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Spanish Police Detain Eight Spanish Citizens for Fighting Alongside Pro-Russian Separatists in Ukraine

February 27, 2015 

 

Death and destruciton in Ukraine, February 2015

 

Spanish police detain eight for fighting in Ukraine

Anadolu, 27 February 2015

MADRID --

Police have detained eight Spanish citizens for allegedly fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

According to initial reports from Spanish police, eight men with an average age of between 20 and 30 were detained on Friday in the Asturias, Catalonia, Extremadura, Murcia and Madrid regions of Spain.

Those detained were charged with committing activities directed against Spain's interest, using weapons and explosives plus murder.

They are expected to appear in a local court in Madrid.

A cease-fire was signed between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in Belarus' capital Minsk on Feb. 12, which included the withdrawal of heavy weaponry from combat areas, the withdrawal of all foreign-armed formations and release of all hostages and unlawfully detained persons, as well as political reforms and decentralization in the eastern Ukrainian regions.

More than 5,300 people have been killed and 12,200 others injured in eastern Ukraine since mid-April last year in the ongoing conflict, according to the UN high commissioner for human rights.

US guilt in Ukraine crisis 'considerable, obvious' – Duma speaker

Russia TV,  February 27, 2015 11:57

Reuters / Maxim Shemetov

The US bears a considerable share of the blame for driving the situation in Ukraine towards the poor state it is in now, the speaker of the Russian State Duma says. The crisis threatens entire European continent.

Instead of promoting a peaceful resolution for the crisis, Washington and its allies are bent on imposing sanctions against Russia, “partially to cover up their own guilt for the events,” Sergey Naryshkin told a media conference in New Delhi.

“The guilt of the United States of America for those events is considerable and obvious to the entire world,” he stressed.

Naryshkin added that the sanctions policy is nothing but “economic blackmail that has nothing to do with law.”

He said that the conflict in Ukraine “poses a risk to international security, first of all to European security.”

Meanwhile Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the travails of Ukraine are a direct result of Western interventionism.

“For a quarter of century the key principles of the United Nations had been systematically violated. The US and other Western nations neglected the fundamental rules of international law, widely used double standards and didn't hesitate to intervene directly into other nations' sovereign affairs. The impact of this policy is fully felt by the peoples of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and now Ukraine,” Lavrov said at a diplomatic scholars’ meeting in Moscow.

Apart from sanctions Russia sees a more direct threat to the fragile ceasefire in Ukraine. The UK announced it would send military trainers to help Kiev build up its army. Officials in Moscow see the move as potentially derailing the truce.

“Britain, which was not part of the Normandy format [Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine, which negotiated the ceasefire], is apparently prepared to derail the entire process. What kind of EU unity over a political resolution in Ukraine are we talking about here?” a source close to the Kremlin told journalists on Friday.

“Statements from London that say there’s no military solution to the Ukrainian crisis amid this move appear to be at least hypocritical and a case of gambling with the security of all Europe in worst-case scenario,” the source added.

The ceasefire brokered by the four nations in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, appears to be holding up despite numerous violations. The level of violence reported in eastern Ukraine has considerably decreased, and both Kiev and the rebel forces are pulling back heavy weapons from the front line under OSCE observation.

However little trust remains between the combatants, and both warn that they would turn their weapons back and resume hostilities if attacked. On Friday, Kiev reported that three of its troops had been killed over the previous 24 hours, after two previous days with no combat losses.

On Friday, Russia sent its 16-truck humanitarian aid convoy to the war-torn regions in eastern Ukraine. Rebel military engineers are using the calm period to search for unexploded shells and other remnants of the battles and dispose of them, RT correspondent Marad Gazdiev reports from the scene.

 

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