Kyiv Mayor Squares Off With Tymoshenko Bloc

KIEV, Ukraine -- The parliament was elected in March but has yet to get down to work, as the first plenary session was spent in battles and haggling over which factions would form a majority.


Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky
However, the workings of the Kyiv City Council, which was also elected last spring and has a make-up similar to that of the parliament, may offer some clues as to what relations between the various groups of national lawmakers will be like.

The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) appears to be squarely in opposition in both legislatures, taking on the role of public watchdog.

During the March 26 general elections, which brought Kyiv its first new mayor in 10 years, BYuT won the largest share of seats on the 120-member city council, forging a strong alliance and near majority with two other parties to oppose new Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky.

BYuT, one of the heirs to the Orange Revolution, almost immediately demanded new elections amid allegations that Chernovetsky’s team bought votes from pensioners and the poor.

Though the “opposition” in the Kyiv City Council has reportedly settled into a tentative working compromise with Chernovetsky, experts say that conflicts are on the horizon, especially when decisions made by the mayor put council members’ own political and business interests at risk.

Earlier this week, Chernovetsky, who campaigned for mayor on a platform of populist social programs targeting the needy, sparred publicly with one of BYuT’s most outspoken lawmakers in the national parliament.

The war of words involved a preliminary decision by the Kyiv City Council to allocate 28 hectares of land in Kyiv for 15 years to Vulcan Pravex, a company that Mykola Tomenko, one of BYuT’s most outspoken people’s deputies, said is connected to Pravex-Bank, a top Ukrainian financial institution controlled by the mayor.

Tomenko charged that the July 27 decision, made by the council’s 15-member land commission, smacks of abuse of office by both the mayor and the 21 city council members from Leonid Chernovetsky’s bloc.

In his appeal to the Prosecutor General’s Office, Tomenko noted that because Chernovetsky is a major stockholder in Pravex-Bank and his son Stepan, who is also a city council deputy, is top manager at the bank, this is a clear conflict of interest.

Tomenko said that if Vulcan Pravex receives the right to use the land, a plant already located and operating on the site could be closed.

Chernovetsky countered in a statement released by the Kyiv municipal administration on Aug. 28 that “none of the enterprises linked with this financial structure [Pravex-Bank] would receive a single square meter of land,” and added that no decision had been made by the Kyiv City Council to allocate land to Pravex-Bank.

Lev Partskhaladze, a former Kyiv City Council member and head of the European Capital party, which failed to get into the council during the last elections, played down the significance of the land dispute in the relations between BYuT and the mayor.

“In this case, I don’t really see any problems if they decided to, or plan to issue this land to that company, because technically there is already a plant operating on the property, and they [the city council] just registered it to the plant itself.”

A more fundamental issue, according to Partskhaladze, is ensuring that land plots are allocated by the authorities in Kyiv in open tenders before any building begins, allowing for the best use of the city’s land and guaranteeing a level playing field for developers.

The Kyiv City Council has come under criticism in the past for the non-transparent way in which building sites are approved.

Analysts predict that Kyiv’s ongoing development will continue to be one of the most divisive issues facing the 120 member council.

Mykhaylo Pogrebinsky, an analyst at the Institute of Political and Conflict Studies, said the issue could undermine the current “fluid compromise” between Chernovetsky and the so-called Fair Kyiv coalition, which was forged immediately after the mayoral elections between BYuT (38 council seats), the bloc of former heavyweight champion Vitaliy Klitchko (13) who lost to Chernovetsky in the mayoral race, and the Civic Active of Kyiv (7).

Chernovetsky’s bloc got only 21 seats, but is thought to be supported by the bloc of former parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn (6), the pro-presidential Our Ukraine (15) and the Socialists (7).

The Donetsk-based Party of Regions, which leads the majority coalition in the national parliament, has only nine seats in the Kyiv City Council, but is also thought not to oppose the mayor. Four council members are independents.

According to Pogrebinsky, “right now it’s hard to say who’s really in the opposition, because it’s completely understood that part of BYuT came to an understanding with the mayor’s team. Whether this will last is difficult to gauge.”

BYuT’s cooperation with the mayor is based not on the party’s political ends, but to the extent to which city council members are able to protect their own political and economic interests.

“The majority of deputies on city councils, who somehow make it onto the party lists of one or another political party, especially when these are not well known politicians, normally get elected in order to protect their own, primarily, economic interests,” said Yevhen Poberezhny, executive director of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a Kyiv-based election monitoring group.

In this case, being in opposition is profitable for few of them,” he added.

Poberezhny said that the Kyiv city council is no exception to this rule. “There are a number of deputies, including some from BYuT, who did not get elected to the city council to be in the opposition, but to secure their own interests,” Poberezhny said, adding that at this point he would not say that there is a strong opposition to Chernovetsky in the Kyiv City Council that has a concrete strategy or that is willing to sacrifice something.

Nonetheless, the interests of these deputies will introduce oversight and control over the policies and decisions made by the mayor himself.

In this regard, Pogrebinsky views “Tomenko’s initiative [calling for a review of the land allocation to Vulcan Pravex] absolutely positively … I think that he should continue to work in this way in order to maximize control over these matters.”

Pogrebinskyi said that on the city council itself there are considerable resources to check the work of the mayor and guard against possible corruption in the future.
“I think that in this regard we can’t count on influential businessmen in BYuT, and if they work diligently, they can organize considerable control over the operations of the city council.”

Source: Kyiv Post

So, Ukraine Isn’t Orange After All

KIEV, Ukraine -- The re-emergence of Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister of Ukraine must rate as one of the most implausible developments even to the many seasoned observers who have long become accustomed to ‘transition shocks’ in post-Soviet Europe.


The so-called Orange Revolution, which followed the rigged presidential election illegitimately ‘won’ by Mr. Yanukovych in late 2004 was supposed to usher in a new democratic Ukraine firmly anchored to Euro-Atlantic geopolitical and economic structures.

However, the new government is committed to encouraging the nascent Ukrainian capitalism that has emerged out of the gangsterism of the 1990s and to re-establishing a close and cooperative relationship with Russia, whatever the West may say. Tellingly, the new government has an unambiguous democratic mandate.

Compared to the temporary economic shocks of the 1990s that were anticipated and analyzed by neoliberal economists, Mr. Yanukovych’s resurrection is all the more shocking because it suggests that the future of Ukraine is not Orange after all.

Combined with the re-election of President Lukashenko in Belarus earlier this year and Mr. Putin’s willingness to assert Russia’s national interests even at the expense of offending the West, it looks as if the future of the post-Soviet world can not be understood purely in terms of a single Western modernity.

Rather than being a source of cheap labor and a client of the West, it is at least possible that Ukraine will take its place in a new emergent capitalism centered on Russia with access to cheap and plentiful hydrocarbons and the potential to rival the West. Is it any wonder then that Western governments have been so keen to destabilize and re-align Ukraine?

That Mr. Yanukovych becoming prime minister for a second time – with enhanced powers that arguably make him more powerful than President Yushchenko – has shocked so many onlookers, is because so much comment in the West leading up to and following the Orange Revolution was based on wishful thinking. Whilst the Orange Revolution unquestionably mobilized millions of people yearning for a new Ukraine, it was not, as widely claimed, solely a national and democratic reawakening.

It was also the occasion for the latest tactical scramble for power amongst the cosy elite that has misruled Ukraine since Independence. Sober analysis of the protagonists revealed that the distinction between the ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ was not so clearly drawn as was often supposed.

The mass mobilization and the political jousting would not have occurred without the sophisticated political operation, predominately ‘made in the USA’, which destabilized the finely balanced domestic political landscape.

The aim of U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine has been clear and consistent ever since Independence: to as far as possible detach Ukraine from Russian influence. To this end, members of the nationalist Ukrainian Diaspora in academia, the media and elsewhere have often been willing accomplices.

Ukraine has been subject to Western meddling through the operation of supposedly independent foundations, aid programs and technical assistance projects, as well as through the more formal (but often less public) instruments of Western diplomacy.

The failure to impose neoliberal economic policies in the 1990s led the U.S. to switch its focus to so-called ‘political processes’ and ‘civil society’. This entailed the mobilization of students, academics, NGOs, journalists and politicians to provide evidence of the authoritarianism of former Ukrainian President Kuchma’s incumbent regime.

Accordingly, Mr. Yushchenko’s presidential campaign focused largely on the legitimacy of the election process itself.

Hence the staged fracas between Mr. Yushchenko and the guards protecting the Central Election Commission building in Kyiv before the presidential election. Hence, too, the agents provocateurs who organized Orange rallies in the politically hostile east of the country in order to video the anticipated response.

Both Mr. Yushchenko’s campaign and the supposedly non-partisan interventions by Western governments were justified by the reaction they provoked. Once demonstrators had flooded onto the streets of Kyiv, they were lauded as the embodiment of the ‘Ukrainian people’ conveniently ignoring that ‘other’ Ukraine, which had supported Mr. Yanukovych and which was as suspicious of the events at Maidan as the demonstrators were of the electoral process.

Equally damning is the way the Orange Revolution failed to deliver stable government, failed to maintain rapid economic growth and made little progress in cracking down on corruption. Far from strengthening the state and promoting structural economic reform the Orange Revolution destabilized the productivist ideology that had united the country.

Just as the state was showing signs of consolidation and alignment after years of division between ministries and competing regional lobbies, the Orange Revolution undermined an already weak state machine.

The renationalization of the Kryvorizhstal steel mill that had been controversially sold to IMU, a holding company jointly owned by two of the largest business empires in the country, and its subsequent resale to the London-based Mittal Group, symbolized the severing of connections between the state and the country’s national capitalists.

Government was largely paralyzed and many voters found Mr. Yushchenko’s apparent fixation with NATO accession a bewildering distraction. Such political instability merely served to discourage much-needed investment and undermine economic growth. The conditions that had enabled rapid economic growth were torn asunder by the Orange Revolution and rendered the country almost ungovernable.

The appointment of Mr. Yekhanurov as prime minister last autumn was an acknowledgment that Mr. Yushchenko and his allies couldn’t govern the country without reaching an accommodation with their political foes based in the financial and industrial heartland in the east of the country.

The finely balanced waxing and waning as the regional lobbies vied with one another for influence in Kyiv was disrupted by the Orange Revolution.

During his first spell as prime minister, Mr. Yanukovych proved particularly adept at brokering between the rival regional lobbies and is perhaps now best placed to coax and cajole them to forge a functioning national state machine united in common cause with a governable national economy.

It is paradoxical that the most fervent supporters of the Orange Revolution now have the least confidence that it will have a lasting effect on the country.

But since Mr. Yanukovych and his party have apologized for their role in the rigged election and now unambiguously defend free elections and a free media, it is at least possible that his premiership will show the Orange Revolution marked the beginning of a new Ukraine after all. Only not the new Ukraine envisioned by many Orange protagonists and their patrons in the West.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Could Face Hike Of More Than 40 Percent In Gas Prices Next Year

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's government is preparing for a more than 40 percent hike in gas prices next year, even as Moscow and Kyiv hold talks aiming at averting another pricing dispute and supply disruptions, an official said Tuesday.


The government is anticipating an increase from $95 per 1,000 cubic meters to $135 - a 42 percent hike, said Vitaly Lukyanchenko, spokesman for Ukraine's first deputy prime minister, Mykola Azarov.

Ukraine had hoped to retain the $95 price - already a twofold increase over last year - for five years, but that looked less likely after Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, perceived as more pro-Russian than the Westward-leaning officials who ran the previous government, called recent price talks with Moscow "rather difficult."

Talks have been ongoing since Yanukovych took office earlier this month.

But "we are taking as the basis an optimistic scenario for the development of events," Azarov told Profil magazine in an interview published Monday.

He said Ukraine would be able to handle any jump in prices since the Cabinet was amassing a Hr 3 billion ($598 million) stabilization fund in case of such an event.

Ukraine's fuel and energy minister, Yuriy Boyko, said Tuesday that Ukraine would ensure that western European gas consumers do not suffer supply disruptions as they did in January during a price dispute between Ukraine and Russia, when Russia briefly turned off the gas taps.

Russia then accused Ukraine of siphoning off gas meant for Europe. Ukraine is the main transit country for Russian gas heading to Western Europe.

"European consumers and Russian resource owners won't have any surprises," Boyko said.

Boyko said Ukraine was "on schedule" with its efforts to store gas for the coming winter, rejecting European concerns that the country is falling behind.

Meanwhile, Gaz Ukrainy, a daughter company of Ukraine's state-owned gas company Naftogaz, began switching off the gas supply Tuesday to the Ukrainian capital's main hot water supplier, Kyivenergo, said Oleksiy Tkach, a Gaz Ukrainy spokesman.

As of Tuesday, Kyivenergo owed more than Hr 66 million ($13.7 million dollars) for gas used this year. The increase in the price of imported gas has prompted Ukrainian gas companies to take a harder line with debtors.

Ukraine is one of the world's most inefficient users of natural gas, with many factories and municipal suppliers using outdated equipment that makes little use of energy-saving technology.

Source: AP

Poland Declares Unwavering Support For Ukraine's EU, NATO Drive

WARSAW, Poland -- Poland is unwavering in its support for Ukraine's drive to join the European Union and the NATO Western defence alliance, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Anna Fotyga said Tuesday in Warsaw following talks with her Ukrainian counterpart Borys Tarasyuk.


Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Anna Fotyga
Foreign Minister Tarasyuk announced Ukraine's new Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych would visit Poland in early September to attend the Krynica Economic Forum September 6-9 in the Polish mountain resort town of Krynica.

The Moscow-oriented Yanukovych is expected to meet for the first time with Poland's Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

The annual Krynica Forum is created specifically for Central and Eastern Europe and modelled on the annual Davos World Economic Forum in the swish Swiss mountain resort.

"Poland is a strategic partner for Ukraine and what is important is how both counties will fulfil this relationship," Tarasyuk told reporters.

He pointed to guaranteeing the minority rights for Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine and the liberal flow of people and goods along Poland's EU border with Ukraine as priorities in the partnership.

Having joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in May 2004, Poland is one of the most vocal advocates of the further eastward expansion of both blocs.

Tarasyuk also confirmed talks were underway to remove an import ban imposed by Ukraine on Polish meat. He did not specify exactly when the ban may be lifted.

Source: Deutsche Presse-Agenteur

Ukraine's Convicted Ex-PM Stripped Of Local Legislative Authority

KIEV, Ukraine -- A district court in eastern Ukraine has stripped a former prime minister and a local lawmaker of legislative authority, a Ukrainian Internet edition said Tuesday.


Pavlo Lazarenko, 53, served as prime minister under President Leonid Kuchma from 1996 to 1997. He was arrested in the U.S. in 1999, and was sentenced to nine years in prison and a fine of $10 million Saturday.

Lazarenko was elected to a local legislature in Dnepropetrovsk in March 2006.

Ukrainskaya Pravda said a lawsuit against the former prime minister, filed by Borys Filatov, a human rights activist in Dnepropetrovsk, was accepted and his legislative authority withdrawn.

During Ukraine's 1999 presidential election campaign, Lazarenko, who was wanted on corruption and embezzlement charges at home, sought political asylum in the U.S., claiming he had faced three assassination attempts. Instead, the U.S. authorities issued a warrant for his arrest.

Lazarenko denied all charges. The 9-year sentence is half of the maximum sought by prosecutors but five years more than his lawyers asked for.

Defense attorneys said that the prosecution was politically motivated and that they would appeal the sentence.

Source: RIA Novosti

Is Yanukovych Really Free to Fight ?

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Ukraine celebrated 15 years of sovereignty Thursday – an incessant struggle between supporters of rapprochement with Russia and those wanting greater distance from Russia.


The Yushchenko-Yanukovych and East-West dilemmas don’t seem like dilemmas any more. Ukraine is united again, and everyone’s attention is riveted on what is happening in Ukraine itself.

The Orange Revolution was proof of Ukraine’s desire for sovereignty and the latest configuration of state power confirms it. On the other hand, there is a difference between desire and ability. The last 15 years proved beyond the shadow of doubt that Ukraine’s economic dependance on Russia is much greater than political.

There is more to it than the simple fact that Ukraine cannot boast of having much oil and gas on its own territory. There is also the Soviet structure of national industry to consider. Ukrainian industry is extremely energy-inefficient, while all its markets are in Russia.

The “cheap energy in return for cheap commodities” arrangement was all right in a single state but when applied to two sovereign states at political odds with each other every now and then, it inevitably crumbles.

Russia is putting Ukraine under pressure from two directions at once nowadays. It closes its markets to Ukrainian goods and commodities (pipe export duties, problems with dairy products) and ups gas prices.

All this effectively undermines Russia-oriented Ukrainian industry whose principal centers are located in the eastern part of the country. Prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko did her best to try to alleviate the situation.

Tymoshenko thought that cheap energy was available elsewhere and that this diversification of gas imports would lessen dependence on Russia. She counted on Turkmenistan a a potential supplier of gas but Moscow’s influence with the Turkmenbashi proved strong enough to disrupt the plans of the Ukrainian prime minister.

Gazprom had bought all gas Turkmenistan had for sale for years to come. Ukraine began getting its gas courtesy of Russia via Rosukrenergo. The task of fighting dependance on Russia is in the lap of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych now.

Believing that his Regions Party is a pro-Russian political force is a mistake. Major Ukrainian businesses have their interests - and lobbyists - in the party in question. Like Ukraine in general, these businesses need the risks they are running differentiated.

Sure, the new government will certainly undertake to regain the lost benefits like an easy export regime and affordable energy prices but “political independence” is not going to be a lot at the auction.

If Russia refuses to have the old arrangement without the political aspect restored (and Russia will refuse), it will make the Ukrainian national economy all the more determined to start looking for new partners and markets in Europe.

All of it will be immeasurably more complicated than the simple Soviet-type arrangement of the past. Ukraine will buy expensive energy from Russia, charge a lot for its transit to Europe, and offer to the West and in the West what it used to sell to and in Russia.

All existing transit accords will have to be revised along with the documents concerning Ukraine’s future membership of the World Trade Organization. What really counts, however, is that the Ukrainian economy will have to be whipped up into shape and made competitive.

All these are nearly impossible tasks. Russia’s reluctance to be cooperative in the talks with Ukraine will only broaden the rift between the two countries. Ukraine is celebrating sovereignty.

Sovereignty from whom? Ukraine bartered independence from Russia for dependence on Gazprom.

This is what Yanukovych the freedom fighter should be thinking about.

Source: The St. Petersburg Times

Korrespondent Publishes TOP-100 Influential People List

KIEV, Ukraine -- Korrespondent, a leading Ukrainian news magazine, has announced its rating of the Top 100 most influential people in the country, an annual poll conducted by the editorial staff of the Russian-language weekly that attempts to reflect the changing fortunes of Ukraine’s power elite against a background of shifting public opinion.


This year’s rating results were presented by Korrespondent editors during an Aug. 17 press conference held at UNIAN news agency in Kyiv.

With the 2006 Top 100 list, the magazine’s fourth since it launched the poll in 2003, “Korrespondent wanted to offer its readers its own view of just how much the country’s landscape of personal influence has changed following the recent political shakeup,” chief editor, Vitaly Sych, said during the news conference.

The change in those positions compared with last year’s poll has indeed been significant, with some individuals “losing unlimited influence and power, and others, gaining it,” reads a statement released by the magazine.

Ukrainians reappraised their and the country’s priorities following the 2004 Orange Revolution and the March 2006 parliamentary elections, which both had a significant impact on the distribution of power among the elite in Ukraine, according to Korrespondent.

“While the political battles this year [the protracted fight over the formation of a parliamentary coalition and government following the March 26 elections] were not as pitched as the social unrest of the Orange Revolution in 2004, the consequences of those battles for the most influential people in the country were no less significant,” the statement continues.

A total of 44 new individuals made the rating this year – nearly as many as last year, following the 2004 presidential elections.

“The creation of a parliamentary coalition has truly changed the face of the elite,” according to the Russian-language weekly. “While the rating last year included only several members of the elite from Donetsk Region, this year they form the backbone of the list.”

This year, a businessman replaced the Ukrainian president in the top spot on the list for the first time in the list’s four-year history.

Considered to be the wealthiest man in Ukraine, Donetsk tycoon and parliament deputy Rinat Ahkmetov moved into first spot on the list from fifth position last year.

He replaced President Viktor Yushchenko, who moved to second place in 2006 because “his [Yushchenko’s] ideas are no longer as popular as they were two years ago and he also has fewer levers of influence over events in the country,” Korrespondent said.

The magazine named Akhmetov Ukraine’s most influential person due to his enormous wealth and sprawling business holdings, as well as the key role that he plays within the Party of Regions – the pro-Russian bloc that recently wrested power from the shattered Orange forces in parliament, forming a coalition of its own.

Vadim Karasyov, the director of the Institute of Global Strategies, a political think tank, told the Post, Korrespondent’s sister publication, that the list not only documents the rise and fall of Ukraine’s powerbrokers, but also shows the large extent to which big business – and big businessmen – have come to dominate and exert great influence on Ukrainian politics within the last year.

He said that in this sense, the fact that Akhmetov heads this year’s list, followed by a large number of other powerful businessmen, many of whom are also closely linked with Akhmetov, was very significant.

“Since the Orange Revolution, Ukraine has become the Republic of Businessmen, the Republic of Big Business,” Karasyov said. “Business has taken political power into its hands.”

Viktor Luhovyk, the head of communications at Kyiv-based investment bank Dragon Capital, said that the rating introduces a civilizing factor into the political life of Ukraine, since it not only reflects which individuals played the most important role in charting the country’s political and economic course over the last year, but also helps make Ukrainian politics more transparent.

“It helps remind politicians that they are in the public eye and being scrutinized by the mass media, as well as other observers,” Luhovyk said in an interview to the Post.

Source: Kyiv Post

Kucherevskiy Killed In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian football is in mourning after Evhen Kucherevskiy, the man who led FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk to the Soviet title, was killed in a car crash.


Evhen Kucherevskiy
The former coach, who celebrated his 65th birthday on 6 August, was driving to watch a reserve match in his current capacity as Dnipro's sporting director when his car collided with a truck. He was rushed to hospital but died without regaining consciousness on Saturday.

After an unremarkable career as a goalkeeper with a number of Ukrainian-based Soviet second division clubs, Kucherevskiy found his true calling as a coach.

Starting his career with smaller outfits FC Kolos Nikopol, FC Sudostroitel, he joined Dnipro initially as reserve team coach in 1986.

Handed sole command, he led the club through an incredible period which saw the modest Dnipro finish as runners-up in the Soviet Supreme League in 1987 - his first season in charge - before claiming the title in 1988, the cup in 1989 and a place in the 1989/90 European Champion Clubs' Cup quarter-finals.

He would subsequently coach clubs in Tunisia and Syria and moved to Russia to take charge of the national Under-21 team.

He returned to Dnipro as coach in November 2001, leading them to two third-placed league finishes and into the UEFA Cup, but stepped down to take up his current position in 2005.

At the time of his retirement, club general director Andriy Stetsenko said of him: "I think all Ukrainian football should thank him. Dnipro's players have contributed heavily to the national team's [FIFA World Cup] qualification and this has everything to do with Kucherevskiy."

Source: UEFA

Reputed Ex-Nazi Living In New York City

NEW YORK, NY -- An alleged former Nazi camp guard stripped of his U.S. citizenship three years ago still lives in New York City because no country will take him, officials say.


'Listen, I`m 84 years old; I`m not going anywhere -- except a funeral home,' Jakiw Palij told the New York Daily News.

Palij is to meet this week with Homeland Security officials who have been trying to deport him.

Ukraine, Poland and Germany have balked at taking the retired draftsman, the newspaper said.

The government brought a deportation case against Palij in 2002, alleging he was a guard at the notorious Trawniki labor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland and a member of several units that committed atrocities against civilians.

Palij has claimed he was forced into the service at age 18 and would have been killed if he refused.

'I was nowhere near to any camp,' he told the News. 'I didn`t hurt any Jews, anybody from Ukraine, Poland. Anybody.'

Source: UPI

Yushchenko: Ukrainian - Sole National Language In Ukraine

LVIV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said the political leadership has been guided by European principles and standards while tackling the national language issue.


"The loss of the language is the loss of the nation and the loss of the foundations for national development.

Therefore, we are pursuing a policy compliant with European standards," Yushchenko said during celebrations of the 150th birth anniversary of Ukrainian poet, writer, social critic and political activist Ivan Franko.

"Ukrainian is and will remain our sole national language," Yushchenko said.

The Ukrainian president arrived in Lviv region on Sunday to attend events marking Ivan Franko's 150th birth anniversary. Yushchenko is expected to visit Ivan Franko's museum-estate in the village of Naguyevichi and lay flowers on his grave at the Lychakovskoye cemetery in Lviv.

Yushchenko will take part in a state award presentation ceremony.

Source: Interfax

Ukrainians Study Kansas Farmers

SALINA, KS -- Officials from Ukraine are visiting the United States as they seek to improve their farming methods.


A Kansas wheat farm
Yesterday, the former speaker of the parliament in Ukraine and two other men from the county visited Great Plains Manufacturing in Salina.

The company exports its equipment to Ukraine, as well as other parts of the world.

Ukraine used to import more equipment from Europe. But much of the European equipment is better suited for small farmers.

The group from Ukraine has been in the United States for about a week to check out what is new in agricultural equipment.

Like Kansas, the primary crop produced in Ukraine is wheat.

Source: AP

Ukrainians Hail Ex-Premier's Sentence As Victory Over Corruption

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian analysts and politicians on Saturday hailed the sentence handed down to former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko in the United States as a victory over corruption, but lamented that Ukrainian authorities have not done enough to tackle the problem.


Former Ukraine Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko leaves a federal court house in San Francisco, California, August 25, 2006. Lazarenko was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined $10 million in a U.S. court
Lazarenko, who was widely accused of corruption during his stint as prime minister in 1996-1997, was sentenced Friday in a federal court in San Francisco to nine years in prison and $10 million in fines for money laundering, wire fraud and extortion.

"The role of U.S. justice turned out positive - Ukraine has not had court hearings of the kind," said political analyst Mykhailo Pohrebinsky. "It has a symbolic meaning: corruption can be punishable - even if not in Ukraine but outside."

Lazarenko fled to the United States in 1999, ahead of a presidential election in which incumbent Leonid Kuchma won a new term, after being stripped of his legislative immunity and served with an arrest warrant at home.

Instead the U.S. government arrested and tried him in an effort to show that the United States must not be used as a safe haven for dirty money.

Ukrainian authorities have long maintained that Lazarenko used his time as prime minister to siphon huge profits from the distribution of natural gas in this former Soviet republic.

Yehor Khmelko, a businessman in the capital, Kiev, said Lazarenko's fate was less the result of his financial dealings than of political missteps.

"He made money like many other state employees in Ukraine. But he had bad luck: he entered a conflict with Kuchma during the presidential campaign," Khmelko said.

Defense attorneys said the prosecution was politically motivated and that political foes withheld evidence that could have exonerated Lazarenko.

"He shouldn't have fled Ukraine," Khmelko added. "All those who made huge money by state-scale fraud are in power now.

President Viktor Yushchenko, the Western-leaning reformer who came to power following the 2004 street protests dubbed the Orange Revolution, has pledged to fight corruption as one of his top priorities.

But many Ukrainians have become disappointed with Yushchenko amid infighting and allegations of corruption and incompetence in his entourage.

Lawmaker Serhiy Teryokhin said Lazarenko got what he deserved. However, he said, "Strange that it's the United States who punishes for crimes committed in Ukraine."

The sentence was half of the maximum sought by prosecutors, who said Lazarenko misused the premier's office to get rich through business schemes.

Lazarenko has claimed his multimillion dollar fortune was earned legitimately at a time his country, emerging from the Soviet Union's collapse, had a lawless free-market economy.

In a comment that reflected a lack of confidence in justice systems that is common in the former Soviet Union, schoolteacher Valentyna Dobra expressed doubt that lazarenko would serve the sentence.

"He will pay his way out of it, no doubt. He has stolen enough money to pay years of appeals, enjoying his villa at the seashore," she said.

Convicted in June 2004, Lazarenko has been under house arrest at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay Area on $86 million bail. A defense attorney said the conviction will be appealed.

Source: AP

First Funerals Held For Russian Victims Of Plane Crash

KIEV, Ukraine — The first funerals were held Saturday for Russians killed when a passenger jet crashed in Ukraine after encountering rough weather, killing all 170 people registered aboard.


Relatives carry coffins containing the bodies of Anna Gabitova, 26, behind, and her one-year-old daughter Alexandra, front, killed in the Pulkovo Airlines Tu-154 plane crash, at a funeral in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, Aug. 26, 2006
Meanwhile, the identified remains of 36 victims were being returned to St. Petersburg, Russia, where most of the passengers lived, aboard a cargo plane flight from Ukraine's Donetsk region, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said. More than 30 bodies had been returned to St. Petersburg for burial a day earlier.

In the Russian Black Sea resort city of Anapa, where the Pulkovo Airlines Tu-154 had taken off on a flight to St. Petersburg, friends and loved ones buried Natalya Kuznetsova. State-run Rossiya television said the St. Petersburg resident had grown up in Anapa and was vacationing with her husband and son before flying back home alone to return to work while they continued their holiday.

At a village in the Krasnodar region, where Anapa is located, a funeral was held for a 19-year-old man who had been returning to St. Petersburg to start his second year at a university, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Dozens of relatives who had traveled to Ukraine to identify their loved ones were returning to Russia on Saturday, authorities said.

The plane slammed into a field north of Donetsk after its crew sent distress signals as a storm raged in the area.

Ukraine's Emergency Ministry said that while emergency workers were loading fragments of the shattered plane to clear the site, they found two bodies including one of a small child.

The crash was the third major air disaster involving a Russian airline or airport this year. An Airbus A-310 of the Russian airline S7 skidded off a runway and burst into flames on July 9 in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 124 people, and an A-320 of the Armenian airline Armenia crashed into the Black Sea while trying to land in the Russian resort city of Sochi in rough weather in May, killing all 113 people aboard.

Source: AP

New WBC Champ Ready To Fight Klitschko

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia’s heavyweight WBC champion Oleg Maskaev has accepted an offer to fight against IBF heavyweight champion Vladimir Klitschko, the Lenta.ru agency reported. The date of the bout is to be set.


Ukranian boxer Klitschko celebrates as he is declared the winner and new IBF heavyweight champion in Mannheim
Maskaev said in an interview with the ESPN TV channel he is willing to fight against Klitschko. “I would like to have this bout but the schedule is problem. I need some time to recover,” he said.

Maskaev went to fight Hasim Rahman on August 12 with a back injury, and injured a thumb and the left arm’s elbow in the bout.

Vladimir Klitschko’s camp are not willing to put off a defense from November 11. Shannon Briggs is also named a likely candidate to fight Klitschko Jnr.

However, Maskaev and Klitschko’s managers already discussed financial terms of the deal. The Russian’s representative Dennis Rappaport said Ukraine’s Klitschko and his people agreed to divide the fight profits in half, though they earlier wanted to get all profits from TV broadcast in Germany.

Source: Kommersant

Former Ukrainian Leader Lazarenko Sentenced In SF

SAN FRANCISCO, USA -- A former prime minister of Ukraine was sentenced Friday by a federal judge in San Francisco to nine years in prison and fined $10 million for laundering millions of dollars in extortion funds through U.S. banks.


Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko leaves the federal building after he was sentenced in federal court to nine years in prison and $10 million in fines for money laudering, wire fraud and extortion,
U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins said "a significant sentence is appropriate" for Pavel Lazarenko, 53, because of his "utilization of the financial system of this country to conceal ill-gotten gains."

Lazarenko was prime minister -- the second-highest position in Ukraine -- in 1996 and 1997.

He was convicted by a jury in Jenkins' court in 2004 of 14 counts of laundering $21.7 million through American banks, money laundering conspiracy, wire fraud and transfer of stolen funds.

Prosecutors said he obtained the funds through extortion and kickbacks while holding a series of Ukrainian government posts in the 1990s. Lazarenko fled to the United States in 1999.

Prosecutors said the 14 counts concerned a total of $44 million in illegally gained funds, including $30 million extorted from former Ukrainian businessman Peter Kiritchenko and $14 million skimmed off from Naukovy State Farm, a state-owned dairy farm.

The unusual trial required prosecutors to prove both that the money laundering, fraud and stolen property transfers took place in violation of American law and that the money was gained illegally under Ukrainian law in effect at the time.

Lazarenko is only the second former foreign leader to be prosecuted in a U.S. court.

The other was deposed Gen. Manuel Noriega of Panama, who was sentenced in federal court in Miami in 1992 to 30 years in prison for cocaine trafficking.

U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan said after Lazarenko's sentencing, "The defendant's crimes lasted for over seven years and resulted in a $44 million loss to Ukrainian citizens and the laundering of over $21 million through the American banking system.

"As this case shows, we will persevere and obtain convictions and lengthy sentences for corrupt public officials -- even if they are from foreign countries -- especially when they abuse the American banking system to conceal their gains," Ryan said.

Defense attorney Doron Weinberg said that if the conviction were upheld, he would consider the sentence fair, but said Lazarenko's lawyers expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.

"We believe no American crime was committed," Weinberg said. "We expect that will be the result on appeal and so we expect the conviction will be set aside."

Defense attorneys argued during the trial that Lazarenko gained his wealth legally through business deals during a tumultuous time in the early 1990s as the former Soviet republic moved from a Communist to a capitalist economy.

Weinberg said that Lazarenko is likely to serve only three and one-half to five years in prison, with credit for previous time in jail and for good behavior.

Defense attorneys had suggested a sentence of a little more than four years, while prosecutors, charging he "engaged in massive abuse of both his public office and the United States' financial system," urged the judge to impose a penalty of more than 19 years.

Last fall, Lazarenko told a Ukrainian television interviewer he had cleared his name in the U.S. courts and in March, he was elected in absentia to a regional parliament in Dnepropetrovsk, according to the government brief, which accused him of "an ongoing refusal to accept any responsibility for his criminal activities."

Jenkins scheduled a further hearing for Sept. 29 to consider the government's bid for forfeiture of $22.8 million in money laundering proceeds and a request by Kiritchenko for $17.3 million in restitution.

Kiritchenko, who pleaded guilty to a felony charge and became a prosecution witness against Lazarenko, is awaiting sentencing.

The forfeiture request includes $21.7 million in money laundering proceeds plus another $1.2 million for an increase in value of a Novato house Lazarenko bought with some of the proceeds in 1998.

Lazarenko bought the house, which once belonged to actor Eddie Murphy, for $6.7 million, but it was re-appraised at $7.9 million this spring, according to a prosecution brief.

Jenkins will also consider on Sept. 29 Lazarenko's motion for release on bail while he appeals.

Lazarenko has been on home detention at an undisclosed location on an $86 million bond since 2003 and is paying for the costs of a security task force to maintain the house arrest.

Lazarenko was originally convicted of a total of 29 counts, but last year, the judge dismissed 15 counts of wire fraud and transfer of stolen property, saying there wasn't enough evidence for those convictions.

Earlier, midway through the 2004 trial, the judge dismissed 24 other counts related to alleged kickbacks on a natural gas distribution contract and a housing enterprise.

The two actions together left only 14 counts in place from a 53-count indictment filed against Lazarenko in 2000.

Source: NBC11

State Glory: Gulag Of The Russian Mind

NEW YORK, NY -- It is now 15 years since the failed coup of August 1991 against Mikhail Gorbachev. At the time, Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost were seen by Soviet hardliners as a sellout of communist Russia to the capitalist West.


Mikhail Gorbachev
But it is now clear that the KGB and the military who launched the coup were not defending the idea of communism. They were protecting their idea of Russia's imperial mission, a notion that had given the Kremlin commissars greater control of the vast Russian empire, and of Russia's neighbors, than any of the czars had ever enjoyed.

Gorbachev's reforms not only liberated ordinary Russians from the straitjacket of Marxism-Leninism, but also released the national aspirations of people who had been locked in the empire for centuries. Having seen the peoples of Central Europe free themselves from Soviet domination just two years before, the constituent nations of the Soviet Union were beginning to seek the same freedom for themselves.

The Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were the first to insist on traveling their own national path, and have since linked their fate to Europe as members of the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Others soon followed. By December 1991, the Soviet empire was no more.

But only the Baltics have secured the sort of independence dreamed of in 1991. Georgia, which is both European and Asiatic, teeters on the edge of instability.

Traditionally Asian Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have resumed the tribal forms of autocracy they practiced throughout the centuries. Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have in essence become their presidents' wholly owned family fiefs.

Ukraine's break with Russia was perhaps the most wrenching, both for those in the Kremlin nostalgic for imperial control and for ordinary Russians who see Ukraine as the wellspring of Russian civilization. The Orange Revolution of 2004, which overturned a rigged presidential election, proved that Ukraine was no longer a Malorossiya (a small Russia), an inferior and subordinate Slavic brother.

That peaceful revolution, led by Viktor Yushchenko and Yuliya Tymoshenko, was a reminder of how enlightened Kievan Rus had been before it was forced to give way to the despotic princes of Moscow.

Two years after the Orange revolt, Yushchenko (a politician who seems out of his depth) has now accepted the Kremlin placeman Viktor Yanukovich, the foe he had vanquished in 2004, as his new prime minister.

Nonetheless, the Orange movement -- now led by Yushchenko's former partner and prime minister, Tymoshenko -- has not fully lost its way, and still aims to preserve Ukraine as a truly independent and free country. Malorossiya, for the majority of Ukrainians, remains a thing of the past.

Despite all these epochal changes, Russians cannot accept the loss of their imperial role. The dream of empire is, indeed, the gulag that imprisons the Russian mind. Most Russians do not regard Europe's approach to their country's borders as a sign that they have, at long last, fully united with the civilization of which they are a part, but as a source of insecurity.

Something more is at work here than mere nostalgia. During the chaotic years of Boris Yeltsin's presidency, it was perhaps understandable that Russians regretted their loss of great power status. Something had to be blamed for their dire economic conditions. Yet under President Vladimir Putin, with the economy growing robustly, these feelings have hardened, not diminished.

Russians are reverting to the past -- to the grand pronouncements of Russia as a unique great nation, destined to rule the world. As before the advent of Gorbachev -- indeed, restoring a centuries-old tendency -- Russians yet again believe that the people should be willing to forfeit their freedoms for the sake of the greatness of the state, which wins wars and launches Sputniks. A free press, free speech and free elections, it is feared, may diminish the brute power that is needed for Russia to assert itself.

Russians have long boasted of their various unique forms of greatness: first it was the holy Russian soul, so superior to Western practicality. In the 15th century, Moscow was declared a "Third Rome," the savior of spiritual Christianity.

The 17th century united this spiritual mission with imperial expansion, which eventually encompassed a landmass spanning 11 time zones. In the early 20th century, the imperial and spiritual mission became one, as Russia became the bastion of world communism.

All these forms of greatness, however, demanded that ordinary Russians accept debasement and enslavement. Development is not seen as a means of improving people's lives, but as helping Russia prove itself to be superior to everybody else. So, ultimately, the material achievements of Russian development always come with a body count. Josef Stalin's industrialization killed millions -- and became obsolete in only 30 years.

Putin's Russia doesn't go in for mass killing, yet it has not lost the country's "superiority" complex.

For Russia's elite, a restaurant bill cannot be too expensive, and one can never have enough bodyguards waiting out front for you. On a grander scale, Putin's Russia has become a great power in terms of energy production, but that looks to be temporary, as scant investment is being made to maintain and improve the oil and gas fields. What matters is selling the reserves and being rich now, not finding more for later.

So, as always, the trouble with Russia is that the state develops, but society doesn't. The good of the people is sacrificed for the good of the nation. The dream of great Russia remains the gulag of the Russian mind.

Source: The Japan Times

Former Ukraine Prime Minister Facing Prison For Extortion

SAN FRANCISCO, USA -- More than two years after being convicted of money laundering, wire fraud and extortion, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko faced sentencing before a U.S. judge Friday, and prosecutors are seeking the maximum term.


In arguing for an 18-year sentence, authorities say the 53-year-old former premier misused his high office in the former Soviet republic to get rich through a series of business schemes. He was the first former head of government to be tried in the United States since Manuel Noriega of Panama.

"The defendant's conduct was egregious, he misused his office to generate tens of millions for himself at the expense of the Ukrainian people and then sought to avail himself of our banking system to safeguard his criminal proceeds," federal prosecutor Peter Axelrod argued in court papers.

In addition to prison time, authorities seek more than $66 million in fines and restitution.

Prosecutors also urged U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins to impose the maximum sentence, so Lazarenko couldn't again exploit Ukrainian citizens. In March, Lazarenko was elected to a regional parliament office in Dnepropetrovsk.

A 12-member U.S. jury in San Francisco convicted him in June 2004.

Lazarenko has since remained under house arrest at an undisclosed location on $86 million bail.

Lazarenko denied he siphoned funds or accepted bribes in exchange for government contracts and favors, claiming his multimillion dollar fortune was earned legitimately at a time his country, emerging from the Soviet Union's collapse, had a new and lawless free-market economy.

Defense attorneys, who are pushing for a four-year sentence for their client, also said the prosecution was politically motivated and that political foes withheld evidence that could have exonerated him.

Doron Weinberg, one of Lazarenko's three attorneys, labeled the government's sentencing recommendation as "Draconian."

"This is the only implication that can be drawn," Weinberg said.

Lazarenko sought political asylum in the U.S. in 1999 during his country's presidential election campaign, claiming he had faced three assassination attempts.

Instead the U.S. government arrested him and said it decided to try him to prevent criminals from using the United States as a safe haven for dirty money.

According to the U.S. government, Lazarenko used his political clout to set up an international underground network of bank accounts to launder profits made through clandestine schemes involving natural gas, agribusiness, housing and other businesses in Ukraine. Authorities claimed $114 million was directed to banks in the U.S., mostly institutions in San Francisco.

Before trial, Jenkins had said the government must prove Lazarenko violated both U.S. and Ukrainian law.

Lazarenko has appealed his conviction.

Source: AP

Ukraine's Yushchenko Urges End To Language Debate, Backs Church

KIEV, Ukraine -- Addressing the nation on its Independence Day Thursday, the Ukrainian president called for the promotion of the Ukrainian language among politicians and the establishment of a united, independent Orthodox church.


In a speech from a central square in Kiev, Viktor Yushchenko said all the country's politicians should be able to speak Ukrainian.

Twenty-four percent of the population in Ukraine, which is marking the 15th anniversary of its secession from the Soviet Union, speak Russian, particularly those living in the east of the country, near the Russian border.

"The principle of this country is simple - a Ukrainian citizen is free to choose," Yushchenko said. "But a Ukrainian politician or a public servant must know, use and live by the national language."

Yushchenko also called for an end to religious debates. Ukraine's two leading religions are Catholicism dominating in the west and Orthodoxy in the east.

The president also said he advocated independence and international recognition for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Following Ukraine's independence in November 1991, Metropolitan Filaret, then head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, convened a national church council and declared the canonical independence of the Ukrainian church from Russian.

The council later asked Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to approve the decision, but it was rejected in April 1992, and the Russian church went so far as to anathematize Filaret.

The Kiev Patriarchy has not been recognized by any of the world's Orthodox churches.

Yushchenko also called for a nationwide discussion aimed at historical reconciliation and mutual understanding between the eastern and the western parts of the country.

The split in Ukrainian society became particularly evident during the past 20 months of political turmoil, when candidates backed by the east and west of the country vied for power. The country emerged from the political wrangling with a pro-Western president, Yushchenko, and a new prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, backed by eastern Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian leader further said he expected parliament, the Supreme Rada, to adopt a bill declaring the famine of 1932-33, or "holodomor", an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation.

The famine, which claimed millions of lives, is said to have been deliberately orchestrated by the Soviet authorities under Joseph Stalin to destroy Ukrainian society and culture in order to subdue the nation.

Yushchenko instructed the government to set up a memorial to the victims of the famine by the 75th anniversary of the tragic events.

The fourth Saturday of November is the day of commemoration of the famine victims in Ukraine.

Source: RIA Novosti

Putin Urges Breakthrough In Relations With Ukraine

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said he hopes Russia and Ukraine will achieve "real" strategic cooperation soon, the Kremlin press office reported Thursday.


In a letter to congratulate President Viktor Yushchenko on Ukrainian Independence Day, Putin said: "Our people have always been and remain the closest neighbors, bound by strong bonds of friendship and trust. I am positive mutual understanding and compromise will help us tackle unresolved problems and achieve a real strategic partnership in our relations."

Putin said circumstances were favorable for improved cooperation between the two countries, and he highlighted areas of primary concern as including energy, investment and contacts within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose union of former Soviet nations.

Russia has pinned its hopes on Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine's new prime minister. As a representative of the largely Russian-speaking industrial east of Ukraine, he is seen as someone who can balance the Western-oriented policies being pursued by the Yushchenko government.

Relations between the two former Soviet neighbors were marred by a series of disputes since Yushchenko and his "orange revolution" team came to power in early 2005, the gas price row being the most acute among them.

Russia briefly turned off natural gas supplies to Kiev in early 2006 after Ukraine refused to pay a market price for it. Ukraine and Russia then exchanged accusations, with Ukraine condemning what it called political revenge, and Russia claiming that gas intended for Europe was being siphoned off.

Yanukovych, who was confirmed as premier in early August, made his first official foreign visit to Russia. He later said a compromise price for natural gas, crucial to Ukraine's fuel-intensive heavy industry, would not be raised further this year, though the price for 2007 had yet to be negotiated.

While in Russia, Yanukovych also said the two countries should intensify talks aimed at establishing a common economic space. The project -- which also involves Kazakhstan and Belarus -- has been criticized by pro-Western politicians in Ukraine, who have pushed for European integration, for allegedly being dominated by Russia.

But Yanukovych toned down his pro-Russian rhetoric since a national unity agreement was signed with the "orange" team in late July, ending the protracted political crisis in Ukraine.

Source: RIA Novosti

Growing Pains

KIEV, Ukraine -- As Ukraine prepares to celebrate Independence Day it finds itself no longer at the infancy stage but firmly in its teens, though full adulthood is still at least a few years away.


That is probably an accurate assessment of the last 15 years. Ukraine had a rocky, unsure start as it began the 1990s with two Leonids - Kravchuk followed by Kuchma - at the helm.

It sees in the start of its 16th with two Viktors - Yushchenko and Yanukovych - steering the country. At the beginning of independence many ordinary folk were confident, buoyed by the feeling that resources-rich Ukraine would do better as an independent state as the Soviet Union imploded and the referendum on independence received the unanimous support of people in December 1991.

Kravchuk experienced huge inflation and Kuchma, promising reforms, found that, like many other politicians, it is easier to promise than deliver. He brought Ukraine some stability but was too busy playing off the European Union and Russia on the foreign front and magnates and businesses on the home front.

Viktor Yushchenko fought Viktor Yanukovych for the presidency and won only for the latter to complete a remarkable return by returning as prime minister with more powers than the president. Fifteen years on, and less than two years after the Orange Revolution, people's expectations have been tempered and, unfortunately, a level of realism and sense of "stability", a word used unsparingly during the Kuchma era, have set in.

However, there is no doubt that Ukraine has made progress in many respects. Economically, much needs to be done but the mass media is now freer and the political system is moving, albeit slowly, towards greater responsibility.

There is a plethora of political forces out there, giving the voter a wide choice of ideology, even if the majority of the main players hail from the Communist era and these forces do not resemble apparent counterparts in the West.

Perhaps more importantly a responsive civil society is being formed, thanks in part to the Orange Revolution. People now feel more confident about standing up for their rights.

Many thrifty business people, working mainly in small and medium-sized companies created from scratch, are thriving. However, it has to be said that progress by entrepreneurs has largely been despite and not due to the efforts of the authorities over 15 years.

Many people have been weaned off looking to the state to provide for them from "the cradle to the grave", as was the case in Soviet times. A middle class is forming and as society becomes more stratified the danger exists that unless an adequate social security system is put into place society will be divided even more into “the haves and have nots”.

Such social protection is vital during the lengthy transition from a command economy to one based on free market lines. Though it can be said that Ukrainian society is now more meritocratic than before much still needs to be done to give people in rural areas the opportunity and means to at least compete on a level playing field.

Cosy relationships and arrangements need to be challenged. A start could be made from the very top by ensuring MPs and their relatives declare all their interests, business or otherwise.

Business and politics have still not been separated. The countryside has been neglected by all governments and parties of every political color, despite promises to invest in the infrastructure.

Many big problems still exist – ubiquitous corruption and business monopolies are just two. Excessive, pointless bureaucracy is a third. It could be argued that time and opportunities have been squandered by politicians in moving the country ahead.
However, for all that Ukraine is now firmly on the world map.

No longer is it known just because of Dynamo Kyiv, Chornobyl or the latest scandal. Now it is known in the world for successful people like Ruslana, the Klitshcko brothers and Andriy Shevchenko.

It is known for quality products like its steel, the Ruslan plane and the Kolchuga radar system. It is known for the Carpathian Mountains, Crimea and wildlife reserves like the Aakania-Nova Biosphere Reserve.

Perhaps what Ukraine needs more than anything is a new and youthful generation of politicians to move it on over the next 15 years.

Perhaps then Ukraine will be able to make a qualitative big step to fulfill the hopes and dreams of those who voted for independence back in 1991.

Source: Kyiv Post

Air Tragedy Hits Nation On Eve Of Independence

KIEV, Ukraine -- Two days before the country was to celebrate its 15th anniversary of Independence, Ukraine once again became the scene of a terrible air disaster.

Emergency ministry workers collect bodies from the wreckage of a Russian Tupolev Tu-154 airplane of Pulkovo Airlines which crashed, 45 km (30 miles) north of the regional town of Donetsk
All 170 passengers and crew aboard a Russian airliner were killed when the plane crashed into a field 30 miles north of the eastern city of Donetsk at around 3 p.m. on Aug. 22.

Eyewitnesses of the crash said the Tu-154, headed from the Crimea resort town of Anapa to Russia’s St. Petersburg, was flying amidst rain and lightning when it suddenly went into a loud tail spin, bursting into flames as it hit the ground.

As the Post went to press on Aug. 23, investigators were still combing through the wreckage, trying to identify the victims and determine the cause of the tragedy.

According to preliminary reports by airport officials in St. Petersburg, as many as half a dozen foreigners from Western Europe may have been on board.

Around a fourth of the passengers were children reportedly under the age of 12, many returning home from their summer vacation.

The flight recorders, or so-called black boxes, have been recovered from the site, where Russian and Ukrainian cleanup crews numbering almost 500 were deployed.

"Right now, it is difficult to determine the cause of the accident," Ukraine's Transport Minister Mykola Rudkovsky said in televised remarks. He noted, however, that weather had been severe, and suggested the plane might have flown into a cyclone.

Ukrainian officials said a storm with heavy winds, driving rain and flashes of lightning was raging through the region at the time.

Russian Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova, citing information from her Ukrainian counterparts, said the plane was likely hit by lightning.

The pilot asked to make an emergency landing before disappearing from the radar screens at around 2:30 p.m. (1130GMT), said Mykhaylo Korsakov, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman in Donetsk.

Rudkovsky said the pilot was given permission to change course by about 20 kilometers (12 miles) to the east.

The wreckage was found about an hour after the plane disappeared from radar screens in Sukha Balka, a village about 400 miles (640 kilometers) east of Kyiv.

Under sunny skies Aug. 23, fragments of the plane - its engines, parts of the landing gear, the nose and chunks of the fuselage - were scattered around fields and a small forest.

Authorities had stretched red tape around a 700 square meters (7,500 square feet) area as investigators hunted for the recorders.

Vadim Seryogin, head of the team from the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry, said Russian investigators, prosecutors and security service officials were at the site.

Authorities planned to begin collecting the bodies later Aug. 23, and at least 50 relatives were expected to visit the crash scene, said Vasily Nalyotenko, deputy general director of Pulkovo Airlines.

Of the 170 people on board, 45 were children, Pulkovo Airlines deputy director Anatoly Samoshin told reporters at the St. Petersburg airport. The list of passengers, most of whom were from St. Petersburg, appeared to include many families.

Preliminary information indicated a citizen of Netherlands, France, Finland and two Germans were among those who died, Nalyotenko said.

He said the 39-year-old captain of the crew was an experienced pilot who had flown 11,900 hours.

The crash was the third major incident involving Russia's aviation industry this year. It came less than two months after an Airbus A-310 of the Russian airline S7 skidded off a runway and burst into flames on July 9 in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 124 people.

On May 3, an A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia crashed into the Black Sea while trying to land in the Russian resort city of Sochi in rough weather, killing all 113 people aboard.

Russian-made Tu-154s are widely used by Russian airlines for many regional flights.

Ukraine is also no stranger to air tragedy.

In late July 2002, Ukraine was the scene of the world’s worst air-show disaster near Lviv when a fighter jet crashed into a crowd of spectators, killing almost 80 people.

In October 2001, a Tu-154, flying from Tel-Aviv (Israel) to Novosibirsk (Russia) with 78 people on board, crashed in the Black Sea on Oct. 4, 2001, after being shot down by a stray anti-aircraft missile launched during a Ukrainian military exercise.

As with the earlier disasters, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a criminal case into the Aug. 22 Donetsk crash.

Aug. 23 was declared a day of mourning, with festive events planned to mark the country’s Independence Day celebrations in the center of Kyiv put off until Aug. 26.

The air tragedy sends a dark cloud over Donbass, whose leaders have been triumphant since taking control over most seats in the government and parliament earlier this summer in a surprise comeback from their routing during the 2004 Orange Revolution.

A bilateral commission has been set up to investigate the disaster with top officials from Russia and Ukraine taking part.

The Russian Cabinet of Ministers has promised assistance to the families of the victims.

St. Petersburg governor Valentin Matvienko announced on Aug. 22 that the city would pay compensation to the victims’ families.

Source: Kyiv Post

The Comeback Kid

KIEV, Ukraine -- Viktor Yanukovych hasn’t stopped smiling since July. He was smiling when the Orange Coalition collapsed thanks to his new buddy Oleksandr Moroz crossing the floor, allowing his Blue Coalition to step in and take over.


He was smiling as the heart-wrenched President Yushchenko reluctantly agreed to admit his adversary to the most powerful post in the land. He was smiling during his swearing-in ceremony in the half-empty parliamentary chamber. And he was smiling as he strutted comfortably beside Russian President Putin at a private Black Sea resort, dressed in matching silver suits like two aging rock stars on a comeback tour.

Perhaps they were. The new PM rushed off to patch up “spoiled relations” with Russia, and it seemed remarkable that Putin – a president embroiled in civil war in Chechnya, and coming off a tough meeting with world leaders – would have cleared his schedule and found a whole weekend for such a minor figure as a government leader. The G8 leaders would have wished as much.

Just like the G8 summit, this meeting was all about energy – with Ukraine coming up with the short stick again and the average taxpayer footing the bill. Gas prices will rise, despite Yanukovych’s ridiculous campaign promises of 2004. By this time next year, the economy can be expected to slow down as higher gas prices help to depress the economy and drive trade underground and able-bodied workers abroad.

Even the most timid of political observers can also venture that gas was not the only topic on the agenda. One can almost smell the burnt rubber from the certain amount of backpedaling on trade issues and other crucial areas of Ukrainian-Russian relations. One can only hope that Yanukovych felt somewhat discomforted being compared in the press with former-PM and rival Yuliya Tymoshenko as to his conduct at the gas talks.

For Orange supporters – those supporting the West-leaning, democratic-oriented political parties - the last two months have been a nightmare. For the average Orange revolutionist, it was a cruel, cruel disappointment to watch Yanukovych sworn in as Ukraine’s 13th Prime Minister during the late-summer ceremony.

It was a bitter pill for the ordinary men and women, young and old, who awoke from the slumber of lethargic politics after a century, and who – having had their fill of corruption and deceit from public officials - sat in unwashed winter clothing for three weeks eating mass made soup and tried to prove a point.

The revolution symbolized a forum to turn all the grumbling and idealism into activity. Unfortunately, this opportunity to give a voice to people power has been wasted. Now the dream is over. There will not be another colored revolution. Nor will there be any need for a government crackdown. Yanukovych’s ascension to the throne ensured that such a huge show of public protest can be peacefully ignored.

The biggest public disenchantment lies with the politicians of the Orange coalition. Nobody can be more disappointed than Orange coalition mover and shaker Yuliya Tymoshenko, who remains in shock and awe at the defection of key coalition members, particularly such morally upstanding politicians as newly-enthroned parliamentary speaker Oleksandr Moroz.

Moroz’s motives remain an enigma, particularly in light of press rumors of bribery. Although a staunch socialist, Moroz has proven a wily, yet calming influence on the Ukrainian political scene, averting more than one political crisis over two decades, and playing a major role in the Orange revolution. In 20 years, he has earned respect from all quarters of the political pie for being honest and loyal. He showed none of those qualities this summer.

This latest political meltdown of democratic forces should come as no surprise really. In fact, it follows a pattern established back when Soviet leader Gorbachev loosed the reigns on political candidates in the late 1980s.

A ‘kid-in-the-candy-store’ effect resulted quickly in which the very ability to form an alternative party after 70 years of one party politics sparked an explosion of parties and opportunities for personal political gain. Political diversity has now backfired with no unifying vision for the future, too many views of democracy and virtually no leadership material.

Until firebrand gas queen Tymoshenko entered politics, Ukraine had a dearth of charismatic and capable leaders in the democratic camp with countrywide appeal. In the end, the country settles for individuals like its current choice of PM – tough guys masquerading as father figures for the nation. But this tough talk and finger-pointing has become a hard sell with the modern, urban under-40 crowd who grew up under independence. They expect more finesse and professionalism.

The parliamentary elections in March were a disaster, and parliament should have been mercifully dissolved three months ago. The interim bickering has allowed Yanukovych and his kinder, gentler Party of Regions to reinvent themselves, aided by a gaggle of U.S. advisors.

However, these advisors and Western governments should not make the mistake of thinking that Yanukovych has had a change of heart or could be even mildly good for Ukrainian politics. He could not even wrestle lower gas prices – his big election promise – out of his new best friend, the Russian president. Yanukovych has simply changed his tactics.

Moreover, the only reason that Yanukovych regained his old Prime Ministerial office was because, for the first time in Ukraine’s new history, a president honored his word by following the rule of law and not his heart or the pocketbook of his cronies – and permitted the majority coalition of parties to form a government. The public should not be too angry with Yushchenko, who was left with a terrible choice.

It could have been so tempting for a minute to quash his rival, bringing some temporary personal satisfaction and revenge – all at the expense of the country’s political stability. But he didn’t do it. Now, for the next two years, Yushchenko will battle to keep Yanukovych in check.

This time around, rather than having free reign as was the case in the Kuchma regime, Yanukovych’s hands are somewhat bound by the Universal he signed with the president and by the whims of his political financiers.

Two years ago the PM hoped to gain power with the strong-arm tactics he learned in the penal system, like making ridiculous statements about his opponents and filling buses with large, leather-coated young men whose chief task was to beat up pensioners who were manning voting boxes. Today, opposition papers are rife with accusations that he has turned to the softer methods of promises and lining bank accounts.

So, what can we expect from the new Prime Minister? More of the same. The West – and more importantly the Ukrainian people - should be under no illusions that Yanukovych has changed and sworn off corruption and bribery. He is still a product of the soviet system raised on a feudal Russian system, and he knows and believes in no other.

Although his handlers try to paint a new image, the fine capitalist veneer cannot hide the coarse underlay – the tough, resilient boy from the coal mining regions who had to claw his way to the top. The ultimate key is power – both political and financial.

Finally, political watchers are wondering what awaits Ukrainian politics next. There are two possible outcomes. First, Yanukovych may enjoy a long run and achieve his goals of running for and winning the presidency, rewarding his friends and hiding behind the umbrella of Russian friendship for 5-10 years. But an even more likely scenario is possible.

As even the most casual spectator of Ukrainian politics has observed – prime ministers don’t last that long. With an average stay of 8 months, election to the Cabinet means a short but sweet career, although some PM’s have lasted up to two years.

In a peculiar twist of Ukrainian politics, Yanukovych could be gone in six months for any number of reasons, including the oft-cited presidential favorite “for failing to carry out his obligations as PM”. Whether he finds himself banished to the sidelines of politics or at the very heights of power, it is clear that even Yanukovych realizes Ukraine is a sovereign state that can no longer rely on good neighbors for such things as cheaper energy supplies.

Ultimately, a third of the voting public elected Yanukovych. His election is not about one man’s popularity, but about what he represents. So, a third of the population is trying to send a message that they cannot cope with the radical changes of the past 15 years and they seek solace in the comfort of familiar bygone days.

Runaway inflation, unemployment, high living costs and social changes threaten belief systems and security. The PM is promising a return to the familiar, something closer to the soviet utopia of predictable daily life and basic needs.

The Orange revolutionists offered the unknown. Thus, in the future both Western aid agencies and democratic movements must improve the circumstances of these most vulnerable sections of the population. It is on this basis that real democratic reforms can be built.

Source: Kyiv Post

KGB Used Clairvoyants As Agents — Report

MOSCOW, Russia -- Allegations that Soviet rulers enlisted the services of clairvoyants to spy on their enemies seem to have found confirmation, a popular Russian tabloid claims.


Correspondents of the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily said that not long before he passed away, Professor Alexander Spirkin, well-known scholar and co-author of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, admitted in an interview that the Soviet KGB employed clairvoyants to spy on their enemies.

Alexander Spirkin used to head a secret lab under the Soviet government and worked closely with clairvoyants hired to carry out special missions for the Kremlin.

“I used to work closely with hundreds of all sorts of extrasensory individuals,” Mr. Spirkin recalled in a conversation with Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondents.

“In the 1960s, when the [Khrushchev] Thaw began (the period between the end of 1950s and the beginning of 1960s, when repressions and censorship reached a low point) and people began to speak out, groups of people interested in telepathy met at the Moscow Polytechnic Museum.

”Wolf Messing who possessed a true gift of clairvoyance and telepathy was a key figure at those gatherings. I had known him since university. His posters reading: “Experienced in reading thoughts at a distance!” were all over the country.

“In those days I had campaigned for studying those phenomena, claimed they were incomprehensible, and, in terms of Marxist and Leninist ideology inexplicable, but we had no right to deny the fact they exist.

Eventually, I was summoned to the scientific department of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] Central Committee and offered a post of the chairman of the laboratory for biological information. Provided, of course, its operation would be closely watched by the KGB and the Central Committee.”

