Praise And Condemnation Of Stalin: Russia And Ukraine Go Their Separate Ways

KIEV, Ukraine -- On November 24-25 the Ukrainian authorities marked the 75th anniversary of the 1932-1933 famine. President Viktor Yushchenko, Acting Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, former President Leonid Kuchma, and other political leaders attended the ceremony.

Joseph V. Stalin, chief architect of the "Evil Empire".
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on November 26, Yushchenko said, “The Holodomor (Terror-Famine) was an act of genocide designed to suppress the Ukrainian nation.” Yushchenko described Stalin’s policy as aimed at destroying Ukrainian national identity by targeting the peasantry and Soviet Ukrainian institutions, including national communists: “It was a state-organized program of mass starvation that in 1932-33 killed an estimated seven million to 10 million Ukrainians, including up to a third of the nation's children.”

Yushchenko’s counterpart in Russia has a very different view of Stalin. In June President Vladimir Putin dismissed Stalinist crimes with the words: “Other countries have done even more terrible things.”

The differing regimes in Ukraine and Russia – democratic versus nationalist-autocratic – have taken different approaches toward what became known in the Gorbachev era as the “blank pages of history,” especially the Stalin era.

A similar rehabilitation of Stalin is also taking place in Belarus where Stalin is, like in Russia, routinely praised on television. There, Stalinist atrocities have been presented as committed by the Nazis, while Stalinist crimes, such as at the massacre at Kuropaty, have been ignored.

In contrast, Kuropaty’s equivalent in Ukraine, the Bykivnia forest outside Kyiv, the site of hundreds of thousands of Stalinist crimes, is officially commemorated.

Yushchenko has expanded the commemoration of the Ukrainian famine and Stalinist crimes, following a process that can be traced to the early 1980's.

First, the Ukrainian diaspora commemorated the famine on its 50th anniversary in 1983, followed by the release of the 1984 film “Harvest of Despair” and Robert Conquest’s book, Harvest of Sorrow.

Second, the national-democratic opposition uncovered “blank pages,” including the famine, during Gorbachev’s glasnost campaign. The Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) was forced to admit the existence of the famine in a 1990 resolution.

Third, post-Soviet Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma issued a decree on the 60th anniversary in 1993, and more commemorative decrees, resolutions, and appeals followed.

In 2002-2004, Kuchma sought international recognition of the famine as “genocide,” a policy that Yushchenko has followed. During his three-year presidency, Yushchenko has issued seven decrees on the famine and Stalinism. UNESCO picked up the theme and issued a resolution on November 1 on the famine, calling it a “national tragedy”.

In Ukraine, many political parties, the presidents, school textbooks, and the media have all negatively portrayed Stalinist crimes alongside Nazi crimes against humanity. But in Putin’s Russia, the crimes committed in the 1930s are ignored or marginalized while Stalin is praised for transforming the USSR into a “superpower.”

Russia’s rehabilitation of Stalin has been accompanied by a similar rehabilitation of the intelligence agencies. Last year, copying the KGB, the FSB introduced national prizes for art, cinema, and literature that created a “positive image” of the intelligence services. But works published in Russia extolling the virtues of the KGB and its bloody predecessors far outnumber books on Stalinist crimes.

In Ukraine the Security Service (SBU) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have supported the denunciation of Stalinist crimes. The SBU declassified 5,000 pages of relevant documents for the Declassified Memory exhibition in Kyiv.

In November all branches of the Ukrainian military lower the state flag in honor of the victims of the famine and Communist crimes. During that month, the military also helped repair monuments, organized lectures at military bases by writers and academics, showed films, and discussed books on the famine and Communist repression.

Each year the president presents state medals to Ukrainian scholars and activists working to document Stalinist crimes.

In contrast, Alexander Filippov’s new school textbook, A Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006, describes Stalin as “one of the USSR’s most successful leaders” whose repression brought the USSR out of crisis. While Ukrainian textbooks denounce both Stalinism and Nazism; Filippov justifies Stalin as a necessary evil and backs his positive treatment by citing opinion polls giving him a positive approval rating among Russians of 47%.

In Ukraine the opposite tendency is taking place. Some 72.4% of Ukrainians blame the 1932-33 famine on the authorities, and 63% of Ukrainians support the recognition of the famine as “genocide”. These polls have both cross-party and cross-regional support: 75% of the centrist Volodymyr Lytvyn bloc and 43% of the Party of Regions supported the definition of the famine as “genocide,” while Donetsk’s annual commemorations of famine and Communist repression are attended by local officials, including the oblast governor and city mayor.

Even the left supports this step. Some 80% of the Socialist Party and 41% of the Communist Party backs the use of “genocide” to describe the famine.

How the “blank pages” of history, such as Stalinist crimes, are treated reflect the nature of the democratic and nationalist-autocratic regimes emerging in Ukraine and Russia. In both countries there is cross-party, parliamentary, and public support – but over polar opposite positions. Ukraine seeks a denunciation of Stalinist crimes, while Russia praises Stalin and ignores his crimes.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Alleged Nazi Death Camp Guard Appeals Latest Deportation Order From The US

CINCINNATI, USA -- A lawyer for an accused Nazi death camp guard on Thursday challenged the right of the United States' chief immigration judge to order his deportation.

John Demjanjuk
The federal government has been trying to deport accused guard John Demjanjuk, 87, for three decades. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on Demjanjuk's challenge to a deportation order issued in 2005.

The three-judge panel did not say when it would rule, but it usually takes several months before the court issues a decision.

The arguments revolved around whether an immigration judge had the authority to order Demjanjuk's removal back to his native Ukraine — or Germany or Poland.

"The chief immigration judge is purely an administrative official," Demjanjuk's attorney, John Broadley, told the panel. "The attorney general did not specify that the chief immigration judge was entitled to hear removal cases."

Robert Thomson, for the U.S. Justice Department, told the court that contention was absurd.

"In plain language, the title chief immigration judge means he's a judge," Thomson said. "Why would that be the title if he wasn't to be a judge?"

Demjanjuk, who lives in Ohio, has steadfastly maintained that he served in the Soviet Army and was captured by Germany in 1942 and became a prisoner of war.

"You haven't heard the last from us," Demjanjuk's former son-in-law Ed Nishnic said after the hearing. He said that he — and his son and grandson, if necessary — would continue to fight the deportation.

"What has happened to this family is tragedy," said Nishnic, who remains loyal to the family.

He said the family is doing its best to shield Demjanjuk from the controversy.

"He is, in a way, oblivious to what's going on in the courtroom, and we kind of make it that way so he doesn't sit there and worry about this," Nishnic said.

The Justice Department first brought charges seeking to revoke Demjanjuk's citizenship — for allegedly falsifying information on his applications to enter the U.S. in 1952 and to become a citizen in 1958 — and to deport him in 1977.

Demjanjuk's U.S. citizenship was revoked in 1981, restored in 1998 and revoked again in 2002. The government initially claimed he was the notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka camp known as "Ivan the Terrible."

He was extradited to Israel in 1986 and was under a death sentence, until Israel's Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that he was not the same man as the guard known as Ivan.

Demjanjuk returned home and his U.S. citizenship was restored. The current deportation case is based on evidence uncovered by the Justice Department alleging he was a different guard. That evidence led courts to again strip Demjanjuk of his citizenship — on the basis of the original falsified information charge.

In the current case, Broadley and the government are arguing over whether a former chief immigration judge, Michael Creppy, had authority to rule in 2005 that Demjanjuk could be deported.

Broadley contends that Creppy was an administrator who should have appointed an immigration judge to hear the case, rather than handle it himself. He wants the deportation order tossed out and a new hearing held.

The Board of Immigration Appeals has refused to set aside Creppy's ruling, and Broadley wants the 6th Circuit to review that denial.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Three Arrested In Slovakia 'Had Enough Uranium For Dirty Bomb'

LONDON, England -- Three men arrested in Slovakia for allegedly trying to sell nuclear material had uranium enriched enough for use in a "dirty bomb", Slovak police said today.

Enriched uranium
According to police, the two Hungarians and a Ukrainian had just under half a kilogram (about a pound) of uranium in powder form that investigators believe came from an unspecified ex-Soviet republic.

"It was possible to use it in various ways for terrorist attacks," a senior police official, Michal Kopcik, said.

He said police had intelligence suggesting that the suspects - whose names were not released, but were aged 40, 49 and 51 - originally had planned to sell the material early this week.

One of the Hungarians had been living in Ukraine. Police moved in when the sale did not occur as expected, he said.

Kopcik said investigators were still working to determine who ultimately was trying to buy the uranium, which the trio allegedly was selling for $1m (£485,000).

Three other suspects - including a Slovak national identified only as Eugen K - were detained in the neighbouring Czech Republic in mid-October for allegedly trying to sell fake radioactive materials.

It was unclear to what degree, if any, they played a role in the thwarted uranium sale.

Police said a total of 481.4g of uranium had been stored in unspecified containers. Investigators concluded that the material consisted of 98.6% uranium-235. Uranium is considered weapons-grade if it contains at least 85% uranium-235.

"According to initial findings, the material originated in the former Soviet republics," Kopcik said.

Western officials have long harboured concerns over the risk of nuclear smuggling from the former Soviet Union, although US-funded safeguarding programmes have reduced the danger of nuclear trading.

Slovakia's border with Ukraine is the EU's easternmost frontier, and authorities have spent millions tightening security in the past few years, amid fears of nuclear smuggling into the EU .

In 2003, police in the Czech Republic, which borders Slovakia, arrested two Slovaks in a sting operation in the city of Brno after they allegedly sold undercover officers natural depleted uranium for $715,000.

Slovak and Hungarian police worked together on the new case for several months, said Martin Korch, a Slovak police spokesman. He would not say how long the suspects were under surveillance, or give details about the arrests and to whom they were trying to sell the material.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, said that last year alone there were 252 reported cases of radioactive materials that were stolen, missing, smuggled or in the possession of unauthorised individuals - a 385% increase since 2002.

But the IAEA cautioned that the jump was due at least in part to better reporting and improved law enforcement efforts. Of the 252 cases, about 85 involved thefts or losses, and not all the material was suitable for use in a weapon.

The US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organisation dedicated to reducing the global threat from nuclear weapons, reported last year that Russia remains the principal country of concern for contraband nuclear material, given the decline in security at nuclear-related industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In 2006, Georgian agents working with CIA officials set up a sting that led to the arrest of a Russian citizen who tried to sell a small amount of weapons-grade uranium that he had in a plastic bag in his jacket pocket.

In 1997, seven men who officials said planned to smuggle 5kg of enriched uranium to Pakistan or China were arrested in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. That uranium reportedly had been stolen from a plant in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.

Roughly 25kg of highly enriched uranium or plutonium is needed in most instances to make a crude nuclear device. But a tiny fraction of that is enough for a dirty bomb - a weapon designed to sow fear and chaos, rather than inflict human casualties.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Ukraine's Orange Revolution Parties Reach Coalition Deal

KIEV, Ukraine -- The two parties that led Ukraine's Orange Revolution on Thursday reached a coaliton deal, setting the stage for pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko to return as prime minister.

Yulia Tymoshenko, expected to become Ukraine's new prime minister, smiles as she holds a bouquet of flowers depicting a map of Ukraine presented to her after announcing the formation of a coalition in the Parliament in Kiev November 29, 2007. Parties associated with the 2004 "Orange Revolution" created a majority coalition in Ukraine's parliament on Thursday, the first step towards forming a government.
The party of President Viktor Yushchenko and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc signed an agreement on forming the new government, interim speaker Roman Zvarych told parliament.

Applause broke out in the parliament chamber and some deputies presented Tymoshenko with a large bouquet of blue and yellow flowers representing Ukraine's national colours.

"I believe that we will succeed in forming an effective government and provide hope for systematic and deep reforms in the country," said Tymoshenko, wearing her characteristic blonde braids.

Tymoshenko was Yushchenko's ally in the Orange Revolution, when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets in November 2004 for 17 days to protest rigged elections that handed victory to a pro-Moscow candidate.

But relations between them broke down just months after Yushchenko come to power in 2005, and critics took her to task as prime minister for a series of populist economic measures.

