Wow. The article's author has no Russian accent whatsoever. (Unless it was translated by an English speaker). Wish I had the same command of English. Somehow I doubt multilingual Ukranian newspapers are that much unaccented in their English. I had no temptation to open the Russian version of the article because the English text was not awkward to read.
Yes, but it was certainly written by a Russian and possibly even written in Russian and translated after the fact. Not every journalist from around here I know can write articles in such flawless English that has no traces of a Russian accent. It's a thing I can only envy.