Spirkin’s task was to hire at least 200 “agents”. Each contender was to fill out a questionnaire containing such questions as: “Which extraordinary properties do you possess?”, “What kind of dreams do you have?”, “Are they of erotic nature?”, “Do you fly in your sleep?”, “Are you able to influence people?” and “Have you ever tried to heal?”

Candidates were examined by a commission made up of clairvoyants who had already proved their ability, and Spirkin himself.

One of the female agents possessed great healing power, as her body produced extraordinary heat. Ivan Fomin used his extrasensory energy to investigate all sorts of disasters and technical malfunctions.

His services are still in demand in Russia, Prof. Spirkin said. He used to work as an advisor to Boris Yeltsin and investigated aircraft accidents. Spirkin also mentioned Boris Shapiro, who possessed a very strong sense of diagnostics. These days, Shapiro consults wealthy entrepreneurs.

All employees of the secret laboratory were closely watched by the Soviet omnipotent security agency — the KGB. Some of the lab staffers, too, were KGB agents. One of such “students” once entered Alexander Spirkin’s office and introduced himself as KGB General Makarevich. The official said that he was ordered to control the professor’s activities because they were of great interest for foreign intelligence and defense agencies, especially for the CIA and the Pentagon.

Spirkin responded that the laboratory had not developed a scientific base that could deserve such immense interests in other countries. The general replied that foreign intelligence officers wanted to know everything, even if there was nothing to know about. “Even the fact we have made no progress whatsoever also amounts to important intelligence data,” he said.

“In the end I had to leave the lab. New know-how and technical devices started to appear but I could hardly make them out. A special committee came to check our equipment, and they were shocked to see how obsolete it was. The laboratory was not closed. A younger scholar took over my post.”

Prof. Spirkin admitted he still did not know what the outcome of the research was. He knew that the military took great interest in the lab’s work, seeking to use clairvoyants for purposes of spying. The Soviets hired clairvoyants to report on the state of health of U.S. leaders or travel to the United States under the guise of tourists, so that they could report on local developments, using their extrasensory abilities.

Source: MOS News

Grieving Relatives Head To Ukraine Crash Site

SUKHA BALKA, Ukraine -- Grieving relatives and investigators were heading to eastern Ukraine on Wednesday where a Russian airliner carrying 170 people home from a seaside resort crashed, killing everyone on board.


Rescue workers, joined by a fresh team of Russian specialists, worked through the night with lights powered by generators, wading through marsh searching for the plane’s “black box” flight recorders, which have now been found.

Officials said the plane had probably been hit by lightning and then hurtled into the ground as the crew tried to maneuver out of a violent storm. But investigators warned against drawing any premature conclusions about the accident.

“Until the commission’s work is complete, we can make no explanations or suppositions,” Vadim Seryogin, head of a rescue team at the site, told Russia’s First Channel television.

Ten crew and 39 children were among the dead in the crash, the second major loss of life involving a Russian airliner in two months. Most of the passengers were Russians but some Dutch nationals were also on board.

Russian television showed the first group of relatives arriving in the Russian Black Sea resort town on Anapa before being taken to the crash site to identify the dead. Others were due to fly in later in the day.

Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin, head of a commission probing the accident, was also heading to the site.

Ball of flame

Russian television showed a film clip taken by a local resident showing a ball of flame rearing up in the distance along with a vast cloud of smoke.

“We all heard a loud rumble and I turned to see the plane beginning to fall...It hung in the air and then began to hurtle toward the ground. It all lasted about 10 seconds,” Yevgeny Donets, in his early 20s, told First Channel.

“We ran to the scene, but you could hardly see for the downpour. Everyone was dead. We made our way through the marshes. There was a big fire and a lot of smoke.”

Fragments of the Soviet-designed Tu-154 jet were scattered across a gully and woodland near the village of Sukha Balka. A burnt-out engine lay in a field and chunks of fuselage jutted out of a clearing.

Ukraine declared Wednesday a national day of mourning. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday would be a day of mourning in his country.

Flight 612, operated by Pulkovo Airlines, was flying on Tuesday afternoon from Anapa back to its home base in St. Petersburg.

Russian television said the aircraft had received authorization from air traffic control to fly across Ukraine’s eastern tip, where it encountered a thunderstorm.

“According to initial information there was a lightning strike on the plane,” a Russian Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman said on Tuesday evening.

About 60 people came to the airport in St. Petersburg on Tuesday to meet the flight. Ambulance crews were called out to hand out sedatives after relatives were told of the crash.

Last month, 122 people died when their Airbus skidded off the runway on landing in the Siberian city of Irkutsk. Russian aviation had a poor safety record in the 1990s but it has improved its reputation since then.

Source: Reuters

Mourning For Ukraine Crash Dead

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine is holding a national day of mourning on Wednesday for 170 people killed in a plane crash.

Russian Tupolev 154 airliner belonging to the Russian airline Pulkovo. All 170 people aboard a Russian airliner were killed when the plane crashed in eastern Ukraine after it ran into severe weather and was struck by lightning, officials said.
The plane was flying from the Russian Black Sea resort of Anapa to St Petersburg when it crashed near Donetsk, Ukraine, killing all on board.

Most of the passengers were thought to be Russians returning from seaside holidays, including about 40 children.

An investigation has begun, with bad weather or a possible fire among the causes under consideration.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that his country would declare Thursday a day of mourning for the victims.

Dutch passengers

The crew of the Pulkovo Airlines flight 612 sent a distress signal at 1537 Moscow time (1137 GMT), and the plane disappeared from radar screens two minutes later, Russian officials said.

It crashed into a field about 45km (30 miles) north of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

The plane was carrying 160 passengers, at least 39 of them children, and 10 crew.

There were foreigners on board, "including Dutch people", according to an official at St Petersburg airport, quoted by AFP.

The fuselage of the plane was entirely destroyed and a thick pall of white smoke hung in the air, an AFP journalist reported from the scene.

"It was floating, it circled around, then it went down," an unidentified women told Russian television.. Immediately there was an explosion ... and smoke started rising."

'Severe weather'

There have been conflicting reports of the cause of the crash.

Ukraine's emergencies ministry said the crew had decided to make an emergency landing after a fire broke out.

But Russian officials told the Itar-Tass news agency that the plane had encountered severe weather conditions before it came down.

Russia says terrorism has been ruled out as a possible cause.

St Petersburg-based Pulkovo Airlines is one of Russia's larger carriers.

The crash is the third serious air disaster in the region this year.

In July, at least 124 people died when a Russian Airbus A-310 skidded off a runway and burst into flames in Irkutsk in Siberia.

Source: BBC News

Russia Announces Mourning Day As Plane Crash Kills 170

Moscow, Russia -- Russia declared August 24 national mourning day after a Russian passenger jet crashed over Ukraine during a thunderstorm, killing all 170 people on board, including dozens of children.

Firemen work at the site of the crash of a Russian Tupolev Tu-154 plane en route from the Russian Black Sea resort of Anapa to St. Petersburg, near the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. All 170 people aboard a Russian airliner were killed when the plane crashed in eastern Ukraine after it ran into severe weather and was struck by lightning, officials said
“I express my grief over the deceased, and send my condolences o their relatives,” President Putin was quoted by Gazeta.ru as saying. “I resolve to declare August 24th 2006 mourning day in Russia”.

A Emergency officials said preliminary information led them to believe that weather — not terrorism — caused the Pulkovo Airlines’ Tu-154 to plummet to the ground in what was the third passenger plane crash involving Russia’s aviation industry this year.

“Nobody survived,” Mykhaylo Korsakov, spokesman for the Donetsk department of the Emergency Situations Ministry, told The Associated Press.

Ukrainian officials said a storm with high winds, driving rain and lightning was raging through the region at the time. Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova, citing information from her Ukrainian counterparts, said the plane was likely hit by lightning.

Korsakov said the pilot asked to make an emergency landing before disappearing from the radar screens at around 2:30 p.m.

The Tu-154 was en route from the Russian Black Sea resort of Anapa — a holiday destination popular with families — to St. Petersburg when it ran into trouble. Two minutes after the crew sent a distress signal, it dropped off the radar, said Russian emergency official Yulia Stadnikova.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko also signed a resolution declaring the day of the crash national mourning day in the country.

Residents of Sukha Balka, a village north of Donetsk and some 400 miles east of Kiev, found part of the plane’s tail section and still-burning pieces of debris in a swampy field. Television footage showed scorched, smoldering land covered in small pieces of wreckage. Thick white smoke hung over the debris.

Of the 170 people on board, 45 were children, Pulkovo Airlines deputy director Anatoly Samoshin told reporters at the St. Petersburg airport. The list of passengers, most of whom were from St. Petersburg, appeared to include many families.

Investigators were searching for the flight data recorders commonly called black boxes.

Samoshin said the pilot decided to climb about 3,300 feet to try to get above the storm. But as the plane ascended from 29,500 to 36,000 feet, the pilot sent the first distress signal. Later, the pilot sent two more distress signals, the last from 9,800 feet, he said.

Ukraine Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman Igor Krol told AP that a fire broke out on the plane at 32,800 feet and the crew decided to try to make an emergency landing.

“The only known fact is that the weather was bad, there was a strong thunderstorm and poor visibility,” Ukrainian emergency official Leonid Kastorsky told Russia’s NTV at the site of the crash.

The crash occurred just two days before the second anniversary of near-simultaneous explosions on two planes over Russia. Those explosions, which killed 90 people, were blamed on Chechen terrorists.

Both Russian and Ukrainian officials said nothing indicated Tuesday’s incident should be blamed on terrorism.

The crash “was not a terrorist attack,” said Leonid Belyayev, acting director of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry in St. Petersburg.

The 16-year-old plane had flown 5,600 miles since its last maintenance checkup, and was not immediately due for another check, Samoshin said. Pulkovo is among Russia’s largest airlines.

The plane “was falling down like a petal,” one unidentified woman told Russia’s Channel One, waving her hand from side to side. “It was floating, it circled around, then it went down and then there immediately was an explosion ... and smoke started rising.”

Zhenya Donets, a 16-year-old villager, said he saw the plane hang in the air for a moment, before corkscrewing to the ground.

“There were fragments of the plane and bodies were lying among them. There were children there too. Many bodies were burning, we tried to put the fire out, but all people were already dead. It was a terrible sight,” he said.

The crash was the third major incident involving Russia’s aviation industry this year. It came less than two months after an Airbus A-310 of the Russian airline S7 skidded off a runway and burst into flames on July 9 in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, killing 124 people.

On May 3, an A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia crashed into the Black Sea while trying to land in the Russian resort city of Sochi in rough weather, killing all 113 people aboard.

Russian-made Tu-154s are widely used by Russian airlines for many regional flights.

Source: MOS News

Report: Russia Airliner With 171 Aboard Crashes

MOSCOW, Russia -- A Russian plane with 171 people aboard crashed in eastern Ukraine Tuesday, after the pilot reported a fire on board and heavy turbulence, emergency officials said.

A Tupolev TU-154, similar to the one that crashed in Ukraine
At least 30 bodies have been pulled from the wreckage, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Donetsk in a hard-to-reach area, the Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry told CNN.

CNN's Matthew Chance, quoting Ukraine officials, said the plane had 160 passengers -- including 39 children -- and 11 crew members on board.

The officials added that there was "no likelihood of any survivors," Chance said.

"The plane is on the ground and is ablaze," Ihor Krol, director of the ministry's press service, told the Russian news agency Interfax.

He said rescuers from the ministry, including fire brigades, were heading to the crash site.

Flight 612 was en route from the Black Sea resort town of Anapa to St. Petersburg.

Interfax said the Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft crashed shortly after 3:30 p.m. Moscow time (1130 GMT).

"Early reports say the plane crashed 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of Donetsk," Irina Andrianovaa, a senior spokeswoman for the ministry, told Interfax.

"At 3:37 p.m. Moscow time the plane sent an SOS signal and at 3:39 it disappeared from radar screens," Andrianova said.

Andrianovaa said the plane belonged to Pulkovo airlines, which is based in St. Petersburg.

The three-engine Tu-154 is the workhorse of Russia's commercial fleet, carrying about half of all Russian air passengers.

It was designed as the Soviet counterpart to the Boeing 727 and the European-made Trident, but with the added ability to operate from short, rough runways. About 1,000 were produced.

Although a popular aircraft, it has had a checkered history and has been involved in at least 30 air disasters since it went into service in 1968.

The former Soviet air fleet has been plagued by chronic safety problems since the 1991 collapse of the country.

Experts have blamed poor maintenance, safety violations and cost-cutting for a high accident rate.

Source: CNN

JKX Signs Ukraine Gas Deal With Shell

LONDON, UK -- Explorer JKX Oil & Gas Plc said on Tuesday it had agreed to sell at least 8.75 billion cubic feet of gas over 12 months to a Royal Dutch Shell Plc unit in Ukraine.


The company, which also has assets in nearby Georgia and Russia and in Italy, said supplies would start this month following an initial delivery in August.

JKX said a statement that the gas sales pact had provisions to raise the amount of gas delivered and the time period allowed.

The agreement was made between JKX's wholly owned Ukranian arm, Poltava Petroleum Company, and Shell Energy Ukraine, the firm said.

Source: Reuters

Ukraine Keen To Build Stronger Ties With Jordan

AMMAN, Jordan -- As Ukraine celebrates its 15th independence anniversary, the country says it is increasingly attaching importance to its ties with Jordan, describing the Kingdom as a leader of reform in the region.

Kingdom of Jordan flag
In a statement, the Ukrainian embassy in Amman said that the country's pursuit of better relations with Jordan is part of a wider Middle East policy, seeking "the development of good-neighbourly, equitable and mutually beneficial relations with the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa."

Since its independence after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Kiev has established a wide network of diplomatic missions in the Arab world. The statement attributed its eagerness to build and develop relations with Arab states to an array of "geopolitical and economic factors," that have made the Middle East a strategically important region from the perspective of Ukraine's national interests.

"We in Ukraine believe... that the positive historical experience of interaction between our countries, geographical proximity, convenience of land and sea communication and... mutually complementary nature of our economies" are prerequisites for large-scale Ukrainian-Arab cooperation, said the statement.

Improving ties with Jordan is key to such openness to the Arab world, the statement added, which also highlighted Jordan's pioneering socio-economic reforms.

"Today, Jordan justly enjoys a high reputation of a regional leader in the field of democratisation the society and liberalisation of the national economy."

Citing common concerns between Jordan and Ukraine, the embassy statement said that both countries enjoy geostrategic positions in their respective regions, adding that the two sides also see eye-to-eye on international and Mideast issues, particularly the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The statement said the two countries are also "going through a period of drastic internal political and socio-economic reforms and integration into the global economy and financial markets."

According to official figures, the volume of bilateral trade between the two countries has been on the rise over the past few years, reaching $192 million in 2005. In the first five months of the current year, the figure reached $153 million.

But the figures are far below expectations, the embassy said. "We should frankly recognise that the present level of our trade and economic cooperation does not fully correspond to the great potential we possess."

At the human level, Jordanian-Ukrainian ties have been distinguished, said the statement. Citing official figures, it said that there are now 3,500 Jordanians studying at Ukranian universities, while there are 1,500 Ukranian women married to Jordanians and living in the Kingdom.

Source: Jordan Times

Ukraine, Oil Cos. Pledge Transparency

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's new premier and oil company chiefs pledged Monday to bring stability and transparency to the country's volatile gasoline market amid increasing prices at the pumps.


Viktor Yanukovych, who was confirmed as prime minister earlier this month, promised that he would avoid heavy-handed tools, such as price controls, and he won a written pledge by oil companies representing about 60 percent of the gasoline market not to use backdoor deals to raise prices.

"The task is to create and support a transparent, competitive environment .... to ensure, most importantly, stability," Yanukovych said after signing a five-page memorandum with the companies.

The deal did not provide specific targets, but called instead for a commission to foster cooperation.

Vagit Alekperov, head of Russia's Lukoil company, said the agreement was "built on discussion, not dictates." German Khan, acting director of TNK-BP, praised it for encouraging dialogue.

The Ukrainian government and gasoline traders have long tussled, exchanging accusations of secret price-fixing and market interference; the disputes have occasionally led to a shortage of gasoline. Last year, then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko triggered a crisis when she capped prices and threatened companies with lawsuits if they failed to comply with government orders.

Last week, Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko set a week-long cap on retail gas prices at 4.7 hryvna (US$0.93, euro0.75) a liter and diesel prices at 4.1 hryvna (US$0.82, euro0.65) a liter for this week.

Many gas stations ignored the price caps, while others sold gas only to customers who had purchased special coupons in advance.

Asked what the price would be now, Yanukovych said that was for the gas companies to answer. The gas chiefs said it was difficult to predict. "We hope it won't get more expensive," Alekperov said.

Boyko, meanwhile, predicted that the prices might decrease next month due to falling world oil prices.

Retail gasoline prices have risen noticeably in Ukraine this summer, climbing about 3 percent in the past week; a sharp increase could spell trouble for Yanukovych's new government.

Source: AP

Reports: Ukraine's New Premier In Moscow; 2nd Trip To Russia This Week

KIEV, Ukraine -- Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych made a secret visit to Moscow on Saturday, Ukrainian media reported, in what would be his second trip to Russia this week.


Putin (L) and Yanukovych (R)
The government's press office refused to comment on the Ukrainian news agency and television reports.

Yanukovych's spokesman could not be reached for confirmation.

The leader of the pro-Russian Party of Regions who was confirmed as prime minister earlier this month visited Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi earlier this week, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov.

Talks focused on reaching a deal with Russia over natural gas supplies - a pressing task for Yanukovych, who raised expectations that his warmer links with Moscow might help secure concessions.

The Sochi meeting ended with no significant breakthroughs, and Yanukovych described the talks as "rather difficult."

Russia strongly supported Yanukovych's fraud-marred bid to win Ukraine's presidency in 2004, and his return as prime minister was welcomed in Russia as a way to balance Ukraine's pro-Western president, Viktor Yushchenko, who has wanted to move Ukraine into NATO and the European Union.

Ukrainian media reported Saturday that Yanukovych flew to Moscow on Friday and planned to return Saturday evening. Yanukovych's office canceled the premier's meetings Friday and Saturday in Kyiv, citing scheduling changes.

In the past month, Yanukovych has publicly drifted from his party's earlier pro-Russian pronouncements, pledging that the president's foreign policy initiatives would remain unchanged.

After returning from the Sochi meeting, Yanukovych spoke by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who encouraged further cooperation with the United States, Yanukovych's office said.

Yanukovych has said he also hopes to visit Brussels and Washington.

Source: AP

Russia: Kremlin Attempts To Get Ukraine Back In Its Orbit

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- It was perhaps no coincidence that Ukrainian PM Viktor Yanukovych's meeting in Sochi with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, coincided with an informal meeting of the Eurasian Economic Community (Eurasec) -- an organization Ukraine is not a member of.

Ukraine's new pro-Moscow Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych returned to Ukraine after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, seen here addressing the Eurasian Economic Community, in Sochi which brought no apparent breakthroughs on the sensitive topic of gas prices
It looks like Moscow is working hard once again, since the appointment of the pro-Moscow Yanukovych, to bring Ukraine back into its orbit.

Yanukovych was in Sochi for talks with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov about the price Ukraine will pay for Russian gas. On August 16, Yanukovych announced that both sides agreed to keep the current gas price for Ukraine until the end of 2006.

Economic Cooperation

Eurasec was created in 2001 to further the economic integration of former Soviet republics. The organization is seen by the Kremlin as a way to restore its political and economic clout, not only over Central Asia but in the European part of the former Soviet Union. It comprises Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Although Russia has made some gains in Central Asia, with the help of its ally Kazakhstan, it has had little success westward. Its only ally to the west, Belarus, cannot play the role of middleman with the European Union because of the isolated regime of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

In terms of influence to the west, Ukraine is the key. In 2003, the Kremlin advanced the idea of the Single Economic Space (SES), an idea supported also by Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The weak and corrupt administration of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma signed the SES accord, but Ukrainian interest waned after Kyiv shifted its foreign-policy orientation to the West after the country's 2004 Orange Revolution.

Thus, with a new pro-Moscow Ukrainian prime minister, Moscow put its cards on the table. Konstantin Zatulin, a Duma deputy and director of the Institute for CIS Studies, said that "Despite the impression that the energy issue dominated, the topic of Ukraine's integration should not be forgotten," regnum.ru reported on August 16.

Central Asia's Water Problem

Another important issue on the EurAsEC summit agenda was the creation of a Eurasian hydro-energy consortium.

Eurasec is one of the few mechanisms with which Moscow attempts to ward off Chinese and U.S. influence in the region. And the creation of a hydro-energy consortium under Russian leadership is an ideal tool.

Water is a potentially explosive issue in Central Asia. Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are the region's main fresh-water consumers, while up to 80 percent of the region's water resources belong to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. To avoid conflicts over water, Russia has suggested creating a supranational hydro-energy consortium that will regulate the use of water resources and intervene if conflicts arise.

Russia, with 24 percent of the world's fresh-water resources, can use water as a political lever, just as it has already done with oil and gas. Moreover, the choice of water as a weapon gives Russia the edge over China, which itself suffers from an acute fresh-water deficit.

Because of the sensitivity of this issue, it was discussed behind closed doors. The leaders were briefed about the project but no details were made public.

Customs Union

Also under discussion was the creation of a joint customs union, which would eliminate border duties between member countries. It was decided that Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus would be the first members of the union, providing their parliaments approved. The other Eurasec states will join the process later.

Since Moscow failed to get Washington's consent to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the July Group of Eight (G8) summit in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin has pushed for the creation of a customs union. Among Eurasec states, only Kyrgyzstan is a member of the WTO, with Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine on the verge of joining.

With WTO membership delayed probably until the end of 2007, Russia is pushing to become a big regional economic player. The customs union -- which could be a prototype for an all-ruble zone -- is just one way of doing this.

Source: Radio Free Europe

Ukraine Wants UN To Recognise Stalin-Era Famine As 'Genocide'

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine hopes to persuade the United Nations to recognise that the great famine of 1932-33, which killed up to 10 million Ukrainians, was genocide, a senior foreign ministry official said Saturday.

Josef Stalin had 10 million Ukrainians killed
"We now have much more witness testimony and facts proving that this was a terrible page in the life of the Ukrainian people... that claimed up to 10 million victims," said Deputy Foreign Minister Mykola Maimeskul at a forum on the famine in Kiev.

Ukrainian experts charge that under Josef Stalin Soviet authorities intentionally brought about the famine in order to weaken Ukraine's nascent independence movement.

The famine has been blamed on the programme of forced collectivisation of land begun in 1932 and the seizure by authorities of seed, wheat, flour, vegetables and livestock.

Estimates of the death toll range from four million to 10 million people.

Jacob Sundeberg, president of an international commission set up to investigate the famine, declared on Saturday that the facts supported the use of the label genocide.

"No doubt, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 does fit the UN definition of genocide," he said.

In a separate statement, he said: "I find that lethal intent was directed at the Ukrainian nation as such".

Less severe famines occurred in Ukraine in the years 1921, 1923, 1946 and 1947.

Source: AFP

Shevchenko: Just One Of The boys - At £30.8m

LONDON, UK -- He describes himself as "down to earth", a difficult trick to pull off when you have a villa on Lake Como, a beautiful American model for a wife, two shops opened with Giorgio Armani and a reputation as one of the very best in the world at your chosen profession, with salary to match.


On the north bank of the Thames, that self-assessment and Andriy Shevchenko's patience are being tested by a four-hour session of photos and interviews to publicise a lucrative new contract with Reebok. Beautiful wife and 18-month-old son are waiting in an adjacent room.

Yet Chelsea's new £30.8 million ($58 million) striker, who will make his Premiership debut at home to Manchester City this afternoon, still manages a friendly handshake for the latest bunch of inquisitors, and a smile that broadens as he recalls the more humble days, when a new pair of football boots was a wondrous thing.

On his first visit to Britain, for a junior tournament at Aberystwyth as a 12-year-old, the precocious young Shevchenko of Dinamo Kiev was named player of the competition and received as his reward a brand-new pair of boots from Liverpool's Ian Rush.

They turned out to be too small, but, he says: "I did whatever I could to wear them, I was stitching them up because my toes were going through them. It was important. You have to put yourself in my shoes. When I was growing up in the USSR, you couldn't imagine playing with a Nike boot or something. It wasn't just a trophy, I wanted to play in them. I kept them as long as I could. Maybe my mother still has them; she keeps all my trophies, I don't keep any."

Mrs Shevchenko's collection must be an impressive one. Since that trip to Wales in the late 1980s, it has been swollen with medals as a champion of the Ukrainian League (for five successive seasons until his transfer to Milan in 1999), Ukrainian player of the year (five times), and winner of the Champions' League (2003 at Old Trafford), Serie A and European Footballer of the Year.

His scoring record at club level is 187 goals from 326 games, including seven years in defensively mean Italian football. In internationals it is 31 in 69 appearances for Ukraine, for whom he has often seemed a one-man team. "Ukraine," he says, "had a great World Cup. To be in the top eight was great and I'm very proud of that. It was one of the best months of my life."

After an emphatic defeat by Italy in the quarter-finals, there was a touching moment when he waved his farewells to the Italian supporters, many Milan fans among them. Some of those followers feel a touch of betrayal from a man who said in an interview last year that he would like to finish his career there and was then seen kissing his new blue shirt after scoring a typically well-taken goal for Chelsea in their Community Shield defeat last Sunday.

But the attractions of a move to London are clear. There are family reasons, with an English-speaking wife and son (a second child is on the way); Sergei Rebrov, once his scoring partner in the successful Dinamo team, enthused about life in the capital despite his own miserable fortunes with Tottenham and West Ham; and it is reasonable to assume that Roman Abramovich, whom Shevchenko and his wife had previously met, made the switch financially worthwhile.

There is also a sense that seven years amid the manic stresses of Italian football proved draining, even before the recent scandal that threatened Milan with relegation as well as their Champions' League place (they were forced to play in the final qualifying round, and have only a 1-0 lead from the home leg against Red Star). It was significant that during his interview Shevchenko suddenly volunteered: "I'd like to mention violence in the stadiums. There are people who cross the limits, which doesn't help the image of football."

As for the football itself in his latest adopted country, early impressions are as favourable as he had hoped: "I like the English way of playing. It is very different to Italy; more open, faster and more exciting. I was struck by the public and the respect they showed, and the atmosphere [in Cardiff] was great. The team have welcomed me very warmly. They are great professionals but also very down-to-earth, and that will help me."

Most foreign imports to the Premiership are shocked by the pace of the game and the leniency of the refereeing. Shevchenko is understandably unconvinced by the suggestion that he might find it all too physical: "Italian defenders are pretty tough, and I'm used to that. It always happened in Italy. Fitness levels are very important now in football, and I hope I'm at a level where I can give my best in that kind of game." He has done so before and has the scars to prove it, notably where a defender's elbow cracked his eye-socket, necessitating the insertion of five tiny titanium plates.

So, almost 20 years on from Aberystwyth, it is a good time to return to Britain for a new challenge, in a new country and with a new coach. Anyone who has worked under Fabio Capello and Kiev's late, revered Valeri Lobanovski would expect high standards from a manager.

Of Mourinho, he says: "I've seen the work he has done and it's very good the way he works for the group. The hardest thing is to make everybody work towards the same goal, and that's what Mourinho is very good at.

"There may be some who will play more than others but they have to understand it's important to keep the flexibility and change always to get the best results. If a great team want to win all the time they can't depend on a few individual players. I'm not here to prove anything to anybody, I'm here to find my role within the team and the way to help them to win."

Finding a pair of boots that fit should not be too much of a problem either.

Source: Independent Online

Arms Depot Blasts In Ukraine Injure 4

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine -- A large fire broke out at an arms depot in southern Ukraine for the second time in three years, triggering explosions, injuring four people and prompting the evacuation of nearby residents, officials quoted by Reuters said.


The Emergency Ministry said the blaze started in the mid-afternoon in an area storing shells due to be taken out of commission.

Explosions in rapid succession continued hours later into the night, hurling shells up to 300 meters through the air.

A Defense Ministry spokesman said four people, including two servicemen, were injured.

Medical brigades were being dispatched to the site in Zaporizhya region.

“Explosions are occurring now at the rate of two to three per minute,” Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Klyuev told Interfax Ukraine news agency. “The fire is covering an area of about three hectares.”

Military officials said the base held 20,000 tons of ammunition.

News reports said 1,500 residents had been evacuated from around the village of Novobogdanovka and a further 4,000 had been taken temporarily to special shelters.

Train traffic between the capital Kiev and the Crimea peninsula, a major tourist destination, was severely disrupted.

Explosions at the same base lasting nearly a week killed five people in May 2004, causing more than $700 million in damage and deeply embarrassing authorities.

A smaller fire occurred last year.

Similar incidents have struck arms depots in Russia and other ex-Soviet states.

Source: MOS News

Ukraine Fears Energy Crisis This Winter

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine may still face an energy crisis this winter, Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuev said on Thursday, Aug. 17, despite assurances from Russia that it will not sharply raise the price of gas supplies to its neighbor.


Klyuev, who oversees the energy sector, chaired a government meeting to discuss preparations for winter and avoid a repeat of a gas crisis that hit Ukraine and Europe in January when Russia cut supplies to Kiev due to a pricing row.

“We can clearly state that we have a gas deficit of about 8 billion cubic meters. We have difficulties with gas supplies, payments, with the financial situation at (state oil and gas firm) Naftogaz and other energy companies,” Klyuev said, quoted by Reuters.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, who favors closer ties with Russia and was appointed earlier this month after a fierce tug-of-war with pro-Western factions in parliament, won Moscow’s word on Wednesday, Aug. 16, that there will be no big hikes in gas price just yet.

But Yanukovich has also said more talks on gas supplies for 2007 could be held in November or December.

At the start of the year Ukraine was forced to accept a nearly two-fold increase in prices for Russian gas as Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom cut supplies for several days in a move that affected many European customers.

Ukraine is a key transit route for Russian gas to Europe. Kiev now pays $95 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas compared with $50 previously.

The new price is paid for a mix of Russian natural gas and much cheaper supplies from Turkmenistan. But Turkmen gas supplies have been erratic so far this year, with the Turkmen side demanding Kiev pay $100 per 1,000 cubic meters instead of $60.

Gazprom, in its turn, has said that gas prices for Ukraine could go up to as high as $230 next year.

Ukraine’s economy with its energy-guzzling heavy industry needs gas prices not higher than $150 to keep going, analysts say.

“Prices could be hiked to over $150 depending on what happens in negotiations with Turkmenistan,” Tim Ash from Bear Stearns in London said in a research note.

“Obviously over $150 for gas suggests a significant hit to the Ukrainian economy, particularly chemicals. Ukraine’s ability to ride through this will depend on whether international metals prices hold up sufficient to let the Ukrainian industry invest... to cut energy consumption.”

Source: MOS News

The Importance of Being Realistic

KIEV, Ukraine -- There is no doubt that the U. S. should not give up on Ukraine. Nonetheless, as the situation in Iraq illustrates, this does not mean that the U. S. can remake the former Soviet space or ignore existing realities.

President Yushchenko (L) meets with President Bush
Neither the U.S. nor the European Union is willing to make Ukraine their first priority. There are plenty of other markets for businesses to pursue and sources of inexpensive and educated labor to which to outsource.

If Ukraine were brought into NATO, for example, it would reinforce Russian fears about being encircled, which would likely have undesirable repercussions. This is not a question of “appeasement,” but rather one of simply dealing with the world as it is.

