatists had moved beneath a bridge about three-quarters of a mile away.

Russia went ahead 3-0, but Oleg paid little attention. He had eaten a bowl of cold soup and removed his boots. In his sandals, he peered at his laptop and ordered a strike of 73-millimeter SPG projectiles to push the rebels back. The artillery kicked up plumes of dust and smoke.

“Our night games,” Capt. Shvets said.

Valentin Kocherzhuk, 56, a captain in the Ukrainian army, smoked a cigarette outside the command headquarters on Thursday.CreditBrendan Hoffman for The New York Times

The rebels responded with 82-millimeter mortar fire. Oleg glanced at the match and said, “I’d like to put a big shell in the center of the field.” He sensed that he had gone too far. Quickly, he added, “That’s a joke.”

Russia went ahead by 4-0, then 5-0. The Ukrainians lobbed 120-millimeter mortar fire. Oleg motioned his hands, explaining that one side played a card, then the other side raised the bet.

“Football is finished,” Capt. Shvets said. “Now we start poker.”

(Source: NYT)

Meet the dogs of Chernobyl – the abandoned pets that formed their own canine community

Hundreds of stray dogs have learned to survive in the woods around the exclusion zone – mainly descendants of those left behind after the nuclear disaster, when residents were banned from taking their beloved pets to safety, writes Julie McDowall in the Guardian. Read on: 

We are in the woods behind the Chernobyl plant when the dog runs at us. It is thin, with brindle fur and yellow eyes. Igor, our guide, makes a lunge and clamps his hands over its snout. They wrestle in the snow and icy water shakes from the trees. The dog’s eyes flash as Igor grabs a stick and throws it into the trees. Distracted, the animal chases it and our little group is free to move. But the dog reappears and drops the stick at Igor’s foot. He throws it again. The dog brings it back. I almost laugh with relief.

Igor, who, it turns out, is very familiar with the dog, throws a few snowballs, which it tries to catch and chew. “This is Tarzan,” says Igor. “He’s a stray who lives in the exclusion zone. His mum was killed by a wolf, so the guides look out for him, chuck a few sticks, play a few games. He’s only a baby, really …”

The abandoned dogs at Chernobyl endure harsh Ukrainian winters. Photograph: Courtesy of Solo East

Tarzan isn’t alone. There are approximately 300 stray dogs in the 2,600km² zone. They live among the moose and lynx, the hares and wolves that have also found a home here. But while the Mongolian horses and Belarusian bears were recently introduced to the area, and other animals have come in as opportunists, the dogs are native.

After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, Pripyat and the surrounding villages were abandoned, and residents were not allowed to take their pets to safety. Chernobyl Prayer, a devastating oral history of the period, tells of “dogs howling, trying to get on the buses. Mongrels, alsatians. The soldiers were pushing them out again, kicking them. They ran after the buses for ages.” Heartbroken families pinned notes to their doors: “Don’t kill our Zhulka. She’s a good dog.” There was no mercy. Squads were sent in to shoot the animals. But some survived and it is mainly their descendants that populate the zone.

The dogs often carry increased levels of radiation in their fur and have a shortened life expectancy. Photograph: Courtesy of Solo East

Life is not easy for the Chernobyl strays. Not only must they endure harsh Ukrainian winters with no proper shelter, but they often carry increased levels of radiation in their fur and have a shortened life expectancy. Few live beyond the age of six.

But it’s not all bad news. The dogs that live near the zone’s checkpoints have little huts made for them by the guards, and some are wise enough to congregate near the local cafe, having learned that a human presence equals food. These canine gangs act as unofficial Chernobyl mascots, there to greet visitors who stop at Cafe Desyatka for some borscht.

Nadezhda Starodub, a guide with the Chernobyl tour specialist Solo East, says the visitors (there are no “tourists” in the zone) love the dogs. “Most of the time people find them cute, but some think they might be contaminated and so avoid touching the dogs.” There are no rules that forbid a visitor from handling them, but Nadezhda asks her charges to exercise the same common sense they would when approaching any stray. “Some guides are afraid of complaints,” she says, “so they try to avoid the dogs to stay on the safe side. But I love them.”