Tymoshenko became Ukraine's first female prime minister in February 2005 but was sacked in September amid bitter rivalry with Yushchenko.

A total of 227 deputies in the 450-seat Rada, or parliament, signed the coalition deal, paving the way for the appointment of a prime minister at a parliament session set for Tuesday.

But a key member of Yushchenko's party, Ivan Plyushch, refused to endorse the accord, underscoring the fragility of the deal that was backed by a slim majority in parliament.

Communist official Petro Tsybenko commented that the coalition endorsed by only 227 deputies "will not be viable. Every vote will be difficult."

The appointment of 47-year-old Tymoshenko as prime minister provides a first test for the coalition, with lawmakers close to Yushchenko reportedly reluctant to endorse her candidacy.

Ukrainian media have reported that Yushchenko's allies fear that Tymoshenko's return as prime minister could bolster her already strong popularity and turn her into a potential rival for the presidency.

Some pro-Yushchenko lawmakers have said that Tymoshenko should pledge not to stand in the 2010 presidential vote as a condition for her nomination as prime minister.

Since Yushchenko came to power in 2005, three governments have been in office, as the country's political elites are torn by infighting.

Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politican who was Yushchenko's rival in the Orange Revolution standoff, resigned as prime minister on Friday after 15 months in office.

The move followed elections in September that were called to resolve months of wrangling between Yushchenko, who supports Ukraine's full integration with the West, including the NATO military alliance, and Yanukovych.

Source: AFP

Power Fight Goes Public

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s pro-Western political forces accused their Russian-friendly rivals of stalling coalition-forming at the new parliament’s first session on Nov. 23, but the real enemy emerged from among their own ranks.

Yushchenko skiing in the Carpathian mountains.
A Nov. 27 part congress revealed the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense (OUPSD) is split between a faction led by Presidential Secretariat Chair Viktor Baloha opposed to uniting with Yulia Tymoshenko and her eponymous bloc, and those who support the Democratic Forces Coalition, led by Vyacheslav Kyrylenko and Yuriy Lutsenko.

The conflict not only threatens the pro-Western coalition, but also the future of the pro-presidential OUPSD, Kyrylenko warned the council, which fell short of its quorum.

“It’s acceptable to lose the elections and go into opposition,” he said. “But our voters won’t forgive us for winning the elections and giving Ukraine away to the clans.”

The Baloha faction boycotted the council, widely viewed as its revenge for the Nov. 22 vote rejecting their proposal nominating Ivan Pliushch, a lawmaking veteran, as parliamentary chair. Pliushch’s candidacy was backed by the president at the time.

The agreement to form the Democratic Forces Coalition called for Kyrylenko’s nomination as parliamentary chair.

After the bloc voted to support Kyrylenko’s candidacy, President Viktor Yushchenko abandoned his support for Pliushch, stating he would support the vote.

Yushchenko’s indecisiveness and passivity in governing, particularly in dealing with his own political bloc, is largely to blame for the current crisis, political observers said.

“The president doesn’t seem to have any clear concept of where he’s headed with the parliament’s leadership, the government, and the country’s direction as a whole,” said Ivan Lozowy, a Kyiv political insider and lawyer.

The Ukrainian media criticized Yushchenko for skiing in the Carpathian Mountains on Nov. 26, instead of preparing his bloc for the next day’s political council that could have extinguished the conflict.

As a result of the vacuum in the bloc’s leadership, battling factions within Our Ukraine resurfaced throughout the past year between the centrist, business-oriented faction and its ideological wing, with the former repeatedly ignoring the president’s directives.

Ironically, Yushchenko appointed Baloha as the bloc’s leader last year to consolidate and establish order, but since then Baloha formed his own faction to vie for power.

“It’s widely practiced that Yushchenko’s directives are ignored, detoured, sabotaged and undermined, even extending to economic and cultural projects,” Lozowy said.

As the Kyiv Post went to print, Baloha announced the night of Nov. 28 the seven politicians who abstained from signing the agreement to form the Democratic Forces Coalition in fact did so that day, following a meeting with Yushchenko.

The president exhausted all arguments and efforts to remove the key doubts of the holdouts that prevented them from signing the agreement.

“The president is sure that as of now, no obstacles exist on the path to forming a democratic coalition and forming an active government,” Baloha said.

Presidential ally Yuriy Yekhanurov offered a hint at what they discussed.

“We are engaged in our beloved Ukrainian matter: distributing posts,” he said during a Nov. 28 telephone conference.

The coalition agreement, however, doesn’t provide for Kyrylenko becoming parliamentary chair, said Mykola Onyshchuk, another holdout deputy.

He named Minister of Foreign Affairs Arseniy Yatsenyuk as a possible candidate.

Addressing the Nov. 27 council, Kyrylenko warned the bloc could become politically irrelevant and undermine efforts to form a national-democrat mega-party, paving the way for two parties to dominate Ukrainian politics: the Russian-oriented Party of Regions and the pro-Western Tymoshenko Bloc (Byut).

“We are supposed to create a coalition,” Kyrylenko said. “And it’s not so important how many votes it will gain. It’s important what laws it will pass and how the government will operate. It will give us the possibility to form a pro-presidential party, which will support Viktor Yushchenko at the next elections.”

After the first session of the sixth parliamentary convocation on Nov. 23, OUPSD confirmed seven of its members refused to sign an agreement to form the Democratic Forces Coalition.

Of them, Yekhanurov, Ivan Pliushch and Viktor Topolov have close ties to Yushchenko. Ihor Kril and Vasyl Petiovka are linked to Baloha.

Stanislav Dovhiy is the father of Oles Dovhiy, the right-hand man of controversial Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy, who may face pre-term elections if the Tymoshenko bloc gains control of the government. The senior Dovhiy was overseas this week.

Another holdout, Onyshchuk, maintains close ties to Party of Regions member Anatoliy Kinakh, who abandoned Our Ukraine this spring, triggering the crisis that led Yushchenko to dismiss parliament and call for new elections.

As his reasons for not signing, Yekhanurov said the original coalition-forming pact signed in February is significantly different from the current agreement, which includes Tymoshenko bloc campaign promises, which he described as “dangerous.”

Among them is her proposal to return the estimated $120 billion in bank deposits destroyed by hyperinflation in 1991-1995 within two years, as well as eliminating the value-added tax.

“Theories on returning the Oshchadbank debt are proposed by Byut’s political technologists, not professional economists,” Yekhanurov said.

Following the Nov. 23 session, OUPSD deputy David Zhvanya suggested the holdouts surrender their mandates.

Yekhanurov already said he would consider doing so, and so did Kril.

In his defense, Kril said he acted against OUPSD submitting itself to Tymoshenko’s will. Tymoshenko, the leading candidate for prime minister in a coalition comprised by her bloc and OUPSD, is expected to challenge Yushchenko for the presidency in a campaign that kicks off in 2009.

Yushchenko vowed to meet with the seven holdouts, listen to their concerns and resolve the conflict by Nov. 29, a date several political observers viewed as unrealistic, despite promises made by presidential ally Oleksandr Tretyakov.

If the president takes a decisive stance, he could demand the holdouts surrender their mandates, said Pavlo Bulgak, a political scientist at the Kyiv-based Stratehema Center for Practical Politics, which is financed by Western and Ukrainian sources.

“If these people undermine the president, then it doesn’t make sense to keep them close to him,” Bulgak said. “They need to be put in their place or dismissed.”

Among the more dramatic moments at the first session occurred when the outgoing parliamentary chair, Oleksandr Moroz, was offered the chance to speak.

It was Moroz who led the effort in parliament to form the constitutional majority to override all presidential vetoes, causing the president to decide to dismiss parliament on April 2 to protect his authority.

Moroz’s Socialist Party of Ukraine failed to gain re-election in September.

In his curtain call, Moroz said Ukraine will return to lawful, democratic development only if Yushchenko is removed from the Ukrainian presidency.

“The organizers of this escapade, primarily Viktor Yushchenko, convinced voters that pre-term elections are the key to resolving all of Ukraine’s problems,” Moroz said. “They promised the coalition would be formed in two hours. Almost two months have passed since elections.”

To demonstrate their disdain with his remarks, Orange politicians walked out of the session hall in the middle of Moroz’s remarks to get a head start on a lunch buffet.

Earlier in the session, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych announced the Cabinet of Ministers would resign its posts, becoming the acting government until a new coalition is formed.

That drew applause from the Orange politicians, which was quickly rebuffed by Yanukovych ally Raisa Bohatyryova, who led the first session as the temporary presidium’s chair.

“Understood emotions!,” she said sarcastically, prompting her Party of Regions to their own round of applause. “Good work, government, for supporting our country being perceived as democratic and economically developed in the world!”

At the session’s conclusion, Bohatyryova announced the next session would be Nov. 29, instead of Nov. 27 as anticipated by the Orange politicians.

Tymoshenko bloc deputies said she announced the date without consulting them and accused her of stalling coalition-formation efforts.

“The decision was made without discussion by the temporary presidium, without an announcement during the working group and without a vote,” said Oleksandr Turchynov, Tymoshenko’s right-hand man. “It’s a simple, clear provocation.”

The events of the next several days proved Tymoshenko has enemies other than the Party of Region, observers said.

“It’s Yushchenko and Baloha that are delaying,” Lozowy said. “The Party of Regions is merely responding to their efforts to undermine Tymoshenko.

Source: Kyiv Post

Differences In Our Ukraine Hinder Coalition Formation

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s new parliament opened on November 23 only to adjourn until November 29, as the absence of a more or less stable majority left it incapacitated, making it impossible to elect parliamentary leaders and form standing committees.

Viktor Yushchenko
This deadlock is due to serious differences within President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc (NUNS) over electing the speaker of parliament and the coalition accord with the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT).

After the September 30 snap parliamentary election, NUNS and BYuT agreed that the post of prime minister in their coalition would go to BYuT and the less important position of parliament speaker would be filled by a representative of NUNS, because it scored fewer votes in the election.

It was agreed that the leader of Our Ukraine – the larger component of NUNS – Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, would become speaker.

It emerged later that many people in Our Ukraine have serious reservations about Kyrylenko.

He is seen by one group of Yushchenko supporters, which apparently includes the head of Yushchenko’s office, Viktor Baloha, as an individual prone to make more concessions to Tymoshenko than necessary.

Kyrylenko’s strengthening, they fear, may weaken Yushchenko vis-à-vis Tymoshenko if she decides to challenge him in the 2009 presidential election campaign.

On the other hand, there are several members of NUNS who support a coalition with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions (PRU), rather than with BYuT.

Some of them, such as National Security and Defense Council (SNBO) Secretary Ivan Plyushch, who served as speaker twice in the past, and Yuriy Yekhanurov, who was prime minister in 2005-2006, reportedly would not mind being elected speaker themselves.

The situation is complicated by Yushchenko’s failure to clearly articulate his position.

Initially he seemed to back Kyrylenko’s bid, but at a meeting with NUNS leaders on November 22 Yushchenko reportedly proposed reserving for Kyrylenko the position of deputy prime minister in the future cabinet.

He suggested that NUNS should consider four candidates for speaker, including Plyushch and Yekhanurov, but not Kyrylenko.

Yushchenko advice, however, was rejected by the majority of those present, who voted to back Kyrylenko’s bid.

Plyushch later told journalists that Yushchenko wanted him to be chosen for speaker.

Plyushch sounded patronizing when asked to comment on Kyrylenko: “I think he does not understand that the speaker should organize the work of parliament, rather than defending the interests of his coalition.”

Plyushch could either take his seat in parliament or remain in his current position, but Yushchenko left him no choice, dismissing him from SNBO.

This means that Plyushch goes to parliament, quite probably to challenge Kyrylenko.

NUNS member Ihor Kril, who is close to Baloha, publicly called on Kyrylenko to drop his bid. Kril claimed that there was no transparent competition for the position of speaker and he called the NUNS-BYuT coalition accord “a conspiracy for the sake of posts.” He also accused Kyrylenko of transforming NUNS into “a branch of BYuT.”

Kril was one of the first three NUNS parliamentarians who refused to sign the accord with BYuT.

