Pro-Russian forces take over telecom company headquarters

Armed pro-Russian forces forced their way into the Donetsk headquarters of a national telecommunications company on Jan. 23 and evicted its workers, the company, Vega, reported on its website. The company said it no longer has control over its assets in Donetsk and has asked law enforcement authorities for assistance. It’s owned by Rinat Akhmetov, the leading oligarch in Ukraine.

Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, didn’t mention Russian aggression in Ukraine as among the main problems on the Council of Europe’s territory in his opening address to the session that convened on Jan. 24, the eurointegration.com.ua news site.

“In his address that lasted more than a half hour, he didn’t mention aggression against Ukraine, the Crimean annexation and not once uttered the word ‘Russia’,” the Strasbourg correspondent reported.

Zenon Zawada: The war in Donbas has long fallen off the radar screens of the Western mass media, though it’s still continuing at a low level. Jagland’s remarks, as well as the Jan. 23 re-election of a Russia-friendly PACE head, confirm a thawing period in Western relations with Russia, ushered in by Western populists. We expect talks to relax sanctions against Russia to accelerate with every month, with the first removals possibly late this year in exchange for concessions.