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RFE/RL Reports: What's Next For Ukraine


Former Maidan Foes Fight Side By Side Against Slovyansk Rebels
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WATCH: Former Maidan Foes Fight Side By Side Against Slovyansk Rebels

As Ukraine's newly inaugurated President Petro Poroshenko prepares to roll up his sleeves, a look at challenges throughout the country.

# Ukrainian volunteers have been risking their lives to deliver supplies to troops fighting separatists in the country's restive east. Radio Svoboda correspondent Levko Stek traveled with one of these "war couriers" delivering medicine, food, and armor to Ukrainian soldiers in the east and learned, "If they catch you with these supplies, you're dead."

# Some former members of the disbanded Berkut riot police have joined Ukraine's newly formed National Guard. Soldiers at a checkpoint outside the eastern city of Slovyansk tell Radio Svoboda they are willing to overcome their differences to battle the common enemy in a pro-Russian, separatist stronghold.

# Russia is building the South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea to eliminate Ukraine as a transit state for gas exports to Europe. But after a Bulgarian surprise this week, the planned pipeline suddenly has nowhere to go. An explainer from correspondent Charles Recknagel.

# RFE/RL's Russian Service interviewed blogger and publicist Sergei Ivanov, who fled his native Luhansk for Kyiv and says he can't "understand or accept or forgive what Russia has done to us."

# In Ukraine, decentralizing government power is considered crucial to repairing the country's internal divisions. Marcin Swiecicki, a Polish lawmaker counseling Kyiv on how to hand off power to the regions, speaks to correspondent Daisy Sindelar about how 2014 Ukraine has some advantages that 1989 Poland did not.

# During a trip to Kyiv for Poroshenko's inauguration, the chairwoman of the U.S. Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, Representative Marcy Kaptur, told Radio Svoboda that continued targeted sanctions against the Russian elite will prove effective in making Moscow change its Ukraine policy.

# Meet "Mustang Wanted," a fearless Ukrainian urban climber who also tempted fate with his feet on the ground when he captured footage in the midst of the deadly clashes between Euromaidan protesters and "Berkut" riot police in February. Report by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Dmitry Volchek.

# New from UkraineUnspun: Russian media sometimes seems obsessed with Western coverage of issues that affect Russia -- particularly when it even peripherally supports Moscow's message. But what should Russian media do when it wants to quote a fringe source but give it mainstream credibility?

For more news from Ukraine, follow RFE/RL's Ukraine Live Blog, and for news from all of RFE/RL's broadcast regions, follow us online and on Twitter and Facebook.

-- Karisue Wyson

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