The number of dissenters grew to at least seven. By November 26, Kril, Plyushch, and Vasyl Petyovka were joined by another four, including Yekhanurov, despite Tymoshenko’s concessions, such as omitting from the accord the promise to cancel military conscription from 2008.

The dissenters argue that several provisions included in the coalition accord by Tymoshenko are unrealistic.

Yekhanurov has demanded deleting seven points from the accord and amending at least 25.

These include Tymoshenko’s promises to reimburse Ukrainians within two years for the deposits lost in the Soviet Union’s Savings Bank, to cancel the value-added tax, and to change the parliamentary election system to make it more transparent.

The promises to cancel conscription and return the Soviet-era savings were among the key points of Tymoshenko’s election program.

Now a coalition and her premiership are impossible without consent from the seven opponents of the original version of the NUNS-BYuT accord, as without their votes Tymoshenko’s bid will be backed by fewer MPs than the required 226.

Kyrylenko scheduled a meeting of Our Ukraine’s top body, the political council, for November 27 to try to persuade the dissenters to change their mind.

More than half of the council, however, ignored the meeting, so dissent within the party is apparently growing.

The BYuT will not vote for a speaker candidate offered by NUNS as long as there is no formal coalition, Mykola Tomenko, one of the BYuT’s leaders, told Channel 5.

Earlier, the other three caucuses in parliament – the PRU, Lytvyn’s Bloc, and the Communists – had made it clear that they will not help the NUNS-BYuT coalition elect the speaker because they were not invited to join the coalition.

If NUNS and BYuT fail to settle their differences quickly, the process of electing the speaker may take weeks. In that case, Ukraine will hardly have a new prime minister by the end of 2007.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Ukraine's Parliament To Elect Speaker November 29

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Supreme Rada, Ukraine's parliament, will elect a speaker on November 29 even if a majority coalition has not been formed, the acting prime minister said on Wednesday.

Ukraine's Supreme Rada (Parliament)
Two Western-leaning parties, pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko's eponymous party, which gained 72 and 156 seats respectively, were expected to form a majority coalition and government during its first session on November 23, but eight members from the Our Ukraine party refused to sign a coalition deal.

"If no coalition deal, signed at least by 226 members of parliament, is submitted [by November 29], then we will have to put the issue of electing a speaker for the 450-seat Supreme Rada on the agenda," Viktor Yanukovych said at a government session.

The Constitution stipulates that a government must be formed within 60 days following elections, but persisting differences within the parliamentary factions, including over Cabinet portfolios, threaten to spark further political wrangling.

Following early polls on September 30 the rival Party of Regions, led by the more Moscow-friendly Yanukovych, was the largest faction with 175 seats in the Supreme Rada. A union with its longtime allies, the Communists, who have 27 seats in parliament, would not be enough for a majority.

Both groups have sought an alliance with Volodymyr Lytvyn, whose faction comprises 20 lawmakers.

However, the former parliamentary speaker has so far declined alliance proposals from both of them.

Source: RIA Novosti

EU Border Moves To Ukraine

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia -- From December 21, the citizens of Slovakia will be able to cross the borders with all neighbouring countries except for Ukraine at any place and without any checks.

Jozef Buček, Schengen commissioner
This is the result of an informal agreement reached two weeks ago by the EU Council of ministers, assessing the evaluation report on the preparedness of candidate countries for accession to the Schengen area.

Though the final decision will be taken early in December, Slovakia is certain to become a member of the enlarged Schengen area before Christmas, along with Slovenia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic and Malta.

However, last year there was no reason for celebrations.

Then, the European Commission announced that the enlargement of the pan-European border-free zone might be postponed to 2009 due to the insufficient preparedness of candidate countries and Slovakia was stated as the worst example.

In response to this criticism, the Slovak government established a team headed by Smer-SD nominee, Jozef Buček, Schengen commissioner and the State Secretary of the Ministry of Interior.

This team prepared a crisis action plan for the solving of 169 problems, which was approved by Schengen member states early this year.

The change over the year in the evaluation of Slovakia’s preparedness for Schengen indicates that the efforts of the crisis team were successful.

It should also be mentioned that the efforts would have had no effect if the old member states of the Schengen zone had not prepared for their new colleagues, as one year ago it was not only Slovakia and the Czech Republic that were behind in their preparations.

The preparation for the accession to the Schengen zone cost almost 64 million EUR, which represents two billion Slovak crowns at the current exchange rate.

Four-fifths of the costs were covered by the Schengen Transition Fund and the reminder was paid from the state budget of the Slovak Republic.

Source: eTrend

EU Slows Ukraine's Entry Into WTO

GENEVA, Switzerland -- The European Union has thrown a last-minute hurdle in Ukraine's path to enter the World Trade Organization, trade officials said Tuesday, but the former Soviet republic was still expected to join before neighboring Russia.

WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ukraine seemed to have succeeded in introducing reforms needed to become the group's 152nd member, according to a WTO draft report obtained by The Associated Press -- but the EU has held firm on a demand that the nation scrap export taxes designed to make Ukrainian-made goods cheaper if they stay inside the country.

"We are in very regular contact with Ukraine to resolve the remaining bilateral issue of export duties," said Peter Power, a spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. "This is a very important issue for us and must be resolved before the process can be concluded."

The Ukrainian economy, once the Soviet Union's breadbasket, shrank significantly after the fall of the Iron Curtain but has rebounded strongly since 2000. WTO membership could mean valuable new market opportunities for industrial exporters from the country of 47 million people, the third most-populous nation still outside the organization behind Russia and Iran.

Ukraine's pro-Western leader has made joining the WTO and attracted greater foreign investment top priorities. The nation is expected to see its economy grow by 7.6 percent this year and President Viktor Yushchenko hopes to steer the nation into NATO and the European Union as part of a platform that has caused friction with Russia.

A working party of diplomats involved in Kiev's negotiations with the WTO has "reviewed the economic policies and the foreign trade regime of Ukraine" and decided that the "Republic of Ukraine may accede to the WTO agreement," it said in a 290-page draft report.

Dated Oct. 11, it included just a couple of unresolved points, including the EU's complaint over export fees. Other issues relate to certain sanitary and technical standards, but are not believed to be difficult to resolve.

The EU has made WTO membership a condition for opening talks with Ukraine on free trade -- a step seen as essential to Ukraine's hopes of drawing closer to the 27-nation bloc.

The working group was expected to conclude its final meeting next month. But trade officials now believe it might have to wait until next year before recommending that the WTO's 151-member general council formally invite Ukraine to join.

The Ukrainian parliament would then have to ratify the agreement, which would initiate a 30-day waiting period before the country would wrap up its 14-year accession process.

Ukraine's acceptance into the trade body would effectively give it a veto over Russian membership as all WTO decisions are made by consensus. Georgia -- another West-leaning former Soviet republic that has battled Russia over gas surcharges and alleged meddling in internal affairs -- has used its power as a WTO member to block meetings aimed at easing Russia's entrance into the organization.

Ukraine and Russia had been locked in a race to join the Geneva-based organization setting the rules for global trade, with both wary about having the other join first. Yushchenko rejected a suggestion from Russia last year that Kiev "synchronize" its WTO accession process with Moscow's, which remains years from completion.

The neighbors have had chilly relations since 2004, when Moscow gave strong support to Yushchenko's rival Viktor Yanukovych in his fraud-riddled run for the presidency, which set off the massive "Orange Revolution" demonstrations.

Russia, the only major economy outside the WTO, has been claiming for over a decade that it is close to entering but has been frustrated by the slow pace of its negotiation, which like Ukraine's began in 1993. Putin has criticized the body as "archaic," but many negotiators say the fault is Russia's for failing to bring its trade rules in line with global standards.

Source: AP

Fitch Forecasts Inflation At 12% In Ukraine This Year

NEW YORK, United States -- New York based Fitch Ratings forecasts the inflation in Ukraine at the level of 12% this year, and 10% - next year.


According to an UNIAN correspondent, these data were distributed today at a conference, devoted to assessing risks of Ukrainian ratings after the parliamentary election.

The agency also forecasts that in 2008 the National Bank will not change the hryvnia exchange rate against US dollar, and will keep it at the level of 5.05 hryvnias for $1.00 dollar.

Source: Unian

Yushchenko Partisans Balking At Coalition

KIEV, Ukraine -- Tensions rose sharply within Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense, President Viktor Yushchenko’s group, on Monday after five of its lawmakers refused to sign an agreement aimed at creating the pro-Western government coalition.

Pliushch and Yekhanurov stated repeatedly that they would rather favor the creation of the grand coalition that would include Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions Party.
Each of the five lawmakers, including Ivan Pliushch, Yushchenko’s former top security advisor, and Yuri Yekhanurov, a former prime minister, slapped different reasoning behind their decisions.

But all came under fire from their fellow Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense lawmakers, who had been persistently calling for the creation of the coalition.

The tensions will probably further escalate on Tuesday when Our Ukraine, which controls a majority of seats in the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense grouping, is due to hold an important political conference.

“I can’t get rid of the feeling that those who have refused to sign the agreement talk about one thing, but in fact mean something else,” Roman Zvarych, a senior Our Ukraine member, said.

Pliushch and Yekhanurov stated repeatedly that they would rather favor the creation of the grand coalition that would include Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s Regions Party, the largest single group in Parliament.

Zvarych argued that if Pliushch, Yekhanurov and other lawmakers refuse to join the coalition with the group led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, they should voluntarily quit Parliament.

“This would be an honest and courageous move,” Zvarych said.

The pro-Western coalition would control the slim majority of 228 seats in the 450-seat Parliament, so the refusal of the five to sign the agreement makes the coalition impossible.

The developments come days after all 72 lawmakers from Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense, at a meeting with Yushchenko, pledged to support the pro-Western coalition.

Yekhanurov said Monday that he wanted to amend the coalition agreement with the Tymoshenko group.

Yekhanurov, who a liberal economist, said he was concerned about some of Tymoshenko’s controversial and populist initiatives, such as the plan to pay out quickly billions of hryvnias in debts owed on Soviet-time bank deposits. He also objects to the plans for canceling the value added tax in Ukraine.

Yekhanurov argued that both measures may spur inflation and undermine state finances in the country.

Ihor Kril, a close ally of Viktor Baloha, the chief of staff at the Yushchenko office, and an Our Ukraine member, also refused to sign the coalition agreement with the Tymoshenko group.

Kril argued that Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense’s nomination of Viacheslav Kyrylenko for the speaker of Parliament, was not transparent. He urged Kyrylenko, who he accused of seeking to post at any cost, to withdraw his nomination.

“Let Kyrylenko withdraw from the nomination,” Kril said. “I am not against the democratic coalition, but I am against ripping out the posts.”

Source: Ukrainian Journal

MTS Ukraine Using Alcatel-Lucent's CDMA/EV-DO Revision A Solution

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine has launched its commercial wireless broadband network using third-generation (3G) CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A (Rev. A) equipment supplied by Alcatel-Lucent.

A CDMA/EV-DO capable mobile phone.
The new network, deployed in the 450 MHz spectrum band, will provide MTS Ukraine's subscribers in major Ukrainian cities with an extensive range of 3G mobile data services such as enhanced multimedia messaging, and audio and video streaming.

"We launched our high-speed wireless Internet service offerings using 3G technology because it is convenient, easy-to-use and offers an exceptionally high-quality experience for the end user," said Pavel Pavlovsky, general director of MTS Ukraine, in a press release. "Project management support provided by Alcatel-Lucent has enabled us to launch our network to satisfy growing demand for data services in the Ukrainian market. We plan to expand our network coverage and will soon be providing wireless Internet access in all of the largest Ukrainian cities."

As part of the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent supplied its CDMA Modular Cell 4.0 Compact base stations for the 450 MHz spectrum band, CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Radio Network Controllers (RNC), a base station operation controller and a network element management system as well as packet core network equipment.

In addition, Alcatel-Lucent has provided network design, planning, deployment, operation, personnel training, and maintenance services, including remote technical support, repair, and local spares provisioning.

Alcatel-Lucent has partnered with Kvazar-Micro, an international IT company that provides products, solutions and services in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), managed the overall network integration.