With regard to EU membership, Turkey can make a more convincing argument for accession than can Ukraine (not to mention that Turkish membership would be a more positive development for the world).

The U. S. is overextended and the EU is trying to determine its own direction for the future. Just as the West could not “rescue” Hungary in 1956, it would be foolish to think that those exercising power in Kyiv can ignore geographic and historical realities.

It is no accident that any survey course in Russian history at a Western university devotes at least some of its coverage to the Kyivan Rus period.

As far as Ukraine leaning towards the West is concerned, President Victor Yushchenko may be an excellent economist and may share the same values as Western leaders.

However, the same can be said about the pro-reform leader of Russia’s Yabloko Party, Grigory Yavlinsky. Like Yushchenko, Yavlinsky is an economist. But visionaries, businesspeople and academics do not automatically turn out to be great, much less effective, presidents.

Another problem is that revolutions are rarely understood as such when they are actually in progress. This point even led to the formation of a popular proverb in the early Soviet era: “An uprising can never succeed, because a successful uprising goes by a different name.”

Not all uprising must be violent, as some, as was the case in Ukraine, occur at the ballot box. The Orange Revolution may have not have come full circle to more resemble an uprising but certain realities, however distasteful, must be addressed all the same.

The choice of Viktor Yanukovych as the new prime minister seems to reflect these realities. The Russian-backed former presidential candidate may prove to be only a transitional figure, but he is a better fit than the other alternatives available.

Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in particular, was compromised for most sides by her background (she gained the nickname “the gas princess” for alleged activities in the energy sector) and there were concerns that she would use the office for the enrichment of herself and her friends. At least over the short term, choosing Yanukovych may bring stability in Ukraine, which is what most people want.

Political and economic transformation takes time. It took those in the West more than a decade to stop putting or using the word “the” before Ukraine. England did not become a constitutional monarchy overnight. It was a case of evolving circumstances, new technologies, and generational change.

The issue where this might be most important is with regard to NATO. It’s hard to see how Ukraine, given its current instability, could be welcome as a NATO member - regardless of whether it is 30 percent or 60 percent of the population that wants to join.

At any point in history, the people living at any time thought they were living in modern times. World War I was to have been the war to end all wars and the Versailles Treaty altered the borders of Europe.

The League of Nations failed, Germany annexed Austria, France and Great Britain sold out Czechoslovakia and Europe’s borders changed again. The League of Nations failed and the armistice in Europe ended. After the victory of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union over the Third Reich, Europe’s borers changed once again.

The post-1945 demarcations in Europe were preserved until Yugoslavia broke up. However, in the meantime the colonies of European states in Asia and Africa gained independence.

On a whim, then Communist Party Secretary-General Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. At that time in the Soviet Union the borders between its constituent parts mattered little.

For representational purposes, who really cares where North Dakota ends and South Dakota begins? The point is that men draw up borders (usually ignoring the wishes of inhabitants) and so the map of the world changes over time.

Think about it: what if current divisions resulted in an uprising in Ukraine’s ethnic-Russian east and the Ukrainian government used force to quell the rebellion. The chances of Russian intervention would be great, at which point it is hardly credible that any NATO country would be willing to resort to - or even threaten – military action.

With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, NATO is an organization looking for a mission. There are many different positive missions that could be suggested, but it is doubtful that would be much support in turning it into a force for humanitarian intervention around the world or to function in a peacekeeping role in the truest sense of the term. That is, using force against individuals or bodies who care to violate any ceasefire.

At present, when it comes to providing the stability Ukraine clearly needs, Viktor Yanukovych looks like a better bet than NATO. Events in Ukraine and Russia are off the front pages of most newspapers.

The conflict in Lebanon and its larger implications (for example, the roles of Syria and Iran) are the hot stories with good visuals for television and photojournalists, whereas the complexities of Russian-Ukrainian relations don’t generate sufficiently interesting visual images other than cartoons.

Perhaps, France, the U.S. and others may be able to arrange a peacekeeping force under U.N. or NATO auspices that will, indeed, keep the peace. That is, to act as a military force against violators of ceasefire agreements. Perhaps making Israel a member of NATO as part of a larger Middle Eastern settlement has more merit.

As a functioning parliamentary democracy with a market economy, Israel has more in common with NATO members than either Ukraine or Russia. Israel already enjoys special trade status with the EU and the U.S. and competes in international sports competitions in Europe since its Arab neighbors refuse to recognize its right to exist (with the exception of Jordan and Egypt).

Now who was it that said “nothing ever happens in August?

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine's Premier Says Moscow Willing To Hold Gas Prices Steady Through 2006

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's new prime minister said Moscow was willing to hold gas prices steady through year's end, the president's office said Thursday.

From left foreground, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, right, walk during a meeting at the Black Sea resort of Sochi
Viktor Yanukovych, leader of the Party of Regions who was confirmed as prime minister earlier this month, met with President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday to inform him about the results of his two-day visit to Russia, dominated by talks on gas supplies.

Ukraine, which receives much of its gas supplies from Russia, earlier this year agreed to a twofold price increase after a bitter dispute with Russian gas monopoly, Gazprom. The Russian company briefly turned off the taps to Ukraine at the height of winter, which also triggered a brief shutdown of supplies to Western Europe after Ukraine began siphoning gas passing westward through its pipelines.

As part of the January deal that resolved the dispute, Ukraine agreed to receive a mixture of Russian and cheaper Turkmen gas at a price of $95 per 1,000 cubic meters from an intermediary company, RosUkrEnergo.

Moscow had previously warned the price would increase if Turkmenistan started charging more for its gas, which Turkmenistan has indicated it wants to do in September. Turkmenistan has said that it wants to raise the price from $65 per 1,000 cubic meters to as much as $140 per 1,000 cubic meters as of Sept. 21. Russia has set the price for its gas at $230.

Yushchenko's office said in a statement that Yanukovych was convinced after his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian premier of "Russia's willingness to not raise prices on natural gas through the end of the year." The statement cited Yushchenko as saying that Yanukovych had "managed to strengthen" January's agreement. It did not elaborate.

Russia strongly supported Yanukovych's fraud-marred bid to win Ukrainian presidency in 2004, and many Ukrainians expected that he might be able to achieve more concessions from Moscow than the Western-leaning Yushchenko, who has sought to drive this ex-Soviet republic closer to the West.

But before the trip, Yanukovych insisted that Ukraine's main bargaining tool - the pipelines that carry Russian gas to more lucrative Western markets - would never be put on the negotiating table as way to get cheaper prices.

Upon his return to Ukraine, Yanukovych called the situation in Ukrainian-Russian gas cooperation "rather difficult." He said both nations had moved closer to agreement, and negotiations were continuing.

Source: AP

Yushchenko Appeals To Ethnic Ukrainians Living Abroad

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko on Friday urged a gathering of ethnic Ukrainians living abroad to work together to support the country's efforts to solidify democracy and revive the economy.

Ukrainian folk dancers in Canada
Yushchenko told the crowd of some 3,500 people from 45 countries that he was aware of widespread disappointment among many Ukrainians after he allowed the nomination of his Orange Revolution rival Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister.

But he appealed to them to work together to "see Ukraine free, its citizens well-to-do, and the power - democratic."

Yushchenko spoke at a three-day conference ahead of the nation's 15th anniversary of independence next week.

Many Ukrainians abroad watched with concern as parliament earlier this month confirmed as premier Yanukovych, whose fraud-tainted run for the 2004 presidency sparked the Orange Revolution mass protests. Yanukovych received strong Kremlin backing during his campaign.

Ethnic Ukrainians living abroad tend to have strong nationalistic tendencies, and Yushchenko has been greeted with standing ovations and hero's welcomes in visiting Ukrainian communities abroad - such as in Chicago or Philadelphia, which have sizable Ukrainian concentrations.

Yushchenko defended the decision to join with Yanukovych, saying that he had set aside emotions and chosen "democracy to the very end." If he hadn't, he said, the political paralysis that ensued after the March parliamentary elections would have triggered an economic crisis.

The choice, he said, is either "conflicts, uncertainty, economic decline and collapse ... or the table of negotiation and understanding."

Iryna Dzyubynska, who has lived in Miami for 14 years, lamented the state of affairs in Ukraine and said she had high hopes after the Orange Revolution protests. Hanna Popovych, from the western Ukrainian region of Ivano-Frankivsk, said people should expect this new government to fail and should prepare to elect a new, better leader.

"We should give Yanukovych time to fail, then demand the resignation of his government, Yushchenko's impeachment, and revote," she said.

Source: AP

Flight Ban Infuriates Local Airline

KIEV, Ukraine -- The German embassy in Kyiv has locked horns with a regional Ukrainian airline over time slots for flights between the two countries, resulting in flight bans, reports of lost revenues and a low brow PR campaign against Germany’s government and major air carrier.


Three obscure Ukrainian public organizations have staged small protests in the capital to defend domestic airlines, which they claim are being squeezed out of the country’s air transportation market by German aviation giant Lufthansa.

The Association for the Defense of Ukrainian Citizens’ Rights, the Public Committee for the National Security of Ukraine, and the Private Investments Protection Association, which could only be contacted by telephone numbers listed on press releases, held an Aug. 3 protest in front of Lufthansa’s Kyiv office and an Aug. 9 rally in front of the German Embassy in Ukraine.

Protest participants accused Lufthansa and Germany’s aviation authorities of unfairly banning flights to Germany by Dniproavia, a 100 percent state-owned airline based in Dnipropetrovsk, in what the Ukrainian organizations have called an aggressive expansion into Ukraine’s air space.

The organizations, none of which have their own websites, said the publicly traded German air line was creating a crisis for Ukrainian airlines flying to Germany.

One of the protesting Ukrainian organizations, the Private Investments Protection Association, is listed as a contact on Dniproavia’s English-language press releases.

According to the German embassy in Ukraine, the German authorities banned the flights in response to Dniproavia’s limitation of Lufthansa flights out of state-owned Dnipropetrovsk International Airport.

The German Federal Office of Civil Aviation (LBA) banned Dniproavia from flying to Germany on March 8 this year.

Prior to the ban, the Ukrainian airline had operated two flights a week to both Frankfurt and Berlin from Dnipropetrovsk.

The protesting organizations also named other Ukrainian airlines that have been allegedly discriminated against by Germany’s aviation authorities, including Donbassaero, UM-Air and Aerosvit.

In a statement released to the press, Aerosvit, a major privately controlled Ukrainian airline in terms of fleet size and number of routes, has denied the claims made by the Private Investments Protection Association on its behalf.

According to an English-language press release issued by Dniproavia and the Private Investments Protection Association on Aug. 1, Dniprovia filed a lawsuit the same day with the Economic Court of Dnipropetrovsk Region against Ukraine’s State Service for Aviation Security Supervision, accusing the Service “of limiting competition in favor of the foreign air carrier Deutsche Lufthansa AG.”

The state service told the Post that they consider the matter bilateral and have not gotten involved in any capacity.

Another press release dated Aug. 4 states that Dniproavia “has filed a protest against the controversial ruling by the LBA prohibiting the company [Dniproavia] to operate on all of its Ukrainian-German routes.”

The release said LBA’s ban was based on “inaccurate allegations by Lufthansa, accusing Dniproavia and [local] Ukrainian aviation authorities of blocking Lufthansa’s Ukrainian flights.”

The Aug. 4 press release further states that Dniproavia demands the immediate cancellation of LBA’s ban, and reserves the right to initiate litigation.

The German Embassy in Ukraine announced in an Aug. 11 statement that the aviation authorities of Ukraine and Germany had signed a bilateral protocol on Feb. 22, 2005 which “significantly liberalized” air transportation between the two countries.

According to the German Embassy, the protocol gives both sides equal rights to overnight stops for all of their flights, and stipulates that all secondary routes such as those from Dnipropetrovsk could be flown by either side seven times a week.

The embassy said that in contravention of the protocol, Lufthansa was denied its right to fly the Frankfurt-Dnipropetrovsk route with overnight stops six times a week, and that numerous rounds of talks between Ukrainian and German aviation authorities held between November 2005 and the start of March 2006 failed to resolve the issue.

The German embassy said that, on Feb. 19 2006, the Ukrainian authorities banned Lufthansa from flying to Dnipropetrovsk altogether, and that the decision by German authorities to ban Dniprovia flights to Frankfurt and Berlin was a “retaliatory measure against Dniproavia, which interferes with competitors by abusing its double position as a carrier and airport operator.”

Dniproavia first deputy general director Serhiy Tkachenko told the Post that the conflict between Lufthansa and Dniproavia was the result of failed negotiations, which ended early in March.

Tkachenko said that Lufthansa was granted five of the six time slots a week that it had requested and was asked to choose another departure time for the sixth slot so that it was not in conflict with an existing Dniproavia flight.

Negotiations with Lufthansa led nowhere, Tkachenko said, adding that Lufthansa currently has permission to fly to Dnipropetrovsk five times a week at their requested times, and could make a sixth flight on condition that Lufthansa’s departure to Frankfurt follow Dniproavia’s flight for the day in question.

Tkachenko said that Dniproavia offered Lufthansa an alternate time slot, but that the German side categorically refused the offer.

He added that if the situation is not resolved by the end of 2006, Dniproavia would lose up to Hr 8 million ($1.6 million) in revenues for the year. According to Tkachenko, Dniproavia has estimated that its Frankfurt route alone amounted to nearly one-third of its total annual revenues as of November 2005, when arguments over Lufthansa’s flight to Dnipropetrovsk began.

Lufthansa declined the Post’s request for comments.

Source: Kyiv Post

Lutsenko U-Turn

KIEV, Ukraine -- Just a few weeks after the Post praised Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko for sticking to his principles after consistently pledging he would not serve in any cabinet led by the Party of Regions, Lutsenko failed to keep his word and did the exact opposite.

Yuriy Lutsenko
He was presented as the new interior minister by Prime Minister Yanukovych last week. Lutsenko told reporters that he intends to continue the fight against corruption and that his main reason for carrying on was the desire to continue reforming the police and fighting crime.

He even argued that he had changed his mind “for the sake of the Ukrainian people ... so that everybody is equal before the law.”

Ironically, even Lutsenko has reservations. He told reporters he had “no positive emotions regarding members of the new government” and felt “uncomfortable”.

However, he is making a rod for his own back. Lutsenko is serving in a cabinet led by his political arch enemy, whose associates he even investigated on corruption charges.

One MP, very close politically to both Yanukovych and magnate Rinat Akhmetov, intends to take Lutsenko to court.

To his credit, Lutsenko said he will resign if asked to carry out unlawful actions.

However, most Ukrainians still remember that Lutsenko completely failed to implement a major tenet of the Orange Revolution: that bandits will go to jail.

No major investigation by his ministry into corruption or election rigging resulted in jail terms.

There is no reason to believe he will be more successful this time, now that some of the “bandits” are back in government.

He will be subject to pressure. More importantly, his post is not part of the President’s quota in the cabinet, so the threat of dismissal will always be there.

After this u-turn, ordinary people will also be asking whether Lutsenko, regarded as one of the few untainted members of the two Orange cabinets, can ever be trusted.

After all, he should remember that effective policing requires the implicit trust of the public and not empty promises.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yanukovych Cold-Shouldered On First Visit To Russia

SOCHI, Russia -- Ukraine’s new prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, paid his first visit abroad in that capacity on August 15-16 to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence in Sochi.


The visit’s results are inconclusive, but Russia’s message to Ukraine seems clear: Economic favors are ruled out for the time being, but may become available later through mechanisms of “integration.”

Yanukovych held talks with Russia’s leaders and attended a summit of the six-member Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEc: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) in line with Ukraine’s observer status in that group.

Extensive discussions between Yanukovych and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov were followed by a one-hour Putin-Yanukovych session on the second day (August 16), just before Yanukovych caught his flight back to Ukraine.

The ushering in of Yanukovych at the last moment underscored the Kremlin’s wait-and-see attitude toward Ukraine’s new government. Landing in the Crimea in the evening to report to President Viktor Yushchenko there, Yanukovych could only tell the awaiting press, “We are aware of our quite difficult relations in the oil and gas sector” (Interfax-Ukraine, August 16).

Opening the prime ministers’ session, Fradkov cautioned Yanukovych that declarations about Russia being a priority in Ukraine’s foreign policy “should advance from words to deeds” and that Russia “needs full clarity” from Ukraine.

Fradkov called for a “market approach” to bilateral economic relations, including energy supplies; Yanukovych, for a “market approach [that] also takes into account the level of Russia-Ukraine relations.”

While Fradkov’s “market approach” implies monopoly and price dictation, Yanukovych’s qualification implies favors to Ukraine within a context of Ukrainian economic gravitation toward Russia.

Fradkov urged the Ukrainian side to participate more actively in preparations for creating the Single Economic Space (SES, with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan) and, as an intermediate step, to fully join EurAsEc and its planned Customs Union.

Fradkov described such participation in “integration processes” as one of the main factors that will determine the shape Ukraine’s relations with Russia. Yanukovych seemed to demur on SES, announcing only that First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov would represent Ukraine in the High-Level Working Group on the Formation of SES.

Regarding EurAsEc’s Customs Union, Yanukovych answered cautiously that Ukraine would consider selective participation in those activities that would correspond to Ukraine’s national interests. Even so, this would seem to go farther than the previous government’s policy of seeking no more than a Free Trade Zone.

At this Sochi meeting, the presidents of EurAsEc’s member countries decided to accelerate preparations for the Customs Union, aiming to announce its founding by July 2007.

Concurrently, the presidents of the three full-fledged SES member countries decided to forge ahead with that project. Such bifurcation would seem to enable Ukraine to opt for the softer form of such “integration.”

However, participation in this Customs Union would jeopardize Ukraine’s accession to the World Trade Organizations and relations with the European Union. Yanukovych’s public remarks during this two-day meeting did not include any reference to Ukraine’s relations with the EU.

In the run-up to the Sochi summit, Yanukovych had publicly expressed hopes that Russia might reduce if only symbolically the price of gas for the remainder of 2006 and consider a price cut for 2007 (see EDM, August 16). These unrealistic hopes were dashed in Sochi.

At the visit’s end, Yanukovych cited speculation about a price range of $150 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2007, which must look horrific in Ukraine, compared to $95 at present.

But he assured the country on his return that there would be “no jump” in the price next year, and that the price of gas to household consumers would rise only moderately in 2007.

Thus, the issue remains in suspense as the heating season approaches. Fradkov and Yanukovych added to the uncertainty by announcing that a whopping 24.5 billion cubic meters of Russian gas would be pumped into Ukraine’s underground storage sites ahead of winter, at a rate of 130 million cubic meters daily.

There is no word as to how much of this volume is intended for export to EU countries and how much for Ukraine’s consumption, how will the already indebted Ukraine pay for its share, and what fees Russia would pay for Ukraine’s storage services.

There was no word in Sochi about revising Kyiv’s suspect arrangements with the RosUkrEnergo gas company.

The new government seems reconciled to those arrangements, to which both the first Yanukovych government and the Yushchenko contributed in an ironic demonstration of “bipartisanship.” Gazprom’s Vice-Chairman Alexander Ryazanov, who concurrently sits on RosUkrEnergo’s Coordinating Committee, was a key participant in the Sochi talks with Yanukovych.

Both sides aim to convene a meeting in Kyiv of the Russia-Ukraine Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation. The meeting would prepare decisions for a subsequent meeting of the Putin-Yushchenko Commission, the top though dormant authority on bilateral relations.

In Sochi, Yanukovych pressed for an early meeting of the intergovernmental commission, to be followed the next day by the presidential commission’s meeting. Fradkov, however, seemed in no hurry, and neither did Putin.

The Russian side wants “careful preparation” of the first meeting and, after that, careful preparation again of the presidential-level meeting.

Yanukovych clearly tried to secure for Yushchenko the meeting with Putin that the Ukrainian president insistently seeks; but the Kremlin clearly feels that Ukraine needs Russia more than Russia needs Ukraine at this point.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Oil Businesses Agree To Cap Gasoline Prices In Ukraine As Prices Climb Sharply: Minister

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's oil businesses have agreed to cap gasoline prices, the energy minister said Monday, amid a dramatic spike in prices that has alarmed consumers and prompted calls for the government to intervene.


Retail prices for both gasoline and diesel fuel have climbed about 10 percent in the past three weeks in Ukraine, reflecting record high world oil prices and increased tariffs from Russia - a major source of Ukraine's fuel.

Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko told reporters that oil companies representing about 60 percent of Ukraine's fuel market agreed to cap retail gas prices at Hr 4.7 a liter ($0.93) and diesel prices at Hr 4.1 a liter ($0.82).

He said the government set the caps, taking into account world oil prices and tariffs, as well as consumers' interests.

He also said that if fuel stations did not respect the agreement, they would be barred from receiving shipments from refineries.

Viktor Yanukovych, who was confirmed prime minister last week, earlier pledged not to interfere in market forces on gas prices - in an apparent attempt to avoid the mistakes of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who threatened companies with lawsuits if they did not institute price caps.

Her threats caused a fuel crunch at many gas stations and ultimately led to her being fired by President Viktor Yushchenko.

"We will follow market economy rules and our law .. no administrative measures by us," Yanukovych vowed.

Source: AP

Echoes Of Kuchma

KIEV, Ukraine -- A few weeks into the new cabinet led by Viktor Yanukovych and there is an eerie, worrying feeling which stems from the actions and statements of the new team.

Leonid Kuchma
Not surprising, really, as most of them served under the previous president, Leonid Kuchma.

The concern is that the progress made in several areas by the Orange authorities is being rolled back.

At least the Orange authorities rightfully resold the Kryvorizhstal steel mill, initially sold for a pittance, and initiated closer ties to the West.

But now Yanukovych ally Rinat Akhmetov has reiterated he intends to challenge the sale in the European Court. With the Orange cabinets, gone were the Kuchma days of playing the West off against Russia and Ukraine standing still.

But with Ukraine now on the verge of joining the WTO, with Kyrgyzstan the only country left with which Ukraine has to sign a protocol, Finance Minister Mykola Azarov has said that membership does not have to go ahead promptly.

He said Ukraine can join later and not in 2006, as planned. It could be posturing to Russia so that Ukraine does not enter first and so gain an edge on its neighbor.

Azarov has already spoken of the return of three or four privileged special economic zones, cancelled by the Yulia Tymoshenko government.

New Fuel Minister Yuriy Boyko has said that the role of shady energy middleman RosUkrEnergo is a positive thing in keeping gas prices stable.

He should know, as he had a role in the company’s creation.

There has even been talk of the hryvnya being devalued, a move which would help Donbass exporters.

Boyko has also said that the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline, intended to take oil from the Caspian Sea to Europe, will not be used in this direction for another two years, but used to take Russian oil to the Black Sea.

These are examples of national interests suffering. Yanukovych even resembles Kuchma in statements on Russia.

Last week Yanukovych said both countries were competitors and ties with Moscow would always be difficult, assuring that Ukraine could build closer ties with both the West and Russia.

This is reminiscent of Kuchma’s strategy of paying lip service while actually doing what he thought was in his own – and not Russia’s - best interests.

The danger is Ukraine will not improve relations with Europe but stagnate as it did under Kuchma.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yanukovich Distances Himself From Crimea's Radical Slavs

CRIMEA, Ukraine -- Russian will not become an official language; Ukraine will not be federalized; the state will protect Crimea’s indigenous Muslim population -- Crimean Tatars -- but illegal land grabs made in their name will not be tolerated.

Crimean Tatars
These were the messages that Viktor Yanukovych brought to Crimea on his first visit there after his appointment as Ukrainian prime minister early this month.

Yanukovych also sided with Crimean Tatars in a land dispute that resulted in violent clashes among radical Slavs and Tatar activists over a market built on the site of an ancient Tatar cemetery.

This may be the end of close cooperation among the local radical anti-West, and anti-Tatar forces in Crimea and Yanukovych’s Party of Regions (PRU), which strives to become a force respected across Ukraine and abroad.

Crimea voted overwhelmingly for the PRU in the Ukrainian parliamentary poll and PRU’s satellites in the local election in March 2006, as the local dominant ethnic Russian population embraced their calls for raising the status of the Russian language, federalization of Ukraine, and opposition to entry into NATO.

Coming to Crimea as prime minister in August, however, Yanukovych made it clear that now he sees things differently.

Hardly by coincidence, ahead of Yanukovych’s visit a local court outlawed the decision by the council of the Crimean town of Feodosiya to proclaim the town a NATO-free area.

That decision dated back to the anti-American and anti-NATO protests in Crimea in May-June 2006, which the then-opposition PRU supported.

Addressing journalists in Crimea’s capital, Simferopol, on August 11, Yanukovych said it would be hardly possible to make Russian a second state language, as this would require either a referendum or constitutional amendments.

Neither is possible now, he said. Yanukovych dismissed calls to make Ukraine a federal state and urged local politicians to forget hostilities between former election rivals. Yanukovych also demanded an end to the practice of land grabs by Crimean Tatars and noted that this is a serious crime.

According to Yanukovych, 90% of land plots seized by Crimean Tatars were intended for commercial purposes.

The problem of illegal land seizures by Tatars has persisted for a decade or so. Slav settlers call this phenomenon “land grabs,” but Tatars say they only take back what belonged to them, admitting, however, that it is not always quite legal to do so.

Returning to their land in the late 1980s and early 1990s after being exiled by Stalin during World War II, Tatars found their native places renamed, their lands cultivated by new owners, and many of their holy places desecrated. The latter happened also to an ancient cemetery in the old capital of the Crimean khans -- Bakhchysaray -- which had become a street market.

Crimean Tatar demands for the market to be removed have been ignored by local authorities for years.

Several people were injured near the market on July 8, when Crimean Tatars clashed with market vendors. The accident was apparently timed toward Yanukovych’s upcoming arrival in Crimea.

Yanukovych, however, backed Tatar demands after meeting with their leader Mustafa Dzhemilev on August 11. He promised to investigate the July 8 clash and to allot funds to build a Crimean Tatar memorial in place of the market, which, he reportedly told Dzhemilev, should be closed down within a month.

Such an outcome was probably not expected by the radical Slav groups. On August 12, a crowd consisting of market vendors, Cossacks, and skinheads clashed with Crimean Tatar protestors near the market.

Hundreds of people armed with stones and metal rods took part in the clash, police said. About twenty people, mostly Tatars, were wounded and several cars were overturned. Radical Slavs smashed also the cars of Dzhemilev and Crimean Tatar MP Refat Chubarov.

Riot police had to intervene with tear gas and machine-gun bursts in the air.

Later on the same day, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Ihor Drizhchany arrived at the venue, joined by Crimean Prime Minister Viktor Plakida, Crimean parliament deputy speaker Mykhaylo Bakharev, the local police chief, and the Crimean prosecutor.

On August 13, Crimean government representatives signed a document with Crimean Tatar leaders, which had been earlier approved by Yanukovych, pledging to close the market down by September 11. Under the agreement, police will patrol the market until then.

The police have opened a criminal case and said that they hold radical Slavs responsible for the August 12 clashes in Bakhchysaray. The local pro-Russian groups have hurried to deny their involvement.

Bakharev said that the Russian Community of Crimea, which the media listed among the organizers of the disorders, had nothing to do with that. The Russian Bloc also denied any wrongdoing.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Orange Revolution, Still Ripe

KIEV, Ukraine -- In the early morning hours of August 3, following a four-month failure to form a majority government in the parliament, Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko announced to the nation that his party, Our Ukraine, will sign a power-sharing agreement with the Party of Regions, led by Viktor Yanukovych - formerly known as "the enemy of the revolution".


Yanukovych returns as prime minister after two years and one revolution, wielding even greater executive power after constitutional reforms rendered Ukraine a parliamentary-presidential republic earlier this year.

Has the Orange Revolution come full circle?

As is the case with every great democratic revolution, the answer is complicated. Gone are the days of Orange glory - that period effectively ended in September 2005, after Yushchenko fired the government of his revolutionary comrade Yulia Tymoshenko.

After largely ineffective and precarious attempts at reform, economic growth rates plummeted and with it Yushchenko's approval ratings. Our Ukraine, the presidential party, garnered only 15 percent of the popular vote in the inaugural post-revolution parliamentary elections in March - finishing third after the Party of Regions and the Tymoshenko Bloc.

Yushchenko, by all accounts, has failed to live up to the reputation of "Ukraine's messiah". The responsibility of guiding a semi-democratic state - rife with corruption, neo-Soviet political paternalism, and an economy reliant on Russian gas - to the promised land of a prosperous liberal democracy has proven a difficult task for the president.

However, quoting America's Founding Fathers, "we are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed". If Thomas Jefferson's adage is applied in this case, Ukraine's overall transition is the closest manifestation of a "featherbed".

After reaffirming integration with the West as the chief goal of his presidency, liberating the media, and holding free and fair elections (a rarity in the non-Baltic former Soviet states), Yushchenko's administration deserves more praise than admonition.

After the March elections, supporters of the Orange Revolution called for the President to reinstate the Orange Coalition, with Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister - a post she claimed as just reward for finishing ahead of Our Ukraine in March.

Yushchenko repeatedly refused, for fear of repeating the economic downturn and re-igniting the fierce conflict with members of Yushchenko's apparatus that marked the first term of Ukraine's "Iron Lady".

While the debates raged on, the Socialist Party, headed by Oleksandr Moroz - a crucial member of the Orange camp that guaranteed parliamentary majority - bolted to the side of Yanukovych, lured by the promise of the speaker's post.

As the hopes of the Orange Coalition faded, an impending political crisis loomed. The president prepared to dissolve parliament altogether, threatening to throw Ukraine back to the revolutionary times of December 2004. Though in much smaller numbers, supporters of the warring factions began gathering on the Maidan - Kiev's main square and the sanctum sanctorum of the Orange Revolution.

No matter how personally distasteful to the president and contrary to his Orange Revolution proclamations, a broad coalition with archrival Yanukovych emerged as Yushchenko's only feasible choice and, ultimately, the right choice for Ukraine's fledgling democracy.

Dissolving the parliament, technically within the bounds of the constitution, nevertheless threatened to undermine Yushchenko's already-battered reputation as an effective leader at home and a genuine pro-democracy reformer in the West.

Moreover, Our Ukraine, which lost significant ground to opponents during the crisis, would fare even worse in a re-election bid. According to the Kiev International School of Sociology, one of Ukraine's most authoritative polling services, the president's party would get no more than 10 percent of the popular vote.

Give or take a standard statistical deviation, the president's party would potentially struggle to surpass the required threshold.

The other choice, even more disastrous, would have been the repeat of 1993 Russia scenario, when Boris Yeltsin ordered an armored tank division to storm the White House and evict the disobedient Russian parliament.

Deputies in Ukraine similarly threatened to disobey their president's order, should he have chosen to release them from parliamentary duty.

As most analysts agree, Yanukovych could hardly be imagined leading armed deputies to defend the parliament building (in the mold of Aleksandr Rutskoi, Russia's renegade vice president), while there is no good reason to assume a soft-spoken Yushchenko would have any predilection to climb atop a tank and order government troops into battle.

Nevertheless, drawing from other post-Soviet examples, the fact that the military option was avoided during this crisis - as in the Orange Revolution as well - is the greatest blessing for democratic development of Ukraine.

The US State Department clearly shares this view. Reacting to Yushchenko's decision, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stated: "Mr. Yanukovych has come to the prime ministership in the old-fashioned, democratic way...He worked hard for votes, he campaigned, he politicked. And we are going to work with the government of Mr. Yanukovych just as we would with any other democratically-elected government."

