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Eastern Europe
December 7, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 23
Military buildup
Kyiv has also justified its imposition of martial law by claiming the Russians are massing troops on the Ukrainian border and preparing an assault.
On November 26, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (par- liament) approved Poroshenko’s decree declar- ing a 30-day martial law in the Vinnitsa, Lugansk, Nikolayevsk, Odessa, Sumy, Kharkov, Chernigov, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, as well as in Ukraine’s territorial waters in the Sea of Azov.
However, Kyiv has failed to provide any evidence of Russian troop movements. During the high tensions following the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, there were also multiple reports of an imminent invasion that came to nothing. Poroshenko’s warn- ings have generally been met with scepticism.
“President Poroshenko claims there are 80K Rus- sian servicemen in Donbas and Crimea. That’s al- most a third of all Russian ground forces for a speck of territory compared to Russia’s size. I’d propose a recount,” journalist Leonid Ragozin tweeted.
Nevertheless, Nato is carefully monitoring the situation in the Black Sea and has been enhancing
Russian private pension funds consolidate around state groups
Vadim Dumesh in Paris
The ongoing consolidation of Russia’s non-state pension funds (NPFs) reached its final stage with the four largest NPF groups (assets over RUB500bn or $7.5bn) already accounting for
its presence in the region, secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told a press conference in Brussels, as reported by the eurointegration.com.ua news site. “Last year, we enhanced the presence of Nato ships in the Black Sea from 80 to 120 days,” he said. “We have an air police mission in the region, and we have a multinational brigade in Romania.”
The 24 sailors involved in the incident have now been formally charged with illegally crossing the Russian border and will be put on trial in Russia. They have already been moved from Simferopol to a detention centre in Moscow.
“They were charged immediately after their arrest. All of them are charged under part 3 of article 322 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Illegal crossing the border of the Russian Federation),” said the lawyer of one of the arrested sailors, Denis Gritsenko.
Putin said during his press conference that there are no plans to send the 24 sailors captured in the Sea of Azov back to Ukraine and said they will be put on trial as a way of “proving” the whole incident was a provocation.
Russia's non-state pension funds largely consolidated by state-owned banks ahead of next stage of reform
77% of all pension fund assets, Kommersant daily estimated in a sector overview published on November 30.