Both the companies facilitate the seamless integration of the solution with MTS Ukraine's existing infrastructure and operations support systems.

"With this deployment MTS Ukraine is now able to introduce very high-speed 3G mobile data services to complement the 2G services offered by its existing GSM/GPRS network, enabling the operator to deliver a wide range of mobile data capabilities to address a variety of customer expectations," said Johan Vanderplaetse, vice president of Alcatel-Lucent for the CIS. "Our Rev. A solution provides a flexible and reliable platform that MTS Ukraine can use to quickly introduce new services and expand its business."

EV-DO Rev. A is an enhanced version of CDMA2000 1xEV-DO that increases the efficiency, data speeds and capacity of existing CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO networks. EV-DO Rev. A enables users to receive data (forward link) at speeds up to 3.1 Megabits per second (Mbps) and send data (reverse link) at speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps.

Source: TMCnet

Quick Deal In Ukraine Unlikely

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's newly elected parliament abruptly ended its first session Friday, dimming hopes for the quick formation of a government and an end to two months of post-election turmoil.

Yulia Tymoshenko at opening of Parliament.
The session exposed cracks in the alliance of the two pro-Western parties, as several lawmakers from President Viktor Yushchenko's bloc failed to sign a highly advertised coalition agreement.

Yushchenko's party and that of his Orange Revolution ally Yulia Tymoshenko mustered a slim parliamentary majority from the Sept. 30 election and had pledged to quickly form a Cabinet together.

However, eight members of Yushchenko's group did not show up for the signing Friday afternoon, according to the party.

"We hope a coalition will be democratic and that it will be formed quickly," said Tymoshenko, who hopes to return as prime minister in a government comprising her party and Yushchenko's.

But in a sign that complicated coalition talks lie ahead, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who formally surrendered his powers Friday, said he hoped his party would be part of the coalition. Tymoshenko has signaled she would not accept that.

Yanukovych's and Tymoshenko's parties continued bickering, failing to agree on the date of the parliament's next session.

Lawmakers have 30 days to agree on a parliamentary majority and another 30 days to form a government.

Source: Moscow Times

Shell Abandons Deal For Ukrainian Oil Sites

LONDON, UK -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC said it won't proceed with an agreement reached days ago to acquire the Ukraine assets of United Kingdom-listed Regal Petroleum PLC, following Regal's surprise move to appoint a new chairman and chief executive.


Shell spokeswoman Eurwen Thomas said the management change at Regal "wasn't expected by Shell, and we see from the new management's comments that they may have changed their thinking on this transaction."

She said that Regal, a U.K. oil-and-gas company, "indicated that they would like to review options. Therefore we have decided not to proceed" with the memorandum of understanding.

On Wednesday, Shell signed a memorandum of understanding with the previous Regal management. The Anglo-Dutch oil company agreed to pay $50 million to Regal upfront for a 51% stake in the company's Ukranian gas and condensate field licenses.

Shell also agreed to invest $360 million to develop the fields as part of the purchase.

On Thursday, Regal said Chairman Francesco Scolaro and CEO Neil Ritson had resigned and that David Greer -- until recently a senior Shell employee -- would take on both roles.

Mr. Greer was most recently deputy CEO of Sakhalin Energy Investment Co., controlled by a Shell until March of this year.

He resigned after one of its motivational memos was leaked to the media.

Oil analyst Tony Alves of brokerage house KBC Peel Hunt in London said Shell's decision to walk away from the decision doesn't bode well for Regal Petroleum.

The oil-and-gas company now has "no way of financing the drilling of the fields" in Ukraine.

No one was available for comment at Regal.

Regal shares dropped sharply in London after news the memorandum of understanding had been canceled, closing down 14% to £1.40 ($2.89).

Source: Wall Street Journal

Ukrainian Pres Calls For Removing All Soviet-Era Monuments

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko on Saturday urged his nation to remove all the monuments commemorating the totalitarian regime.

Lenin statue at the head of Taras Shevchenko Boulevard - typical Communist propaganda.
As he addressed a meeting on Kiev’s Mikhailovsky Square that had gathered in connection with 75 years since the outbreak of famine of 1932 and 1933, Yushchenko condemned the Communist era and said his country “should put on a clean shirt, removing the symbols of totalitarianism from its body.”

At the same time, he called for installing national memorials and monuments.

Saturday, Yushchenko signed a decree declared 2008 the Year of Memory of the Victims of Famine.

The reported goal of the document is to “reveal truth about the genocide of the Ukrainian people to broad public quarters in Ukraine and to the international community in connection with the 75th anniversary of the tragedy”.

The decree demands that the government analyze the steps taken in connection with the Law on Famine in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933, as well as the legislative acts in connection with the anniversary of famine and pass the necessary decisions on financing the steps they specify.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the World Congress of Ukrainians are expected to produce within a month a plan of commemorative and special events that Ukraine’s diplomatic missions will carry out abroad with the aid of Ukrainian communities living in foreign countries.

Ukrainian officials claim that the famine of 1932 and 1933, which was caused by Joseph Stalin’s police of sweeping collectivization of private farms, was a purposeful act of genocide of the Ukrainian people.

In the meantime, historians, public personalities and politicians in Russia have indicated on many occasions that the famine embraced a territory much broader than the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and had a telling impact on many other regions and ethnic groups of the former USSR, including the Russians and Kazakhs.

Source: ITAR-TASS

Norwegians Accuse Russians Of Dirty Tricks In Telecoms Venture

LONDON, England -- International court rulings are ignored in the struggle for a Ukrainian mobile firm. It began as a partnership. It became poisoned by rancour. And now it has descended into farce.


A dispute between two international telecoms companies, Norway’s Telenor and Altimo, part of Russia’s Alfa Group, has taken a new, surreal twist and is threatening to spill over into the British courts.

The two groups have been involved in a bitter argument over control of a Ukrainian mobile-phone company, Kyvistar, jointly owned by the Russian and Norwegian groups since 2002.

Telenor has accused Altimo whose parent, Alfa Group, is headed by the Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman of using underhand tactics to try to gain control of Kyvistar.

The dispute went to the International Panel of Arbitration in New York. In August the panel ruled that Altimo’s Ukrainian offshoot had broken its shareholders’ agreement with Telenor and had wrongly tried to wriggle out of an agreement under which disputes would be resolved by arbitration in New York.

But Altimo’s Ukrainian subsidiary, Storm, responded by saying that “according to Ukrainian law, it is impossible to recognise and enforce the arbitration award in Ukraine”. The Altimo-controlled company is refusing to comply with the New York panel ruling.

And now, the focus of the increasingly bizarre tale has been shifted back to Ukraine.

The Pechersk district court of Kiev ruled last month that enforcing the arbitration award “would contradict the public policy of Ukraine”.

That sounds straightforward enough except that Telenor had not even been informed that the US ruling was being challenged in the Kiev court. The first it knew about the case was when it was told of the result by a Russian journalist.

Storm, the Altimo offshoot contesting the US ruling, told the Ukrainian court that Telenor had been served notice that the case was coming up.

But it later transpired that the papers informing Telenor of the hearing had been sent to an office that the Norwegian company had not occupied for months although its present address is well advertised.

The papers were apparently signed for at the former Telenor offices by someone simply calling himself or herself “Kovalenko”. Telenor has never had an employee called Kovalenko.

Nothing about the impending court case had been sent to Telenor’s present Ukraine office, its Norwegian head office, or to its lawyers.

By the time that Telenor was told of the outcome of the case, the company had missed the deadline for appealing against the decision. The ruling by the judge, a Ms Grymych, contained the assertion that “Telenor Communications AS has failed to appear, though it was duly summoned and noticed of the time and place of the consideration of the motion”.

However, as is now clear, Telenor did not have a clue that the case was even taking place.

Sources within the Altimo camp maintain that it was the court that was responsible for handling the paperwork, not Storm.

And in a further strange twist, the judge disappeared apparently abroad on extended maternity leave the day after giving her decision.

Even within Ukraine, a country not renowned for the consistency and rigour of its legal system, the Pechersk court chosen by Altimo’s offshoot as the arena for the battle with Telenor has a reputation for making some strange decisions.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko said: “There are legends about the Pechersk court . . . We’ve already got used to such a court system where, I am sure, even Jesus Christ could lose a good case . . . He would not win in the Pechersk court.”

There is a further strange sub-plot to the dispute. In the argument over Kyvistar, Telenor’s direct legal opponent has been Storm, the company through which Altimo holds its stake in the Ukrainian telecoms business.

Storm is owned by two offshore companies, based in Cyprus, which in turn are owned by Altimo. In late August after the New York arbitration ruling the two companies in Cyprus held a shareholders’ meeting at which its Russian owners said that Storm should indeed comply with the New York panel’s decision.

But Storm says it is bound by the Ukrainian court’s ruling that the New York arbitration decision is unenforceable. Storm says it is banned from attending meetings of its Kyvistar joint-venture partner Telenor although Storm’s parent, Altimo, wants it to do so.

Hence now, on the surface at least, Altimo is at loggerheads with a company that it owns. The Russian company can claim that it is trying to comply with an internationally recognised panel’s ruling, while its subsidiary continues to defy it.

Storm and Telenor each signed a shareholders’ agreement covering their Ukrainian joint venture: this explicitly stated that any dispute should be referred to arbitrators in New York.

But Storm subsequently argued that the company’s director who signed the agreement didn’t have the authority to do so. The argument was rejected by courts in America.

Altimo said this weekend: “Altimo has always complied with every court ruling in every jurisdiction. We fully respect the laws of every country in which we operate.” Earlier this month an American judge, Gerard Lynch of the southern district of New York, gave his judgment on Storm’s efforts to avoid complying with the arbitration award.

He said Storm had made “repeated efforts to renege on its agreement and to torpedo the proceedings by collusive and vexatious litigation”.

The affair further calls into question the role of Altimo’s six-man “advisory board” that includes Lord Hurd, the former Conservative foreign secretary Douglas Hurd; Sir Roderick Lyne, who was British ambassador to Russia; and Sir Julian Horn-Smith, who was the deputy chief executive of Vodafone until the summer of last year.

Telenor executive vice-president Jan Edvard Thygesen has said that the Norwegian group “will seek to enforce this [New York arbitration] award wherever Alfa has assets”. And sources within Telenor indicate that this could involve action to seize assets in the US and UK.

Alfa has a business, Alfa Capital Holdings (Cyprus), that is regulated by the Financial Services Authority in London. Altimo Holdings is domiciled in the British Virgin Islands, but the company lists its international headquarters as being in London. Peter Aven, head of a private bank within the Alfa empire, has a mansion in Surrey that was bought for £8.5m.

Source: Times OnLine

Final Toll In Ukraine Mine Accident At 100 Dead

KIEV, Ukraine -- One hundred people died in the worst mining accident in Ukraine's post-Soviet history last week, Interfax news agency said on Saturday giving what it said was the final toll of the disaster.

People and relatives of the miners mourn at a funeral for miners killed in Post-Soviet Ukraine's worst mining disaster.
The accident on Nov 18 took place some 1,000 metres underground at the Zasyadko pit, one of Ukraine's three biggest mines.

Ukraine's coal mines are considered among the most perilous in the world, with many poorly financed and employing outdated Soviet-era equipment.

Most of the country's mine disasters are caused by build-ups of methane gas, which can occur suddenly.

Previously, the worst mining disaster in post-Soviet Ukraine had been at the Barakov mine in 2000, when 80 people were killed in a similar gas explosion.

The Zasyadko mine employs some 10,000 people and produces up to 10,000 tonnes of coal every day.

In 1999 an explosion there claimed 50 lives, while in 2001 another blast left 55 people dead.

A gas leak in September 2006 killed 13 miners.

Source: The Straits Times

Can't Stand D.C. Traffic? You Should See Kiev

KIEV, Ukraine -- There's a certain fascination in watching a city destroy itself more or less overnight. Kiev last imposed itself on the West's consciousness when it exploded into mass protests during Ukraine's so-called Orange Revolution in 2004.

