Ukrainian Army reserve officers set up an information alert network to address the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The group includes military analysts and journalists. Many of them are retired colonels who previously worked in research departments of the Ukrainian armed forces, some  of them participated in peacekeeping missions in Iraq.

They called their group Information Resistance. The information is disseminated through the Facebook page of the Head of the Center for Military and Political Studies, colonel in reserve Dmitry Tymchuk. “The initiative group is made up of the recently retired reserve officers such as myself. This means that we do not have bosses, we do not get paid for our work and, therefore, depend on nobody. We are working on pure enthusiasm and the only force motivating us is patriotism,” writes Tymchuk.

Just hours before his appointment as Minister of Economic Development in Ukraine, Pavlo Sheremeta, the President of Kyiv School of Economics, spoke of how Ukraine needs to “fully reboot” its entire system. He also noted, in an interview with Money magazine, that the lesson for Ukraine will be experience of Georgia.

What should the government’s first steps be?

First, we need to restore control over state institutions. Second, we need to return order to the streets. Now the situation is more or less calm, but people don’t always feel safe. That’s an issue for the the Ministry of Internal Affairs and others. But until  order is restored on the streets, it is pointless to talk about economics.

The following is an update by the Embassy of the Ukraine in the United States.

“The Crimea, an integral part of Ukraine, is being occupied by foreign troops. The aggression is intensifying, Russian troops are consolidating control over the Ukrainian peninsula.

On March 9, 2014, the developments were characterized by the following:

• Continuation of blockade of Ukraine’s Armed Forces in Crimea, extension of Russia’s military presence on the peninsula