 The strays are helped by the Clean Futures Fund, which has set up veterinary clinics in the area. Photograph: Courtesy of Solo East

While the dogs get some food and play from the visitors, their health needs are met by Clean Futures Fund, a US non-profit organisation that helps communities affected by industrial accidents, which has set up three veterinary clinics in the area, including one inside the Chernobyl plant. The clinics treat emergencies and issue vaccinations against rabies, parvovirus, distemper and hepatitis. They are also neutering the dogs. Lucas Hixson, the fund’s co-founder, says: “I don’t think we’ll ever get zero dogs in the exclusion zone but we want to get the population down to a manageable size so we can feed and provide long-term care for them.” This makes Chernobyl safer for the dogs, but also for the workers and visitors.

‘We want to get the population down to a manageable size so we can feed and provide long-term care for them.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Solo East

The Chernobyl plant has recently been sealed under a new “sarcophagus” designed and built by a multinational group of experts, and similar cooperation can be seen with the dogs. In the woods behind Chernobyl I look again at yellow-eyed Tarzan and see, not a wild animal, but a playful example of global kindness and cooperation.

My grandfather, who finally came back from the second world war in 1981

Katja Petrowskaja gained a grandfather when she was 10. He turned up after an absence of 40 years – but where had he been? And had he done or seen something so horrific it made it impossible for him to return? She resolved to find out

I had two grandmothers with floral names: Rosa and Margarita. They were too old to enjoy their retirement, and they were alone. What I didn’t have were grandfathers. One had died on my second birthday and I don’t remember him. The other, Vasily, suddenly appeared when I was about 10, out of nowhere, with the words: “I am back.”

Until that point, I hadn’t known about his existence, so I was astonished, amused and happy to get a grandfather.

I spent my childhood in the ancient city of Kiev, the biggest city in the Soviet Union after Moscow and Leningrad. We lived in a 14-storey apartment block on the left bank of the majestic Dnieper river. Our entire neighbourhood district was built after the second world war and seemed to have no past, only a shiny Soviet future. We always said “the war”, as if it were the only one, and everything around us was about this war. No family was spared. The perished were our common heritage, almost the only property we had, and each family story seemed to reflect a tiny part of a big history.

My family was small. I had almost no relatives because of the war. Whole family branches had perished. But there were many who had fewer relatives than I did. I had no reason to suffer. However, I always dreamed of a big family at a long table.

A few months before Vasily returned home to his wife and younger daughter after a 40-year absence, I remember hearing a confused old woman ask loudly on a tram, “Has the war already ended?” as if she was talking about the next stop. She was not that wrong. My grandfather “came back” from the second world war in 1981.

The explanation I was given at the time was that he had disappeared at the beginning of the war, during the encirclement of Kiev in August 1941. He was captured by the Germans and spent years in their camps as a Soviet prisoner of war. The family knew that he had survived but, for some reason, he just didn’t come home. But now here he was, back finally.

It was a very vague story, satisfying perhaps for a child, but disturbing later. I never asked him directly where he spent these 40 years, or how he reached “home”. At the time, the family treated it as good news: the second world war was finally over, now, at the beginning of the 80s, because my grandfather had come back. It was a miracle of the sort I knew only from books.

A family photo of Rosa, Vasily and Lida, showing the tear where Vasily had been removed. Photograph: Courtesy Katja Petrowskaja

As a child, I was in love with Greek mythology, with the Trojan war and the return of Odysseus. The return of my grandfather fitted in with these tales, and I was proud that my once beautiful grandmother had waited all those years for him. Rosa had never remarried, or even let anybody get close to her – Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, waited only 20 years. I felt that my ancestors were gods and heroes, or almost.