After ill-advised (and Kremlin-backed) "black PR" efforts during the Orange Revolution contributed to his defeat, Yanukovych became a wiser - and less Moscow-reliant - politician. For the March parliamentary elections, the Party of Regions hired American public affairs consultants.

Though not legally binding, the most recent joint power-sharing agreement is another indication of progress and moderation. While Yanukovych's image has been severely tarnished in the West by the obligatory "good vs. evil", "pro-West vs. pro-Russia" media frenzy, his political views of late resonate with those of the president on many vital issues.

According to the National Unity proclamation, Ukraine's EU and WTO integration efforts are still in place. The divisive debate over language rights between the Ukrainian-speaking (and Europe-leaning) western regions and the Russian-speaking eastern part of the country, has also subsided for the moment.

Ukrainian will remain the state language, while minority languages (including Russian) will be accorded full usage rights, per Ukraine's 1996 Constitution and the 1992 European Charter on Regional and Minority Languages.

Moreover, several weeks ago, a local court in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk overturned a city council decision that rendered Russian a "regional language" - a precedent that may effectively prevent any such demands in the future.

Yushchenko's only concession to Yanukovych was potential NATO membership, which would now have to be decided by a national referendum. Judging by nationwide opinion polls, which show less than a third of respondents in favor of entry, these plans will have to shelved for the immediate future.

As the recent indignation over the stationing of a handful of US Marine Corps engineers in the Crimea demonstrated, the president was always likely to lose the NATO battle in the public sphere.

The president's most prominent critics allege that there is little reason for the Party of Regions - characterized as the remnants of the corrupt ancien regime - to adhere to the principles outlined by the most recent compromise.

In a recent statement, Yulia Tymoshenko predicted that the grand coalition "would not last for more than three months", repeatedly reproaching Yushchenko for "selling out" the principles of the Orange Revolution.

But contrary to Tymoshenko's admonition, recent history of other neighboring post-communist regimes bodes well for the future of Ukraine. The country's democratic development has so far mirrored the successful, yet rocky, path of its central European neighbors - such as Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, or Romania.

After a brief revolutionary rule of largely dissident-based pro-democracy forces, rejuvenated leftists swept back into power. In Poland, former communist minister Alexander Kwasniewski replaced the celebrated dissident Lech Walesa in 1995 and ruled as president until 2005.

In 1994, Romania's first "post-communist" government under Ion Iliescu published the "White Book of the Securitate", praising the work of the country's nefarious intelligence agency during the Cold War.

Nonetheless, the proverbial democratic "rules of game" - free elections, free media, and orientation toward the West - had been firmly established, as they have by the Orange Revolution. Poland is now one of the closest US allies in Europe, while Romania - formerly the embodiment of George Orwell's 1984 - is due to join the European Union in 2007. The democratic "revolution repetition entrenchment acceptance" paradigm has so far held well in Ukraine as well.

Revolutions always have their detractors: in Ukraine, nearly half of the country voted against the Orange Revolution. The most recent coalition with Yanukovych may force Yushchenko to take a step back in order to take several forward. We are in fact witnessing the rise of compromise politics and consensus-building in Ukrainian society.

Despite the temporary setbacks and the inevitable "strange bedfellows" along the way, the revolution continues in Ukraine.

Source: TCS Daily

Gas 'Headache' Tops Ukraine PM's Agenda On Russia Visit

MOSCOW, Russia -- Ukraine's new pro-Moscow Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was heading to Russia for talks on energy that will test his recent promises to continue his country's pro-Western course.

Ukraine's new pro-Moscow Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was heading to Russia for talks on energy that will test his recent promises to continue his country's pro-Western course.
Yanukovych's visit to the Black Sea resort town of Sochi less than a fortnight after his confirmation in office was hailed by some Russian commentators as a renewal of relations battered by the 2004 "orange revolution" that marked a turn away from Moscow, as well as by a January "gas war".

He was officially due to meet his Russian counterpart Mikhail Fradkov Wednesday but was also likely to meet President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of an economic summit of the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The visit is likely to be closely watched, not least because of the disruption of natural gas supplies to European Union countries last January that resulted when Russia briefly cut supplies to Ukraine.

The Russian newspaper Gazeta said that Yanukovych was in a weak position as Ukraine faced problems coping with the price it pays for gas imports following the January dispute, which was resolved with a substantial price hike.

"Viktor Yanukovych's headache is not with political curtsies but the energy crisis that Ukraine is on the threshold of," Gazeta said.

Ukraine's difficulties in paying could allow Russian energy giant Gazprom to extend its influence over the Ukrainian distribution network and possibly its transit network, the newspaper said, noting that such a move would have to be handled carefully.

Together with the state energy company Naftogaz, Ukraine's market is "practically already taken up by companies controlled by Gazprom -- RosUkrEnergo and Ukrgaz-Energo," said Gazeta.

RosUkrEnergo is a gas trader 50-percent owned by Gazprom that sells a combination of Russian and Turkmen gas to Ukraine and is criticized in Ukraine and the West as intransparent.

"Gazprom is making every effort to distance itself from Ukraine's problems and to act only through daughter and 'grand-daughter' companies" that are now meeting half of Ukraine's gas needs, the paper said.

The results of the visit will be scrutinised by some in Ukraine who fear Yanukovych will reverse the pro-Western course set by President Viktor Yushchenko during the "orange" mass protests of 2004.

At this March's parliamentary election Yanukovych campaigned against Yushchenko's plans to guide Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a goal that has angered Moscow.

Speaking last Friday, Yanukovych appeared to signal a weakening of commitment to economic reform, saying that long-delayed accession to the World Trade Organisation might have to be postponed again until next year.

But he has also tried to reassure Yushchenko's pro-Western wing, saying he will continue reforms needed if the country is to join the European Union.

Before leaving Kiev on Monday, he promised to resolve concerns about the transparency of the deal that solved the January "gas war" -- particularly the creation of RosUkrEnergo.

"Concerning 2007, we will without a doubt work to create a mechanism that is transparent so that both the Ukrainian and international community know just how it works," Yanukovych said.

Yanukovych was also expected to raise other trade issues, including the terms of Ukrainian exports of meat, milk products and pipes to Russia.

This week's meeting may prepare the ground for a summit between Putin and Yushchenko, who have had frosty relations, commentators said.

Source: AFP

English Lessons For Shevchenko

LONDON, UK -- Andrei Shevchenko's new life in London means giving up sports cars, improving his golf and trying to learn English as quickly as possible.

Andrei Shevchenko
On Monday, the new Chelsea striker was carried down the River Thames in a power boat to a fashionable boat club where he received a celebrity welcome at a sponsors' lunchtime launch.

"I am sorry for my English," the Ukrainian said in Italian, the only language he used to answer questions. "I promise you, it will be much better in a few months time."

Since his 30-million-pound transfer from AC Milan in May, Shevchenko's life has undergone big changes. He led Ukraine to the last eight in their first appearance at the World Cup finals, in Germany in June, and then moved his household from Italy to England.

Adding another tongue, in a family through which the blood of at least seven nations runs, will be no great hurdle. His American wife Kristen Pazik, whom he met at an Armani party in Milan, has a Franco-Polish father and an Italian-Spanish mother. And 'Sheva', she told Reuters, is "at least five percent" German.

They married at a golf club in Washington in July 2004. A son, Jordan, was born in November that year and a second son is expected later this year.

"He makes me laugh, my son," said Shevchenko. "I relax with him, my family, my friends and playing golf.

"My father, and my mother, taught me good values, family values, to work hard, to respect people, to be honest and to give back to people and help them," he told Reuters. "I work the same way."

HARD WORK

Shevchenko's disciplined character, inherited from his father, shines through. In the last 20 years, he agreed, he had travelled a long way from the fringes of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in his native Ukraine to life among the cosmopolitan elite of Europe.

"I have been lucky," he agreed. "I have had a lot of help and great support from my parents and family. I am lucky to have become successful, but it has come from hard work and some sacrifices."

Clearly well-coached in making bland answers to probing questions, Shevchenko revealed himself to be a fast-learning, ambitious, clever and forward-thinking man with a wide range of interests and experiences.

His wife, a former model, insists on speaking English at home where her husband, who will be 30 next month, is trying hard to avoid using Italian. But after seven years in Milan, where he was leading goal-scorer and a totem to the fans, it is not easy.

He is giving up fast cars, a habit he enjoyed in Ferrari-mad Italy, and aims to improve his golf. "I am going to have only a family car in London," said Shevchenko, who grew up in the village of Dvirkivschyna, near Kiev.

As a child, he was keen on ice hockey, boxing, wrestling and basketball, but "football won my heart in the end".

"I chose football and football chose me," he said, adding that golf was never an option because there were no courses in Ukraine.

EXAM FAILURE

Shevchenko's village was 130 kms from the site of the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant that spewed radioactive dust across much of northern Europe in the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.

"I was not old enough to understand it then, but later I realised more. It was not just a disaster for Chernobyl, not just for the Ukraine, but the whole world."

He recalled being moved to live temporarily on the eastern coast, near Donetsk, and playing football all the time. He remembered, too, failing a football exam -- his dribbling skills let him down -- that would have secured entrance to a specialist sports school. But, by the time he was 13, he was playing for Dynamo Kiev and his brilliant career had begun.

Goals flowed -- he was top scorer at a tournament in Wales where he won the Ian Rush Cup and a pair of the Liverpool striker's boots -- and he progressed rapidly. In 118 games for Kiev, as a professional, he scored 60 goals before he joined Milan.

He scored a further 127 goals in 207 appearances for the Italian club and became the first Ukraine player to win the European Cup when his penalty at Old Trafford, Manchester, defeated arch-rivals Juventus. He also tasted European Cup final defeat when Milan lost on penalties to Liverpool in 2005 and he missed his spot-kick.

"I have learnt that the difference between winning and losing is so little," Shevchenko said. "Sometimes just luck. So, I don't predict anything now for Chelsea. I just want to work hard, learn English and hope for success."

Source: The Scotsman

Post-Orange Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once likened a successful revolution to "the kicking in of a rotten door." In the case of Ukraine, though, one might say the rotten door has swung back in full force, given the dismantling of the coalition that carried out the Orange Revolution.


The ringleaders of the 2004 revolution proved ineffective and out-of-touch, resorting more to political infighting and settling scores than improving Ukrainians' livelihoods.

With pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovich back in the prime minister's saddle, Ukraine looks poised to rejoin Moscow's orbit after a period of closer ties with organizations like the European Union and NATO. Yanukovich is currently in Russia meeting with President Vladimir Putin to renegotiate a more favorable energy deal for Ukraine.

The collapse of the Orange Revolution has created a stir among democracy activists across the post-Soviet space. After all, if Ukraine, a country in Europe's backyard with relative freedom of the press and a vibrant opposition, can't sustain a pro-democratic revolution, what hope is there for Belarus, Kazakhstan, or any other country where opposition groups have begun clamoring for more freedoms?

"It will be seen very negatively by opposition groups [in the region] that had hoped to follow the path of the Orange Revolution," George Washington University's Taras Kuzio tells.

However, some experts tell RFE/RL that Ukraine's reorientation toward Russia should not have a noticeable effect on its post-Soviet neighbors. Nor will the revolution's demise result in a firm tilt away from Brussels toward Moscow.

"Ukraine's distinctive history," writes Columbia University's Mark von Hagen in the Wall Street Journal, "refuses to put the country firmly in the East or West, but somewhere in between."

Yet, at least for the near future, Ukraine's attempts to cultivate closer ties to Europe and NATO appear to be "under a cloud," Columbia's Robert Legvold tells RFE/RL.

Regionally, the collapse of the Orange coalition should, if anything, soothe the nerves of post-Soviet authoritarian leaders, who are paranoid of grassroots uprisings sweeping them from power. The presidents of Belarus, Russia, and Uzbekistan, for example, have rolled back democratic reforms in the past year for fear of allowing a spark that could set off a color revolution.

They have called government turnovers in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan the work of CIA-backed operatives. The president of the National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, writes in the Journal of Democracy that the backlash following the Orange Revolution has wiped out the modest political reforms in many "hybrid regimes" and "prompted a more aggressive and coordinated response on the part of the world's authoritarians and autocrats".

The issue of East versus West remains germane to Ukraine's internal politics as well. The Economist reckons that handing over the premiership to Yanukovich, who rightfully won the post and remains popular in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east, should help heal the country's East-West divisions.

Source: Council on Foreign Relations

Ukraine's New PM Heads To Russia For Talks

KIEV, Ukraine -- Newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is heading to Russia for talks on Tuesday.

Russia has welcomed what it says are potentially friendlier ties, after backing Yanukovych in 2004’s controversial presidential election.

But Yanukovych had to agree to tone down his pro-Moscow policies in the deal to receive the job as prime minister. He now says he wants closer links with the West.

He is due to meet Russian leaders in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, the BBC reports.

In March’s parliamentary election, Viktor Yanukovych stood on a platform of making Russian a second official language and opposing eventual NATO membership for Ukraine.

Now, he says that Ukrainian children should learn good Ukrainian, calls for Ukraine to “truly move” towards NATO and has even set the ambitious goal of joining the World Trade Organization by the end of this year.

These are dramatic u-turns that have left many Ukrainians wondering just who represents whom. In his first live television interview after assuming the prime ministership, Yanukovych tried to explain them.

Russia and Ukraine, he said, were economic competitors, fighting for the same markets. And relations with Moscow would always be difficult, he added, assuring the public that Ukraine could build closer relations with both the West and Russia.

Some Ukrainian analysts say this is reminiscent of the strategy pursued by the former president, Leonid Kuchma. Namely, of paying lip service to Moscow while actually doing what he thought was in his own — and not Russia’s — best interests.

The thorny issue of gas prices and deliveries will be top of the agenda for Yanukovych’s visit to Russia. And with Gazprom remaining keen to push its customers towards paying the full, market rates, the negotiations are likely to be tough.

Russia backed Yanukovych strongly during the 2004 presidential election, providing him with money, exposure on prime-time media, advisers and technical specialists.

It is likely that Russia, in return for this support and a possible discount on gas prices, might want to see a more malleable policy from Kiev, BBC News wrote in ahead of Yanukovych’s arrival in Sochi.

Source: MOS News

Sheva Given Ukraine Breather

LONDON, UK -- Chelsea new-boy Andriy Shevchenko was left out of Ukraine's squad for Tuesday's friendly with Azerbaijan in order to adjust to life in England.

Shevchenko - given rest by Blokhin
The $56.6 million summer signing from AC Milan scored on his Blues debut in Sunday's FA Community Shield defeat to Liverpool but head coach Oleg Blokhin feels he still needs time to adapt to his new surroundings.

Strike partner Sergei Rebrov will also miss the game through injury.

Of the squad called up by Blokhin, only 14 outfield players and two goalkeepers are preparing for the game.

Blokhin admitted in his pre-match press conference that he failed to persuade Andriy Gusin to come out of international retirement for the Euro 2008 qualifiers.

"We spoke for 40 minutes with Gusin and I tried to persuade him to stay," Blokhin said.

"However, he made the decision, and I respect it. I hope Gusin will return to the national team some time."

Blokhin also warned recalled midfielder Olexander Rykun Tuesday's friendly would be his "last chance" to impress, saying: "If Rykun will not use his last chance, he will never be in the national team."

Source: Sky Sports

Ukraine's New PM To Visit Russia

KIEV, Ukraine -- Newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is heading to Russia for talks which will test his country's pro-Western policies.

Viktor Yanukovych (L) meeting with Putin (R)
Russia has welcomed what it says are potentially friendlier ties, after backing Mr Yanukovych in 2004's controversial presidential election.

But Mr Yanukovych had to agree to tone down his pro-Moscow policies in the deal to receive the prime ministership.

He now says he wants closer links with the West.

He is due to meet Russian leaders in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

In March's parliamentary election, Viktor Yanukovych stood on a platform of making Russian a second official language and opposing eventual Nato membership for Ukraine.

Now, he says that Ukrainian children should learn good Ukrainian, calls for Ukraine to "truly move" towards Nato and has even set the ambitious goal of joining the World Trade Organization by the end of this year.

Kuchma echoes

These are dramatic U-turns that have left many Ukrainians wondering just who represents whom.

In his first live television interview after assuming the prime ministership, Mr Yanukovych tried to explain them.

Russia and Ukraine, he said, were economic competitors, fighting for the same markets.

And relations with Moscow would always be difficult, he added, assuring the public that Ukraine could build closer relations with both the West and Russia.

Some Ukrainian analysts say this is reminiscent of the strategy pursued by the former president, Leonid Kuchma.

Namely, of paying lip service to Moscow while actually doing what he thought was in his own - and not Russia's - best interests.

The thorny issue of gas prices and deliveries will be top of the agenda for Mr Yanukovych's visit to Russia.

And with Gazprom remaining keen to push its customers towards paying the full, market rates, the negotiations are likely to be tough.

Russia backed Mr Yanukovych strongly during the 2004 presidential election, providing him with money, exposure on prime-time media, advisers and technical specialists.

It is likely that Russia, in return for this support and a possible discount on gas prices, might want to see a more malleable policy from Kiev.

Source: BBC News

Ukraine Seeks To Lower Price Of Russian Gas “By At Least $1” - Yanukovich

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian government intends to abide by natural gas agreements the country signed with Russia in January 2006, Ukrainian PM Viktor Yanukovich said on Monday, Aug. 14.

PM Viktor Yanukovich
The price of natural gas, an important factor for Ukraine’s economy, has been a contentious issue between the ex-Soviet neighbors during Western-leaning President Viktor Yushchenko’s time in office.

Members of Ukrainian opposition have strongly opposed the pricing system agreed to at the beginning of the year, by which the country pays roughly double the former rate for gas supplies from Russia.

“We are not planning to review natural gas contracts with Russia for 2006, but we will be seeking transparency in our cooperation next year,” Yanukovych, who is widely expected to pursue closer economic ties with Moscow, told a press conference.

He said that changes in gas cooperation were possible only if Russia agreed to cut the price for its supplies to Ukraine. “If we manage to lower the price by at least a dollar, it will be a success,” Yanukovych said, quoted by RIA Novosti.

It was reported earlier that Yanukovych would discuss natural gas prices with Russia during his visit to Moscow, scheduled for August 15-16.

Currently, Ukraine is receiving a mixture of Russian and cheaper Turkmen gas for a price of $95 per 1,000 cubic meters under an agreement that ended a pricing spat with Russia in late 2005 and early 2006.

The price formula was based on a rate of $230 for Russian gas and $60 for the Central Asian republic’s gas. However, the agreement was only valid for the first half of 2006.

Since then Turkmenistan has already raised the price of the gas it sells to Russia to $95 per 1,000 cubic meters, prompting speculations that the new price of gas exported to Ukraine will be equal to roughly $140.

Russia’s natural gas monopoly Gazprom seeks to raise prices for Ukraine and other former Soviet republics to European levels, which was the reason behind the New Year dispute.

At the time, the gas monopoly suspended its supplies, prompting Ukraine to call the move blackmail, while Russia in turn accused its neighbor of tapping gas intended for European markets.

Source: MOS News

The Ukraine-NATO Relationship

KIEV, Ukraine -- The question of whether or not Ukraine should join NATO is tainted by opinions formed under the pressure of Soviet propaganda and without regard for the bloc's role, a weekly has reported.


The author said opinions both for and against membership are not based on rational, sober thought. He said NATO has changed substantially in the past 15 years and the NATO which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined and the NATO which Ukraine is planning to join are "two very different things".

Membership could even pose new threats to Ukraine stemming from international terrorism directed against NATO, he said noting such threats were "hypothetical" for Ukraine in its present, unaligned state. He said Ukraine could still join the EU, even if it did not join NATO.

The following is an excerpt of the article by Andriy Fialko, entitled "Ukraine-NATO: You remember how it all began...on something important without emotion", published in Zerkalo Nedeli on 5 August, subheadings have been inserted editorially.

STANCE ON NATO STILL NOT CLEAR

For those citizens of our country who are exhausted by the sun and tired of the interminable and ever more depressing political serial, many questions which just yesterday seemed topical and provoked harsh discussion have been pushed into second place. And the establishment of the anti-crisis coalition could push them back even farther.

Ukraine's prospects for joining NATO undoubtedly belongs to the number of such questions.

Quite unexpectedly for everyone, this issue took one of the central places during negotiations on signing the declaration of national unity and setting up the new coalition. However, nothing became more clear. In place of the clear and unambiguous signal which we intended to send to the world, we again got sounds characteristic of the Ukrainian political establishment "which sometimes sound like 'a' and sometimes like 'e'".

And in light of the extreme positions on the NATO issues which are held by [pro-presidential bloc] Our Ukraine and the Communist Party of Ukraine, it seems the joint efforts of a swan, lobster and pike would be the pinnacle of results-oriented work compared to the work of the new coalition in this direction.

"We have again lost such a big chance", some say with worry. "We won", others will shout no less sincerely. And the majority will remain perfectly indifferent.

We shall point out right away: there is no reason for either despair or any special joy, since the issue of Ukraine's membership in the North Atlantic alliance has still not been presented.

Although it could possibly be seen on the horizon, among all things unsaid (the expediency of joining is another topic). And so the maximum which we could count on is getting a meaningful wink at the next summit. And they'll wink anyway, though maybe not so expressively.

Now there is time to think, in a more calm situation, exactly how justified are the mutually-exclusive feelings our citizens have? On what base do politicians stand when reciting such pathos-imbued speeches on the topic of Ukrainian-NATO relations? Finally where does Ukraine's national interest lie, when cleaned of party intrigues and dirt and of external influences and their own [psychological] complexes?

We shall try to find variants of answers to some of the issues, but do not pretend to have the final word on truth. In order to understand the essence of many complicated moments, one must not judge them based on positions today, but rather recall the conditions under which they formed.

PRO-NATO CAMP IS FAR FROM TRUTH

As paradoxical as it may seem, the arguments of those favouring Ukraine's membership in NATO are often essentially no closer to the truth than those of their opponents, though they are presented in a more civilized and less aggressive form. But this does not stop a pretty tale from being a tale, or a fantasy from being a fantasy.

Though at the beginning of the 1990s the majority of our fellow countrymen continued by inertia to look at NATO from foxholes dug during the cold war, the idea of drawing closer (and for the more brave - Ukraine's membership in NATO) appeared in the domestic political elite at practically the same time as independence was gained. It then seemed: just a little bit more and Ukraine would take its rightful place in the family of civilized peoples.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreement, which successfully withstood the totalitarian system of the Soviet Union, was one of the faces of the democratic system. NATO-member countries were the edge of dreams - high standards of living, social protection, real responsibility of authorities before society and not just a show of such, as well as freedom of speech, congregation and mass media.

Besides, nearly all new democracies which had broken free of the suffocating communist system and the pettiness of Soviet stewardship, were striving to join NATO. In these conditions, a direct rejection over membership in the alliance was taken as an expression of poor tone or at least insufficient progress (progressiveness, democracy, and so on).

Besides, a feeling of slight offence appeared in the subconscious of the Ukrainian establishment: if they are negotiating with everyone except you, it means you don't deserve it, you have not matured yet, or you are still on the other side of the curtain.

As we see, understandings began to chance even in this early stage: democracy and a level of civilization were seen as the same as the important, but far from key, element in the system of western values, one which was foremost responsible for the defence aspect.

NATO'S ROLE CHANGING

In these 15 years which have sped by so quickly, threats to security have changed at the core, and with them, the essence of NATO. The terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 which changes the world drew a thick, fat line under an entire historical era. Of course the alliance which had shown itself to be effective as a defence union was impotent in the face of a more treacherous and sudden danger. As a result of adapting to new realities, its nature and principles of action and its strategy changed fundamentally.

While NATO defended the Western world for its first 50 years of existence, mainly due to the strength of its leading state, the United States, on the threshold of the 21st century one can see the opposite picture as the members countries in the alliance are themselves helping America in the fight against the threat of terrorism.

NATO which had not gone beyond the bounds of the Euro-Atlantic region and which acted in strict accordance with the statute of the United Nations, turned into an organization whose strategic goal is preventative actions in case of need - and without the agreement of other members of world society and in practically any place on the globe.

In particular, the alliance's Military Defence Concept against terrorism adopted at the summit in Paris on 21-22 November 2002 unambiguously reads: "NATO must be ready to carry out military operations against terrorist groups and there resources when and where necessary in accordance with the decision of the NATO council".

Today the vulnerability of NATO member countries has significantly increased in regard to new threats, such as a sudden missile attack by terrorists or states which support terrorism or international terrorist organizations (like Al-Qa'idah), and also the use of bacterial, chemical and - not to be ruled out - nuclear weapons on the territory of countries in the alliance.

In this context, it is interesting to note a comparison by American international relations expert Zbigniew Brzezinski on the problem of the security of the United States in the 21st century with the challenges which the criminal world is presenting to modern megalopolises. Meaning the difficult and nearly impossible search in a city with a population of millions for small, but well-organized groups of criminals (terrorists) who are hard to identify before they commit large crimes (terrorist attacks).

Brzezinski draws the logical conclusions: NATO's main efforts should be directed not towards integrating 26 national armies, since defence in terms of the principle of territory has lost its original meaning, but towards creating rapid-response forces which would carry out missions beyond the borders of the alliance's member countries.

Correspondingly, NATO's priority tasks (both for the organization as a whole and for its individual members) are operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and, in the case of regulating the Arab-Israeli conflict, in the Middle East.

A number of influential American politicians have insistently put the issue of activating the NATO agreement on the table in the case of an exacerbation of the situation with Iran's nuclear programme.

It is a big question whether the alliance can act as successfully under conditions of growing geographical scope and such radically changing tasks. But one thing is perfectly clear: the NATO which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined and the NATO which Ukraine is planning to join are "two very different things".

RISKS COULD INCREASE

It is also perfectly clear that should Ukraine successfully complete the process of Euro-Atlantic integration, the number of risks to its national security could significantly grow. This is no reason to panic, but the issue needs additional, serious analysis and thought. Statements that the mechanism of decisions made in NATO are so democratic that Ukraine can choose for itself which crisis situations it will participate in and which not, are at best too naive.

Especially if one takes into account that the famous Article number five of the Washington agreement of 1949 was used for the first time in the history of NATO in response to the terrorist acts in the United States on 11 September 2001. This article qualifies an armed attack on one or more members of the alliance as an attack on them all.

It is also hard to imagine that in case of a serious crisis in Washington, London or Paris, they will follow a "fate-defining" meeting of our National Security and Defence Council with trepidation, especially if the main decisions have already been made by that time by the Grande dames of the alliance.

Also unclear is the logic according to which we can discuss whether or not we will take part in defending our potential allies should a threat against them arise or whether they would unanimously and unwaveringly come to our aid should such a threat arise against Ukraine itself. And so it is worth asking oneself whether one needs such an unpredictable ally, on which one cannot rely.

IN THE EU WITHOUT JOINING NATO

I also think attempts to present the process of joining the European Union and NATO as nearly one and the same thing are incorrect. Some saying that without joining the alliance, we will get nothing in terms of the EU, so what is there to talk about.

Under the identical common system of values and the public-political and economic systems of participating countries, there are serious differences between these integrating associations, not to mention contradictions. NATO is foremost a military (and then political) union with the leading participation of a super-power - the United States - which determines its nearly unlimited sphere of responsibility in the face of global threats.

And one need not expect the only super-power in the world to behave itself more loyally than a spouse - thinking only about how to make you happy without thinking of its own interests. It is more likely to be like a mother-in-law, who knows exactly what you should do for your own happiness (and her peace of mind). At the same time, in contrast to NATO, the EU is foremost an economic union with an ever more noticeably strengthening political component which spends a lot of time mulling the topic of "what is good and what is bad" while acting quite slowly. These two organizations have as much in common as a tank and a combine.

Here is one eloquent example. The most successful, unproblematic and fast round of widening the EU took place in 1995 when non-NATO member countries Austria, Finland and Sweden joined. And the citizens of one country participating in the negotiations, NATO member Norway, blocked the process of their country joining the EU in a referendum, believing that [EU] membership would overly regulate their habitual way of life and would not aid in preserving and developing their own culture.

By the way, I personally asked Javier Solana at a conference in Kiev whether it was possible for Ukraine to join the EU without joining NATO. His answer was clear: "Of course it can, why not?" Clearly our Euro-integrators know their way around the system much deeper than their colleagues in Brussels. But Mr Solana's opinion is still of interest since at that time he was appointed "EU minister of foreign affairs" after having worked as NATO secretary-general and knew the system from the inside.

Is their life without NATO?

The question of membership in NATO, taking into account the consequences both for Ukraine and its relations with third countries, certainly occupies an important, and today perhaps key, place. It is good that serious discussion has begun on this issue. It is bad that it is being held mostly on the basis of ideas, convictions and feelings, in a word, emotions, and not on concrete facts and sober analysis.

In the heat of passions and mutual accusations, the answer to the main question is somewhat lost: "What will Ukraine get from joining NATO and what will it lose?" And will it not turn out that once becoming a member of the alliance, Ukraine, besides moral satisfaction from being in a prestigious club, will get first class protection from threats which are already not as topical, while opening itself up to new, more dangerous risks which are now more hypothetical in nature.

This article intentionally not does touch the Russian factor. One can discuss that without end. Having not said the main thing - one of the driving motives for Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations is the desire for insurance against the case of unforeseeable turns in Russia's foreign policy.

Too much was said by [Moscow Mayor Yuriy] Luzhkov, [Duma MP Konstantin] Zatulin and others in the mid 1990s. One must stress: we are not at all talking about anti-Russian motivations for Ukraine's foreign policy and surely not about taking part in any kind of acts against Russia. One can suppose that on the Russian side, unacceptance of the idea of our membership in NATO includes recognizing the fact that it will once and for all cut Ukraine off from the Russian "umbilical cord".

In deciding the issue of membership, time is important. It is hard to imagine a more unfavourable time for finally realizing the Euro-Atlantic choice. The country is in serious need of taking a breath which would allow it to overcome the noticeable divide in society and renew healthy processes in the economy. I personally do not understand how one can talk seriously about Ukraine's membership in NATO, having held up the country on 230 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters of gas. And that as a base price.

As far as the political aspect, a painless solution to the problem of our joining the alliance today is impossible without the Party of Regions. And unrealistic with it. And one should not forget that society's predominant unacceptance of the idea of Ukraine's joining NATO does not reveal itself in grotesque theatrical processes, but will come in a referendum on the issue and in the presidential election in 2009, a year when the issue could take on practical meaning should a corresponding invitation be made then. And no-one needs that mess.

For now events should not be forced. We have a strong position today like never before. As far as the alliance, Ukraine's input in its missions in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq are qualitatively and quantifiably equal to the efforts of a good half of the members of NATO.

That is, not only are we interested now, but the leading world players are interested in us. This is something that should not only give us joy, but reason for a bit of caution, too. Especially when voices of warning are ever more clearly sounding in warning of a possible renewal of the cold war. You don't have to be a genius to understand exactly where its main battles will be fought.

At the same time, one must clearly imagine that the most commonly proposed alternative to NATO membership, Ukraine's neutrality, has no real guarantees of being realized despite the idea appearing attractive on the outside. Does anyone in fact seriously think that, not being tied by any alliance obligations, states which look very much like the United States and Russia will destroy each other and the entire world in our nuclear age and over Ukraine, too?