A typical day on main street Khreschatyk.
But looking around this still beautiful capital on Europe's edge today, you wonder how much strain an urban fabric can take before it rips.

Kiev's problem is cars. The city's increasingly well-off post-Soviet population has taken to automobiles with the intensity of the long-deprived.

Ukraine's booming economy is blast-forging the country's first mass middle class, and by many locals' count, perhaps 10 times more vehicles are now rumbling through this ancient city's hilly streets than there were when the Soviet Union expired in 1991.

In 2006, according to the Kiev Post, Ukraine climbed from 12th place to ninth place in Europe in terms of new car sales, which a leading Ukrainian newsmagazine reports grew 52 percent here from last September to this.

About 60,000 new cars were registered in Kiev this October alone, according to the Unian news agency, bloating a total that Ukraine's Emergency Ministry puts at 1.5 million -- and the number is expected to grow by a million more by 2011.

This has meant something catastrophic for life in Kiev. Streets that in 1991 were almost empty and that five years ago remained passable thoroughfares are now gridlocked for most of each business day.

In Kiev, cars are what water must be to Venetians or snow to Eskimos: the fundamental shaper of daily experience. Given Ukraine's distinctly Soviet approach to emissions controls, Kiev's air reeks in a way that residents of even the filthiest downtowns of Western capitals can't imagine.

You don't want to open your windows by day if you live downtown; better to wait until well into the evening, after the dissipation of the apocalyptic traffic jams that have become the city's conversation pieces in much the same way that politics were during the Orange Revolution.

All of this is a function of what one Kiev magazine earlier this year dubbed the "Cult of the Automobile" -- the status, unimaginable to Westerners, that comes with car ownership in a society conditioned by Soviet-era scarcity.

It was the great Western-looking dream of the Soviet citizen to own a set of wheels, and those dreams are now coming true -- with the help of easy credit, which is everywhere in a country where speculation was a crime just 20 years ago.

Many of the late-model KIAs and Skodas in Kiev are wholly owned by local banks, which is only one of the peculiarities of a car culture so seductive that I've heard anecdotes about people who have sold elegant apartments to get cash to buy cars. Another peculiarity: Cars are really unnecessary here because Kiev's Soviet-built subway system is excellent.

And all of this is a shame, given that Kiev has historically been considered the most pleasant of the former Soviet Union's capitals -- a walkable alternative to Moscow.

In his book "Imperium," about his travels through the declining Soviet Union, the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski described Kiev as "the only large city of the former USSR whose streets serve not merely for hurrying home but for walking, for strolling." Kiev's main boulevard, Khreschatyk, he wrote, is something like a local Champs-Elys¿es, and he was impressed by Kiev's downtown "crowds of people" out "to get some fresh air."

A decade and a half later, the city that Kapuscinski liked no longer exists. Walking here can be dangerous because the sidewalks are covered with cars, both parked and moving.

That ritual of city life -- the promenade -- has become an adventure in the sort of defensive, serpentine ambulation with which the pedestrian makes his way through a strip mall parking lot.

And it doesn't help that Ukrainian traffic cops know better than to stop expensive vehicles: It can be bad for their careers. Drive a Hummer or a Bentley here (Bentleys are common), and you can barrel through any red light and over any lawn or sidewalk.

The situation is exacerbated by Kiev's geography. The city is composed of a compact downtown core that would seem better in a smaller city -- Oakland, say, not a growing population cluster of perhaps 5 million.

An increasing number of Kiev's residents live in bedroom communities outside the city, endless developments of high-rise towers that each month radiate farther across the plains.

Because these futuristic tower blocks don't include office space, the city's circumscribed downtown is overloaded. It's as though all of New York's economic activity were restricted to an area the size of Greenwich Village and SoHo combined.

Kiev's preponderance of wide boulevards and vast plazas -- communist showcases for an era before the automobile reigned -- exacerbate the situation, too.

What 10 years ago were pleasant poplar-lined boulevards are now clogged eight-lane highways that scream and honk and pound through the city's heart. Looking at central Kiev's Victory Square is like looking down at a gridlocked Los Angeles freeway, except that many of the cars are going in opposite directions, there's more toxic haze and tens of thousands of people have to live within yards of it.

Where all this will end up, it's hard to tell. Kiev's transformation -- from a charmingly shabby stroller's city of dusty squares and streets in which there might be more stray dogs than SUVs into an increasingly charmless automotive dystopia -- has happened mostly during the past five years of economic growth.

Like survivors of a flash flood, residents (especially those who don't own cars) are just coming to terms with the sudden change in their physical reality.

Their neighbors in Europe have started dealing with the antisocial effects of urban car use and are banning, restricting or taxing driving in many downtown cores.

But Ukraine, despite the aspirational rhetoric of some of its Western-looking politicians, isn't Europe. In a macho culture that has embraced conspicuous consumption, the idea of people taking to bicycles like the burghers of Amsterdam is inconceivable.

Just a little less so is the idea that, in a nondemocratic culture defined by elite prerogative, the newly affluent will use public transportation like wealthy Westerners. And a culture with an almost totally corrupt public life, no functioning justice system and a tendency toward political murder seems unlikely to make "green" choices when it comes to urban planning.

Barring some unexpected development, Kiev seems fated to become less and less the "European" city that the westward-looking Orange Revolution declared it to be and more and more a hub of Third World-style chaos.

Certainly the pollution situation is disturbing. Ukraine was an ecological basket case even before the car culture, and unlike car-mad America or similarly polluted Russia, it doesn't have excess space to destroy.

There is a geopolitical irony to all this: Ukraine, a poor and weak country with no oil of its own, is giving itself over to a car- and oil-based culture at a moment when that culture is approaching its limits. The global cheap-oil party is approaching its end even as Ukraine shoves its way into the rubbish-strewn foyer near midnight.

And while Ukraine may be spared $100 barrels of oil on the world market, that's only because it has a potentially bigger problem: It gets all its oil from or through Russia, an assertive power whose leadership resents seeing its old vassal persist in its delusions of independence.

Russia has also proved willing to use the "energy weapon" against Ukraine, as seen in the 2006 European gas crisis, when Russia briefly shut off gas supplies to its southerly "little brother." And so every time a patriotic Ukrainian proudly fills up his new Prado, he's pushing his vulnerable country further into the arms of the hegemon to the north.

It's yet another bleak historical irony for Ukraine that its giddy embrace of Western automotive culture may someday seal its ultimate submission to Russia -- and sever it from the West.

Source: Washington Post

Great Famine Anniversary In Ukraine

KRASYLIVKA, Ukraine -- After authorities broke into Yakiv Atamanenko's home in autumn of 1932 and confiscated the family's food, his mother and two brothers died of starvation and their bloated bodies were tossed among others in a freshly dug grave on the outskirts of this farming village.


Atamanenko and other survivors here said one of their neighbors, Oleksandra Korytnyk and her husband, ate their two children. "They cut their children into pieces and ate them," recalled Atamanenko, now a frail, gray-haired 95-year-old.

In the end, he and others said, the Korytnyks died as well.

On Saturday, Ukraine marks the 75th anniversary of the terrible famine of 1932-33, engineered by Soviet authorities to force peasants across the former U.S.S.R. to give up their privately held plots of land and join collective farms. Millions perished.

Now President Viktor Yushchenko is leading an effort to gain international recognition of Holodomor - or death by hunger, as it is known here - as a crime rather than merely a disaster, by labeling it an act of genocide.

Long kept secret by Soviet authorities, accounts of the Great Famine still divide historians and politicians, not just in this nation of 47 million but throughout the former Soviet Union.

Some are convinced that the famine targeted Ukrainians as an ethnic group. Others argue authorities set out to eradicate all private land owners as a social class, and that the Soviets sought to pay for the U.S.S.R.'s industrialization with grain exports at the expense of starving millions of its own people.

The dictator Josef Stalin's collectivization drive affected the entire U.S.S.R, but was particularly calamitous for Ukraine, which had some of the former Soviet Union's richest agricultural land. The campaign coincided, as well, with the Kremlin's efforts to root out a growing Ukrainian nationalist movement.

Estimates of the number of people who perished in Holodomor differ, but there is no doubt the death toll was horrific. Yushchenko estimates 10 million Ukrainians died, while Stanislav Kulchitsky, a Ukrainian historian, believes the number is closer to 3.5 million.

Authorities set production quotas for each village. But these quotas generally exceeded crop yields and in village after village, when farmers failed to meet their targets, all their food was confiscated.

Residents were prohibited to leave their homes - effectively condemning them to starvation.

In Krasylivka as many as 1,017 people - roughly the village's present day population - died in the course of that terrible year, according to a list of the victims compiled by village authorities. Elders say the famine nearly wiped out the village.

Villagers tell stories of their neighbors collapsing in the street and dying. Driven to despair, people ate whatever they could scrounge: leaves, dirt, birds, dogs, rats and - several witnesses said - even each other.

Olena Yaroshchuk, 94, her wrinkled face framed by a green kerchief, said she filled her aching stomach with grass. "Those who could survived, those who couldn't - that was the end of it, one house after another - almost all died," she said.

Kulchitsky, a leading famine researcher, argues the famine was a genocide aimed at Ukrainians who resisted Soviet rule. "The conditions authorities created for the Ukrainian peasantry were incompatible with life," he wrote in a recent article.

But Heorhiy Kasyanov, a top historian with the National Academy of Sciences, says the issue is more subtle. "There is no hard evidence that there were concrete statements or actions aimed at destroying ethnic Ukrainians by someone else. I don't have a clear answer whether or not it was genocide."

The Ukrainian parliament has already labeled the famine genocide. So has the United States, and some other countries. But Russia, the legal successor to the Soviet state, resists the label.

Under international law, genocide is defined as deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial or ethnic group. Moscow insists the famine also targeted other groups, including Russians and Kazakhs.

"There are no grounds to talk about genocide. We can talk about 'sociocide' - the extermination of peasants, a political crime on the part of Soviet leadership," said Andrei Petrov, a historian with the Russian Academy of Sciences.

But another Russian historian said Holodomor was one of many acts of genocide by Stalin against the peoples of the former Soviet Union. "It was genocide in the direct sense of this word - it is the killing of people, the killing of the Ukrainian people," he said. "The same must be done for the Kazakhs, the Russians and peoples of other territories."

Ukrainian politicians are themselves divided on the topic. The genocide vote in parliament last year was boycotted by the party of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who draws his support from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, as well as the Communists.

Even in Krasylivka, people say the issue is complicated. Many survivors blame the Soviet government for the famine. But many also say that the cruelty of the local authorities compounded the tragedy.

Source: DailyComet

Ukraine PM Resigns As Parties Jostle For Power

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych submitted his resignation on Friday as a new parliament was sworn in and rival parties jostled to form a government after September elections.

Yulia Tymoshenko at opening of Parliament on November 23, 2007.
Yanukovych formally gave up his powers at an inaugural parliament session in which all 450 new members of parliament were solemnly sworn in.

"I announce the renunciation of the powers of the Ukrainian government," Yanukovych said at the ceremony in which he embraced his possible replacement, Yulia Tymoshenko. She was dressed like her supporters in her party's uniform: a red blouse and white v-necked jumper.

Parliament's inauguration means that talks to form a government reach a decisive stage in this former Soviet republic that lies sandwiched between giant neighbour Russia and the countries of the European Union.

A spokeswoman for the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc predicted that a coalition deal could be reached as early as Friday following behind-the-scenes talks.

"The coalition agreement could in principle be signed on Friday," the spokeswoman told AFP, requesting anonymity.

A leader of President Viktor Yushchenko's party Our Ukraine-Self Defence, Vyacheslav Kirilenko, also said a coalition agreement could be signed on Friday in comments reported by Interfax.

Ukraine held snap elections on September 30 in an effort to resolve months of wrangling between Yushchenko, who supports full integration with the West, including the NATO military alliance, and the more pro-Russian Yanukovych.

Pro-Western political forces took a narrow lead in the election, although Yanukovych's Regions Party took the most votes overall.

Analysts say the most likely outcome of coalition talks is an "orange" coalition of Yushchenko's party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, which together spearheaded a peaceful uprising known as the Orange Revolution in 2004.

