MUNICH (AP) — French President Francois Hollande is proposing a broader demilitarized zone in Ukraine and greater autonomy for the pro-separatist eastern region.

In an interview with France 2 television on Saturday, Hollande said a plan under negotiation would see a 50- to 70-kilometer (30 to 45-mile) demilitarized zone.

He called for a "rather strong" autonomy in the east.

Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are spearheading a flurry of diplomacy to calm the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.

http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Ukraine-diplomatic-flurry-goes-into-new-round-in-6068118.php

Ukraine, to use a technical term, is broke. That's what you call a country whose currency has lost half its value in just two days.

The problem is simple: Ukraine has no money and barely any economy. It's already talking to the IMF about a $15 billion bailout and what's euphemistically being called a debt "restructuring"—i.e., default—as its reserves have dwindled down to $6.42 billion, only enough to cover five weeks of imports. (Three months worth is considered the absolute least you can get by with).

So it was more than a bit belated for Ukraine to stop spending the few dollars it does have on propping up its currency, the hryvnia. It took until Thursday for it to do that, though, and, when it did, the reaction was swift and it was violent. The hyrvnia fell from 16.8 to 24.4 per dollar, and then again to 25.3 on Friday, on this news that the government wouldn't intervene it in anymore. In all, it was a 50 percent decline in 48 hours. And this was despite the fact that its central bank simultaneously jacked up interest rates from 14 to 19.5 percent to try to get people to hold their money in hyrvinia that would pay them a lot instead of dollars that wouldn't. That, as you can see, didn't exactly work.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/06/ukraines-currency-has-fallen-50-percent-in-two-days/

50% loss in value of your currency in 2 days is the definition of economic and political collapse.

Odd how this breaking news is not breaking news in America at all, except when it involves providing more machines of war and killing, then that is in the news a lot.

Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, a former U.S. State Department officer who was granted Ukrainian citizenship only this week, headed a U.S. government-funded investment project for Ukraine that involved substantial insider dealings, including $1 million-plus fees to a management company that she also controlled.

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/05/ukraines-made-in-usa-finance-minister/

you know Merkin or Merkel and Hollande going to Moscow all of a sudden. I was trying to figure out what prompted that. The war in the East was not going well, but it was not apparently a rout either, so I didn't see that as sufficient to get them off their butts, but money motivates them.

MOSCOW — European leaders on Friday broke from last-ditch negotiations without reaching an agreement to calm an escalating conflict in eastern Ukraine, as new splits opened between the United States and Europe over whether to bolster Ukrainian forces with arms shipments.

Kremlin talks between the leaders of Russia, Germany and France stretched for more than five hours, but they ended early Saturday with no conclusion, a sign of the bitter divisions between the two sides. The leaders planned to continue the negotiations over the weekend and to speak again by telephone on Sunday.

The core of the deal appeared to be a return to a tattered cease-fire agreed to in Minsk, Belarus in September. But Ukraine and Russia have differed over crucial issues such as how much territory would be left under the control of the rebels, who have captured hundreds of square miles since the deal was inked last year.

The Moscow visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel was her first since the conflict in Ukraine erupted nearly a year ago, and it was a sign of the high stakes she assigned to reaching an agreement. But both French President François Hollande and she sped to a Moscow airport after midnight and departed, giving no statements.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/ukraine-peace-bid-moves-to-moscow-as-us-weighs-military-aid-in-conflict/2015/02/06/8565e01e-ae04-11e4-abe8-e1ef60ca26de_story.html

DONETSK, Ukraine — Nikita, who has been living for several months with his mother and 1-year-old sister in a basement labyrinth of makeshift tents and rubber-bucket lavatories, explained why he cannot return to his toy-filled apartment.

“There is shrapnel in my bedroom,” said Nikita, 4.

About 200 refugees, 50 of them children, cower in the subterranean bomb shelter of a children’s arts center in Petrovsky district, on the far western edge of Donetsk. Three days earlier, a shell had exploded across from Nikita’s apartment, pitting the walls of his building, shattering windows and sending a fresh delivery of razor-sharp metal into his bedroom wall.

His mother, Katerina Dynya, 22, sat on a cot made from a door set atop four bricks. “We think perhaps we will let the children outside today,” she said, though the sprawling park nearby is far too dangerous. Instead, the children are allowed occasionally into an interior courtyard, where they search the rubble for shards of shrapnel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/world/europe/shivering-hungry-and-tearful-in-rebel-held-eastern-ukraine.html?_r=0

Germany’s Angela Merkel on Saturday ruled out sending weapons to the Ukrainian government to fight pro-Russian separatists but said there was no guarantee that her latest peace initiative with French President Francois Hollande would work either.

Speaking at a Munich conference on Saturday attended by top U.S., European, Ukrainian and Russian officials, Ms. Merkel said the Franco-German peace plan presented to Kiev and Moscow this week was worth trying, but “it is uncertain if it will succeed”.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/merkel-rules-out-arming-ukraine-government/article22851895/

Feb 7 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that sending weapons to help the Ukrainian government fight pro-Russian separatists would not help bring about a solution to the crisis.

"I understand the debate but I believe that more weapons will not lead to the progress Ukraine needs. I really doubt that," she told the Munich Security Conference after presenting a Franco-German peace initiative to Moscow on Friday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/07/ukraine-crisis-merkel-weapons-idUSB4N0RB00X20150207?rpc=401

Chancellor Merkel used her speech on Saturday to the annual Security Conference to criticize Russia for its annexation of Crimea last March, as well as its alleged role in the ongoing fighting between pro-Russia separatists and government forces in eastern Ukraine.

Speaking just hours after she returned to Germany from talks with French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Merkel said resolving the crisis in eastern Ukraine required the cooperation of the Kremlin.