And what we have in the 1994 Budapest memorandum are not guarantees, but statements (in a true translation of the original). And of all statements, the most reliable is that of the beloved pop-singer Vera Serdyuchka: "Everything will be OK, everything will be OK, I just know it". But that is a topic for another conversation. Or another song.

Source: BBC Monitoring

Deal Near To Free 4 Workers Kidnapped In Nigeria

OSLO, Norway -- Negotiators are close to a deal to free four foreign workers kidnapped from an oil services ship off the coast of Nigeria last week, Norway's ambassador in Nigeria said on Monday.


Two Norwegians and two Ukrainians were seized at gunpoint on Wednesday, victims in a series of abductions in Africa's top oil producer.

"There is a draft agreement between the negotiators, but it has to be approved by the local state government," Tore Nedreboe told Reuters, saying that the four were unlikely to be released on Monday.

Earlier, Norway's NTB news agency said that an agreement had been reached to free the four. Nedreboe said that talks had been going on with representatives of the kidnappers.

The four worked on a vessel owned by a Norwegian unit of U.S.-based Trico Marine Services Inc. , which services an offshore drilling rig.

Eight foreigners were kidnapped from the same rig for two days in June in a dispute with a nearby community over jobs and investment.

The kidnappers of the two Norwegians and two Ukrainians made similar demands for other communities in the region, Nedreboe said.

Source: Reuters

Turkish, Ukrainian Miners Killed

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A gas explosion on Sunday killed six miners and injured seven others at a coal mine in eastern Ukraine, emergency officials said.

Ukrainian miners
At the time of the blast at a mine in the Luhansk region, 171 miners were underground, said Volodymyr Ovsyannyk, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry

Six miners died on the spot, seven were hospitalized and 158 others were evacuated, Ovsyannyk said.

Ukraine has some of the world's most dangerous mines, due to outdated equipment and poor safety standards. Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, nearly 4,300 miners have been killed in mining accidents.

In northwest Turkey, a methane gas explosion collapsed a coal mine on Sunday, killing two miners, local officials said.

The collapse occurred near the village of Gokcesu in Bolu province, Gokcesu's mayor, Vahit Aydin, told the Associated Press by telephone. The area is 125 miles northwest of Ankara.

Aydin said only two workers were in the mine at the time of the collapse and both had been killed. A rescue team had recovered one body and was trying to reach the second, he said.

Ali Fuat Atik, the governor for the nearby town of Mengen, told the state-owned Anatolia news agency the collapse was caused by a methane gas explosion.

Mining accidents are frequent in Turkey, due to safety violations, outdated equipment and high concentrations of methane gas. In June, a methane gas explosion killed 17 miners in a coal mine near the western town of Dursunbey.

Source: AP

Electronics Giant Moves Into Ukraine

IVANO-FRANKVISK, Ukraine -- Tyco Electronics Ltd., one of the operating segments of United States-based conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., is set to invest $60 million into the construction of a new wiring and cable plant in Ivano-Frankvisk Region.


This makes it the latest of several major international producers of such products to launch production in western Ukraine within the last three years.

Taking advantage of low labor costs and rising world prices for cable and wire, Tyco and other global producers stand to get high returns on their investments, while Ukraine’s cash-strapped western regions will improve budget revenues and employment statistics.

Tyco Electronics Ukraine Ltd., a 100 percent subsidiary of Tyco Electronics Ltd., was registered in Ivano-Frankivsk in February 2006, and signed an agreement with the Ivano-Frankivsk City Council to build the plant on July 25.

Construction of the new Ivano-Frankivsk plant, which will produce wiring for consumer electronics, as well as cables for communications systems and the automotive industry, will begin this year and is expected to be completed by 2009.

“We plan to employ 4,000 to 5,000 people … We planned to start plant construction in February, but did not receive enough support from the city administration at that time,” Petra Streifler, manager of PR and advertising for Tyco Electronics Ltd., told The Post Aug. 1.

According to the agreement signed on July 25, Tyco Electronics Ltd. is obligated to invest $60 million into the construction project and create at least 3,000 jobs.

The Ivano-Frankivsk City Council, for its part, committed to provide a plot of land to the company within 30 days of the signing of the agreement.

Tyco Electronics Ltd. will rent the 15-hectare plot, paying the city administration a monthly rent of over Hr 116,000 ($23,000) during construction and Hr 154,000 ($30,800) after it has been completed.

The land plot is part of the 419-hectare Khryplinskiy industrial center, which the city said it set up to attract investment into the local infrastructure by offering administrative streamlining and economic incentives.

“There was a tender for the land plot. Khryplinskiy industrial center is an object of pride for us, and we consider the agreement with Tyco to be a great achievement that will give people jobs,” said Andriy Oleksyn, a spokesman for the Ivano-Frankivsk mayor’s office.

According to Oleksyn, the prior city administration held up the start of construction works for years, but the new city council elected during the country’s March 2006 general elections moved things along.

“While Kyiv’s growth in the last years is noticeable, it’s different for regions like Ivano-Frankivsk, so we consider this agreement to be an outstanding achievement. The minimum salary for future Tyco employees will be Hr 950 ($190) [per month], which is very different from the official minimum salary in the region, which is Hr 400 ($80),” he added.

Western Ukraine already boasts two other global producers of wire and cables: Leoni, which is headquartered in Germany and claims to be the world’s largest and longest established manufacturer of wire, cable and wiring systems, and Japan’s Yazaki, which calls itself the world’s largest producer of wire harnesses.

Leoni Wiring Systems UA GmbH has a plant in Transcarpathia Region, while Yazaki has production facilities in Lviv Region.

The newly constructed Leoni plant started its production in July 2003.

“For now, we have about 2,700 employees. Our customers are world leaders in the automobile industry: General Motors and Porsche. We are also analyzing opportunities of future cooperation with Ukrainian automobile manufacturers,” Nadiya Shaban, personnel and marketing manager of Leoni Wiring Systems UA GmbH told The Post July 31.

Yazaki Ukraine also launched manufacturing in 2003, with a contract with the German-based carmaker Opel. According to Yazaki’s website, the company invested 31.7 million euros (around $40.6 million) into the factory’s construction, the largest industrial investment by Japan into Ukraine’s economy. As of September 2004, the Yazaki plant boasted 1,300 employees.

Like Leoni and Yazaki, Tyco Electronics Ukraine has its eyes set on exporting the wire and cable that it produces in western Ukraine for the time being.

According to the German Office for Foreign Trade, between February 2005 and February 2006, prices on the world market for copper cables and wires went up by 48 percent, and for aluminum-based products, by 26 percent.”

“It is highly probable that world market prices for copper, aluminum, steel and other materials used for cable and wire production will go up, causing 10 to 25 percent growth in the price of cable products,” reads a June 2 report by the German Office for Foreign Trade.

“There are a number of reasons for a company like Tyco to build a plant in the western region of Ukraine,” said Vasyl Bevz, executive director of UkrElektroKabel Association, whose membership includes 21 out of 25 of Ukraine’s cable and wire producers.

“Compared to salaries in the central and eastern parts of the country, wages here are approximately 20 percent lower,” he said.

In addition to Leoni, Yazaki and Tyco, Kromberg & Schubert, a German auto-wiring manufacturer, announced in March last year that it would build an 18-million-euro ($23 million) production facility in western Ukraine’s Volyn Region.

Tyco Electronics Ltd. is a global supplier of electrical and electronic components. In the 2005 fiscal year, it reported an annual turnover of around $12.2 billion dollars and 95,000 employees worldwide.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yanukovych Sees Ukraine WTO Delay

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- Ukraine's government is committed to joining the World Trade Organization but may delay talks to ensure membership conditions meet producers needs, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said Friday.


Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko set a government task to join the bloc by the end of this year. But Yanukovych said more time to study all conditions might be required.

"Certainly, we have a huge interest, and the government set itself a task to join the WTO as soon as possible. But the main issue for us is the conditions for joining," he told reporters during a visit to the Crimea. "If we manage to do it in 2006, then it will be 2006.

But our task is to resolve this issue in a clear way and within national interests. If we need to extend the term to do it, then we will extend it," Yanukovych said. Yanukovych was appointed prime minister earlier this month after he promised to try to secure WTO entry this year. He is due to visit Moscow on Tuesday in his first foreign trip since his appointment.

Ukraine wants to cut its dependence on energy imports by participating in gas and oil extraction projects in Russia, Central Asia and Libya, Yanukovych said Friday, Bloomberg reported.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko pledged Friday to continue his fight against graft in the Cabinet led by Yanukovych, whose associates he has investigated on corruption charges, The Associated Press reported.

Also Friday, NATO countries sent ships to the Black Sea port of Sevastopol for a naval exercise, the first after an anti-NATO protest forced the cancellation of U.S.-Ukrainian maneuvers, the AP reported.

Source: The Moscow Times

Investigative Group Arrived In Bakhchisaray, Crimea

BAKHCHISARAY, Crimea -- About 300 people from each side participated in clashes between Slavs and Crimean Tatars in Bakhchisaray on August 12.

Bakhchisaray palace
Regnum was told at the Public Relations Center of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Department in Crimea, that the clashes resulted in four people having bruises and grazes, another one has his leg broken. Dozens of injured were taken to a local hospital.

Bakhchisaray central street has been closed by a special security unit, security officials, leaders of the district administration, members of the parliament have gathered there.

Special forces unit divide Crimean Tatars from one side and the Slav population from another. The clashes have continued.

A large group aggressively inclined Crimean Tatars has approached the city from the Ai Petri Mountain; law enforcement officers are trying to stop them by firing in the air and using smoke-grenades. An operative investigation group arrived to Bakhchisaray from Simferopol.

As Regnum reported before, Crimean Tatars have been blockading the Slavic market since August 8, claiming to withdraw it from the place which is very close to a former burial ground of Muslims.

On August 11, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich issued a decree to free the market territory by September 11, but Crimean authorities refused to sign it.

Source: Regnum

European Court Finds Ukraine Violated Journalist’s Free Press Rights

NEW YORK, NY -- The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Ukraine violated the press freedom rights of a newspaper editor convicted in 2001 on criminal defamation charges stemming from a series of stories about two government officials.

European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg
The court found that Oleg Lyashko, former editor of the independent Kyiv weekly Polityka, reported on matters of public interest and ordered the Ukrainian government to pay him 3,000 euros (US$3,860) in compensation.

A court in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, had sentenced Lyashko to a two-year suspended prison term and barred him from working as a journalist during that time. The case stemmed from complaints filed by former Prime Minister Vasyl Durdynets and Odessa region police chief, Gen. Ivan Hryhorenko, over articles published in 1997.

The articles alleged that Durdynets had made personnel and other decisions for self-serving reasons, and that Hryhorenko had a connection to a purported criminal.

The court, ruling from Strasbourg, France, found that the “articles concerned a matter of public interest and that there was no evidence to suggest that [Lyashko] deliberately intended to damage the reputation of those concerned or the police force in general.”

The court said “all four articles were framed in particularly strong terms.” But it said that “they were written on matters of serious public interest and concerned public figures and politicians” and thus “the language used could not be regarded as excessive.”

The court also found that the conviction and sentence could have “considerable chilling effect” on freedom of expression.

Ukraine’s government did not immediately comment on the ruling. The European Court of Human Rights has authority to review the actions of domestic courts, issue findings and recommendations, and levy monetary sanctions.

Source: CPJ News

Ukraine's Top Cop Pledges To Continue Struggle Against Corruption

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's interior minister pledged Friday to continue his fight against graft while serving in the Cabinet led by his political arch-foe, whose associates he has investigated on corruption charges.

Interior Minister Lutsenko
"The Interior Ministry will be a block to any resurgence of anti-democratic forces and restoring of corruption schemes," Yuriy Lutsenko told reporters.

Lutsenko, one of the leaders of the 2004 Orange Revolution mass protests and an appointee of President Viktor Yushchenko, kept his job under the newly appointed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, whose fraud-tainted run for presidency sparked the mass protests.

Lutsenko, who had initiated a criminal investigation of top figures in Yanukovych's party, earlier had pledged that he would not work under Yanukovych, who last week returned to the prime minister's job he held when he ran against Yushchenko in 2004.

On Friday, Lutsenko said that he changed his mind "for the sake of Ukrainian people .. so that everybody be equal before law," but added that he had "no positive emotions regarding members of the new government."

Yanukovych's Party of Regions won the most votes in the March parliamentary election, capitalizing on Yushchenko's falling popularity due to infighting among his allies and the slow pace of change.

After four months of political maneuvering and shifting alliances, Yanukovych's party formed a coalition with the Socialists and the Communists, which nominated him to the premier's job.

Lutsenko was hospitalized with hypertension just as Yanukovych was approved by parliament as prime minister last week.

Yushchenko acceded to his rival's political comeback after Yanukovych agreed to continue Ukraine's pro-Western course, uphold democratic freedoms and ensure the opposition has equal rights during elections.

The "national unity" pact also spells out Ukraine's European Union aspirations and promotes cooperation with NATO, but says membership can only follow after a referendum.

Source: AP

Ukraine Hosts NATO Member Countries For International Military Exercise

SEVASTOPOL, Crimea -- NATO countries on Friday sent navy ships to Ukraine's Black Sea port of Sevastopol for a military exercise, the first after a month-long anti-NATO protest forced the cancellation of U.S.-Ukrainian maneuvers.


The four-day Blackseafor exercises involve NATO members Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, as well as Russia and Ukraine, said naval spokesman Yuriy Kulik.

In May, the arrival of U.S. Marine reservists to make improvements at a training facility in preparation for planned Black Sea maneuvers sparked daily protests.

The Americans left after being unable to carry out the work, and the exercises were canceled.

Last week, Ukraine's parliament agreed to allow foreign troops into the country to participate in training exercises - an apparent nod to President Viktor Yushchenko for his decision to approve his political rival, Viktor Yanukovych, the leader of the pro-Russian Party of Regions, for the premiership.

Yushchenko wants Ukraine to join NATO, but the alliance remains deeply unpopular here, particularly in the largely Russian-speaking east and south.

As part of an agreement reached between Yushchenko and Yanukovych, Ukraine will put any decision to join the alliance to a public vote.

Source: AP

Ukraine's Referendum On NATO No Sooner Than 2008

KIEV, Ukraine -- A referendum on Ukraine's accession to NATO will be held no sooner than 2008, the country's foreign minister said Thursday.

NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (L) and Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Borys Tarasyuk (R) after the press point following the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission at NATO HQ
Western-leaning President Viktor Yushchenko has made NATO membership a priority since coming to power in 2004, but has met with strong opposition on the issue from the pro-Russian political forces in the country.

Borys Tarasyuk said the referendum should be held only after all the necessary procedures have been implemented.

Ukraine must first participate in the Membership Action Plan to prepare for NATO entry, and inform the public on relations with NATO, he said.

The minister said the recent four-month political crisis in the country and the delay in forming a government after the March parliamentary elections had slowed down Ukraine's course toward NATO, begun in 2005.

Tarasyuk added that the country's new prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, would visit Brussels to discuss Ukraine's adopting of the Membership Action Plan with the NATO leadership.

Source: RIA Novosti

U.S. Diplomat Foresees Political Strife In Ukraine

MOSCOW, Russia -- The U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine said he doubts Ukraine will not experience further political turmoil, Interfax news agency reports.

Ambassador William B. Taylor
William Taylor stressed that it was quite democratic that people in Ukraine believe it is necessary to call fresh elections in Ukraine’s parliament.

The ambassador’s statement came shortly after the recent end of the four-month political crisis prompted by the parliamentary elections, which brought victory neither to the pro-Russian coalition nor to the pro-Western one. The crisis seemed to be solved after Ukraine’s president avoided parliament dissolution and new elections by naming the pro-Kremlin leader prime-minister.

Taylor said he had spoken to people who say they are convinced in the need for fresh elections. He said there were even people who believe elections are needed right now. He said such people tried hard to convince him that they would act in line with the Constitution in pushing for new elections. The ambassador said he considered such views legal, that they were part of political activity, and part of democracy.

A political crisis in Ukraine burst out after the parliamentary elections on March 26 in which pro-Kremlin Victor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions won the most votes but lacked an overall majority.

Pro-Russian and “orange revolution” parliament coalitions were fighting for the most essential posts in the government for about four months, lacking political weight to get the prime-minister post. Yushchenko’s ally in the “orange revolution” Yulia Timoshenko and pro-Kremlin Victor Yanukovych were the two main candidates for the most important post in the government.

Due to the impasse, Ukraine’s President Victor Yushchenko according to the Constitution had two choices — to dissolve the parliament, which failed to form a government, or to name the at the time more influential pro-Russian leader prime-minister. Timoshenko’s party insisted on the dissolution of the parliament and urged new elections to be held in hopes that they would win a majority this time.

But the president made the second choice. On August 3 Yushchenko signed a “national unity pact” with Yanukovych, putting aside their political differences.

Ukraine’s parliament confirmed pro-Russian politician Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister on August 5, 2006.

Now Yanukovich will share power with the “orange revolution” president, who defeated him in 2004. The president said he had cast-iron guarantees from Yanukovich that he would not try to reverse the revolution’s pro-Western principles.

The main loser appeared to be Yushchenko’s glamorous ex-ally Yulia Tymoshenko, who stood by him during the 2004 pro-democracy demonstrations, rallying the crowds that flooded onto Kiev’s streets and camped out in freezing conditions.

On the eve of Yanukovich’s appointment the U.S. officially pledged to work with him and his government despite perceptions his comeback will slow his country’s march to the West. “Yanukovych has come to the prime ministership in the old-fashioned, democratic way. He worked hard for votes, he campaigned, he politicked,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on August 3.

Source: MosNews

"Uniting Ukraine": A hard Sell For The Yushchenko-Yanukovich Coalition

KIEV, Ukraine -- The formation of a majority-based parliamentary coalition and legitimate government promises relative stability to Ukraine after a year of chaos and misgovernance.


Simply ending the turmoil and attending at last to the country’s pressing needs is a promise that undoubtedly meets the expectations of voters across the political spectrum and country.

The Party of Regions’ entry might improve the government’s managerial competence or at least discipline, while the retention of the Orange-period foreign affairs and defense ministers may ensure policy continuity there.

However, the four-party governing coalition formed under the aegis of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is being billed as a democratic way of “unifying Ukraine” east and west.

This is a very hard sell to attempt in Ukraine itself or abroad.

This Ukrainian government is the first-ever in post-communist Central-Eastern Europe in which the Socialist and Communist parties support oligarchic power, as embodied by the Party of Regions in this case.

The oligarchic model of transition to capitalism that failed in Russia in the 1990s seems hardly worth rehabilitating for use in another country. Experimenting with an updated version of this model in Ukraine would not advance the country’s integration with the West, though it may facilitate the access of certain oligarchs to the West, and in the most felicitous of cases their political cooptation there.

The coalition’s heterogeneity does not reflect a national consensus at the grass roots or the voters’ mandate. It mainly reflects an arrangement to share access to political power and its economic benefits among leaders that otherwise profess conflicting ideologies and goals. Such an arrangement seems inherently provisional.

In terms of eastern Ukraine-western Ukraine and regional representation, it seems far from certain that the groups in the new government are qualified to “unify” the country in a political and civic sense. Election returns, opinion surveys, and the configuration of interest groups suggest that this government’s composition rather lacks that nation-unifying quality.

Based on the March parliamentary election returns, clearly the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (YTB) seems the best positioned to “unify the country;” “bridging the Dnipro” across the traditional east-west divide. The YTB won the elections in 14 regions out of Ukraine’s 27.

It carried the heartlands on both sides of the Dnipro River, as well as three western regions; and under normal conditions could have scored well in parts of the industrial east (where Dnipropetrovsk was YTB’s original power base).

However, the Party of Regions and the pro-presidential “business wing” of Our Ukraine have joined forces to exclude the YTB from any commensurate role in government. The YTB is the only all-Ukrainian party in the country at this stage.

With Regions representing Ukraine’s east, Yushchenko and his side in the pro-presidential bloc are presumed to represent Ukraine’s west in the coalition to “unify Ukraine.”

Additionally, the president is supposed to embody a national political consensus: “president of all Ukrainians,” as he continually asserted during the coalition negotiations. These assumptions are difficult to sustain, however.

With Yushchenko on its banners, Our Ukraine carried only three of the western regions and just 14% of the vote nationwide in the March parliamentary elections.

Opinion surveys through July showed the president’s and Our Ukraine’s approval dropping to 10% or less, due to the president’s handling of the coalition negotiations.

The bloc is on the verge of splitting between the “business wing” and the national-democratic wing, the latter based mainly in the western regions. Only 30 of Our Ukraine’s deputies voted for the government while 51 national-democrats variously refused to vote or voted against.

Leaders of three national-democratic parties in the six-party bloc -- Christian-Democrats, Sobor, and the People’s Party -- have issued statements protesting the formation of this coalition, as has the elected regional council of Lviv oblast (one of three regions where Our Ukraine won the elections).

Yushchenko is rapidly losing his remaining base of support in the west of the country. In sum, the main political forces in the western regions (national-democrats, YTB) are aghast at this government, whereas Our Ukraine’s “business wing” which supports the “unifying government” cannot be said to represent the western regions.

Whether the Party of Regions represents eastern and southern Ukraine overall is also questionable. The presidential and parliamentary elections, held in the space of 16 months, did catapult Yanukovych suddenly to the role of standard-bearer of those regions.

But he has yet to create a real political and organizational base in most of them. The Party of Regions is a vehicle of oligarchic interests in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, with extensions in some adjacent eastern oblasts.

It cannot be said to represent regions beyond that power base, and does not have strong ties to Ukraine’s southern regions and the main interest groups there.

Most of the party’s ministers in this government simply come from the “Donetsk clan,” rather than “eastern and southern Ukraine.” Even within the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, powerful and wealthy interest groups such as the Industrial Union of Donbas are not part of, but rather in an uneasy competitive coexistence with, the interest groups represented by the Party of Regions.

Rather than a nation-unifying factor, this is still a sectional force that has successfully dealt itself into dominating the national government.

The formation of a “unifying government” would require a different, more representative configuration, as well as a more open democratic process that would involve civil society as an indispensable unifying factor.

Instead, this government stems from a non-transparent deal at the top among business interests and political groups fronting for them, with anti-capitalist leftist parties covering the oligarchic flank.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Democracy In Ukraine

LONDON, UK -- Ever since the end of the Cold War, Ukraine represented for many observers just a large former soviet republic too close to Russia to be properly distinguished.


The policies of the two countries seemed so similar that many commentators almost lost hope of ever seeing a truly independent Ukraine in charge of its borders, army and energy security. And yet in November 2004, not more that six months after Europe's historical enlargement, the Ukrainian nation awoke.

The people had enough of corruption, fraud and ignorance of their choices. They took to the streets to manifest their anger and desire for freedom. And it was there in the streets where the wish for a better life of the orange camp proved stronger than the conservatism and inertia of the blue side.

Names like Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko immediately became associated with Ukraine's new independent course, while Viktor Yanukovych, the former premier, was seen as the big loser. This picture was altered a few days ago, on the 3 August, when president Yushchenko nominated his archrival Yanukovych to be prime minister.

The news hit hard at the heart of Orange Revolution supporters. Judging from their comments, their hopes are shattered, the values they fought for seem all lost. But are they really?

Putting a democratic system in place

In 1947 the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made one of his most memorable quotes: "No one pretends that democracy is perfect […] democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried."

It is this democracy that, fifty-seven years later, was promoted by the supporters of the Orange Revolution. And it is exactly democracy that has triumphed in Ukraine. The values of democratic choice, proved in the end stronger than any individual or coalition.

The Orange Revolution was not about giving the state power to Mr Yushchenko or anybody else but about putting in place a democratic system that insured Ukraine's sovereignty and a better life for its people.

On 26 March, during the last election, the people showed their preference. The two factions came close, the difference being around 3% in favour of the now split Orange side. It showed the people were not happy with the slow changes of the past two years but they haven't lost their trust in democracy and they were willing to wait.

It was now down to president Yushchenko, the political symbol of the Orange Revolution, to make his choice for prime minister. His options were limited Mrs Tymoshenko or Mr Yanukovych After a long delay he opted for the later with all the sacrifices such a decision implied. From a purely theoretical perspective, Mr Yanukovych being the leader of the party that got most votes, is entitled to the position.

But there is more to the president's choice; it shows his trust in the durability of the democratic changes he was able to bring to the country. His option carries a risk, a high one, and now he has to be able to defend and oversee it. But more importantly he has to keep his country on track. It won't be easy but if he manages, Ukrainian democracy will come out stronger and more of a unifying force than ever before.

The role of the opposition

The decision of the president was interpreted by many as leaving Mrs Tymoshenko, the real symbol of the Orange Revolution, out in the cold. Instead, she is in for four years of real heat! If any of that revolutionary spirit that energised the masses two years ago is still there then the Yanukovych government will have to face a real opposition both in Parliament and in the media.

In a real democratic system the role of the opposition is as important as the one of the government. Mrs Tymoshenko proved to be a strong and charismatic leader, now she has to show herself as an informed and fierce critic. Heading a strong and unmerciful shadow government can be as challenging as the real job itself.

For young democracies, having an alternation of power and leaders that are capable of great things both in government and opposition is crucial. Moreover if the alternation to power in other Eastern European countries is any indication, Mrs Tymoshenko has a great chance of getting the top position in four years or even earlier. And what a rich political experience will she have by then!

It is clear that the controversial character of the story is the new prime minister, Mr Yanukovych. His past is no indication of how he will perform in his new job. He was for long seen just as the right hand man of a Soviet-style leader. Later, at the height of the Orange Revolution there were rumours he wanted to bring the army out in the streets against his co-nationals.

The right gamble?

As a leader of the opposition he didn't bring much and now he is portraying himself as a reformed politician. Only time will tell what his real nature is. For the moment he has to prove he is worthy of a second chance to the highest office. He has to show he understood the democratic game and he is willing to play by the rules. Until then the responsibility for his actions lies with president Yushchenko who took the gamble. Hopefully it was the right one.

Yet, there is one part of the world where the news about Mr Yanukovych's new job was received with less reservation. The Russian newspapers and opinion leaders congratulated him and some even said they feel vindicated by the nomination. But outside lessons have always slowly entered Russian space.

It must be hard to see a neighbouring country with a similarly difficult history having a strong and blossoming democracy in which political rivals are not jailed but asked to play their rightful role and where the press is free to speak its mind. And for the ones that are less jubilant about the Ukrainian changes, Mr Yanukovych'S nomination at least proves that the Orange Revolution was genuine. There was no outside force trying to put its people into place. The revolution was simply the option of the local population that had enough of tyranny.

Complex and delicate concept

Democracy is a complex and delicate concept, that takes time to grow and flourish both in the political system and in people's hearts. And at no phase is democracy more fragile than in its infancy. The past two years showed the Ukrainian people the benefits and sacrifices it requires, but it also showed its fragility. It should not be forgotten that the people of Ukraine were energised by the democratic models of Europe and the US when they took the streets asking for change and for EU and NATO membership.

It is the EU and the US that became the guarantors of the newly born democracy. The EU through its proximity and historical ties with the country has not only the possibility but also the capacity and duty to keep a very exigent eye on the developments in Ukraine.

Inside the EU, there are certain countries, such as Poland, which have a vested interest in keeping the country on course and should therefore spare no effort in making sure that democracy has solid roots across its eastern border.

But who can talk about democracy in Eastern Europe without mentioning the role of the United States?

Washington's role

The US is the single most important democratic model for the countries in the region and its committed involvement in the area played a crucial role in the post- Cold War transformations. Washington's role in Ukraine's recent history has for sure been overestimated by most commentators. It is true that the US engagement with the Ukrainian democratic forces has always been there, but it has to be stepped up in the near future.

If indeed president Bush wants to see Ukraine in NATO before he leaves office then he has fully understood a large part of his responsibilities towards this young democracy. With European integration having no secure date, NATO membership is the only real external guarantee for the Ukraine's democratic future.

The Americans and the majority of the other NATO members are willing to stretch out a hand. President Yushchenko and prime minister Yanukovych should be ready to grab it if they want to prove they are worthy of leading Ukraine in these historic times.

Source: EU Observer

Ukraine Is Not Europe - Yet

KIEV, Ukraine -- Many analysts have reacted positively to the confirmation of the new Yanukovich government, welcoming the end of over four months of political turmoil.


But, when looking past the short-term goal of so-called “political stability” to Ukraine’s long-term development, the formation of the government causes a number of concerns.

On August 3, US State Department Spokesman Scott McCormack suggested, “”Mr. Yanukovych has come to the prime ministership in the old-fashioned, democratic way. He worked hard for votes, he campaigned, he politicked.” Yes – and no.

It is true that Yanukovich’s Party of Regions ran a superb Western-style political campaign, based on the advice of several US Republican Party strategists. The party placed first in the parliamentary election, with 32 percent of the vote. And, in the end, Yanukovich negotiated well with the president to secure his job.

But the formation of the coalition that allowed Yanukovich to be in that position had as much to do with the physical blockading of the parliamentary rostrum, and the reported providing of “incentives” to MPs, as with “politicking.”

Almost immediately after the former “Orange” parties announced their own majority coalition, which would have nominated former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the Party of Regions began blocking parliament.

They blocked work for 10 days, assisted by at least one non-MP “hired gun.” The unknown man was filmed physically defending the rostrum from those attempting to unblock it.

During that time, the Party of Regions was able to “convince” the Socialist Party, the smallest member of the “orange coalition,” to switch allegiances.

The Socialists did so spectacularly during the election of the parliamentary speaker. The party provided no notice to its previous coalition partners, thus violating Ukraine’s parliamentary procedures.

Given the long history of bribery in Ukrainian politics, it was not surprising when a television camera captured Party of Regions deputy Andriy Kliuyev on the parliamentary floor making what appeared to be a gesture of counting money while speaking to the head of the Socialists (although the Socialists deny receiving money).

It also was not surprising for journalists to overhear a deputy from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc ask Kliuyev sarcastically whether they could “get” a committee membership for three million dollars since they missed the chairmanships “for 10.”

There may be a reason why Kliuyev has been called the “money man” in Ukraine’s domestic press. But one thing is certain – those watching the parliamentary majority’s creation saw very little that resembled Western-style parliamentary politics.

The inclusion of certain individuals in the new cabinet does little to assuage concerns. Andriy Kliuyev was named Deputy Prime Minister for the Energy Sector.

This is the same post Kliuyev held in the 2004 pre-revolution Yanukovich government. In fact, the new Yanukovich cabinet includes several individuals from that time, which is the period when the questionable gas intermediary RosUkrEnergo was formed.

RosUkrEnergo, which controls Ukraine’s gas contracts, has been severely criticized by Western officials for its lack of transparency. Charles Tannock, a British European Member of Parliament suggested that the use of RosUkrEnergo in gas agreements with Russia suggests “there is a possibility of political corruption.”

He and other Western officials have urged Ukraine to remove RosUkrEnergo from all gas transactions.

Yulia Tymoshenko had vowed to do this. During her tenure as premier, the company was investigated by the Secret Service for money laundering. “It is a front company,” she charged, designed to enrich certain Ukrainian officials.

After her dismissal, the probe was shelved. Now, the new cabinet can be seen as a sign of support for the intermediary.

Ukraine’s new Minister for Coal and Mining, Serhiy Tulub, served as Yanukovich’s Minister for Fuel and Energy in 2004, when RosUrkEnergo was formed. Even more, Yuriy Boyko, the former head of Ukraine’s state gas company Naftohaz in 2004, will now serve as Fuel and Energy Minister.

