Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (CLICK TO ENLARGE):
Trump's Personal Lawyer Cancels Plans To Visit Ukraine
U.S. President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, says he is canceling plans to visit Ukraine to encourage investigations by the country’s incoming government that he thinks would help Trump politically.
Speaking on the U.S. television channel Fox News, Giuliani said late on May 10 that he was not going because he thinks he would be "walking into a group of people that are enemies of the president...in some cases enemies of the United States."
Democrats have criticized Giuliani’s plans to visit Ukraine over the weekend after The New York Times quoted Giuliani as saying he wanted to encourage two investigations by the government of incoming President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
One is the origin of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference and the other is the involvement of 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden's son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.
Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler, the head of the House Judiciary Committee, said U.S. politics is in "a sorry state" if the president's lawyer can seek foreign interference in a U.S. election.
Ukraine’s president-elect defeated incumbent President Petro Poroshenko in an April 21 runoff election and is scheduled to be inaugurated in early June.
Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, Fox News, and The New York Times
Latvian Lawmakers Label 1944 Deportation Of Crimean Tatars An Act Of Genocide
By RFE/RL
The Latvian parliament has recognized the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 1944 by the government of the Soviet Union as an act of genocide.
The resolution on the issue, approved by Latvian lawmakers on May 9, says it was adopted to "commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Crimean Tatar deportations" and to support "the policy of nonrecognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea" by Russia in 2014.
The document stressed that "a set of historical sources refers to the purposeful pursuit of genocide by the Soviet authorities against...Crimean Tatars as an ethnic group to destroy their cultural and social heritage and their historical affiliation with the Crimean Peninsula."
In May 1944, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the mass deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population from the region to Central Asia, collectively accusing the community of collaborating with Nazi Germany.
Tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars died while being transported on cattle trains or during the first few months after they arrived in Central Asia.
Survivors and offspring of the survivors began unauthorized returns to Crimea in the late 1980s.
Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula was seized and illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Since then, the Crimean Tatar community has been subjected to repression by the Russia-installed authorities for voicing opposition to the annexation.
On May 9, unknown vandals in Crimea desecrated a memorial to Crimean Tatar soldiers who died in combat against Nazi Germany during World War II.