US praises 'restraint' of Kiev forces while they shell East Ukraine..update June 4 2014

US praises ‘restraint’ of Kiev forces while they shell E. Ukraine with missiles

Top Pentagon official has praised the way the Ukrainian military is dealing with anti-government forces. Assistant Defence Secretary Derek Chollet is in Kiev – and he says he’s impressed with the work being done.

The village of Krasny Liman near Slavyansk in the Donetsk region was heavily shelled by the Ukrainian army during Kiev’s military operation Tuesday.

The violence from the US-backed government in Kiev, against Pro-Russia protesters, has escalated in the last week. The Ukrainian army admits that it fired over 150 missiles on Monday. People in Luhansk say the missiles deliberately targeted civilians, and the death toll is rising. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who is President of the United Nations Security Council for the month June, has introduced a resolution to the Security Council calling for the UN to take action against what he calls a humanitarian outrage.
The resolution introduced by the Russian Federation calls for a cease-fire, and the creation of humanitarian corridors, so civilians can flee the troubled areas. Churkin said he was disappointed in the way certain member-states reacted to the proposed resolution. Sara Flounders of the International Action Center says she agrees with Russia’s concerns about the escalating violence in Eastern Ukraine. As the United Nations Security Council debates the resolution, Obama has announced that the US will increase its military presence in Eastern Europe

The U.S., Ukraine, NATO and Russia
June 4, 2014 • 9:48AM

‘U.S. Wants To Make Ukraine Anti-Russian State,’ Says Duma Member

The head of the Russian State Duma Foreign Relations Committee, Aleksei Pushkov, believes Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko tends to work on instructions from Washington, and these concentrate on making Ukraine an anti-Russian state. “I get the impression that Poroshenko is completely oriented toward the United States, that the European Union is a second-priority project for him. He connects his political ambitions mostly with Washington,” Pushkov told Izvestia in an interview.

He added that European leaders mostly want the situation in Ukraine to stabilize, while the United States seeks to turn the country into “an openly anti-Russian nation, in the future dragging it into NATO.”

“Today the country is run by forces that see conflict with Russia as a self-sufficient objective. The conflict helps Kiev to establish the national identity that is not being formed from within, but results from the standoff with Moscow. This is the identity they intend to use to gain ground in the international political arena,” said the member of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Parliament.

 Rasmussen Calls for Increased NATO Buildup Against Russia

Stonewalling against Russian offers to enter a dialogue with NATO, the Secretary General of the Western alliance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, used a press conference in Brussels two days ago, in the wake of a NATO-Russia Council meeting that yielded no results, to call on NATO members to boost their military budgets. He complained that, whereas Russia has been continuously increased its own military spending, most NATO members in Europe have even reduced theirs, so that the West faces the danger of no longer being able to cope with Russia, Rasmussen claimed. His hysteria was echoed by the Poles and Baltic states, the Polish Defense Ministry most outspoken in calling for a substantial increase of foreign combat troops stationed on its territory.

US President Barack Obama leaves Washington and is due to arrive in Poland at the start of a four-day European tour.
Obama is to meet with Polish president and prime minister. The crisis in Ukraine will be at the heart of the conversation. On Wednesday, he will sit down for talks with Ukraine’s president-elect Petro Poroshenko in the Polish capital Warsaw. Also on the same day, the US president will attend the G-7 summit in Brussels. The final leg of Obama’s European trip will take him to France, where he will attend an event to commemorate the World War Two.

Ukraine has paid its 786 million dollar debt to Russian Gazprom Company and now insists on Russia to change the 2009 gas contract and lower the price for future imports.
Gazprom now charges Ukraine 485 dollars per 1 thousand cubic meters of gas which is the highest price in Europe. The debt payment gave Ukraine a little more time to negotiate. Russia has urged Ukraine to pay the whole $1.45 billion of gas debt. Moscow has even threatened gas cutoff. The European Union has interfered in the talks, since the final gas price would affect Europe to a large extent. But the possibility that both sides will reach a final gas price this week is quite low. As the dispute inflates, Gazprom has continued billing Kiev at the higher rate and says Ukraine is running up more debt at a rate of more than $1 billion per month. Meanwhile Kiev is looking after the model of Germany, Poland and Lithuania that have successfully arbitrated against Russia to secure cheaper gas prices in the past.