Here's another item from our news desk on Canada's new foreign minister:
Russia Signals Sanctions On Canada's Freeland Can Only Be Lifted Reciprocally
Russia has signaled that it will only remove newly appointed Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland from its sanctions list on a reciprocal basis.
Russian news agencies cited an unidentified Russian Foreign Ministry official as saying on January 11 that Freeland has been on a list of Canadians subject to sanctions, which includes a travel ban, since 2014.
Moscow introduced the sanctions list after many Western countries, including Canada, imposed targeted sanctions against Russian officials over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
"The issue of removing her from the response sanctions is an issue of reciprocity and the mirror principle," the Foreign Ministry official said. "The fact that she is blacklisted will not impede contacts with Russian officials at international forums."
Freeland, a former journalist who is of Ukrainian descent, has been a harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After Moscow imposed sanctions on her, Freeland posted on Twitter that she considered it "an honor to be on Putin’s sanction list."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Freeland as foreign minister on January 10.
In 2015, she wrote an article for Quartz magazine titled My Ukraine, And Putin's Big Lie.
Trudeau, in announcing Freeland's appointment as foreign affairs minister, sidestepped a question from reporters over whether her rocky relationship with Russia would have an impact.
Freeland, who once lived in Moscow during her career as a financial correspondent, said that whether she will be able to travel to Russia as foreign minister was not up to her.
"That's a question for Moscow," she said. "I am a very strong supporter of our government's view that it is important to engage with all countries around the world, very much including Russia."
Based on reporting by RIA Novosti, Interfax, Reuters, TASS, and AFP
Ukrainian journalist Alisa Sophova has had a nice piece published in The Guardian. Here's a taster:
When I started working as a journalist in my native city of Donetsk I never imagined that war would come to town, until the day it did.
In the spring of 2014 tanks and pro-Russia separatists showed up on the streets of the city, which was quickly turned into the capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).
I was a news editor at Donbass, the largest newspaper and website in the city and responsible for a dozen reporters covering local news. We reported on the governor’s weekly press conferences, the construction of a new hockey arena, several scandalous crimes a year – that was our journalistic routine. It felt like nothing unexpected could happen.
Then it did. Within days my neighbourhood had become a battlefield between the separatists and the national army and my newspaper was forced to suspend its activities, but this was an international news story so I was offered work as a fixer, then as a reporter for the New York Times.
My office dresses were replaced by a flak jacket and helmet. I saw people fighting, surviving – and dying. My colleagues and I often found ourselves under fire.
Should you write about corruption in the national army, knowing that your story will be distorted by the Russian propaganda machine and used against your country? How do you balance opinions about the conflict while your brother, a Ukrainian soldier, is imprisoned and tortured by the insurgents (a situation my colleague faced)?
These are the complicated but real choices that Ukrainian journalists still face. It’s easy to be a person of principle in a peaceful and democratic environment, but as soon as the situation gets personal journalists are told that “truth above neutrality” must prevail. However, that “truth” is never simple.
Read the entire article here.
Here's an item from RFE/RL's Russian Service relating to imprisoned Crimean filmmaker Oleh Sentsov:
Prominent Writers Quit Russian PEN Center
Prominent Russian writer Boris Akunin, whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili, has severed his association with the Russian PEN Center in part of a widening split within the rights organization.
Writing on Facebook on January 10, Akunin said that the Russian PEN Center does not defend persecuted writers and so has "nothing in common" with the global PEN movement.
The previous day, poet Lev Rubinshtein and writer Aleksandr Ilichevsky also quit the group to protest the expulsion from the group of prominent journalist and activist Sergei Parkhomenko.
Formally, Parkhomenko was expelled from the group for "provocative activity," but he wrote on the website of Ekho Moskvy radio that he was punished for criticizing the Russian PEN Center for failing to support Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who is serving 20 years in a Russian prison after being convicted of plotting terrorist attacks.
Sentsov, a native of Crimea, was a vocal opponent to Russia's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula in March 2014. He denies the allegations, and the United States, the European Union, Amnesty International, and others in the West have condemned his arrest, trial, and imprisonment.
Speaking to the Interfax news agency on January 10, Russian PEN Center President Yevgeny Popov denied claims of a split in the organization, saying there are more than 400 members of the organization and "only one Parkhomenko."
Akunin participated in a wave of antigovernment protests in 2011-12 that were prompted largely by allegations of widespread fraud in a December 2011 parliamentary election and opposition to Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency in 2012.
With reporting by Interfax
World War II Monument Defaced In Ukraine's Lviv Region
A monument in western Ukraine honoring the memory of some 900 people who were massacred during World War II has been severely damaged by unknown vandals.
Local police reported the damage on January 10, saying that they were investigating.
A stone cross was smashed to pieces and two slabs bearing the names of the victims were painted with a Ukrainian flag, Ukrainian nationalist symbols, and a Nazi SS emblem.
The monument in the village of Huta Peniatska in Ukraine’s Lviv region honors victims of a 1944 massacre by a Nazi unit composed mostly of Ukrainian volunteers.
Most of the victims were ethnic Poles, and Poland’s Foreign Ministry has asked Ukraine to ensure that the perpetrators are revealed and punished.
Poland’s ambassador to Ukraine, Jan Pieklo, plans to attend ceremonies at the site of the monument next month to mark the 73rd anniversary of the massacre.