Together the two have 228 seats out of the total 450.

If such a coalition were to be formed Tymoshenko, a former prime minister under Yushchenko, would probably return to the post.

However it is not certain that this is what Yushchenko would want. Earlier he called for Yanukovych's Regions party to be included.

Relations between the president and Tymoshenko broke down within months of him coming to power in 2005, while critics took her to task as prime minister for a series of populist economic measures.

On Friday Yanukovych again voiced hopes that his party would be included in the next government.

"I am confident" of the possibility of such an alliance, Yanukovych was quoted by Interfax as saying.

Source: AFP

Newly Eelected Ukrainian Prliament Convenes For 1st Session

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian lawmakers elected in a September vote aimed at ending persistent political turmoil convened for their first parliamentary session Friday, opening the way for a Cabinet to be formed in the country.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich (R, front row) and other government officials applaud during the new parliamentary session in Kiev, November 23, 2007. Ukraine's new post-election parliament opens on Friday, with uncertainty lingering over virtually all key decisions, including formation of a majority coalition and government after three years of instability.
The two pro-Western parties that were central to the 2004 Orange Revolution won enough votes to muster a slim majority of 228 seats in the Verkhovna Rada, the 450-member parliament, and have pledged to form a governing coalition.

Their main rival, led by Moscow-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, has the biggest faction in parliament with 175 seats. His Party of Regions lacks a coalition partner strong enough to forge a majority, but deep divisions in the Rada point to further wrangling in a nation long mired in political conflict.

The session began with lawmakers rising from their seats to listen to a legislator's oath, read out by the new parliament's senior member, and to a choir in traditional Ukrainian costumes singing a popular folk song. Each lawmaker was to sign the oath.

Ukrainian politics have been driven by a power struggle pitting President Viktor Yushchenko, swept to power in the Orange Revolution street protests against election fraud, and Yanukovych, his bitter rival in the 2004 presidential vote that sparked the demonstrations.

Yanukovych was initially declared the winner, but the Supreme Court threw out the result and Yushchenko won a new vote.

Yanukovych rebounded and became Prime Minister after his party received the biggest share of vote in March 2006 parliamentary elections, capitalizing on widespread disappointment in the slow pace of reforms and what critics said was Yushchenko's failure to deliver on his Orange Revolution promises.

The struggle reached its peak earlier this year, when Yushchenko accused Yanukovych of an illegal power grab and called the new parliamentary election, held Sept. 30.

The Rada has 30 days to form a parliamentary majority and another 30 days to form a government.

Source: Kyiv Post

Coalition Doubtful Ahead Of Rada Opening

KIEV, Ukraine -- Leading politicians don’t expect a coalition agreement to emerge as they prepare for the new parliament’s first session on Nov. 23, noting that the likelihood of an Orange parliamentary majority has grown fairly faint.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the leading candidate for prime minister.
“I am not a pessimist, but a well-informed person,” Yuriy Yekhanurov, former prime minister and close ally of President Viktor Yushchenko, told reporters on Nov. 20. He has been critical of the prospect of Yulia Tymoshenko’s return to the post of prime minister.

“I think we have serious work ahead of us. The main matter is that Ukrainians very poorly listen to one another.”

The Ukrainian Constitution requires that a coalition agreement is signed by all its participants within 30 days of the parliament’s first session.

Given that three Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense (OUPSD) deputies have yet to support the agreement to form the Democratic Forces Coalition, it’s highly unlikely a coalition will emerge during the first session, politicians and analysts have said.

“Everyone will sing the Ukrainian anthem with inspiration, and then break for writing their statements on forming factions and officially select faction leaders,” Yekhanurov said. “I think we won’t be able to do more than that.”

According to the Constitution, coalition formation takes place in three stages: The first parliamentary session is held within 30 days of official publication of election results (Oct. 27), a coalition agreement is signed within 30 days of the first session and a prime minister is nominated within 30 days after the agreement is signed.

Numerous formalities are scheduled for the Nov. 23 session, which are expected to be well-attended by Ukraine’s current and past leaders. President Viktor Yushchenko’s press service said Nov. 21 that the head of state was so far not planning to attend the Rada’s opening ceremonies.

The outgoing Cabinet of Ministers led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych must officially resign their posts at the session, becoming acting ministers until a new government is elected by parliament.

A rotating temporary presidium with representatives of the parliament’s five factions will lead the sessions until a new chairman is elected, explained Yuriy Syrotiuk, a political analyst with the Kyiv-based Open Society Foundation, funded by American, British and Polish donors.

The number of parliamentary committees will have to be determined – there were 26 in the Rada’s fifth convocation and 24 in the fourth, he said.

Each deputy must also submit a statement declaring faction membership.

After these procedures, the national deputies could theoretically form the new parliamentary coalition by signing an agreement, which should occur before a new chairman is elected.

However, the Democratic Forces Coalition – declared by the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, Byut, and the pro-presidential OUPSD – doesn’t have support from at least three OUPSD politicians: National Security and Defense Council secretary Ivan Pliushch, Ihor Kril and Vasyl Petiovka. The latter two are considered to be closely aligned with Presidential Secretariat Chair Viktor Baloha.

Most political observers expect a repeat of last year, when drafting and signing a coalition agreement was dragged out to the last minute of the month-long deadline.

The pro-Western coalition revealed further instability when several OUPSD politicians stated this week they would not support Tymoshenko for prime minister or Viacheslav Kyrylenko for parliament chair.

After a coalition agreement emerges, the voting for the next parliamentary speaker should occur within a month.

The Presidential Secretariat now supports Pliushch, who has headed the Rada twice in the past, for the Rada chair over Kyrylenko, a younger and fiercely pro-Western politician.

For weeks, Tymoshenko and Kyrylenko assured the public they would gain support to form their coalition.

But while Kyrylenko was allowed to make such statements, he never truly enjoyed the support of the party’s hierarchy, particularly Baloha, said Ivan Lozowy, president of the Kyiv-based Institute of Statehood and Democracy, financed by Ukrainian businessmen.

“Knowing the public’s expectations, Tymoshenko and Kyrylenko tried to cut off the Baloha camp, which was the natural thing to do,” he said.

“Without an economic base, though, people ignore Kyrylenko because everyone knows who holds the real power – Baloha. Kyrylenko was never a real threat to him, and served as a useful pawn during the elections.”

Yushchenko has trusted Baloha with much of the decision-making surrounding the coalition-forming, Lozowy said.

Meanwhile, the Party of Regions has insisted no parliamentary chair or prime minister can be selected without its approval. The party flexed its political might throughout the week, demonstrating its indifference to being shut out of the potential Democratic Forces Coalition.

Region’s Raisa Bohatyriova said on Nov. 20 that her party and its allies could support Pliushch’s candidacy, suggesting they hold the trump card.

They are against Kyrylenko because of his strong advocacy of Ukrainian cultural and historical issues, and consistently pro-Western positions, including support for NATO membership.

Kyrylenko’s candidacy is further threatened by the secret ballot vote for the parliamentary chair, which will make undermining his candidacy quite easy, Syrotiuk said.

Meanwhile, Volodymyr Lytvyn, leader of the eponymous bloc, said his faction won’t support any candidate for parliamentary speaker.

“We don’t need to assume responsibility for the work of political forces, which divided posts among themselves and want someone to support their positions with their votes,” Lytvyn said.

Meanwhile, opposition to Tymoshenko’s candidacy for premier has gained momentum among OUPSD politicians.

Anatoliy Matvienko said he opposes any candidate for prime minister who will compete for the Ukrainian presidency in the 2010 elections, a direct reference to Tymoshenko.

Source: Kyiv Post

Hollywood Cartoon To Be Made In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- In an unexpected move, some of Hollywood moviemakers seem to view Ukraine as the Promised Land for realizing their projects.

Billy Frolick's acclaimed cartoon “Madagascar”.
Just last Friday American screenwriter Billy Frolick, whose biggest project so far was the script for the acclaimed cartoon “Madagascar,” is having the next animation based on his screenplay made in Ukraine.

The film, whose working title is “Paws and Wires,” will be co-produced by Ukrainian 3D animation studio Umbrella Vision and made by Ukrainian animators, at the request of Umbrella Animation Works Inc. based in the US.

“Paws and Wires” will be created to resemble the aforementioned “Madagascar,” as well as “Ice Age,” “Finding Nemo,” “Over The Hedge” and similar 3D animations.

The producers refused to reveal any plot details so far, but claimed that extracts of the film will be shown at Cannes Film Festival 2008.

The characters of the cartoon will be voiced by Hollywood stars and the recording will naturally be conducted in the States, as Ukraine so far lacks a suitable technology base for it.

On the other hand, the music for the film will be written by Ukrainian composers and the background symphonic parts will be recorded in Kyiv.

According to the producer of the project, Mikhail Dudko, the financing of “Paws and Wires” will be provided by Ukrainian sponsors and the budget will resemble that of similar American films.

The film, set to be released in 2009, will be first distributed in the US, though there is a possibility that the world premiere will take place simultaneously in Ukraine.

Frolick, whose future projects include the movie “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (based on the famous novel by Richard Matheson), explained that work in the American studio system is difficult, as it’s hard for authors to retain their vision, and he sees more possibilities for him to avoid this by working in Ukraine.

Somehow his words bring to memory the times when the pioneers of American cinema fled from New York to California, to have more freedom doing what they want.

So is Ukraine becoming New Gollywood? Just joking…

Source: Kyiv Post

Yushchenko: Ukraine's Roads Are Europe's Most Corrupt And Dangerous

KIEV, Ukraine -- Europe's most dangerous roads and greediest traffic cops are in the same place - the former Soviet republic Ukraine, said President Viktor Yushchenko during a televised meeting with law enforcers.


Some 7,500 people lost their lives in Ukrainian road accidents in 2006, a 20 per cent increase over 2005. The year 2007 is on track (nearly 7,000 by mid-November) to be even deadlier, making a car trip in Ukraine four times riskier than in France or Belgium, and eight times more dangerous than in Germany, an indignant Yushchenko claimed.

"What kind of statistic is that? It is a direct reflection of the way you work!" the Orange Revolution leader told a glum auditorium filled with the leadership of the country's DAI traffic police force. "You are doing your jobs badly, and unprofessionally ... you should be ashamed."

The Ukrainian president's last visit to DAI headquarters, in July 2005, ended with a furious Yushchenko, a supporter of European politics and standards in Ukraine, declaring the organization dissolved.

Yushchenko's decision to wipe the DAI off the bureaucratic books (it never really worked) came after a notorious June 2005 road trip with Yushchenko at the wheel of an unmarked government sedan. Traffic cops looking to cash in on invented traffic violations halted Yushchenko eight times over a 600-kilometre route.

"The assembled DAI leadership received the president's Monday comments in silence," Ukrainska Pravda reported. A few colonels busily scribbled notes.

Yushchenko during the tirade ticked off several nasty DAI tactics long familiar to most Ukrainian drivers. Police place traffic signs not for public safety, but where they will snare the most unwary motorists.

Speeding law is ignored, but advertising signs are scrupulously controlled by DAI officers, the better to bring ad sign registration fees into the DAI budget.

Extortion of bribes from motorists is not just tolerated, but expected by mid-level police managers as they get a cut.

Korrespondent magazine in an article entitled "The situation on Ukrainian roads is becoming a national disaster" singled out "a total absence of punishment" as one reason Ukraine's traffic police seem so uninterested in enforcing traffic law properly.

A typical fine for a simple traffic violation in Ukraine - for instance running a stop sign or driving with a broken tail light - averages between $2 and $4 dollars.

A drunk driving conviction carries a license suspension averaging six months, but only after a court trial, and if the vehicle is needed for the driver to work, then most judges will throw out the suspension. The fine if assessed averages between $40 and $80 dollars.

"In fact, traffic police have very few tools with which they can influence driver behaviour," argued Evhen Kravets, a traffic police spokesman, in Fakty newspaper. "How can we tell if a particular citizen happens to be doing what a court told him?"

Even avoiding a manslaughter rap after running down a hapless pedestrian has, in Ukraine, its unofficial price. Provided the victim had no important friends or his family money, as little as $5,000 dollars split between the judge and state prosecutor will usually get the case thrown out, according to the Ukrainska Kriminala web site.