"Russia needs to do its bit in the Ukrainian crisis. This crisis cannot be resolved by military means," she said.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is also attending the conference, told reporters that he believed the peace initiative presented by Merkel and Hollande could work.

http://www.dw.de/merkel-calls-on-russia-to-do-its-bit-to-resolve-crisis-in-eastern-ukraine/a-18242100?maca=en-rss-en-eu-2092-rdf

At every stage of the Ukrainian crisis Washington has been taking steps that “only promoted further aggravation of the situation,” Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said at the Munich Security Conference.

The West connives to justify Kiev’s military operation in eastern Ukraine, which involves the use of internationally prohibited munitions, such as cluster weapons, the head of the Russian delegation in Munich pointed out.

“We cannot understand why in Afghanistan, Yemen and Mali the West is calling on the governments to hold talks with the opposition, in some cases even with extremists, whereas in regard to the Ukrainian crisis, the West is indulging Kiev in its military operation,” Lavrov said.

However, there is every chance the peace talks in Moscow could unravel the conflict in Ukraine, Lavrov said, adding that Russia will persist in pursuing the peace process.

http://rt.com/news/230219-lavrov-munich-speech-ukraine/

US Vice President Joe Biden has called on European countries to show unity when it comes to sanctions against Russia, labeling the dissenting voices “inappropriate and annoying”, reported ‘Der Spiegel’, quoting the participants of the Brussels meeting.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine said that the US vice president’s remarks were made at a special meeting of leaders of the European parliament factions at the EU headquarters in Brussels. Biden called on European countries to ‘stand firm’ against Russia’s alleged threats to the region's unity.

“Putin continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside and he absolutely ignores every agreement that his country has signed in the past... including in Minsk,” Biden said, referring to “little green men”, but failing to provide any exact details of Russia's alleged military presence in the region.

http://rt.com/news/230143-biden-sanctions-europe-russia/

If we had just given them some white phosphorus shells and killer drones with tomahawk missiles, they wouldn't have had to use those cluster bombs, right John?

This is the face America shows to the World?

Have we actually had a military coup here, and it just isn't recognized as such? Sometimes I wonder about that.

Pro-Russian separatists have intensified shelling of government forces on all front lines and appear to be amassing forces for new offensives on the key railway town of Debaltseve and the coastal city of Mariupol, Ukraine's military said on Saturday.

Five Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 26 wounded in fighting in the past 24 hours, spokesman Volodymyr Polyovy told a briefing.

Separatist gains against Kiev government forces in eastern Ukraine, particularly a rebel advance on Debaltseve to the northeast of the regional centre of Donetsk, have given impetus to a Franco-German initiative to try and strike an 11th hour deal with Russia to end the Ukrainian crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who along with French President Francois Hollande met Russia's Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin late on Friday, told an international security conference in Munich on Saturday that there was no guarantee that the peace initiative would work.

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-russian-backed-rebels-massing-to-attack-key-ukrainian-towns-ukraine-military-2059016

MUNICH (Reuters) - Germany's Angela Merkel warned on Saturday that sending arms to help Ukraine fight pro-Russian separatists would not solve the crisis there, drawing a sharp rebuke from a leading U.S. senator who accused Berlin of turning its back on an ally in distress.

The heated exchange at a security conference in Munich pointed to the fragility of the transatlantic consensus on how to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over a deepening conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 5,000.

Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March last year and evidence that it is supporting separatist forces in the east of the country, which the Kremlin denies, have driven Moscow's relations with the West to a post-Cold War low.

A recent rebel offensive has triggered a flurry of shuttle diplomacy, with Merkel and French President Francois Hollande jetting to Moscow on Friday to try to convince Putin to do a peace deal.

https://in.news.yahoo.com/europe-u-clash-over-confront-putin-over-ukraine-141330970--sector.html

Has there been a silent military coup in America?

WTF do Senators have to do with butting in on official American policy, the Executive Branch has that exclusive power....don't they?

It's American as apple pie. And yeah, it's dangerous, it gets a lot of people killed, for nothing or less than nothing.

The issue is this: Should the West arm Kiev against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says no, and she is joined by French President Francois Hollande. They have the outline of a plan that Hollande says includes "rather strong" autonomy for Ukraine's east. And they are taking it to President Obama.

As for the U.S., White House press secretary Josh Earnest says this: "The president is going to make a decision that he believes is in the broader national security interests of the United States," adding, "and part of that is understanding what sort of impact the decisions that we make have on our allies."

NATO's top military commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove has made it clear that Washington has not ruled-out the option to arm Kiev.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/02/07/384514520/merkel-hopes-to-dissuade-obama-from-arming-ukraine

Sending more lethal weapons to Ukraine will simply ensure that more lethal weapons get into the hands of the wrong people.

We have seen it time and again and yet we never learn.

I'm beginning to see more and more light between the U.S. position on Ukraine and that that of our Western European allies. That is one of the most hopeful developments ever regarding the tortured nation of Ukraine.

To my mind, it is clearly time to admit that, yes, there are indeed limits to American power; in fact, it seems pretty clear that we have run up against one of those "limits" somewhere between Kiev and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

They can make Snowden the Ukraine Supreme Commander.

And let the Ukrainians "have it" themselves?

What imaginable good have we done that pitiful country, nothing I can think of since we sent Vicky Nuland with our billions to achieve "Regime change" in Kiev. As to the damage we have caused it, that should be easily apparent to anyone.

They're back.

And it's about time!

Where have they been anyhow? I was beginning to think bull-headed war-mongers were in charge everywhere.

why is that?

and now Republicans like McCain are pushing free ones on them