IF this is in fact correct THEN is an interesting turniong point regardless of whether the fighting is still occurring.
Russia attempted to get the Ukraine to pay for the electricity and natural gas they were shipping to the mercenaries and the Ukraine refused and argued that they are not bound by any legal contract to pay and for Russia if they wanted to they could take it to the Swedish Court--WHICH russia did not do.
This Russian tactic had been successful in their Georgian enclave so they assumed it would work again.
I have stated here a number of times that while Russia want a "frozen conflict" it was appearing more and more than in fact the Ukraine was "freezing Russia into a serious problem"--how to extract itself from the eastern Ukraine without a serious loss of even more money which has been estimated to be costing Russia 30 to 40M USDs per day to support the mercenaries.
In addition today there was a report from the Russian Finance Ministry indicating that out of the 500 banks in Russia 300 might have to be shut down due to bank failures and only 100 will remain---Russia is having some serious unannounced financial issues that some analysts stated would be occurring in the 3rd quater--this decision on the electricity can mean that this is in fact.
If one also looks at the apparent battlefiled failures by the newly from Russian regulars trained mercenary forces and that virtual no new territory has been captured since Feb. even the early battlefield successes have not been repeated.
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-cuts-of...155519945.html
Russia cuts off power supplies to Ukraine rebels: Kiev
AFP By Dmitry Zaks
1 hour ago
Bookmarks