Another contributing factor to DAI inefficiency is officer salaries equivalent to $300 dollars a month, producing a 70 per cent annual turnover in DAI personnel, Fakty reported.

"With that kind of salary and retention rate it is naive to expect honest enforcement of the law," Korrespondent noted.

Danger levels on Ukrainian roads are heightened, Yushchenko said, because police corruption extends off the roads.

A driver's license without having to take the test - or indeed knowing how to drive - costs in Ukraine's black market from $200 to $500 dollars.

A vehicle inspection without the inspector runs around $50 dollars, depending on the make and age of the auto not being inspected.

The Ukrainian leader at the end of the meeting gave police bosses "six months or else" to show substantial improvement.

The DAI colonels and generals "showed no particular reaction to that demand either," Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Source: Earth Times

AIDS On The Rise In Russia, Ukraine

MOSCOW, Russia -- AIDS has gained ground in Russia and Ukraine where drug use by injection remains the number one cause of new HIV infections, the United Nations' AIDS report for 2007 said overnight.

AIDS patient in Odessa, Ukraine.
The number of new HIV cases was also on the rise in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and in Uzbekistan. The latter now has the largest epidemic in Central Asia, according to the annual AIDS report.

Of the 150,000 people newly infected with HIV in the former Soviet Union, 90 per cent were in two countries: Russia and Ukraine.

Russia accounts for 66 per cent of all new infections in the former Soviet Union, confirming the steady worsening of the AIDS pandemic following a period from 2001 to 2003 when AIDS was on the decline.

"The HIV epidemic in the Russian Federation continues to grow, although not as rapidly as in the late 1990s," said the report.

Injecting drug use remains the main mode of HIV transmission, but infection through unprotected heterosexual sex is increasing steadily in Russia, according to the report.

The total number of people living with HIV in the former Soviet Union has climbed to 1.6 million, a 150 per cent increase from 2001.

In Ukraine, new HIV diagnoses have more than doubled since 2001, reaching 16,094 last year and exceeding 8700 in the first six months of 2007, the report said.

Southeastern Ukraine and the capital Kiev continue to be the most affected regions.

One in four prostitutes in the coal mining city of Donetsk is HIV positive, while infection rates among intravenous drug users in some southern Ukrainian cities can reach close to 90 per cent, according to the report.

AIDS is also progressing in Moldova, where HIV infections doubled between 2003 to 2006. and in Azerbaijan, where half of those living with HIV were infected in 2005 and 2006.

Uzbekistan is grappling with Central Asia's worst AIDS crisis, with HIV infections skyrocketing from 28 cases in 1999 to 2205 in 2006. A third of drug users in the capital Tashkent are HIV positive, according to the report.

There was a sharp increase in the number of HIV cases in Kazakhstan after more than 130 children were infected in a hospital in the south of the country last year.

UNAIDS estimates that 55,000 people died of AIDS-related diseases in eastern Europe and Central Asia in 2007.

Source: Perth Now

For Ukraine's Miners, Demand And Dangers Mounting

DONETSK, Ukraine -- As the country marks three days of mourning, Ukraine today buries the first victims of a coal mine blast that so far has claimed 89 lives. Another 11 miners are still missing since the November 18 explosion and are feared dead.

Relatives cry at the funeral of a coal miner at a cemetery in eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk, Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007. Flags flew at half-staff nationwide and hope of finding anyone still alive underground virtually vanished; 89 died and 11 miners remain unaccounted for after the methane explosion Sunday at the Zasyadko mine.
Deadly methane blasts are not rare in Ukraine, which is the world's second-deadliest country for miners after China. But the disaster at the Zasyadko mine, located near the eastern city of Donetsk at the heart of the country's coal industry, is the worst of its kind since Ukraine's independence.

Miners and their families are pinning the blame squarely on the government, which they say has done little to improve miners' safety in its drive for greater productivity.

"An accident like this could have been prevented if the state had carried out its responsibilities properly and controlled the situation in the industry," says Mykhaylo Volynets, the chairman of Ukraine's independent trade union for miners.

The country's coal industry, Volynets claims, is riddled with "corruption and irresponsible behavior" at the managerial level.

Dangerous Labor

Ukraine's run-down coal pits are among the most hazardous in the world. The Zasyadko mine, despite being one of the country's largest and best-equipped, has still been plagued by a string of disasters: 125 miners died there between 1999 and 2002.

A number of miners said they intended to quit their jobs at the Zasyadko mine after the deadly blast. But the mine's leadership is likely to find quick replacements. In economically depressed eastern Ukraine, coal mining for many remains the only source of income.

Mykola Surhai, who served as a Ukrainian coal minister during the Soviet era, says mining safety has deteriorated since the 1991 breakup of the USSR.

"New mines have to be built, equipment should be upgraded, funds should be allocated for protection and new security equipment," says Surhai. "There used to be a law controlling work in the mining sector and other industries. All controlling organs were guided by this legislation and security rules. These were compulsory for all."

Volynets agrees, claiming the number of mining deaths in relation to the volume of coal produced has tripled in Ukraine since the country gained independence.

"It's become worse, much worse. The system of work has disintegrated, particularly the work safety system," he says. "The coal industry is plagued by poor funding, bad management, a low level of responsibility for security, and a lack of governmental will to fix the problems. So these accidents repeat themselves over and over."

Paid To Produce

Part of the problem is that Ukrainian mines are deeper than average, usually running more than 1,000 meters underground. The danger is compounded by routine safety violations. In the country's now mostly private mines, workers are paid by the amount of coal they extract and often disable gas-detecting devices in order to continue work.

The government has pledged to pay relatives of the Zasyadko victims about $20,000 per miner in compensation. But this has done little to soothe the grief and outrage sparked by the most recent tragedy.

Serhiy Harmash, an independent Ukrainian journalist, says miners will continue dying unless money-hungry officials shift priorities.

"If this mine continues to function, I'm convinced more people will die. People have been dying there, and lessons still haven't been learned," says Harmash. "Now we have another accident. If nothing is done, people will continue dying. I think that's what is going to happen, because for our so-called leaders, money is more important than the lives of simple workers."

Ukraine is unlikely to follow in Europe's footsteps and move away from its coal industry, which currently accounts for 95 percent of the country's energy sources.

During a visit to Donetsk on November 19, Yushchenko criticized the government for the poor safety record in mines. But he said coal production will nonetheless remain a top priority for Ukraine.

"Ukraine's coal reserves amount to some 175 billion tons. This represents energetic security for more than one Ukrainian generation," Yushchenko said. "The coal industry has been a priority over the past century, and I'm convinced it will remain a national priority for many more years."

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, whose stronghold is based in coal-rich eastern Ukraine, sought to minimize his government's responsibility in the tragedy.

"Not a single mine in the world is safe from such incidents," he said during his visit to the Zasyadko mine. The government, he said, is "definitely" working to increase coal production.

Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Yushchenko Tries Another Customs Crackdown

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko on Monday ordered the firing of Ukraine’s top customs officials and the creation of a new department at the security service to crack down on an estimated $25 billion worth of illegal imports.

Viktor Yushchenko at a meeting with the SBU (formerly the KGB).
The measures come after a special anti-contraband operation by the SBU, the security service, failed, apparently due to sabotage from the top customs officials.

“You have been losing courage, you don’t have energy to resist swindlers,” Yushchenko said addressing Oleksandr Yehorov, the head of the State Customs Service. “Who is directing you?”

Yushchenko joined a meeting of law enforcement agencies, including the Prosecutor General Office, at the SBU headquarters in Kiev in his most significant attempt so far to crack down on illegal imports.

He ordered the replacement of the entire administration at the Southern Customs Office, which supervises most of the imports coming to Ukraine via Black Sea ports. He also ordered the dismissal of a number of lower level officials, including the head of the Odessa Sea Port and the Customs Office in Mykolayiv.

The measures are the most significant attempt to curtail illegal imposts since early 2005, when then-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko launched her ‘Contraband. Stop’ campaign.

The campaign sent mobile SBU teams roaming throughout Ukraine with the authority to stop and to check papers of any cargo shipment. But the latest meeting at the SBU shows that campaign, as well as the most recent operation, had failed.

“The contraband is now on a scale that it is threatening the nation,” Yushchenko said. “The customs control in Ukraine is being rapidly destroyed.”

Now, the SBU within a week will have to submit a plan to create a completely new counterintelligence department that would have sweeping powers to fight corruption and the illegal imports. “This department should become a real tool,” Yushchenko said.

The measures seek to address one the most controversial sectors of the Ukrainian economy, which is thought to have an annual turnover of up to $25 billion.

Yushchenko, citing expert research, said up to 70% of goods in high demand in Ukraine are thought to come via contraband, when traders completely fail to pay taxes and customs fees. This, he said, costs Ukraine up to 60 billion hryvnias, or $12 billion, annually.

Another UAH65 billion worth of goods are imported via the so called “gray” contraband in which traders do pay some taxes and fees, but substantially less than required by law.

Both of the ways to import illegal goods represent a major chunk of the shadow economy, estimated at an annual UAH180 billion, that fuels corruption in Ukraine. And Yushchenko’s measures seek to eradicate that.

“Nothing - from personnel reshuffle to punitive actions - will stop me from achieving results,” he said.

The developments come after the SBU’s most recent anti-contraband operation, known as Tsunami, failed following months of major opposition and sabotage from the top customs officials.

“We can’t handle that if the top officials are hindering us,” Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, the acting head of the SBU, said. “This was not just corruption, this was the high level of corruption.”

Source: Ukrainian Journal

Migrants Head To Ukraine To Plot EU Entry

CHOP, Ukraine -- Ukraine has become the latest battleground for illegal migrants desperate to get to Britain as the European Union expands its borders ever eastward.

A Slovakian border guard and his dog scan the Ukrainian border for illegal immigrants.
A military barracks in the town of Chop has become home to Lebanese, Iraqis, Moldovans, Russians and others desperate to cross the frontier into the EU.

For them, the promised land is agonisingly close.

The border with Hungary, and with it the EU, is just a few hundred yards to the south. To the west, the EU frontier between Ukraine and Slovakia is no more than a couple of miles away. Only a couple of dozen miles north, Ukraine borders Poland.

However, according to the authorities in Ukraine, the unwilling residents in Chop aren't aiming for Hungary, Slovakia or Poland as their final destination.

"They all want to get to Western Europe. Many want to go to England," said a senior officer at the camp, who requested anonymity because of military rules.

For the moment, that trip to Western Europe is a fraught journey across well guarded borders. On Dec 21 however, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland are all set to join the EU's borderless Schengen zone. Within its frontiers, border controls will be abolished.

The prospect has already caused uproar in Austria, where the interior minister, Guenther Platter, has suggested setting up internal military checkpoints to compensate.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said last night: "The Government must work with EU partners to prevent a surge in illegal immigration when internal border controls are abolished in this country."

Britain is facing increasing pressure from immigration. There were 591,000 new arrivals last year alone and the Office for National Statistics has predicted there will be 191,000 added to the population through direct immigration every year until 2031.

While frontier posts are being torn down within the new Schengen zone, controls are being dramatically enhanced at its eastern edge.

On the EU side are the re-inforced border police forces of countries such as Slovakia. In the town of Sobrance, nine miles from the border with Ukraine, a high-tech frontier surveillance centre has been built where officers scrutinise plasma screens displaying pictures relayed from thermal imaging cameras.

"The surveillance of this border is crucial," said Jan Bucek, Slovakia's deputy interior minister. "The EU fears that here's where all the immigrants and terrorists could get in. But we'll stop them."

Those efforts have been replicated along the outer border of the Schengen zone - in effect creating a new Iron Curtain.

This, however, is not a Soviet barrier to keep out the West, but a European wall against influxes from the east.

But a few hundred metres across the border in Chop, there is little sign of the sophisticated equipment being deployed in the new Schengen zone.

Down a potholed road, beyond a police patrol that locals warn is out only to collect bribes, soldiers in fatigues stream in and out of an iron-gated camp. This is Ukraine's holding centre for illegal immigrants.