My mother took Vasily in, and he spent the last year of his life at our place, sitting in an armchair and smiling. That armchair seemed to be the apex of his existence. He was confident and radiant in his silence, as if he had a dark secret and was happy that his grandchildren were spared it. I have spent years since then trying to understand his silence, and his return. Between the armies near Kiev in 1941 and the armchair in our apartment in the early 80s, a black hole slowly grew.

He was a beautiful old man and I felt very protective of him – he was my newly born grandfather, somehow younger than I was, and I had to look out for him.

Years later, as I began to search out his story, he catapulted me into the middle of the war. I followed him, along with masses of soldiers, from Kiev to Volodymyr-Volynskyi prisoner-of-war camp north of Lvov. Then I followed him to another PoW camp in one of the most beautiful Austrian landscapes near Salzburg, then to the site of the concentration camp at Mauthausen.

I was haunted by the idea that he had seen or done something during imprisonment that was so inhuman that it had made his return to his family impossible. I searched for a specific point in his journey, his “point of no return” – something that might explain his absence for so many years.

A photograph of Vasily taken in the 1970s. Photograph: Courtesy Katja Petrowskaja

I was searching for him in the archives, and even there he almost didn’t exist, as if he were a fiction. I found out that he was encircled, together with a million other Soviet soldiers, and became one of more than six million Soviet prisoners of war, who were excluded and erased from memory. They were considered traitors; they didn’t belong among the “victors” over fascism. Rather, they became double victims of the Soviet system: imprisoned by the Germans, because they were so poorly armed and led, and then, if they survived, imprisoned by the Soviets. Suddenly, I realised that his small story spoke of the fate of millions and, in looking for him, I was caring for all of them.

My grandfather was lucky to spend only two or three years in Soviet “filtration camps” following the war. I discovered afterwards that, in fact, he had come home from the camps, but only for a short time – he could not live with his family any more and so he left again. Why? Was it survivor’s guilt? The impossibility of a normal life?

The story might be simple: he had another family – he was helping the widow of a friend who had died and stayed with her and lived for a time after the war moving between two families, but my grandmother threw him out. He then spent many years alone in a small village in western Ukraine, returning to Kiev when he was old. He came back to Rosa at the end of his life and maybe it was too late. When I say that I remember them kissing, my mother gets angry with me.

We have only one family photo that survived the war: it is of my grandmother Rosa (pregnant with my mother), my grandfather Vasily and Lida, their elder daughter. It is torn in half, as if someone sought to remove Vasily, but then thought better of it. Perhaps it was done just after the war, when he returned briefly, only to leave again. Rosa and Lida stayed together and Vasily was cut off.

Then, four decades later, there he was, sitting and smiling, happy to be home, to be with us. His silence was something I was not used to, because all of us were talkative, energetic, always full of untold stories. It might sound like a joke, but Rosa and Lida and their ancestors had, for some generations, taught deaf children to talk. It was the family vocation. But Vasily was mute.

Vasily was the only Ukrainian in the family, all the others were of Jewish origin, a thousand miles away from tradition, but it did not matter in this war. Without this grandfather, we lacked connection to the soil.

Katja Petrowskaja with her parents and brother. Photograph: Courtesy Katja Petrowskaja

He was the only one who had his own garden plot on the edge of town, so I got a grandfather and a garden to boot, allowing me to experience a small fairytale at the end of my childhood. My parents, and everybody we knew, had huge libraries at home, their only property and joy. My grandfather had a piece of land, a dacha, which I visited only a few times.

All his neighbours planted potatoes and tomatoes, putting their property to some practical use, but Vasily turned his dacha into a paradise full of roses, encircled by white raspberry, which I had never seen before, and in the middle of the garden stood one paradise-apple tree.

I really don’t remember him talking, apart from a few words such as “yes” or “good”, but I do remember the names of roses, and these are the words he left me: Dolce Vita, October Stars, Chinese tea roses, Gloria Dei.

I don’t remember his last days, but I do recall him standing in the middle of his rose paradise, cultivating his garden.

(Source: The Guardian)