Boyko sat on the original “coordinating council” of RosUkrEnergo. The international watchdog Global Witness questioned the “curious relationship” between RosUkrEnergo, Naftohaz and Boyko and asked who profited from it.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s new First Deputy Prime Minister will be Mykola Azarov, a man known during the Kuchma administration for his use of the tax police against the political opposition.

As head of the Tax Administration, Azarov is heard on the “Gongadze Tapes” – secret recordings of President Kuchma’s conversations in 2000. These tapes were authenticated by the United States FBI. Most individuals heard on the tapes, including then-Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, have said the conversations in question did take place. Kuchma and Azarov have not, but they seem to correspond with real events.

In one conversation, a man identified as Azarov discusses his attempt to pressure Boris Feldman, a wealthy banker and supporter of Yulia Tymoshenko. On the tapes, Kuchma is heard to tell Azarov, “Put him in a cell with convicts. Let them pound him.”

Three months later, Azarov explains that Feldman will go to prison. “We agreed with the Luhansk court …,” he says on the tape. “I have talked about adding a charge. We have discussed this with the judges there, whom we can manipulate.” Feldman spent three years in jail before another court threw out the charges.

Under Azarov’s direction, the tax administration also opened investigations into the work of the US-based organization Freedom House and the US-owned newspaper Eastern Economist. Many Ukrainian organizations critical of Kuchma also endured excruciating tax investigations during Azarov’s tenure.

Now, Azarov is the second most important man in the cabinet. Though it includes reformers, its overall make-up and the tactics used to form the coalition, should give pause to those worried about corruption or possible oppression. Any resurgence of RosUkrEnergo may concern Europeans focused on energy.

As usual, the country appears to be heading in two directions at once. Despite concerns for the future, Ukraine conducted a free and fair election. All politicians expressed their opinions throughout the coalition formation. Perhaps most important, this government, unlike Yanukovich’s first, will be actively monitored by a real opposition.

The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc refused to participate in the government, suggesting that it could better serve Ukraine as a watchdog. Tymoshenko’s new inter-party opposition may include disaffected members of President Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party, which officially joined Yanukovich’s government. The President has welcomed the creation of the opposition and pledged to protect it.

In fact, protecting the opposition should be one of the president’s most important goals, given possible questions about the new cabinet. Will this government truly be able to meet Western standards of democracy and transparency? Ukraine will need its opposition to ensure that they do.

Source: Kyiv Post

A Kinder And Gentler Party Of Regions

KIEV, Ukraine -- Gone is the old Viktor Yanukovych, the tough street kid who as a young man was convicted and jailed for robbery and bodily injury.


Gone is the regional politician in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk oblast who has reportedly lobbied the interests of local organized crime in Kyiv since the late 1980s.

Gone is the politician who as premier was rumored to have used fisticuffs to drive home a point home with members of the presidential administration. And gone is the leader of the Regions Party who allegedly helped engineer the very fraudulent presidential election of 2004, but was never charged.

Enter the unarguably legitimate leader, and party, that received a third of the electorate in a parliamentary election last March that was hailed internationally as fair and free.

A party whose deputies in the new parliament simply ask for an end to the incessant political feuding and an opportunity to get on with their important work: to unite the country and tackle its economic and political problems.

Today, we have a new Yanukovych and Regions Party, a kinder, gentler, and more responsible one. Or do we? Are we, in fact, witnessing a fundamental transformation of the Regions Party and leadership, a genuine effort to embrace what President Yushchenko, on so many occasions, has called a "European political culture" with its democratic standards of parliamentarianism?

Negative images of Yanukovych and his party still abound and evoke strong emotions from citizens. However, psychologists remind us that such negative images cannot easily be erased. They are alive and well and evoke strong emotions from citizens who supported democratic forces in last March's parliamentary election.

Keenly aware of this fact, Viktor Yanukovych and his deputy party leader, Mykola Azarov, have launched a sophisticated and intensive image campaign to chip away at these negative images.

Assisted by Taras Chornovil, Hanna Herman, and numerous other Regions deputies, they have been working overtime during the recent parliamentary crisis, appearing on countless Ukrainian television and radio programs, and spreading a consistent, simple message: Party of Regions is a democratic party whose representatives to the new parliament have been elected by the people, have a solemn responsibility to them, but are not allowed to work effectively because of endless feuding among politically ambitious former Orange Revolution allies.

Moreover, they assert that they place the nation above all other interests and are uncompromising in their principles. According to Yanukovych’s personal website, these principles are: “Equality before the law, fair government, and supremacy of rights.” A casual survey of this website also reveals strong party support for European standards and, interestingly, even Jeffersonian democracy.

From the many recent appearances of Regions Party spokespersons on Ukrainian media, we can cull a following fresh new line of positive images of Yanukovych and his party: a savior-unifier of the nation at a time of great peril; the people's choice for prime minister; a strong, decisive, and effective leader; a de facto guarantor of the Constitution, given the country's weak president; a selfless party that can rise above ideological differences and join other parties to form a broad parliamentary coalition in order to pull the country out of crisis; and an enlightened, tolerant, and legitimate party.

When we look beyond these images and messages projected by Regions party leaders and turn to their recent behavior, what do we see?

The intense daily drama surrounding Ukraine’s parliamentary crisis during the past few months has opened a rare window to the operational style, core motivations, and ambitions of Viktor Yanukovych and other Regions party leaders. Close scrutiny of this behavior can shed light on the vexed question of Regions’ commitment to a European political culture and democratic standards of parliamentarianism.

Operational style: Behind the democratic veneer and forced smile displayed publicly by Yanukovych during the protracted parliamentary crisis, there lies a very authoritarian ultimatum-punctuated style of governance with strict party discipline.

His frequent promises to quickly reach European standards in parliament ring hollow in light of the tactics employed by his party during the parliamentary crisis.

As soon as it became apparent that President Yushchenko was reluctant to quickly nominate Yanukovych as premier in the new parliament, the Party of Regions cast aside their kinder, gentler, and more responsible European standards approach and embraced the maxim, all is fair in love and war.

The tactics that followed were heavy-handed and reminiscent of those many Ukrainians had come to know and fear during recent election campaigns. They included active measures to incite public unrest and civil conflict.

For example, on 25 July in a speech to parliament Viktor Yanukovych resorted to scare tactics in order to place greater pressure on the president to send his nomination as premier to parliament. He asserted that the parliamentary crisis had led to widespread chaos in the country and that prospects for civil conflict were growing daily.

To provide added support for such assertions, the Regions Party unabashedly created evidence. Acting in a very provocative and irresponsible fashion, they bused reportedly upwards to 2,000 mostly very poor supporters from Eastern Ukraine to picket and march in the nation’s capitol.

The protestors were fed ice cream and beer to fend off the scorching heat, and many even received a meager stipend for their few days in Kyiv. Significantly, they were mostly well behaved and hardly poised for the serious civil conflict or separatism which Regions spokespersons had advertised.

As their patience with President Yushchenko quickly wore thin, Regions party leaders in Kyiv and the Donetsk region, notably, issued a barrage of public ultimatums which, in effect, ordered the president to deliver the nomination of Yanukovych as premier to parliament within 72 hours, rather than the 15 days guaranteed by the Constitution for careful deliberation.

It is also worth noting that the Party of Region’s operational style during the parliamentary crisis included the offer of bribes, ranging from $3-7 million, in return for membership in their new majority coalition, according to several members of Yuliya Tymoshenko’s bloc.

Further insights into this very authoritarian and intolerant style of leadership may be gleaned from the official website of the Party of Regions which contains an interesting recent document titled “The Ultimatum of the Political Council of the Party of Regions.”

Core motivations: The collapse of the new democratic coalition in parliament on 6 July and the escalating parliamentary crisis provided a unique opportunity for Yanukovych and the Regions Party to fill the political vacuum and acquire greater power in parliament by forming a new majority coalition. Although this required abandoning some fundamental principles and recent election campaign promises, Regions did so effortlessly.

Motivated conspicuously by their overwhelming desire to control parliament in Ukraine’s new parliamentary-presidential system, they embraced the Socialist and Communis parties, whose fundamental principles, at least ostensibly, were aliens. To add insult, they even actively sought to add the president’s Our Ukraine bloc in parliament to their new majority coalition, trumpeting the incredulous slogan, “2 Viktors (Yanukovych and Yushchenko), 1 Ukraine.”

In doing so, Yanukovych broke a grave promise to supporters made during the parliamentary election campaign, when he solemnly swore that, “The Party of Regions considers it impossible to collaborate with Orange forces which took responsibility for the state of affairs but did not fulfill their obligations.” Regions leaders justified this grab for more power as the selfless act of a party rising above ideological differences to form a broad coalition that would pull the nation out of crisis.

Ambitions: Regions leaders endlessly assert that the Ukrainian nation must come first - above all other interests. Yet their recent behavior illustrates that they care primarily about climbing the power pyramid and even taking immediate family members with them.

It’s no secret that Viktor Yanukovych is an extremely ambitious politician, who sought the premiership in the new parliament, in no small measure, as revenge for his defeat in the 2004 presidential election. However, it is surprising that he would put personal political ambitions above the interests of his own party. He did just that recently when, on several occasions, he had a potential opportunity to defuse the parliamentary crisis.

Instead, he categorically refused to step aside and allow another Regions Party candidate, one more palatable to President Yushchenko, to be nominated for the coveted post of premier. This act of political expediency heightened the risk of having parliament dissolved and the Party of Regions, along with the entire country, put through another election.

Yanukovych also zealously seeks political power for his immediate family. Although his young son is unqualified to carry the heavy manteau of one of nation’s 450 key lawmakers, this did not stop Yanukovych from adding his son’s name to the Region’s list of party candidates for the last March’s parliamentary election.

This act ensured that Viktor Yanukovych, Jr., at the ripe age of 24, would become a member of parliament. Equally disturbing is the fact that senior leaders of the Regions Party, members of the Political Council, glibly endorsed his candidacy.

In Ukraine this brazen act has outraged ordinary citizens who view it as nothing other than nepotism: an especially egregious form of corruption which openly mocks rhetoric about equality before the law and fairness, and reflects a conspicuous double standard in society.

Viewed in this light, it is not difficult to see that a wide gap exists between image and reality; a great discrepancy between the projected image of a party leader who allegedly seeks to unify a very polarized nation, and at the same time, in the heat of a crisis, sanctions tactics which breed division and even incite separatism.

Yanukovych and his party have failed to grasp a simple truth: as long as they resort to non-European standards of parliamentarianism in their hour of need, they will only reinforce existing negative stereotypes of their party, and will be their own worst enemy.

Prediction in a highly dynamic political environment is always foolhardy. The best we can do is to identify key trends that offer a more informed basis for speculation. Yet it is not at all hard to imagine, given current trends and political realities here in Ukraine, a day when Yanukovych will be president and with lightning speed will nominate and obtain parliamentary approval for a Regions party leader to be premier.

This would give Yanukovych and his party virtually full control of the governmental machinery and the option to dramatically shift Ukraine’s foreign policy and economic course to better suit their personal interests, those of their Donetsk business-elite investors, and their Russian supporters. Till that fateful day, we can expect to see a kinder, gentler, and more restrained Viktor Yanukovych and Party of Regions.

Source: Kyiv Post

Retailer Says Cell Phone Sales In Ukraine At $623 Mln In Jan-Jun

MOSCOW, Russia -- The sales of mobile handsets in Ukraine amounted to U.S. $623.3 million in January-June, AVentures Group said in a report Tuesday.


In 2005, mobile handset sales in Ukraine stood at $762 million, AVentures Group said without giving the figure for January-June 2005.

Among other businesses, AVentures Group is engaged in mobile handset sales.

Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset, which also operates a chain of outlets in Ukraine, said in July that mobile handset sales in Ukraine stood at $917 million in January-June.

AVentures Group estimated mobile handset sales in physical terms at 4.1 million units in January-June, down 31.7% on the year.

The average price of sold handsets in January-June amounted to $152, the group said.

Nokia accounted for 36% of total mobile handset sales, Samsung for 33%, BENQ-Siemens for 12%, Sony Ericsson for 9% and Motorola for 6.5%, AVentures Group said.

The average price of sold smartphones was at $342 in the period, the group said, adding that Nokia accounted for 88.5% of smartphones sales. AVentures Group did not provide figures for smartphones sales for January-June, saying that in January-March smartphone sales amounted to 185,000 units worth $63 million.

AVentures Group expects mobile handset sales in Ukraine to increase 67% on the year this year to 10 million units, including 520,000 of smartphones, due to low mobile penetration in Ukraine, which stood at about 32% as of December 31, 2005.

AVentures Group controls several wholesale and retail mobile handset companies, as well as companies engaged in other businesses.

Source: Cellular News

Ukraine's Shadow Across Eurasia

KIEV, Ukraine -- Modern Ukraine's most famous son, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, once said, "He who cannot eat horse meat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horse meat. It's simply a question of taste."

Nikita Khrushchev
The predicament facing the United States over the death of the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine is somewhat similar. The choice is whether to do business with the incoming pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich or to destabilize him in the coming months by consorting with the mercurial opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. The dilemma is acute insofar as Washington doesn't have a genuine "taste" for either of the two Ukrainian leaders.

The choice would have been easy if Moscow had placed its cards on the table. But Moscow is not helping matters. It is eschewing polemics and is not stating preferences. Instead it is putting on a poker face - an exasperating correct median line. No sooner had Yanukovich assumed office in Kiev on Friday than Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov extended customary greetings and expressed hope for the development of bilateral ties.

President Vladimir Putin took another three full days to add his felicitations. On Monday, significantly, he first telephoned Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko to congratulate him for putting an end to the political crisis emanating out of the latter's rift with his "orange partner" Tymoshenko. And only then did Putin congratulate Yanukovich.

With characteristic understatement, Moscow drew attention to the great strategic defeat that the US has suffered in Ukraine. It is common knowledge that the US actively worked behind the scenes after the March elections to put together an orange coalition of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.

Washington was eager to see an orange coalition in power in Kiev so that at the summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in November in Riga, Ukraine could be formally invited to a membership action plan, which in turn would qualify Ukraine potentially for full membership at the 2008 NATO enlargement summit. But in the event, Yushchenko simply would have no truck with Tymoshenko.

Fearing that his popularity, which is already below 10%, might plummet even further if fresh elections were held because of a hung parliament, Yushchenko opted for a grand coalition with Yanukovich despite the US administration's deep suspicion of the latter as a menace to the United States' geopolitical interests. Worse still, as a former American diplomat put it, "pretty much everybody ... was surprised" by the undercurrents that swept Yanukovich to power.

Washington has put a brave face on the geopolitical shift in Kiev. The US State Department spokesman claimed satisfaction that Yanukovich's return to power was "in the old-fashioned, democratic way" and, therefore, Washington would seek a "good relationship" with his government, "just as we would with any other democratically elected government".

Yet such grandstanding couldn't hide that in three broad directions at least, Yanukovich's ascendancy signifies a shift in Ukraine's policies that profoundly hurt the US position. First, developments in Ukraine conclusively debunk Washington's claims that a wave of US-sponsored freedom and democracy was on the march. President George W Bush himself had listed in his 2005 State of the Union address the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine as one of the "landmark events in the history of liberty".

As Russia scholar Anatol Lieven wrote, these assumptions on which the US strategies have been based stand contradicted today; Ukraine "demonstrated that the processes which the West has encouraged in Central Europe and the Baltic states cannot be extended seamlessly to the former Soviet Union. Societies, economies and national identities and affinities are very different, links to Russia are closer, and both the US and the EU are weaker than appeared to be the case a few years ago."

Indeed, the reverberations of the collapse of the "orange project" will be felt far and wide in the post-Soviet space. Belarussian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka will feel vindicated in his assertion that there will be no rose, orange or banana revolutions in his country. Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia, on the other hand, will worry that "color revolutions" are not irreversible.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan would be gratified that his early burial of the "Tulip Revolution", and his choice of indigenous and regional moorings as the mainstay of power, were after all the correct choice.

Across the length and breadth of the post-Soviet space a realization will have dawned that the era of the "color revolutions" has ended and that with all its awesome power as the sole superpower, there are serious limits to the US influence in bringing about regime changes. Certainly, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine - or, wherever Washington has let the genie of "democracy" out of the bottle - pandemonium prevails.

The Bush administration faces a serious credibility problem in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, which will pose a difficult legacy for the next administration. The less said the better for Washington's "Greater Central Asia" strategy or any mediation in settling the "frozen conflicts" in Moldova or Transcaucasus. (Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin visited Moscow on Tuesday to discuss with Putin key issues of finding a settlement to the Transdnistria problem.)

Equally Ukraine, with its 50 million people, its advanced military-industrial complex, its strong agricultural base, its highly strategic geography, and not least of all its near-mystic appeal to Mother Russia, should have been the fulcrum around which an entire geopolitics was conceived by the US. With Ukraine cut adrift once again in the midriff of Eurasia, issues are wide open.

Democracy may or may not have changed Yanukovich. But one thing is certain: Moscow is back in serious business in Ukraine - that is, if it ever was out of it in real terms. In his first remarks within hours of assuming office, Yanukovich told the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta that Ukraine-Russia ties will run on an altogether different track than under the orange regime. He said: "We need to stop quarrelling with our neighbors and learn to have respectful discussions ... The new government is not going to foster anti-Russia sentiments in Ukraine."

Influential Russian politicians promptly reciprocated. But the chairman of the Russian duma's International Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachyov, underlined Moscow's cautious approach not to raise hackles in the West. He commented: "Yanukovich stands for a balanced foreign policy of Ukraine. Russian-Ukrainian relations now have a chance to overcome the crisis and start gradual development." The emphasis of Russian politicians was on the "de-ideologization" of Russian-Ukrainian relations and their pragmatic development.

All indications are that Russia will offer Yanukovich's government a new concept of strategic partnership focusing on the economic-reform objectives of Ukraine but aimed at closer integration with Russia in terms of projects and programs. Russia has an inherent advantage over all of Ukraine's Western partners in pursuing such a course. More important, it is a "win-win" situation, since Russia will also attend to the top priorities of Ukraine's political economy.

But US cold warriors seem to be stopping at nothing to raise the dust in Russia-Ukraine relations. They see fresh hope in the "checks and balances" implicit in the Yushchenko-Yanukovich grand coalition. (They made more or less the same misplaced assumption in the case of the Bakiyev-Felix Kulov team in Kyrgyzstan.) They count on Tymoshenko providing an "effective critique" of the grand coalition in Kiev. They insist democracy has changed Yanukovich's outlook. They calculate that the US still has its own clientele in the Ukrainian leadership. They visualize Yushchenko, though an isolated politician, as still capable of (and interested in) fighting for the "orange" spirit.

Without doubt, Yanukovich will create a change in atmosphere in Ukraine's relations with Russia, especially at the political and diplomatic level. He will not be enthusiastic about the anti-Russia regional groupings sponsored by Washington such as the GUAM group (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) or the Community of Democratic Choice. These regional groupings are bound to wither away if Kiev doesn't put its heart in them.

The million-dollar question has always been about the prospects of Ukraine's NATO membership. In his first comments, Yanukovich reiterated his opposition to Ukraine joining the NATO. He recalled that the orange regime's stance on the issue "made Russia unhappy" and that his government must abide by the wishes of the majority of Ukrainian people who were opposed to NATO membership.

Yanukovich later amplified that "NATO is a very sensitive issue for our society" and, therefore, "balanced and collective decisions" became necessary involving the government, president and the parliament. What all this adds up to is that the NATO enlargement summit in 2008, which Bush very much hoped to have as a legacy of his presidency, will have to be postponed indefinitely.

But NATO expansion is not merely an issue of Bush's political legacy. If Ukraine holds back, NATO's eastward expansion virtually stalls. Ukraine is too big to be bypassed. And no encirclement of Russia is realistic without Kiev coming on board.

Furthermore, NATO expansion into Ukraine was intended to give verve to Poland's claims of a leadership role in Eurasia, which the US was counting on, challenging Russia. Eastward expansion is NATO's strategy; it isn't Ukraine's strategy. It is a strategy that, essentially speaking, has nothing to do with the actual security of member countries. It is political and has been championed by the caucus involving the US, Poland and the Baltic states. It is a venture about which other NATO countries harbor ambivalent feelings.

Washington hoped that NATO expansion would give impetus to the United States' trans-Atlantic leadership and keep burning the fire of Euro-Atlanticism even in the post-Cold War setting. Now, if NATO begins to meander for want of motivation or a clear-cut action plan, lingering doubts about its raison d'etre would resurface.

It is not even two years since then German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder questioned NATO's pivotal role or France reactivated its NATO links. The challenge is thus political and, as Khrushchev put it, politics are the same all over - "They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river."

Source: Asia Times Online

Political Uncertainty In Ukraine Persists

MOSCOW, Russia -- The political crisis in Ukraine has been resolved, but uncertainty persists. The new government is still suffering from the painful compromise that brought about its establishment.


On the one hand, most key posts in the government have been given to people free of ideological intoxication and capable of constructive, pragmatic actions. They know why gas should be stored in underground depots in summer, why international commitments should be honored, and why their country should not clash with those on whom its development depends.

They are First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Naftogaz head Yury Boiko. They will be easy to work with, and may be the most suitable partners for Russia.

The duo of Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk and Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, who had laid out the plan for an accelerated integration of Ukraine into NATO, which determined the policy underlying other decisions, has remained in place, just like the position of President Viktor Yushchenko, who pursued the line they had suggested and who remains the key politician in Ukraine.

Yushchenko's miraculous victory in the battle against the parliamentary majority showed that he still has something within him - a fighting spirit. Any other head of state would have acted in accordance with the law and nominated the majority's candidate.

But Yushchenko said that the majority must accept his conditions or he would dissolve parliament because the creation of "a wrong coalition" distorted the will of the people.

Surprisingly for observers, parliament did not reject the ultimatum, which would have buried any other democratically elected president in a democratic country, but spent weeks discussing it and eventually signed it, although with compromise conditions.

The catastrophic inability of "orange" politicians to govern the country has reduced the president's approval rating to almost zero. (In his first and best 100 days, Yushchenko had the support of barely 50% of the people, which is logical in view of the illegitimate way he had come to power.)

The parliamentary victory of the "orange trio" - the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, pro-presidential Our Ukraine and the Socialist Party - seemingly rehabilitated the revolutionary ideals. But subsequent developments showed that the winners were kept together by their striving for power, so that the "orange" government was deadlocked by their fear that one of the partners would gain the upper hand.

However, the ideological foundation of Our Ukraine proved to be sufficiently strong to prevent a seemingly unavoidable union with the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by Viktor Yanukovych, the new prime minister of Ukraine.

Its ideology prevented Yushchenko from implementing his agreements with the crisis coalition: only 30 of the 80 members of Our Ukraine in parliament voted for the new prime minister, leaving the party short of full participation in the new coalition.

This result will benefit Yanukovych, who did nothing to bring it about.

The talks on the formation of the government showed that Yanukovych is a weak politician, just like Yushchenko. The compromise was mostly reached through the surrender of his party's positions. Yanukovych's stance on the issue of the Russian language is a relevant example.

During the election campaign, the Party of Regions demanded that Russian should be granted the status of a second official language. But shortly before signing the agreement, Yanukovych said that Ukrainian should remain the only official language and that the Ukrainian Constitution, which protected all other languages, should be used to ensure this.

His statement sounded like a capitulation in view of President Yushchenko's stubborn refusal to implement the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Lawyers can talk all they want about how this refusal does not preclude support for decisions to grant Russian the status of a regional language, but the voters will not believe them.

Another example is Yanukovych's stance on joining NATO. A possible compromise might involve making a commitment to do everything necessary to become a member, with only the formal accession to be approved by referendum.

That Tarasyuk and Hrytsenko have kept their posts in the government means that preparations for accession to NATO will continue alongside energetic brainwashing of the people.

But then, a brainwashing campaign might not be necessary, since the compromise agreement is not a binding document, and agreements survive in Ukraine only until one of the sides decides to change his/her stand.

Moreover, the new government will be unable to speed up the country's movement towards NATO because of the growing civic awareness of the people. But the Euro-Atlantic factor will complicate economic talks with Russia.

Russia sympathized with the Party of Regions, above all because it hoped to stop Ukraine's slide towards NATO. Since Ukraine's stance on this issue remains vague, Moscow will most likely establish coldly pragmatic relations with Ukraine, and none of the new ministers, even though they suit the Kremlin, will be able to dampen its resolve.

Russia will operate according to the "every man for himself" formula, although this may cost it some of Ukrainians' sympathy. But the Ukrainian government will also lose out unless it develops friendly relations with its main economic partner.

By succeeding in the coalition talks, Yushchenko has kept his post until the next elections but lost broad electoral support. By resisting the temptation to support the government and get seats in it, Our Ukraine may remain an opposition force alongside Tymoshenko's Bloc.

However, the "orange" time is over. The voters that may desert Yanukovych and his Party of Regions will not support the "orange" forces, but rather those who more consistently uphold the interests of the southern and eastern regions of the country. Unrestrained nationalism survived for as long as the eastern regions slept and maintained their paternalist Soviet mentality.

They are becoming increasingly active today, as proved by the passing of laws on the status of the Russian language by regional assemblies.

This means that we may soon see the emergence of political parties that will fight for the interests of the majority of Ukrainians, who live in the southern and eastern regions. If the Party of Regions fails to get part of that vote, it will anyway not go to the "orange" forces.

Ukraine has started down the path of slow recovery after years of instability and civil discord. The formation of the new government was the first faltering step towards this goal. Ukraine's parliament has won the battle against the president, and its role will keep growing, together with that of the majority of voters.

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukraine's New Government: Dark Blue, Pale Orange, Some Pink, Touch Of Red

KIEV, Ukraine -- The mere fact that Ukraine finally has a cabinet of ministers since August 4 is an achievement after a seven-month vacuum.

Click on photo for larger size
The outgoing cabinet had been dismissed by parliament in January, continued as a powerless caretaker beyond the March elections, resigned officially in May both collectively and at the level of individual ministers, and limped on without proper legal authority.

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s new cabinet includes ministers nominated by President Viktor Yushchenko, the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party, alongside a preponderance of ministers from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, which is the “Donetsk clan’s” political vehicle.

This cabinet is top-heavy with officials who personified the corrupt fusion of business interests with the government and the manipulation of elections before the short-lived Orange period.

Thus, Yanukovych’s government marks a return to power not just of the Party of Regions, but to a certain extent of the phenomenon of Kuchma-ism and some of its personalities. Their antecedents do not necessarily or fully presage their conduct in the new government (just as the coalition’s National Unity Declaration is no guide to the government’s policy.

However, those antecedents suggest that the Yanukovych government is ill equipped to lead Ukraine toward democratic institution building -- the unfulfilled Orange mission.

The Verkhovna Rada approved the cabinet’s composition at an agitated session with 269 votes in favor out of 450, the balance not voting or voting against. The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc voted solidly against this cabinet, with only six deputies bolting from the bloc to vote for the new government.

Despite Yushchenko’s final deal with Yanukovych, only 30 of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine deputies voted for the new government, while 51 of them variously refused to vote or voted against. This action reveals that Our Ukraine’s majority disapproves not only of the cabinet’s composition but also of the president’s actions.

The Party of Regions holds the first deputy premiership and all three deputy premierships, in addition to the prime minister’s post. First Deputy Prime Minister and concurrently Finance Minister Mykola Azarov had earlier exemplified the selective and arbitrary use of taxation while serving as head of the State Tax Administration and Finance Minister during the Kuchma era.

Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Kluyev, now in charge of the energy sector, is among Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen as well as former minister, in a political system that has yet to internalize the notion of conflict of interest.

Azarov and Kluyev are personally close to the Party of Regions’ most influential decision maker, Renat Akhmetov (formally number seven on the party’s slate of deputies). Another deputy prime minister, Dmytro Tabachnyk, the former head of Leonid Kuchma’s presidential administration, helped coordinate the use of “administrative resources” in presidential and parliamentary elections during that period. He has meanwhile reincarnated as a Crimean deputy.

The third deputy prime minister and concurrently construction minister, Volodymyr Rybak, is also a veteran Kuchma-era office holder. The Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers, Anatoly Tolstoukhov, is also a throwback to that period, when the cabinet’s resources and property were used in the interest of power holders with little public accountability.

The new fuel and energy minister, Yuriy Boyko, headed the state oil and gas company Naftohaz Ukrainy during the first Yanukovych government (November 21, 20002, to January 5, 2005) and is one of the principal figures who brought the notorious RosUkrEnergo gas company into Ukraine in August 2004.

The Party of Regions has also appointed the ministers of economy, of the coal industry, of labor, of the environment, and for ties with parliament

The Socialist Party retains the Transport Ministry and Education Ministry as in the predecessor government and for the same two incumbents. The party reckons to retain the chairmanship of the State Property Fund as well, based on an informal understanding with the Party of Regions.

The unreconstructed Communist Party has entered the government thanks to the Party of Regions. The Communists have appointed Agricultural Policy Minister Yuriy Melnyk and Industrial Policy Minister Anatoliy Holovko based on the party’s coalition quota.

Melnyk was the predecessor government’s deputy prime minister responsible for agriculture, nominated by the Socialist Party, which opposes the privatization of land, as does the Communist Party. Meanwhile, the nonbinding National Unity Declaration envisions “putting land into economic circulation” by September 2008.

Yushchenko had hoped in vain to be spared the embarrassment, to himself and his ministers, of accepting Communists in the coalition. The Communist Party had barely passed the 3% threshold to enter the parliament, holds only 20 seats, is not needed for forming a numerical majority, and cannot make any serious trouble within parliament or outside, having lost almost all influence on society.

In fact, the Party of Regions has seamlessly inherited the lion’s share of Communist votes in eastern Ukraine.

Thus, appeasement or cooptation of the Communists was unnecessary. However, the Party of Regions needs the Communist group of deputies as a watchdog on the pro-presidential Our Ukraine as well as a reserve of votes for Regions within the coalition.

Communist leader Petro Symonenko has promptly and snarlingly announced his readiness to play that role. With the Communists inside the coalition, the Party of Regions will be less dependent on pro-presidential deputies for approval of decisions, and by the same token the pro-presidential group will be limited in its leeway to oppose decisions it may not like.

Yushchenko has re-appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs Borys Tarasyuk (Rukh), Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko (non-party), and Internal Affairs Minister Yuriy Lutsenko (hitherto Socialist) to those same posts and will also appoint the security service chief and prosecutor-general, all within the presidential quota under the amended constitution. In addition, as part of the deal with Regions, Yushchenko has managed to obtain the ministerial posts at justice, health, family and sports, culture, and emergency situations and Chernobyl cleanup for the Our Ukraine bloc.

Tarasyuk and Hrytsenko are determined to pursue a Western orientation under the president’s political authority and constitutional prerogatives to set the course of foreign and defense policies. Meanwhile, the majorities in the cabinet and parliament seem set to ponder a return to the Kuchma era’s two-vector policy.

The incoming Justice Minister, Roman Zvarych of Our Ukraine, served in that same post for some months in 2005, until he was found to lack a law degree and to have misrepresented his degree in another field of study. Despite the ensuing scandal, Zvarych retained Yushchenko’s trust and helped negotiate the deal with Regions.

