many people Russia actually catches. My guess will be zero.

Russia expects new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to stop the armed hostilities in the eastern part of Ukraine and switch to peaceful efforts to settle the situation, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov said.

Speaking to journalists in Kyiv on Saturday, Zurabov pointed out that Russia had repeatedly insisted on switching to peaceful political methods of achieving compromise in eastern Ukraine.

"Halting the military operation is fundamentally important to us. Surely, on the condition that the militiamen should also stop armed activities," Zurabov said following Poroshenko's inauguration on Saturday.

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/zurabov-russia-expects-poroshenko-to-stop-military-actions-in-eastern-ukraine-351038.html

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine

A Ukrainian military plane has made a forced landing after being hit by gunfire from pro-Russian separatists in the eastern province of Slovyansk, according to Ukrainian officials.

The An-26 cargo plane was carrying aid when it was struck by fire from armed militias, Ukrainian spokesman Vladislav Seleznev said on Saturday.

Meanwhile, two Ukrainian soldiers were injured in a gunfight with pro-Russian forces at a checkpoint in the city.

http://www.aa.com.tr/en/rss/341623--ukrainian-plane-crash-lands-after-pro-russian-attack

It really helps the situation.

Even if they halt the attacks I doubt that there will be enough trust to work it out until that happens.

Poroshenko will likely win, if he survives. The current interim leaders are hysterical nitwits, but violent. Suppressing the free-lancers in the East will be difficult too, but if/since Putin wants to close the border, it will likely succeed, perhaps with western "help". Critical to that will be efforts from Kiev to calm the fears of the East. And money. Putin is the only guy with the means to close that border, at the moment, and he may not be able to seal it completely.

are with Russia. Many are dual citizens. Russian/Ukrainian marriages are very common. Many Russians are living in Ukraine and visa versa. It will be very difficult to stop this now that it has escalated to the point it has. Though not impossible.

They served you and died. Sent home in the truck marked +++200+++ (old soviet military mark)

Putin doesn't even have any respect for his own military.

The press has done a lousy job of explaining how intertwined Russia and East/South Ukraine are. The borders were essentially almost non-exsistant and Ukrainians and Russians freely moved back and forth, intermarried, a very large number of Ukrainians have two passports (Dual nationals). And even larger number of Ukrainians have significant family in Russia and visa versa.

Now that things have escalated it will be almost impossible to stop people completely from heading over on their own. Because they can't completely seal the borders without causing severe hardship of another kind to families in both countries.

What is amazing is that much of Ukraine shared a level of comfort with a society that had the connections with Russia (and other areas of the CIS) before all this happened. It is actually a very narrow slice of the population that the heavily handed government in Kiev represents. That was bourne out in the presidential election. How was it that this proclaimed "majority" had such a lack of success for all their party candidates?

in Ukraine.

The group were carefully body bagged, packed in the truck with the old soviet military symbol and sent home to Russia.

I realize that area of the world was porous border for centuries, much like Mexico/US was. People have family/farms, homes, on both sides of the border.

But there is clearly a border for Ukraine/Russia now, today. One will become a full member EU country someday (no borders or visas needed for travel in full EU countries)
the other country will not be free to travel there.

Not de jure, at least.

The USSR had a habit of using proxies. "There are no Soviet troops in _____ and the USSR has sent no weapons there." Instead, there were great quantities of Cubans and weapons sent by Cuba--which it had received at some point from the USSR. And no small number of Soviet advisors, trainers, consultants, etc. But Brezhnev wasn't lying; he was misleading, misdirecting, encouraging misinterpretation. But not lying.

So there are no Russian troops not officially deployed (unlike Putin's lies about Crimea). There are a lot of fighters that manage to get hold of equipment manufacturered in Russia and just recently supplied to the Russian military--some of which has never been officially exported. There are fighters that take Ural trucks and various kinds of armored vehicles to the border and cross without notice. Tuchynov is probably wrong, but if he's right about the mobile AA rockets that knocked down the AN plane yesterday, it was only received by the Russian military for distribution to units 5 days ago.

"Kadyrov" is a name that keeps figuring in Ukr accounts. Oddly, neither Russian, Ukr, nor US reports have bothered to explain the backstory for why Chechens would be hot to fight Ukrainians on behalf of Russia. Gazeta Rzeczpospolita finally filled in the gaps, recounting the divisions in Chechen attitudes towards Russian intervention there and later pay-offs to leaders to encourage support. Kadyrov owes Putin. So the kadyrovtsy make good proxies.

Then there are the "self-defense" forces from Crimea, encouraged by the racist/fascist Aksyonov, along with materiel provided from there.

With Russia's economy so messed up, I bet a lot of young men are willing to 'play Thug' for a few bucks.

There are outrageous claims about Yanukovich doing all kinds of financing, etc., but a lot of guys would just be willing to go off and fight for room and board. And the "glory" of fighting for whatever it is they think they're fighting for. Pride? "Historical justice"? Etc.

Still a mystery to me how a column of KAMazes and APCs can just travel from Rostov on Don to the border and cross it without anybody noticing. I'm fairly sure that even in Arizona something like that would attract attention. At the very least, ownership and license plates would be verified. Then again, that would be Arizona, a "state" in which the military is nowhere near as glorified as in Russia.

