Writing for the BBC, David Stern has been looking at the involvement of the far-right in Ukrainian politics:
Ever since Ukraine's February revolution, the Kremlin has characterised the new leaders in Kiev as a "fascist junta" made up of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, set on persecuting, if not eradicating, the Russian-speaking population.
This is demonstrably false. Far-right parties failed to pass a 5% percent barrier to enter parliament, although if they had banded together, and not split their vote, they would have probably slipped past the threshold.
Only one government minister has links to nationalist parties - though he is in no way a neo-Nazi or fascist. And the speaker of parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, is Jewish. He has the third most powerful position in the country after the president and prime minister.
But Ukrainian officials and many in the media err to the other extreme. They claim that Ukrainian politics are completely fascist-free. This, too, is plain wrong.
As a result, the question of the presence of the far-right in Ukraine remains a highly sensitive issue, one which top officials and the media shy away from. No-one wants to provide fuel to the Russian propaganda machine.
Ever since Ukraine's February revolution, the Kremlin has characterised the new leaders in Kiev as a "fascist junta" made up of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, set on persecuting, if not eradicating, the Russian-speaking population.
This is demonstrably false. Far-right parties failed to pass a 5% percent barrier to enter parliament, although if they had banded together, and not split their vote, they would have probably slipped past the threshold.
Only one government minister has links to nationalist parties - though he is in no way a neo-Nazi or fascist. And the speaker of parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, is Jewish. He has the third most powerful position in the country after the president and prime minister.
But Ukrainian officials and many in the media err to the other extreme. They claim that Ukrainian politics are completely fascist-free. This, too, is plain wrong.
As a result, the question of the presence of the far-right in Ukraine remains a highly sensitive issue, one which top officials and the media shy away from. No-one wants to provide fuel to the Russian propaganda machine.
But this blanket denial also has its dangers, since it allows the ultra-nationalists to fly under the radar. Many Ukrainians are unaware that they exist, or even what a neo-Nazi or fascist actually is, or what they stand for.
Read the entire article here
Ukrainian media are reporting that the airspace over Dnipropetrovsk is being closed because of the threat of a terrorist attack.
The Russian TASS news agency has published this item on the closure of airports in eastern Ukraine:
KIEV, December 13 -- Ukraine’s state aviation service has suspended flights to and from three major airports - Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhye - for security reasons, a local daily has said with reference to the service’s chief, Denis Antonyuk.
The measure is effective starting from [midnight] on Saturday, December 13.
Antonyuk said “security considerations” were the reason. He did not elaborate.
This is not the first time the Ukrainian state aviation service closes Ukrainian airports to flights. Air links with Donetsk have been disrupted since May. Flights between Kharkov and Moscow were banned last May, too, and between Dnepropetrovsk and Moscow, in December.
(TASS)