At the moment, Zvarych calls for substantially expanding the powers of the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, a presidential appointment, giving him the right to vet government decisions. The proposal may well be designed to prepare a return of Zvarych’s current political patron, Petro Poroshenko, to that post, which he held in 2005.

Lutsenko reported sick and did not attend the voting in parliament that confirmed him as internal affairs minister. He had warned repeatedly that he was not going to be part of a Yanukovych government, and quit the Socialist Party in July as a protest against the deal party leader Oleksandr Moroz cut with Yanukovych.

In the run-up to the August 4 parliamentary vote, Lutsenko publicly denounced as “forgery” the court documents that purported to rescind Yanukovych’s two criminal convictions as a youth in Donbas. As minister in 2005-2006, Lutsenko had aggressively targeted some prominent Donetsk figures for anti-corruption investigations.

Also on August 4, the Verkhovna Rada approved with 274 votes in favor (of 307 deputies in attendance, out of the 450 total) changes to the law on the Constitutional Court.

Yushchenko immediately signed this bill into law. Under the changes, the Court does not have the right to review the constitutionality of the December 2004 amendments that have transferred some presidential powers to the parliament and the prime minister. With this development, Yushchenko loses the opportunity to appeal to the Constitutional Court for rescinding the December 2004 amendments. Until now, Yushchenko had insistently called for rescinding them, out of concern that they weaken the presidency unduly in favor of the prime minister and parliament.

Overall, Regions emerges as the clear winner while Yushchenko seems at this point to be losing support from most of Our Ukraine, and Our Ukraine risks losing much of its electorate if it joins the Regions-Socialist-Communist parliamentary coalition.

The Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc offers a simple message: “betrayal” of the Orange Revolution, “political capitulation” by the president, and need for a “cross-party opposition” to organize around this bloc.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Ukraine Government Plans Tax Cuts

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's new government will cut taxes, restore import tariffs and improve ties with Russia to raise economic growth rates into double digits, its finance minister said Monday.


Mykola Azarov, who was also named last week as first deputy premier in Viktor Yanukovich's government, called on the central bank to support growth by pursuing a competitive exchange rate policy.

"The new government will start in 2007 to prepare a new tax reform," Azarov said during an interview published on the Web site of his political party, the Party of Regions. "I think 2008 will be the year for a real tax reduction.

"We will create the best possible conditions for investment and business," he added. "We plan to achieve annual growth in gross domestic product of at least 10-15 percent."

Azarov served in Yanukovich's 2002- 04 administration, when Ukraine's economy posted growth rates of up to 12 percent, driven by booming exports of products like steel and chemicals. Exports account for about 60 percent of Ukraine's gross domestic product.

Growth slumped after the 2004 "Orange Revolution" which ousted Yanukovich, whose support base is in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east, and propelled the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency.

Azarov confirmed plans to cut the tax on corporate profits to 20 percent from 25 percent and the value-added tax to 18 percent from 20 percent.

The new team also plans to reverse decisions by the previous government to cut import tariffs, reinstating some, Azarov said. He did not give details.

Russia raises growth outlook

The Russian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade has raised its forecast for economic growth in 2006 to 6.6 percent from the previous estimate of 6.1 percent, AFX reported from Moscow.

The ministry's most recent official forecast was made in June. Government officials, including German Gref, the economic development and trade minister, have hinted in recent weeks that the forecast would be revised upward.

Russian economic growth is being driven by rising oil and natural gas exports amid record-high energy prices.

Source: Reuters

Ukraine's Govt., President, Rada To Decide On NATO Entry - PM

KIEV, Ukraine -- A decision on Ukraine's accession to NATO should be taken jointly by the country's government, president and parliament, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said Monday.


President Viktor Yushchenko has made accession to NATO a priority since coming to power on the back of the 2004 "orange revolution," but Yanukovych, the leader of the country's main pro-Russia party, who was confirmed in his post for a second time Friday, has taken a cautious approach to the idea.

"I am convinced the authorities will now make balanced and collective decisions," Yanukovych said. "The government, president and parliament will decide [on NATO accession] together. NATO is a very sensitive issue for our society."

He said economic factors should be taken into account in making a decision on the accession.

Yushchenko said August 3 Ukraine would continue to pursue integration into NATO as one of the terms of a national unity pact aimed to end the country's protracted political crisis.

"I am pursuing the policy toward integration without adding anything else to it," he said during a ceremony to sign the document.

Under the terms of the national unity pact, which has been signed by all main political forces except the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, the decision on Ukraine's integration into the military bloc will be made following a referendum.

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukraine's Comeback PM Wants to Restore Ties with Russia

MOSCOW, Russia -- After making a stunning political comeback, Ukraine's new Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich is looking to restore strained ties with Moscow.


Putin (L) with "favorite son" Yanukovich
Ukraine's new government "will not provoke anti-Russian sentiments," he told Russia's official Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily Saturday, a day after saying he would "prioritize relations with Russia."

He also pledged to uphold controversial agreements with Russia on gas supplies.

Yanukovich enjoys strong support from the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine and has long presented himself as a guardian of Russian culture and language in Ukraine.

He was appointed prime minister last week by his political rival, President Viktor Yushchenko, under whose leadership Ukraine has moved out of Russia's orbit and closer to the West -- to Moscow's displeasure.

The move by a reluctant president provided a new political lease of life to Yanukovich, whose earlier bid to become president was defeated by Yushchenko in December 2004.

As part of a negotiated deal, Yanukovich agreed to support Ukraine's campaign to join the European Union, work toward Word Trade Organization membership, and cooperate with NATO, among other things.

In another concession, Yanukovich agreed to drop the idea of turning Ukraine into a federal state as well as a demand that the Russian language be given official status in Ukraine.

In return, Yushchenko dropped his insistence on immediate NATO membership and agreed to hold a nationwide referendum on NATO entry.

Ukraine is thought to be unlikely to join NATO any time soon because the move is believed to be unpopular with a majority of Ukrainians.

Yushchenko called the development a unique chance for the national unity.

Last March, parliamentary elections saw Yanukovich's Party of Regions come out on top but without enough seats to form a majority in the 450-seat parliament, the Supreme Rada.

The following month, representatives of three other parties agreed to form a pro-Western ruling coalition in parliament, the Orange bloc.

The deal would have kept Yanukovich and his party out of office, but it collapsed last month when one of the Orange parties, the Socialists, abandoned the coalition and sided with the Yanukovich's party and the Communists.

The head of one of the remaining Orange parties, Julie Tymoshenko, wanted the president to dissolve parliament and accused him of capitulating to Yanukovich. She said her party would oppose the new cabinet.

Russian response to the developments has been muted so far.

Leader of the Russian Communist party, Gennady Zyuganov, urged Yanukovich not to abandon his pro-Russian stance, and not to bow to pressure from the "pro-American" Yushchenko.

Source: CNS News

IMAX Signs Two-Theatre Deal In Ukraine

TORONTO, Canada -- IMAX and Kinokompaniya "Triumph", a leading film production company in the Ukraine, today announced an agreement to install two IMAX(R) theatres in the Ukraine, with the first to open in the capital city of Kiev.

An IMAX theater
The theatre is expected to open in early 2007, in time for IMAX's summer blockbuster season which includes Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, set to open in July 2007.

The second IMAX theatre is scheduled to be installed in a retail development in a major city outside Kiev in early 2008. With this announcement, IMAX is scheduled to have nine theatres operating in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by 2008.

"We are very excited to partner with IMAX to provide a unique moviegoing experience for consumers in Kiev," said Andriy Shpyg, general director, Kinokompaniya "Triumph". "We are delighted to bring IMAX theatres to the Ukraine and introduce IMAX's growing list of digitally re-mastered Hollywood films to another international audience."

"Following on our success in Russia, we are pleased to build our presence in the Ukraine with entertainment leaders such as Kinokompaniya "Triumph," said IMAX Co-CEOs and Co-Chairmen Richard L. Gelfond and Bradley J. Wechsler.

"As economic development and growth continues in the region, we believe the new IMAX theatres will offer more consumers in the CIS cinema exhibition market the opportunity to experience Hollywood films in the most powerful and immersive way possible."

Larry O' Reilly, IMAX's Executive Vice President of Theatre Development, added "We believe that our partnership with Kinokompaniya "Triumph", combined with greater demand for event titles being released to IMAX theatres, will continue to drive increased enthusiasm for The IMAX Experience(R) in international markets."

The new IMAX theatres will utilize IMAX MPX(R) technology, which was specifically designed to enable multiplex operators to more cost effectively enter into the IMAX theatre business, either by retrofitting an existing stadium seating auditorium or via an economical new build.

The new Kinokompaniya "Triumph" IMAX theatres will be capable of playing Hollywood event films that have been digitally re-mastered into the unparalleled image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience, as well as original IMAX productions in 2D and IMAX(R) 3D.

Source: CNW Group

Ukraine to Restore Free Economic Zones

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's new government plans to reinstate tax privileges for certain regions and will consider increasing import customs, the first deputy prime minister said in an interview published Monday.

First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov
Both moves would be likely to benefit Ukraine's industrial sector, whose leaders are the dominant force behind new Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, and could help boost the country's economy.

The new government was settling into place Monday after being approved by parliament last week. It brings back many of the people who saw their careers upended when the 2004 Orange Revolution protests against election fraud helped bring a group of pro-Western reformers to power.

President Viktor Yushchenko agreed to approve the nomination of his former Orange Revolution rival, Yanukovych, after the latter publicly committed to uphold the democratic principles and pro-Western path adopted by the president.

First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov laid out his top priorities in an interview posted Monday on Party of Regions' Web site.

He said that three or four of Ukraine's so-called free economic zones will be restored. He didn't specify where, saying it would depend on where "big investment is truly located."

The zones, which offer investors tax breaks and other incentives, were canceled in 2005 by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who said they allowed Ukraine's oligarchs to bleed money from the state.

The cancellation sparked an outcry not only in Ukraine but also among foreign investors, particularly Polish firms. Yushchenko, who later fired Tymoshenko, called the cancellation a mistake.

"When I hear speculations that we'll cause a huge hole in the state budget and missed revenues will be in the tens of billions, I want to say in answer: compared to other world economic zones, we are offering very few advantages, a thousand or hundreds of thousands time less than what you see in, say, China," Azarov said.

He added that the government would explore how it could compensate investors who suffered unexpected losses when the zones were canceled.

Azarov also said that the new government would take another look at the low import customs on light industrial products and textiles, saying that Ukraine had until 2009 to lower the rates under agreements reached toward joining the World Trade Organization.

"However, the Cabinet of Ministers lowered customs already in 2005," Azarov said. "Importers were allowed to become rich at the expense of the state treasury."

The new government also said it would work to cut value-added tax and profit tax rates in 2008. Azarov said the country would look into the financial health of the state's gas company, Naftogaz, to determine what was happening with Ukraine's own gas resources, which he said should be enough to supply the domestic sector.

But as for revising this year's controversial gas deal with Russia, and possibly removing the middleman RosUkrEnergo, Azarov said that wasn't atop his agenda.

Source: AP

Mayor Raising Standards

KIEV, Ukraine -- Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy is trying to show that he is serious about raising the level of city services and tackling problems like traffic congestion.


Chernovetskiy has set his sights firmly on the capital’s roads, which have become overcrowded: the number of cars passing through the center increases every day, while sidewalk space is crowded out by construction sites.

Increased car sales and building projects testify to a vibrant economy, but the city must keep abreast of the growth with commensurate measures aimed at keeping it livable and attractive.

The practice of towing away and impounding vehicles has helped to bring some order.

At the end of July, the Kyiv City Administration introduced diversified parking tariffs, depending on parking zones.

One hour in the city center costs Hr 10 for a passenger vehicle. The tariffs are almost on a par with rates in Western countries and will be introduced very soon.

From Aug. 18 the mayor’s office plans to introduce chargeable parking lots at selected sidewalks.

It also wants to reorganize Kyivdorservis, the enterprise responsible for roads and other enterprises dealing with parking and transport.

Last week saw the creation of a coordinating body which aims to use high tech to regulate traffic.

All these initiatives are complemented by others, including new rules on the city’s markets aimed at improving hygiene and the look of buildings housing markets as well as eliminating unauthorized trade.

Ukraine’s aspirations towards Europe are a worthy goal, and the mayor should be commended for his initiatives.

However, raising public transport fares is expected to be discussed soon and it is important that people see better services and not just higher prices.

Otherwise, residents will feel cheated and alienated. In the race to bring Kyiv up to the standards of other European capitals it is important that the public does not equate municipal reforms or new services merely with higher prices.

Source: Kyiv Post

US Open To Ukraine's 'New' Yanukovych

WASHINGTON, DC -- In the heady days after the "orange revolution," Ukraine fitted the US government's script perfectly, as the White House charted a generational drive for global democratic change.

Viktor Yanukovych, pictured July 2006, leader of pro-Moscow majority in Ukraine's parliament as he talks to journalists in Kiev. Ukraine's parliament confirmed pro-Russian politician Yanukovych as prime minister 04 August 2006.
But now, former communist Viktor Yanukovych is back, only two years after he was blocked by people power from becoming president, and criticised by the United States for alleged ballot rigging and corruption.

His stunning political comeback, as prime minister, raises a question for the administration of US President George W. Bush: Were US hopes for a democratic, Western-leaning Ukraine premature?

Pro-Russian Yanukovych, 56, was confirmed by parliament on Friday after he was chosen by his former bitter rival, Viktor Yushchenko, the Western-leaning president who beat him to the top job.

The decision ended months of deadlock following elections in March and disappointment over indecision on the part of Yushchenko, facing a key political test after beating Yanukovych in a repeated re-run election in 2004.

Even before the 2004 election in Ukraine, the United States had funnelled funds to pro-democracy, non-governmental groups and sent election monitors to observe the polls.

The subsequent mass demonstrations after allegations of rampant corruption and vote buying sparked admiration in Washington.

Bush supporters later used events in Kiev, a democratic awakening in Lebanon, signs of change across the Arab world and elections in Iraq as evidence that a new wave of US-inspired freedom was on the march.

Later, Bush himself cited political activists in Ukraine, along with women in Afghanistan and Palestinian voters, as part of "landmark events in the history of liberty" in his 2005 State of the Union address.

Two years on, things are not so rosy. Lebanon is shuddering under Israeli assaults on Hezbollah. Iraq is in turmoil, and Palestinian elections brought the radical Islamic movement Hamas to power.

Is Ukraine, under Yanukovych and his nasty associations with the authoritarianism and corruption of ex-president Leonid Kuchma, the next democratic domino to fall? Not necessarily, say officials and experts.

The United States is arguing the democratic process has changed Yanukovych, rather than the other way round. And his election campaign, which used US consultants and campaign-trail razzmatazz, seemed to bear that out.

"We were strong supporters of the Orange Revolution in as much as it represented a cry for free and fair elections and for democracy to take root," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

"What we're seeing right now is the evolution of a democratic process in Ukraine. Mr Yanukovych has come to the prime ministership in the old-fashioned, democratic way. He worked hard for votes, he campaigned, he politicked."

"We are going to work with the government of Mr. Yanukovych just as we would with any other democratically elected government," McCormack said.

Analysts said Washington was sincere in its offer -- though Yanukovych's pro-Russian stance may stall hopes of Ukraine swiftly joining the European Union and NATO.

"I believe they are prepared to work with Yanukovych, he today has something that he didn't have before," said Steven Pifer, senior analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"He now has democratic legitimacy because he heads the party that won 32 percent of the vote in March."

But Washington's envoys in Kiev would be keeping a close eye on how things go, he Pifer added.

"They don't want to see any democratic backsliding," he said.

Yanukovych's comeback does pose some problems for the West -- notably ambitious plans to draw Kiev into the Euro-Atlantic orbit with Yushchenko's plan to reach agreement by 2008 on joining NATO.

A deal on NATO entry would have been a tasty addition to Bush's political legacy just before leaving office -- but now seems out of reach.

"In general it is not good news for NATO, it is not good news for Ukraine's desire to (get into NATO)," said Stephen Larrabee, an analyst with the Rand Corporation.

Yushchenko on Thursday signed a pact with pro-Russian parliamentary parties stating that the country can only join the NATO military alliance if the move is approved in a referendum.

That was after setting membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as a key goal for Ukraine when he came to power last year.

Larrabee said the Bush administration's support for Ukrainian membership of bodies like the European Union, NATO and the World Trade Organisation was not totally self-serving.

But there was also a sense that Washington was "to try to do all those before Bush left office so he could claim credit for it," he said.

For now, Washington appears content to sit and wait, waiting for the dust to settle in Ukrainian politics, before plotting its next move.

Source: AFP

Viktors May Make A Good Team

MOSCOW, Russia -- "CONSTRUCTIVE, we have to be con-struc-tive," President Viktor Yushchenko spelt out, as if talking to small children, at a roundtable of Ukrainian politicians.

Amazing frienship between two former enemies
Yulia Tymoshenko, his former Orange Revolution partner and prime minister, wore a sour expression. Viktor Yanukovich, his erstwhile rival, who will now become prime minister, looked smug.

The Supreme Rada, or parliament in the capital, Kiev, had confirmed Mr Yanukovich as Prime Minister on Friday, ending a political crisis that had dragged on since March.

"Thank goodness we have some solution. It seemed as if the politicians had gone mad and forgotten all about the people," said Valentina, who comes from Kharkov in eastern Ukraine but earns her living selling meat in Moscow. The Russian capital is full of Ukrainian guest workers like her, who cannot make ends meet back home.

Investors were also breathing a sigh of relief. Ukraine, which looked so promising after the 2004 Orange Revolution, had become less attractive by the day since the elections in March with politicians often physically scuffling as they tried to form a coalition government.

Unless they fall out - which is quite possible - the two Viktors might make a good team. Potentially, it is a better tandem than the cautious Mr Yushchenko made with radical Ms Tymoshenko.

The US indicates it is willing to work with Mr Yanukovich, saying he had campaigned cleanly in the elections and won by democratic means. Since the Moscow-backed Mr Yanukovich's humiliation in the Orange Revolution elections in 2004, the Kremlin has been careful not to interfere in Ukrainian affairs and Mr Yanukovich has re-invented himself.

Mr Yushchenko, who retains control over foreign policy and is likely to reappoint the pro-Western Boris Tarasyuk as foreign minister, will ensure that the Kremlin does not exert undue influence over Ukraine.

For his part, Mr Yanukovich, whose power base is the Russian-speaking regions, would be "the dealmaker" with Russia, said Sergei Markov, a political analyst with connections to the Kremlin. This is vital if Ukraine and Europe are to avoid another fuel scare like last northern winter, when gas supplies were cut during a price dispute between Moscow and Kiev.

New gas talks are looming so there are hopes that Mr Yanukovich will be well placed to get the best deal for Ukraine. Gazprom says it is willing to hold prices in exchange for control over the pipelines.

Ukraine walks a fine line between East and West. Russia swallowed former Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland joining NATO but it would not be happy if Ukraine also moved to become part of the pact.

Demonstrations in Crimea forced the cancellation of planned NATO naval exercises earlier this northern summer and showed that not all Ukrainians share Mr Yushchenko's aspiration to join the bloc.

Mr Yanukovich has committed himself to co-operating with NATO but Ukrainians would have to vote in a referendum on possible membership.

The demonstrations also might mean NATO is less keen to absorb Ukraine. And until Ukraine makes significant economic progress, the overstretched European Union is also unlikely to hold out a welcome.

The economy is the key in this large, potentially rich country that languishes in poverty and sees so many of its people going as guest workers to Russia. But with Mr Yanukovich's appointment, Mr Yushchenko said Ukraine now had the prospect of five years of stable government.

One day, perhaps Valentina may be able to afford to go home.

Source: The Sidney Morning Herald

The Non-Listening President

KIEV, Ukraine -- One of the most surprising aspects of the Viktor Yushchenko administration has been its unwillingness, or disinterest, in public relations and public opinion, whether in Ukraine or abroad.


The Yushchenko administration and Our Ukraine ignored public opinion in Ukraine among Orange Revolution supporters, and that of the USA and the West in general, which called for a revived Orange coalition following the March elections. A coalition was only put together on the eve of the June deadline but it immediately collapsed and led to the current political crisis.

In ignoring domestic and foreign public opinion and advice, the Yushchenko administration has boxed itself into a corner. The two choices facing President Yushchenko are both unpalatable; proposing Viktor Yanukovych as Prime Minister or dissolving parliament and holding new elections. The first would be to make Yushchenko a lame duck president and the second would make Our Ukraine a lame duck political force.

The Orange Revolution did not have to develop this way if the president and Our Ukraine had upheld one of the central ideals of the Maidan. When Ukrainians went on to the streets in the Orange Revolution they sought to change their relationship with their rulers.

The post-Soviet relationship had continued the Soviet approach of the ‘new class’ living in a different world to its ‘subjects’. The Orange Revolution was a call for the ruling elites to treat its ‘subjects’ as citizens; that is, to move this relationship from Eurasian to European norms. Remember the Orange Revolution anthem ‘We are not bydlo (scum)! We are the sons and daughters of Ukraine!’.

A central component was to be that the ruling elites would listen and act in line with public opinion. But Yushchenko has failed to become a listening president.

Orange Revolution supporters were never told why the ‘bandits’ (commonly understood as former President Leonid Kuchma and his senior officials) never met any justice and are in parliament today heading key committees? When the newly free media asked awkward questions, such as why Roman Zvarych could be Justice Minister without legal training and after falsifying his CV or questions regarding the president’s son, they were told to stop asking them or were condemned.

President Yushchenko never explained why he had to remove the Yulia Tymoshenko government, after saying three weeks earlier that it was the ‘best government in Europe’. Similarly, Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov never explained why the bad oligarchs had suddenly become ‘good national bourgeoisie’?

Every poll that followed the March elections showed that an overwhelming majority of Orange Revolution voters in Our Ukraine, the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc and the Socialists wanted to see a revived Orange coalition. Yet, Our Ukraine and President Yushchenko took credit for holding Ukraine’s first free election while, on the other hand, ignored the fact that Our Ukraine had come third.

Ukrainians also flocked to the Orange Revolution because they believed that Yushchenko, and other Orange leaders, were different. The September 2005 crisis, drawn out coalition negotiations following the 2006 elections and the July crisis have proven to many Ukrainians that this Maidan assumption was wrong.

Our Ukraine and Socialist politicians have not proved they are different to those under Leonid Kuchma. Only the Tymoshenko bloc has stuck to its stance of refusing to talk with Yanukovych.

If Our Ukraine had come first in the Orange camp in the 2006 elections, as they expected, there would have been an Orange coalition established in April, with Yekhanurov as premier. The only reason for the drawn out talks, and ignoring of Orange opinion, was President Yushchenko’s and Our Ukraine’s dislike for Tymoshenko, who had a right to claim the post as her bloc had come first in the Orange camp.

Instead of listening to Orange voters, Our Ukraine (presumably with the president’s knowledge) negotiated simultaneously with its Orange partners and the Party of Regions. This dual-track duplicity, coupled with the drawn out talks, only served to reinforce the view that the Orange camp was hopelessly divided.

In the foreign arena, the Yushchenko administration has also ignored public opinion and public relations. This is surprising as during the 2004 elections the Yushchenko camp had by far the best public relations exercise in the West.

The ‘pro-Western’ President Yushchenko and Our Ukraine ignored US and NATO advice following the March elections, which linked a revived Orange coalition to a NATO Membership Action Plan and NATO membership (without supporting any particular candidate for Prime Minister).

The only conclusion one can make is that personal animosity towards Tymoshenko became a more important policy than listening to Ukraine’s best Western friends. And this animosity became more important than NATO membership, which now seems more illusory with the anti-crisis coalition.

Since the election of Yushchenko his administration has largely ignored the formation of Western opinion. No PR firms have been hired in the West by his administration or Our Ukraine.

The only explanation is the arrogance that power brings coupled with a misplaced view that there was no need to shape Western opinion because it was pro-Orange anyway. This has led to numerous public relations mistakes when President Yushchenko and his chief of staff, Oleh Rybachuk, have appeared in Western television interviews.

Presidential secretariat staffers explained to this author how they had briefed Mr. Rybachuk for his BBC Hardtalk interview. This advice and briefing was subsequently ignored, leading to what everybody acknowledges was a lost opportunity and PR disaster.

Compare this with Mr.Yanukovych. During the 2004 elections his government hired a Washington, DC public affairs company but its advice was largely ignored and Mr. Yanukovych relied upon Russian political technologists.

During the 2006 elections, he hired a new American public relations firm that has been to some degree been successful in re-shaping his image, and that of his top lieutenants. It is ironic that the Party of Regions is the only political party using US public relations advisers, while President Yushchenko/Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko bloc have ignored this issue.

The return of Yanukovych as prime minister is proof of Yushchenko’s failure to implement the core values of the Orange Revolution in becoming a listening president. He should have implemented what he promised on the Maidan.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yanukovych Wants To 'End Quarrels' With Moscow

MOSCOW, Russia -- Ukraine's new prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, says he wants to stop the disputes between Kiev and Moscow over such key issues as NATO membership and the price of gas supplies from Russia, according to an interview in the official Russian newspaper.

Yanukovych says he wants to stop the disputes between Kiev and Moscow over such key issues as NATO membership and the price of gas supplies from Russia, according to an interview in the official Russian newspaper.
"We need to stop quarreling with our neighbors and learn to have respectful discussions," Yanukovych told the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Saturday.

He added that Russia was "an important partner" for Ukraine's new government.

"The new government is not going to foster anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine," said the leader of the pro-Moscow Regions party with its base of support in the mainly Russian-speaking east of Ukraine.

Yanukovych has been a Moscow favorite. In 2004 Russian President Vladimir Putin backed him in Ukraine's disputed presidential election which triggered the "orange revolution" and led ultimately to his pro-Western rival, Viktor Yushchenko, becoming president.

The new prime minister, approved by the Ukrainian parliament on Friday, also spoke about the accord on the price of gas delivered to Ukraine, which had caused a crisis in January when Moscow cut off supplies to force Kiev to accept its prices, and which must be renegotiated regularly.

"When Ukrainian politicians said that we must cancel the accord, they used that as a weapon in their political game," Yanukovych said, referring to Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and "orange revolution" ally of Yushchenko, and now in the opposition.

"We will be capable of conducting negotiations," Yanukovych said of his government.

He also said he remained opposed to Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in contrast to Yushchenko who wants Ukrainian membership in the western military alliance.

But Yanukovych pointed out that the two political rivals had reached an agreement to put the issue of NATO membership before the voters in a referendum.

He said he recognized that "the previous official statements from Kiev about the desire to join NATO had made Russia unhappy." But he pointed out that "the majority" of Ukrainians today are opposed to NATO membership, which is reflected in opinion polls in the former Soviet state.

"We will abide by their wishes," he said.

The new prime minister also justified the presence of some opposition "orange revolution" ministers in his cabinet, stressing the need to reunite Ukraine, which has been divided between the pro-Russian east and the more nationalist west of the country.

"The government must not serve half the country but the entire state if it is to be effective," he said.

Source: AFP

EU Wants New, Broader Partnership With Ukraine

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union wants to deepen its ties with Ukraine and hold talks with the new government in Kiev on a wider cooperation agreement, the EU's external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said Saturday.


Benita Ferrero-Waldner
Ferrero-Waldner was speaking days after the confirmation of pro- Russian politician Viktor Yanukovich as the new Ukrainian prime minister.

A new EU-Ukrainian agreement could cover free-trade, the former Austrian foreign minister said. First however, the path for Ukrainian membership of the World Trade Organization would have to be opened.

"I trust that the new government will continue on the path of both political and economic reform," she said.

Cooperation between the EU and Ukraine have been stepped up following that country's Orange Revolution that brought pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko to power in early 2005, particularly in the areas of energy and border security, the EU commissioner said.

Source: DPA

Preacher Popular In Ukraine Despite Racism, Russian Orthodox Tradition

KIEV, Ukraine -- Pastor Sunday Adelaja, a Nigerian preacher, understands why some in Ukraine are suspicious of him.


Pastor Sunday Adelaja
He’s black in a country where racism is blatant, Pentecostal in a country considered the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy, and a foreigner whose lively, conversational preaching style — punctuated by pompom girls and electric keyboards — stands out from the subdued, centuries-old practices of Ukraine’s traditional faiths.

But the 39-year-old preacher laughs at critics who suspect black magic, hypnotism, brainwashing and even hallucinogenic drugs explain the hundreds of bopping, clapping white worshippers who fill his converted sports hall every Sunday.

By delivering a you-can-do-it message of hope and redemption — along with such direct help as free meals and addiction counselling — The Embassy of The Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations church has ballooned from a ministry for society’s troubled into the ex-Soviet republic’s first true megachurch, claiming a membership of 25,000 people.

The church, informally called God’s Embassy, boasts a TV ministry and plans for a $15 million US church stadium, and aims to reach five million people — 10 per cent of Ukraine’s population — with its message of salvation.

Adelja’s church has dispatched missionaries to western Europe and the United States, and is eying China. Kyiv’s new mayor, Leonid Chernovetsky, is a member. Many analysts credit the church’s get-out-the-vote efforts with his surprise win in March over a two-term incumbent and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko.

"I knew it would grow, I just never knew it would grow to this extent. . . . In a way it is unexplainable," said Adelaja, who came to the then-Soviet Union to study journalism but was inspired by a dream to establish a church.

Adelaja’s church is part of a Pentecostal movement that has flourished in Ukraine, which has been more politically and culturally open to new faiths than some of its other ex-Soviet neighbours, even as the dominant Orthodox faith has looked on warily.

Ukraine has long been an important religious centre. Legend says the Apostle Andrew travelled the Kyiv hills overlooking the Dnieper River, planting a cross and prophesying that someday, churches would be sprinkled over the landscape. Some 900 years later, a Slavic prince marched the population into the water to baptize them into the Christian faith.

While the Russian Orthodox Church made its base in Moscow, more than half of its registered churches were in Ukraine, including its most sacred monastery. But after the Soviet Union’s breakup, the Orthodox church in Ukraine splintered, weakening its influence.

"I don’t think there is the assumption that because you live in Ukraine, you must go to a particular Orthodox church . . . that makes it very different from Russia," said Felix Corley, editor of Forum 18, a group that promotes religious freedom. "Orthodoxy is very pluralistic in Ukraine. There is not one dominant church overshadowing everybody else."

The non-governmental Religious Information Service of Ukraine estimated that 60 per cent of Ukrainians still identify with one of the Orthodox churches, and Protestant churches account for less than one million believers.

But the Pentecostals’ increased visibility has the traditional faiths nervous. Patriarch Filaret, who heads the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kyiv Patriarchate, said he had written a letter to the new mayor "expressing fear that this sect will only become stronger with his election."

Despite his popularity, skeptics continue to question Adelaja. He’s been accused of using the church as a moneymaking venture and investigated by a medical commission to ensure that he wasn’t claiming to be performing medical miracles on stage.

So when Chernovetsky recently invited the Orthodox patriarch to bless the city government buildings, the Nigerian pastor shrugged off the snub.

"Kyiv is the motherland of the Orthodox church, it is a cultural thing to be Orthodox and people feel it is a disgrace and insult to have a Protestant mayor who goes to a black man’s church," he said. "If you are a white politician, you have to cool that down.""

Source: AP

Yanukovych Returns As Ukraine's Prime Minister

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's parliament has voted to return Viktor Yanukovych to the post of prime minister, less than two years after he abandoned the job to make his failed bid for the presidency.


Parliament also push