Heard that Putin rather likes the idea of renaming Volgograd "Stalingrad" again?

it will be because of feeling the heat from the sanctions.
Draghi had another press conference on Thursday. In the one prior, he had said that so much money was pouring into the euro from Russia that it was making it hard to manage the euro exchange rate.
He continued to complain on Thursday that the euro was staying up despite his rate cutting and other efforts to lower its exchange rate. He didn't mention Russia this time, but he was clearly irritated and a bit confused about why the euro continues to stay up. No doubt continuing hemorrhaging of money from Russia into the euro was a good part of the reason. The Russian central bank is probably running out of ways to keep the ruble from doing a complete nosedive.
When Putin met Poroshenko, the Russian market responded very nicely. So Putin is finally figuring out that despite the myth about war being good for an economy, it's not. Capitalists hate uncertainty. He's now running a capitalist economy, and that means he needs to kill the uncertainty introduced by this not-quite-invasion of Ukraine he's running, so that everyone can get back to business, quite literally.
Meantime, Poroshenko says he'll talk, but the things not up for negotiation are EU integration, the structure of the Ukraine gov't, or Crimea.
It's the usual thing for two sides to start with seemingly unreconcilable positions and then move to the compromise position, so Poroshenko's public remarks on this and Putin's on stopping the military ops are not exactly surprising.

Sometimes they immediately ask, "How high?" and perform.

Other times they sit around and do nothing, because that's what the order means.

So the day after the order, APCs and a hundred fighters crossed from Russia into near Snizhne.

The day after the order, apparently the same trucks went back through the same border post (where the Ukrainian border patrol people are basically barricaded in through judicious use of "humanitarian" landmines and snipers), picked up another hundred fighters, and returned. The Russian border guards just watched. So we know how Putin's orders are being implemented--and since this isn't exactly secret news, we also know how he cares about his orders' implementation. "No Russian troops in Crimea." "We'll stop unauthorized entry into Ukraine." I guess it boils down to what "unauthorized" means.

Could be worse. The first time included Ukrainian planes sent to stop the incursion. Some of the APCs returned to Russia. On the other hand, Russia scrambled jets and locked onto the Ukrainian planes, as if to say, "Those are our boys you're bombing, on Russian soil they're under our protection."

I've been wondering if Putin regrets the Novirussia comment now. Probably not.

The situation reminds me of how Texas became part of the USA, with Ukraine in the place of Mexico, and Russia in the place of the USA.

"Could be worse" seems about right at the moment.

Poroshenko at least does not seem to be hysterical, and seems to understand that he must deal with the Kremlin to start to repair the mess, and that the "anti-terrorist operation" was a big mistake. It remains to be seen if he can do much about it though, and I expect he is getting all sorts of bad advice.

(Reuters) - Moscow, Kiev and Brussels will restart talks on Russian gas supplies on Monday to try to resolve a dispute over price, a Russian energy ministry official said on Sunday.

"The next (round) of trilateral negotiations will take place tomorrow evening in Brussels," a spokeswoman for the energy ministry said.

Russia's energy minister Alexander Novak, his Ukrainian counterpart Yuri Prodan and the European Union's energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger will take part in the talks.

Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine state energy company Naftogaz met for two days in Berlin last week to try to settle the dispute which could threaten gas flows to Europe.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/08/ukraine-crisis-gas-talks-idUSL5N0OP07720140608?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssEnergyNews&rpc=401

(Reuters) - Ukraine's newly-installed President Petro Poroshenko is set to remake a governing team which will handle the crisis with Russia, with talks on gas prices on Monday providing an early test of his new relationship with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Poroshenko's swearing-in as president at a pomp-filled, but relaxed, ceremony on Saturday conveyed the feeling that a line had been drawn under six months of unprecedented and bloody upheaval which toppled his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich.

But behind the euphoria that Ukraine might now, at last, start to "Live in a new way", as Poroshenko's campaign slogan has promised, lies the reality of seething separatism in the east in which Ukraine sees Moscow's hand, and Russia's opposition to his plans to lead Ukraine into mainstream Europe.

Poroshenko's blunt refusal to accept the loss of Crimea in a combative inaugural speech puts him further at odds with Putin.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/08/us-ukraine-crisis-poroshenko-idUSKBN0EJ0IZ20140608?rpc=401&

Donetsk, Ukraine: Pro-Russian rebels fighting Ukraine's Western-backed government have launched their most serious attacks yet on Lugansk International Airport in the east of the country, a military source said Sunday.

The assaults, which took place Saturday evening and Sunday morning in the immediate wake of the inauguration of Ukraine's new President Petro Poroshenko, did not result in any injuries among the defenders, he said.

"It was clear the rebels were trying to destroy the building which controls the power supply to the airport," said the source, one of the Ukrainian paratroopers guarding the airport, talking to AFP by telephone.

"It's the first time we have had an attack of this kind. Up till now, we've only had a few skirmishes," said the soldier, who identified himself only as Sergiy.

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/worst-rebel-attack-yet-on-lugansk-airport-in-east-ukraine-538116?curl=1402238205

Ukraine’s new leader, Petro Poroshenko, has agreed to start talks with an envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending separatist violence in the former Soviet republic’s easternmost regions.

Poroshenko took the oath of office as Ukraine’s president yesterday, a day after he discussed with Putin his proposals for the first steps toward a cease-fire. In his inauguration speech, he presented a plan to bring peace to the nation after more than six months of unrest that’s pitted the U.S. and Europe against Russia in the worst standoff since the Cold War.

---

Poroshenko, switching between languages to address Russian speakers in their mother tongue, pledged to “preserve and strengthen Ukrainian unity and ensure lasting peace” in the country ravaged by separatist violence. The billionaire, who said he became a grandfather for the first time yesterday, vowed to steer the former Soviet republic toward closer ties with the European Union, create jobs and stamp out corruption.

“There’s a window for peace now, but it won’t stay indefinitely,” U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said yesterday at a meeting with Poroshenko in Kiev. “We look for Mr. Putin to meet his end of the commitments and deliver on the pledge to actually work with your government.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-08/russia-ukraine-talks-to-start-as-poroshenko-seeks-peace.html