NATO top commander in Europe says 'military option' possible in Ukraine

NATO’s commander in chief says the West should not rule out arming Ukraine. General Philip Breedlove said no troops would be sent to the region, but providing Kiev with weapons and equipment was on the cards.

Speaking to reporters at a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Breedlove said: “I don’t think we should preclude out of hand the possibility of the military option.”

His strong comments come as the US is considering sending weapons to help Kiev in its fight against anti-government militias.

The chief commander of NATO said the proposal made by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine was “completely unacceptable,” and added “there is no conversation about putting boots on the ground.”

The head of the Russian Duma committee on CIS affairs and Eurasian integration, Leonid Slutsky, slammed Breedlove’s comments as “absolutely cynical.”

In Latest Vindication of Snowden, Court Rules UK Mass Surveillance Illegal
'We must not allow agencies to continue justifying mass surveillance programmes using secret interpretations of secret laws,' said Privacy International director Eric King.

In the latest vindication of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, a U.K. ruled on Friday that the British government violated human rights law by failing to safeguard some aspects of its intelligence-sharing operations until December 2014.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) accessed information obtained by the National Security Agency (NSA) without sufficient oversight, violating Articles 8 and 10 of the European convention on human rights. According to Reuters, "The tribunal's concern, addressed in the new ruling, was that until details of how GCHQ and the NSA shared data were made public in the course of the court proceedings, the legal safeguards provided by British law were being side-stepped."

The Guardian adds, "The ruling appears to suggest that aspects of the operations were illegal for at least seven years—between 2007, when the Prism intercept [program] was introduced, and 2014."

Article 8 guarantees the right to privacy; Article 10 protects free expression.

"For far too long, intelligence agencies like GCHQ and NSA have acted like they are above the law," said Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, one of the human rights groups that brought the case to the IPT. "Today’s decision confirms to the public what many have said all along—over the past decade, GCHQ and the NSA have been engaged in an illegal mass surveillance sharing program that has affected millions of people around the world."