An update on our last report via News24:
Four Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers and two Tu-22M Backfire long-range bombers were intercepted in international airspace by Portuguese F-16 fighter jets assigned to Nato, spokesperson Oana Lungescu said.
Lungescu said that while most intercepts carried out over the Baltic are "routine," the intercept of the six bombers "represented a significant level of activity by Russia."
In two other incidents later on Sunday, Nato aircraft intercepted a total of seven Russian military aircraft, including Tu-134s used for training and moving passengers as well as An-72 transport aircraft, Lungescu said.
Yesterday, December 9, a hash-tag campaign started on Twitter #BoycottAnnaNetrebko,when the famous Russian operatic soprano, a protege of the Mariinsky Theater Director Valery Gergiev, was shown supporting the Russian-backed armed separatists in southeastern Ukraine.
Netrebko sang the Russian national anthem at the opening of the Sochi Olympics, which was held near her native Krasnodar; she is of Kuban Cossak heritage. She now holds dual Russian and Austrian citizenship and lives in New York City.
The trouble started when Netrebko announced that she was donating one million rubles (about $54,000) to the Donetsk Opera and appeared with Ukrainian politician Oleg Tsaryov, former Party of Regions deputy now wanted by police for violent separatism, and included in the EU's sanctions list for the war in Ukraine. Tsaryov published pictures on his Facebook page of the two of them holding the Novorossiya banner.
Julia Davis ran a piece in the Examiner noting Anna Netrebko's own website claiming an Austrian Airlines ad campaign was scheduled to start.
Other journalists picked up the scandal:
Customers immediately began threatening boycotts, but then were pleased with Austrian Air's rapid response -- the airline immediately announced it had already dropped Netrebko when her contract expired in November:
The governor of the Lugansk region, Hennadiy Moskal, has announced that the government-held town of Stanitsa Luganskaya and the village of Verkhnaya Olkhovaya, to the north-east of the city of Lugansk, have been shelled by Russian-backed forces.
Ukrainska Pravda reports on the Grad attack on Verkhnaya Olkhovaya, conducted just after midnight, (translated by The Interpreter):
A residential building on Parkhomenko street was destroyed by three direct rocket strikes. On neighbouring houses the façades were damaged and windows and doors broken; a car was wrecked. Part of the village has been left without gas due to low pressure after a shell broke a gas pipeline.
Moskal reported that Stanitsa Luganskaya itself had been shelled by mortars and self-propelled artillery at around 6 am. Several buildings, including some residential, were damaged and power lines to the village of Olkhovaya were cut, but there were no casualties.
The attacks were conducted before the official start of today's ceasefire at 10 am local time.
-- Pierre Vaux
Vyacheslav Abroskin, head of the Donetsk regional branch of the Interior Ministry, has written on his Facebook page that yesterday's shelling of the Ukrainian-held town of Avdeyevka, to the north-east of Donetsk Airport, has left two people dead and thirteen, including four children wounded.
Abroskin wrote that the shelling had destroyed residential tower blocks, the buildings of a kindergarten and part of the structure of the town hospital.
Police are combing the debris in the hope of finding other casualties.
In his original post, which was edited around two hours later, Abroskin had written that the two people killed were children. This report was picked up by several Ukrainian media outlets but there is now no specification as to the age of the deceased in Abroskin's post.
-- Pierre Vaux