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Ukraine Tag

Over the weekend, Ukraine held its presidential election. Current President Petro Poroshenko, who won in 2014 after the ouster of Viktor Yanukovych, lost to comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a landslide. Television became real life since Zelenskiy played "school teacher Vasyl Holoborodko, who by a sheer stroke of coincidence becomes Ukraine’s president," on the show Servant of the People.

President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the increased tensions in Ukraine after Russia attacked and seized Ukrainian vessels in the Black Sea. From Fox News:
"Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in Argentina with President Vladimir Putin,” he tweeted Thursday.

*UPDATE 2:42PM: Ukraine's parliament has approved "martial law for 30 days in the regions bordering" Russia. The undeclared war between Ukraine and Russia took a horrific turn on Sunday after Ukraine claimed that Russia opened fire on its navy in the Kerch Strait, which separates the Black and Azoz Seas. The attack wounded six sailors and Russia seized at least three Ukrainian vessels.

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed into sunflower fields located in eastern Ukraine. Everyone reasonably pointed fingers at Russia since the two countries had been (and still are) fighting in that region of the former Soviet republic. A Dutch-led team of investigators announced today that the missile that downed the flight and killed all 298 people aboard came from a Russian brigade.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has charged lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan for making "materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements and representations" to his office and the FBI. Van Der Zwaan will appear in a federal court in Washington this afternoon. He is expected to enter in a guilty plea since he was charged with a criminal information. Mueller claims Van Der Zwaan lied about his communications with former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates and with someone else only identified as Person A and deleted emails that his office requested concerning a report from 2012 with Ukraine's Ministry of Justice.

A report from Politico shows that national security officials warned former President Barack Obama of Russian interference in Western political systems, including the United States. Politico reported:
As early as 2014, the administration received a report that quoted a well-connected Russian source as saying that the Kremlin was building a disinformation arm that could be used to interfere in Western democracies. The report, according to an official familiar with it, included a quote from the Russian source telling U.S. officials in Moscow, "You have no idea how extensive these networks are in Europe ... and in the U.S., Russia has penetrated media organizations, lobbying firms, political parties, governments and militaries in all of these places."

Russia, Russia, Russia. We're here to talk about Trump/Russia: get it? Don't go distracting us with talk of the DNC working with Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump! This morning on CNN, Alisyn Camerota and John Berman co-hosted a segment with Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign aide, and Dem consultant Hilary Rosen. Miller tried to raise this Politico story, which reported that Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary, meeting with a DNC consultant to research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.

The Petya ransomeware took off yesterday across the globe, affecting state-owned and private businesses in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. The BBC has now reported that it "may have started via corrupted updates on a piece of accountancy software." The ransomeware hit Ukraine hardest since it attacked the country's "power grid, banks and government offices" and disrupted some flights at Kyiv's Boryspil Airport. Other companies hit included pharmaceutical giant Merck and Russia's state owned energy company Rosneft.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike recently revised a report from December that insisted that the group "Fancy Bear," which has ties to Russian intelligence, used malware to hack into Ukrainian artillery. In the same report, the firm said "Fancy Bear" used the same malware to "hack" into the American election. Well, British think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) found that CrowdStrike "erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion." This also calls into question its findings of meddling in our election.

A shooter assassinated former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov, who was also a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, outside of a hotel in Kiev, Ukraine. Voronenkov, former member of the Communist Party, fled to Ukraine last fall with his wife when he found out he would face fraud charges "over the alleged misappropriation of a Moscow building in 2011." The Ukrainian government granted him citizenship and he provided evidence against former Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, who ran to Russia after parliament ousted him on February 22, 2014.

Vice President Mike Pence attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany where he told Europe that America will stand behind its NATO allies. Pence also met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to assure him that America remains committed to Ukraine and that Russia upholds the Minsk Agreement. President Donald Trump rattled some cages on the campaign trail when he stated his beliefs that NATO was obsolete, leading many to believe America will abandon the organization. Pence said that will not happen: