Ukraine President gave in to protesters demands, deal signed

 

Yielding to hard Western pressure, Ukraine’s embattled President Viktor Yanukovych has agreed to call early presidential election, cede key powers to Parliament and form a coalition caretaker government. Ukrainian and Russian analysts described Mr Yanukovych’s decision as total surrender.

The Ukrainian leader made the announcement on his website after marathon talks with opposition leaders brokered by the Foreign Ministers of Germany, France and Poland. The talks, which began on Thursday, went through the night and resumed on Friday. Russia was represented at the talks by human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin.

The three opposition leaders, Arseny Yatsenyuk, Vitaly Klitschko and Oleh Tyahnibok, approved the deal after “consulting” protesters in the streets.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the agreement “a good compromise,” but analysts said Mr Yanukovych merely accepted the opposition’s demands.

“What compromise are you talking about? Yanukovych has signed an act of capitulation,” wrote Vladimir Kornilov, a Ukrainian political scientist.

“The West has dictated its terms of capitulation to Yanukovych, who did not even try to resist,” said Vigen Akopyan, editor of Russia’s Regnum online news service.

Mr Yanukovych gave no timeline for the proposed steps, but Vladimir Oleynik, a senior lawmaker from the President’s Party of the Regions, said that within the next 48 hours the Parliament should vote on reverting to the 2004 Constitution, which took away from President and gave to Parliament the right to appoint Prime Minister and the cabinet. The Constitution was scrapped after Mr Yanukovych won presidential elections in 2010.

According to Mr Oleynik, a coalition government is to be formed within 10 days and new presidential elections will be held before the end of the year, about six months earlier than scheduled.

It was not immediately known whether radical protesters from the Right Sector group would accept the agreement between Mr Yanukovych and leaders of the Parliamentary opposition. The radicals wrecked a truce negotiated on Tuesday and unleashed deadly violence in Kiev.

Over the past three days 77 people have died and 580 have been wounded in clashes between protesters and police, according to Ukraine’s Health Ministry. The Interior Ministry said 16 police officers had been killed and 130 suffered gunshot wounds.

Late on Thursday the Ukrainian Parliament voted to call off an “anti-terrorist operation” the security forces had launched earlier this week to clear central Kiev from protesters. By Friday afternoon all riot police were withdrawn from the scene of recent fighting.

The agreement reached in Kiev is a setback for Moscow, which had been urging Mr Yanukovych to get tough with the protesters and do not let them “wipe their feet on the authorities like a doormat.”

Akash medium-range missile test-fired

India on Friday successfully test-fired its Akash medium-range surface-to-air missile from a defence base in Odisha.

The indigenously-developed missile, with a 27 km range and an effective ceiling of 15 km, was test-fired from the Integrated Test Range of Chandipur in the coastal district of Balasore, 230 km from Bhubaneswar.

“It was test fired by the scientists of (state-run missile system manufacturer) Bharat Dynamic Limited and (state run defence electronics company) Bharat Electronics for the armed forces,” test range director M.V.K.V. Prasad told IANS. “The test was successful,” he added.

The 700-kg all-weather missile can carry a 60-kg warhead at speeds of up to Mach 2.5. It can operate autonomously and simultaneously engage and neutralise different aerial targets.

It can be launched from static or mobile platforms, enabling flexible deployment by the armed forces.

Preparation are underway for a few more tests of the missile from the same base within next fortnight, Mr. Prasad said.

INS Arihant all set for sea trials

India’s first indigenously built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, INS Arihant would be going to sea trials within “a few weeks or months” as its preliminary harbour acceptance trials are over and various systems, including nuclear propulsion, have proceeded satisfactorily and as per the time schedule.

The submarine would undergo sea trials, during which all the systems, including its ballistic missiles, would be tested before it is finally commissioned into the Indian Navy, Assistant Chief of Naval Staff Rear Admiral L.V.S. Babu, said here on Tuesday.

Incidentally, INS Arihant, which is the lead ship of India's Arihant-class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, would also figure on the Indian Navy tableaux at this year’s Republic Day Parade.

The sub-surface ballistic nuclear missile (SSBN) submarine would be “indigenously designed, built, operationalised and maintained,” said Rear Admiral Babu, adding that “there were no hiccups in the progress of harbour trials” at Vishakhapatnam. Once the sea trials, which would test the capability of various systems in real deep sea scenario, are over the Navy would announce its arrival, he said, as it would be a “stabilising force in the Indian Ocean”.

Stating that “it is a fact that we (Indian Navy) would like to have more submarines”, the Rear Admiral denied that clearance for three SSBNs has been obtained. “That is our wish, it has not been cleared,” he said, adding that finance and infrastructure were major considerations.

He also made a mention of the Scorpene submarines, being developed at the Mazagaon docks, and said these are scheduled to be inducted from 2016. “We would be looking at inducting one submarine per year till we have six of them in the fleet.”

China building second aircraft carrier

A senior Communist Party official in northeastern China said that China was at work on a home-built aircraft carrier and had plans to operate a fleet of at least four of the vessels, a Hong Kong newspaper reported.

The comments by Wang Min, the party secretary of Liaoning Province, are an official indication of what outside observers have long predicted: that China’s commissioning of a refurbished aircraft carrier in 2012 was only a first step in its effort to develop its capacity to build and sail its own aircraft carriers.

According to the Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao, Mr. Wang said on Saturday that China’s second aircraft carrier was being built at a shipyard in the coastal city of Dalian and should be completed in six years. The newspaper has ties to the Communist Party, although it is not an official mouthpiece.

China’s first aircraft carrier, named Liaoning for the city where it was refurbished, was purchased from Ukraine and towed to China, where it underwent years of work before joining the Chinese fleet in 2012. Late last year, while on exercises in the South China Sea, a Chinese support vessel sailing with the Liaoning had a near collision with a United States Navy cruiser, the Cowpens, that had apparently been monitoring the Chinese flotilla.

The Ta Kung Pao report has since been removed from the newspaper’s website, and reposts carried on the websites of domestic Chinese media outlets have also been deleted.

Other mainland media sought to downplay Mr. Li’s statement. News of China’s aircraft carrier “isn’t worth fussing over,” Li Jie, a professor at the People’s Liberation Army’s Naval Military Studies Research Institute, wrote in Global Times, a newspaper run by the Communist Party’s People’s Daily Group.

Mr. Li argued that the United States, with 11 aircraft carriers, had attempted to play up China’s naval development as a threat. India, with two aircraft carriers and a third under construction, also has an advantage over China, he wrote. “We should confidently develop aircraft carriers and promptly respond to the outside world’s questions,” he wrote, “so that this ‘China threat theory’ won’t find a market in international society.”

Last year the United States Department of Defense predicted in its annual report on China’s military development that China would “likely build multiple aircraft carriers over the next decade,” with the first of those becoming operational before 2020.

INS Vikramaditya enters Indian Navy's area of operation

INS Vikramaditya

INS Vikramaditya and INS Viraat

 It was a sight to behold. As India’s newest aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya entered the Indian Navy’s area of operation in north western Arabian Sea, accompanied by three other vessels, it was rendezvoused — in Naval parlance RVed — with the Western Fleet that had gone all the way from Mumbai to receive it.

INS Vikramaditya, which was accompanied by INS Trikand, which is a Talwar class frigate, INS Delhi which is a Delhi class destroyer and INS Deepak, the fleet tanker, fired ceremonial guns to salute the flag of the fleet commander Rear Admiral Anand Chawla, who was leading the flotilla of the Western Fleet, that also comprised aircraft carrier INS Viraat.

The other ships besides INS Viraat which had gone to receive INS Vikramaditya included two Delhi class destroyers, three Trishul class stealth frigates, a Godavari class frigate and a couple of offshore vessels.

All this happened about 1200 nautical miles from the country's shores on New Year’s eve and thereafter all the aircraft carriers, frigates and destroyers together set sail for India.

INS Vikramaditya, which was commissioned into the Indian Navy on November 16 last at the North Russian shipyard of Sevmash at Severodvinsk, is now headed for its home port at Karwar in Karnataka where it is scheduled to reach in a week’s time.

Commanded by Captain Suraj Berry, INS Vikramaditya -- which took eight years to refurbish at the Russian yard -- would reach Karwar on completing a near 8500 nautical mile journey.

On reaching Karwar, the aircraft carrier would re-equip and prepare and get ready for the next phase which would be its integration with the air wing, comprising about 30 Mig 29K aircraft and six Kamov Ka-31 “Helix” reconnaissance and anti-submarine helicopters.

It would take around four to six months for the full integration of the aircraft carrier after which it will become the spearhead of the carrier battle group. During this period, the aircraft carrier would also be equipped with surface-to-air missile (SAM) and close-in weapon system (CIWS) to safeguard it from aerial attack.

At the time of commissioning of INS Vikramaditya Indian Navy Chief Admiral D.K. Joshi had indicated that Indian naval fighter pilots would be certified to carry out flying operations from the carrier deck within weeks of the carrier’s arrival in India.

While a batch of combat fliers from ‘Black Panther’ squadron has undertaken simulator training in Moscow, before the flying operations from the carrier deck, they are also scheduled to perfect take-off and landing on the shore-based test facility (SBTF) at INS Hansa in Goa.