Russia's EU ambassador has urged Brussels to launch talks with the newly born Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) despite the Ukraine crisis.

Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver: "Our idea is to start official contacts between the EU and the EAEU as soon as possible. [German] chancellor Angela Merkel talked about this not long ago. The EU sanctions [on Russia] are not a hinderance".

"I think that common sense advises us to explore the possibility of establishing a common economic space in the Eurasian region, including the focus countries of the Eastern Partnership [an EU policy on closer ties with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine]".

"We might think of a free trade zone encompassing all of the interested parties in Eurasia".

This documentary follows the lives of children in Donetsk and other Eastern parts of Ukraine, where Kiev's ethnic cleansing operations have left them with serious physical and psychological traumas. Many have had to leave families and homes. Although not fully aware of what is happening, they are already beginning to think that this is 'normal life'. Hiding out in bunkers as shells and missiles explode all around, this is how thousands of children in Eastern Ukraine spent Christmas 2014...

Tougher sanctions against Russia could destabilize the country and provoke an "even more dangerous" situation in Europe and have negative consequences for the entire world, German Vice-Chancellor Economic Affairs and Energy Minister has warned.

"Those who want it, provoke an even more dangerous situation for all of us in Europe," Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

"Those who are seeking to even more destabilize Russia from the economic and political point of view are pursuing quite different goals."

The goal of sanctions against Russia was to return Moscow to the negotiating table to find ways for a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Ukraine, he said.

He elaborated that additional sanctions may exclude Moscow from partnership in the resolution of conflicts which "will have very dangerous consequences for the entire world."

Russia's economic crisis cannot bring any benefit to the European Union, and so the introduction of sanctions against Moscow should be stopped, French President Francois Hollande said on France Inter radio on Monday. He said the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine is the main condition for the sanctions' lifting.

If Russia is in crisis, this means no good for Europe, said the French leader. He said he was against the confrontation policy and that the sanctions must be stopped. He said, however, that the sanctions regime would remain in the old format if the asides fail to make progress on the Ukrainian issue.

"I think the sanctions must stop now. They must be lifted if there is progress. If there is no progress, the sanctions will remain," Hollande said.

Two aircraft - presumably drones - were spotted flying over a French nuclear power plant on Saturday. The incident happened amid the country's efforts aimed at detecting and intercepting such flying objects above nuclear facilities.

The latest intrusion happened at a nuclear power plant in Nogent-sur-Seine in north-central France, AFP reported on Sunday.

"Around 6:40 p.m., site safety officers observed two flying objects that flew over the land reserve located on the perimeter of the nuclear plant," a spokesman for the power station told AFP. The objects were believed to be drones, and the gendarmerie has been alerted.

U.S. President Barack Obama said in a December 30th Oval Office interview with Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio, that, "wherever we have been involved over the last several years, I think the outcome has been better because of American leadership." This statement from him was part of his answer when Inskeep asked whether the President had regrets about "overthrowing the Gadhafi regime" in Libya.

Obama answered:

"We are hugely influential; we're the one indispensable nation. But when it comes to nation-building, when it comes to what is going to be a generational project in a place like Libya or a place like Syria or a place like Iraq, we can help, but we can't do it for them." In other words: the Libyan people failed, and the Syrian people failed, and the Iraqi people failed, according to America's President - but he himself and his predecessor Bush did not fail by bombing those countries under false pretenses as they did.

Obama then pivoted into a direct criticism of Russia's President, Vladimir Putin. He started his attack here by praising himself for "having some strategic patience. You'll recall that three or four months ago, everybody in Washington was convinced that President Putin was a genius." Obama was suggesting that the real genius was himself, for his "strategic patience."

Inskeep (who apparently was ignorant that the people of Crimea had always opposed the donation of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, and who was also ignorant that Crimeans in March 2014 were delighted to be reunited again with Russia and had not been "taken" by Russia but were instead saved by Russia from the fate that befell Donbass) interjected, there, for clarification to his listeners, that Obama meant that Putin was thought to be a "genius" "for taking Crimea." Inskeep was here trying to help Obama by clarifying Obama's anti-Putin reference in his "genius" term; and, by doing so, Inskeep falsely assumed that Crimea had been seized, against the will of Crimeans.

