Situationen i Ukraina just nu.

Do the Russian authorities fulfill their promise and increase social payments?

When Crimea seceded, I was shocked. Some fell into euphoria and failed to realise what was going on, because there were a lot of promises. They said pensions would be doubled – and sparkles of hope and joy flashed in people's eyes. Now we see that the hryvnia's rate to the ruble's is not appropriate. Pensioners are 200 hryvnias shortchanged. They promised that payments would remain on the same level, but in vain.

The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) has banned flights to Crimea, in particular, to Simferopol and Sevastopol.

According to him, Eurocontrol, strictly following the ICAO Convention on International Civil Aviation, will not recognize any unilateral declaration of air navigation service provision over any part of Ukrainian airspace other than from the Ukrainian authorities.

According to Eurocontrol, flights to Simferopol and Sevastopol have been banned until further notice.

Dettmer, who spoke recently to RFE/RL’s Russian service, said the photos show a pro-Yanukovych Ukrainian Special Forces unit known as the “Alfa Team.”

“We are not saying we can prove that those guys in the photographs pulled the triggers," Dettmer said. "What is pretty clear is that there is an a priori facie case there -- that you have trained antiterrorist people, some who’ve been trained as snipers, locking and loading up before the shooting starts up in the Maidan on February 20."

Meanwhile, in further evidence of a link, RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service on February 20 recorded video of masked troops with the same uniforms and yellow armbands aiming the same tripod-mounted sniper's rifles and firing the same type of modified Kalashnikovs at Maidan protesters:

The Maidan massacre is now part of a propaganda war. The Kremlin claims protest leaders themselves or U.S. spies engineered the killings.

Russia’s state-controlled media and its UN Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, have claimed the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was involved.

Oleksandr Yakymenko, who served as SBU chief under Yanukovych, has claimed the snipers were protesters.

Dettmer said those claims aren’t supported.

“They’ve got to provide evidence. At the moment, they’re just shooting their mouths off without providing any documentary evidence, without providing any photographic evidence," Dettmer said. "We do know that one or two protesters did have rifles that day. But they’re not responsible for gunning down at least 53 protesters. We have a tremendous amount of evidence from British forensic experts who looked at the site and found where the most likely positions of the firing had occurred. And they had occurred in buildings that were under government control. Not the protesters.”

The Russian government’s assertions that Ukraine is falling into the hands of violent and widespread neo-Nazi thugs is not just an exaggeration, but entirely baseless, according to observers in Kiev.---

Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to solicit support from ethnic Russians worldwide, who believe the opposition “Maidan” movement (also known as ”Euromaidan”) in Ukraine threatens their way of life. Those on the ground in Ukraine see it differently.

“The Maidan is peaceful, deeply religious, iconic, symbolic, and a place of discussion and a mixture of all kinds of people discussing the phenomenon of the Maidan revolution,” says William Miller, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1993 to 1998.---

As recently as Monday, the vice-speaker of the Russian lower house of parliament claimed the entire country is “populated by armed militants in balaclavas” who have taken Ukraine hostage. He warned that, if left unchecked, Nazism could once again spread throughout Europe.