The President skillfully built upon Inskeep's ignorance, and anti-Russian bias, here, by playing along with Inskeep's false intrinsic assumption, and by continuing directly from it in such a way as to present himself as being the real "genius"; he asserted, "And he had outmaneuvered all of us and he had, you know, bullied and, you know, strategized his way into expanding Russian power. And I said at the time we don't want war with Russia [even though his February 2014 anti-Russian coup in Ukraine and actions afterwards show otherwise] but we can apply steady pressure working with our European partners, being the backbone of an international coalition to oppose Russia's violation of another country's sovereignty [as if it weren't the case that two recent Gallup polls in Crimea showed an overwhelming public support there for leaving Ukraine and for reuniting with Russia, and as if it weren't the case that America's takeover of Ukraine on Russia's border hadn't been the aggressive act here], and that over time, this would be a strategic mistake by Russia [when, in fact, Obama knows quite well that the people he installed in his February coup in Ukraine had already been initiating the process to kick out of Crimea, Russia's crucial Black Sea Fleet, which had been stationed there since 1783, and that this reversal of Khrushchev's 1954 gift of Crimea to Ukraine was crucial for Russia's own national security]. And today, you know, I'd sense that at least outside of Russia [such as among the trusting listeners to NPR], maybe some people are thinking what Putin did wasn't so smart [when Obama knows quite well that what Putin did by his re-absorbing Crimea back into Russia was actually vital to Russian national security under the circumstances of Obama's February coup in Ukraine]."

They all have been included in a special register
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) is putting on a wanted list all actors and musicians who come to areas of Donbass (Donetsk and Lugansk regions) not controlled by Kiev, Vasily Vovk, head of the SBU main investigation department, said Sunday on 112 TV channel.

"They all have been included in a special register and put on a wanted list," Vovk said when asked what actions the SBU is taking against Russian artists who perform in Donbass.

Russian singer Yulia Chicherina in early January visited the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk with a charity concert. Singer Iosif Kobzon, actors Mikhail Porechenkov, Ivan Okhlobystin and Alexey Panin, as well as other actors and performers, have visited the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's republics.

Fierce clashes between troops loyal to Kiev and local militias in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev's military operation, conducted since mid-April, to regain control over the breakaway southeastern territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People's republics, have killed over 4,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee Ukraine's southeast.

The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on a ceasefire at talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine.

Numerous violations of the ceasefire, which took effect the same day, have been reported since.

A "day of silence" in eastern Ukraine began at 09:00 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) on December 9. It is seen as another attempt by both parties to the intra-Ukrainian conflict to put an end to hostilities.

Slowly but surely Europe is figuring out that as a result of the western economic and financial blockade of Russian, it is Europe itself that is suffering the most. And while Germany was first to acknowledge this late in 2014 when its economy swooned and is now on the verge of a recession, now others are catching on. Case in point: the former head of the European Commission, and Italy's former Prime Minister, Romano Prodi who told Messaggero newspaper that the "weaker Russian economy is extremely unprofitable for Italy."

The other details from Prodi's statement:

Lowered prices in the international energy markets have positive aspects for the Italian consumers, who pay less for the fuel, but the effect will be only short-term. In the long-term however the weaker economic situation in countries producing energy resources, caused by lower oil and gas prices, mostly in Russia, is extremely unprofitable for Italy, he said.

"The lowering of the oil and gas prices in combination with the sanctions, pushed by the Ukrainian crisis, will drop the Russian GPD by five percent per annum, and thus it will cause cutting of the Italian export by about 50%," Prodi said.

"Setting aside the uselessness or imminence of the sanctions, one should highlight a clear skew: regardless of the rouble rate against dollar, which is lower by almost a half, the American export to Russia is growing, while the export from Europe is shrinking."

In other words, just as slowly, the world is starting to grasp the bottom line: it is not the financial exposure to Russia, or the threat of financial contagion should Russia suffer a major recession or worse: it is something far simpler that will lead to the biggest harm for Europe's countries. The lack of trade. Because while central banks can monetize everything, leading to an unprecedented asset bubble which if only for the time being boosts investor and consumer confidence, they can't print trade - that all important driver of growth in a globalized world long before central banks were set to monetize over $1 trillion in bonds each and every year to mask the fact that the world is deep in a global depression.

According to various publications in the American and foreign media, the United States has created a global system of cyber espionage that allows the interception and processing of personal data around the globe in violation of fundamental human rights. Tapped phones, intercepted short messages, supervised discussions in social networks and stolen emails - this is the ugly reality we are living in. The NSA and other units of the United States Intelligence Community are more than capable of breaching any mobile operating system, be it iOS, Android or BlackBerry OS.

In 2011 US intelligence agencies successfully finished the development of geo-location tracking software that allows the NSA to collect and save more than five billion location records of mobile users around the world on a daily basis, and then through a special program labeled CO-TRAVELER analyze and monitor the movement of certain individuals that could be of interest for Washington. In addition, since 2010 information on social contacts of US citizens, their personal data, including telephone calls, Internet logs, bank codes, insurance data is being processed by intelligence agencies on a regular basis.

Israel allegedly decided to freeze a monthly transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian authorities after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a request to join the International Criminal Court, Reuters reports, citing an Israeli official.

The monthly tax revenues amount to approximately $125 million. Palestinians use the funds to run their government and pay salaries to those employed in the public sector. Israel collects customs duties and taxes on behalf of the Palestinian authorities under the 1993 agreements, known as the Oslo Accords, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Israel repeatedly halted transfer of monthly revenues as sanctions against Palestine at times of heightened security and diplomatic tensions, according to Reuters.