"We give them healthcare and nutrition," said the officer. "Mostly it's young men, but there are some women from Moldova - the majority are smuggled across the border."

From next month, all illegal migrants detected by surveillance centres such as Sobrance will be returned to their point of entry into the EU ­ usually Ukraine, which already feels overwhelmed by migrants.

"It's a real problem," said the officer. "We're going to get more and more people."

At the moment, thousands pass through the camp at Chop every year.

It holds about 100 people at a time, who are held there for a few days before being sent to a similar camp nearby.

Unlike many countries in the EU, Ukraine only approves a tiny fraction of asylum cases, so almost all the camp's residents are ultimately deported.

"It's expensive for us to send them home," said the officer. "All those plane tickets. But they will keep coming."

Source: Telegraph

Ukraine's President Meets Grieving Families

DONETSK, Ukraine -- Only bodies are emerging from underground now. Rescuers are still searching for any survivors at the Zasiadko mine, but with 80 dead Ukraine's industrial heartland is heavy.

President Yushchenko (lower left) meets with miners.
Search teams have had to call a break in their efforts because temperatures underground have risen too high; hardly improving the chances for the 20 men still missing.

Families briefly besieged the mine manager's office on Monday as their grief spilled over into anger at a lack of information about what was happening.

When that information came, relatives crowded to hear a list of the dead or missing read out. Many, on hearing the news they had dreaded, could not stay to listen to any more.

The Zasiadko mine is one of Ukraine's three biggest and has suffered several accidents in recent years. It is one of the most profitable and
miner's wages at 680 euros a month are triple the national average.

President Viktor Yushchenko visited on Monday, meeting victim's families, and chairing a session of the commission investigating the causes of what may soon be confirmed as the country's worst-ever mining disaster.

However it is the present filling people's thoughts right now, coming to terms with loss or the unknown, or preparing for burials. For many the future only holds bereavement and uncertainty.

Source: EuroNews

Rescue Teams Battle Ukraine Mine Fire, 70 Dead

DONETSK, Ukraine -- Rescue teams battled a tenacious fire in a Ukrainian colliery on Monday as they strove to locate 30 miners missing underground after a methane blast that killed at least 70 miners.



Distraught relatives awaiting news of missing miners more than 24 hours after the accident pushed their way into the office of the director to confront officials and demand information on rescue efforts and possible survivors.

The explosion at the Zasyadko mine in Donetsk, heart of Ukraine's Donbass coalfield, is likely to become the country's deadliest accident since independence from Soviet rule in 1991.

Twenty-eight miners remained in hospital, one in serious condition, according to the latest figures provided by Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev.

"The situation has become worse," Klyuyev, who heads a commission of inquiry, told reporters.

"The temperature has risen. But rescue work is proceeding. There are always chances for a rescue ... If we put the fire out, we will finish matters today."

But trade union officials have said since Sunday's explosion 1,250 metres (3,800 feet) underground at the Zasyadko mine that there is little chance of finding survivors among the missing.

President Viktor Yushchenko was to visit Donetsk on Monday to press efforts to investigate the explosion.

On Sunday, he said the government of his longstanding rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, had failed to reorganise the mining sector and improve its safety record. Yanukovich visited the mine in his native region on Sunday.

Post-Soviet Ukraine's worst mining accident was in March 2000, when 80 miners were killed in an explosion at a coal mine near the eastern town of Luhansk.

DISTRAUGHT RELATIVES

Weeping relatives spent the night at a park adjacent to the mine. By mid-morning, more than 100 made their way into the colliery's administrative headquarters and burst into the office of the mine director where Klyuyev was chairing a meeting.

"We demand at least some sort of information!" shouted Olga, a woman in her 50s, her face ashen. "We've been waiting for more than 24 hours and all we get is promises. No one is telling us anything."

Officials read out a list of identified victims. Klyuyev told relatives the fire was hampering rescue work and that officials were doing their best to keep relatives informed.

The group left the office within half an hour, with medics attending to several clearly under stress.

Miners at the pit, one of Ukraine's most profitable in a sector plagued by obsolete equipment, earn wages equal to about $1,000, more than three times national average monthly pay.

Many were openly distraught at the accident which sent fire and smoke roaring through underground shafts.

"After an accident like this, lots of miners quit and I'm thinking about it too," said a miner identifying himself as Nikolai. "Why should I do this? I live alone with my daughter. What happens if I end up getting killed?".

Others seemed resigned to sticking to their jobs in the pit.

"I don't know how to do anything else," said Yevgeny. "I earn more than 4,000 hryvnias ($800) and I have four children. I have to keep them fed."

Other industrial sectors in Ukraine have also been plagued by accidents causing loss of life or damage -- including the derailment of a train carrying phosphorus in July and a gas explosion killing 20 people in an apartment block last month.

Authorities have declared Tuesday a national day of mourning throughout the ex-Soviet state of 47 million. Three days of mourning were announced in the region and funerals were scheduled for Tuesday.

Source: The Star

Putin Sends Condolences To Yushchenko Over Coalmine Tragedy

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a message of condolences to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Russian President Vladimir Putin
"I was deeply shaken by the news of the tragedy at the Zasyadko mine in Donetsk region causing a massive loss of life. We sincerely share the grief of fraternal Ukraine and regard the developments as our common disaster," the message received by Interfax on Monday reads.

Interfax reported earlier that the death toll in the coalmine blast had increased to 69 by Monday morning.

The Ukrainian Emergency Situations Ministry said 31 miners were still missing.

Meanwhile, 357 survivors have been raised to the surface, and 28 of them have been hospitalized - 27 with gas poisoning and one with burns and injuries.

A mixture of air and methane exploded at 3:11 a.m. on Sunday at a depth of 1,078 meters.

There were 456 miners underground, 186 in the disaster area.

Source: Interfax

In Ukraine, Condemning Communist Crimes Worldwide

KIEV, Ukraine -- With the 75th anniversary of "The Great Famine" coming up, Ukrainians are becoming more and more aware about the crimes committed by the Communist Party, and not only about the bygone Soviet party, but also about the existing Chinese Communist Party.

Member of Canada's parliament, former Canadian secretary of state for the Asian-Pacific region, David Kilgour speaking at the public rally on November 15, 2007 in Kiev Independence Square, about the new evidence on state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China.
On November 14, David Matas, international human rights lawyer, made a speech at the conference "Legal mechanisms of international influence on totalitarian communist regimes in order to stop their evil deeds," which took place in Kiev.

In his speech, David Matas emphasized that communism affects every country and every nation. "Crimes that are being committed against Falun Gong are not only China's problem, just as "The Great Famine" is not only the Ukraine's concern. The persecution of people is an essence of communism," said Matas.

Representatives from more than 25 organizations from different countries gathered to condemn crimes of communism, those committed in the past as well as those taking place right now. The participants agreed on the necessity of condemning the communist ideology in Ukraine.

David Matas, international human rights lawyer, at the conference "Legal mechanisms of international influence on totalitarian communist regimes in order to stop their evil deeds." "This visit to Ukraine is very important to us because similar events happened here in the past. In the 1930s, during "The Great Famine," millions of people were exterminated here. At that time, communists insisted that it had never happened, just like now the Chinese Communist Party denies harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners," said David Matas.

According to Matas, governments of many countries they have visited have begun to bring up this problem with China's leadership. Physicians do not recommend their patients go there for organ transplantation, and some countries issued laws forbidding their citizens from going to China for this purpose.

"The most important thing is that recently the Communist Party has changed the law banning the sale of organs in China," a former member of Canada's parliament, and a former Canadian secretary of state for the Asian-Pacific region, David Kilgour remarked. "We need to follow it up and watch if they really do it."

After releasing their investigation report titled "Bloody Harvest: Revised Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China," Kilgour and Matas have been traveling to more than 40 countries in a global mission to raise awareness of the practice, which they conclude to be "a form of evil yet to be seen on this planet."

Source: Epoch Times

Ukraine Mine Explosion Leaves 63 Dead

DONETSK, Ukraine -- A methane explosion ripped through a mine in Ukraine's Donbass coalfield overnight, killing at least 63 miners and leaving 37 missing in underground shafts engulfed by fire and smoke.

Ukrainian rescuers on their way to the Zasyadko mine in Donetsk.
A trade union official said there was only a small chance the missing would be found alive after the blast more than 1000 metres underground at Zasyadko mine in Donetsk.

The figures issued by Ukraine's Emergencies Ministry put the accident among the most serious since Ukraine won independence from Soviet rule in 1991.

Post-Soviet Ukraine's most deadly mining accident was in March 2000, when 80 miners were killed in an explosion at a coal mine near the eastern town of Luhansk.

Other industrial sectors in Ukraine have also been plagued by accidents causing loss of life or damage.

Relatives wept, and some women screamed uncontrollably, as officials read out lists of the dead at the mine headquarters.

"I've come here to collect my grandson," said one despondent woman in her sixties. "I accompanied him to work yesterday. Now I want to take him home."

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich flew to Donetsk, his native region, to assess the latest of a long series of accidents in Donbass's outdated mines.

He said a fire was still burning unchecked several hours after the blast.

"There is a blockage at the accident site formed by a cave-in, airshafts and water channels," Mr Yanukovich, dressed in black, said after a meeting of a commission of inquiry.

"This is being cleared."

A deputy prime minister, one of several officials who rushed to Donetsk, later said the fire was under control.

Officials said 27 miners were in hospital, one in serious condition.

President Viktor Yushchenko, the prime minister's longstanding rival, announced plans to visit Donetsk tomorrow.

His office quoted him as saying that Mr Yanukovich's government had "made insufficient efforts to reorganise the mining sector, particularly the implementation of safe mining practices".

Funerals were scheduled for Wednesday, and three days of mourning were proclaimed in the region.

Yuri Zayats, head of Zasyadko's trade union council, said there was little hope of finding the missing alive.

"The chances are small. They are poor," he said by telephone from Donetsk.

Trade unionists said the process of identifying the bodies was under way. Smoke, they said, was hampering rescue efforts.

Ukrainian television showed survivors of the explosion in a hospital isolation ward.

"The temperature rose sharply - so sharply you couldn't see anything," Vitaly Kvitkovsky told a television crew.

"I put on my breathing equipment and found my way out by feeling the pipes and the rail lines."

Officials said 457 miners were underground at the time of accident. Rescue teams brought more than 350 to the surface.

Accidents are common in Ukraine's coal mines, many of which date from the mid-19th century. Experts there say mining deep below the surface increases the risk of explosions.

Though Zasyadko had experienced several accidents in recent years, it is considered one of Ukraine's most modern, efficient and profitable mines upholding safety standards.

Official statistics put at 80 the death toll in mining accidents this year, though independent trade unions say the figure is higher. Last year, 170 miners died.

Source: Courier Mail

At Least 33 Killed In Ukraine Mine Blast: Ministry

DONETSK, Ukraine -- A gas explosion ripped through a notoriously dangerous Ukrainian coal mine on Sunday killing at least 33 miners, the ministry of emergency situations said.

Ukrainian coal mines are some of the deadliest work places in the world.
Rescuers were searching for 77 other miners who had been working in the area of the blast and are still unaccounted for at the Zasyadko mine in the Donetsk region, ministry spokesman Igor Krol told AFP.

Shocked family members gathered by the mine on Sunday morning, many desperate for news of their loved-ones.

"I detest them, these mines," said a middle-aged woman, in tears as she tried to get news of a relative.

A massive rescue operation has been initiated with 65 rescue teams and 21 medical units deployed to the scene, the ministry said.

More than 450 people had been working in the mine when the explosion occurred at 3:11 am local time (0111 GMT), a statement said.

So far some 300 miners had been evacuated, said Mykola Maleyev, an official with Ukraine's work safety authority.

"Work has been complicated by the fact that the incident has affected the ventilation system," Malayev said.

The Zasyadko mine, one of Ukraine's largest, employs some 10,000 people and produces up to 10,000 tonnes of coal every day.

After several deadly accidents it has gained a reputation as one of the most dangerous in the country.

A gas leak in September 2006 killed 13 miners and made dozens more sick.

In 1999 an explosion there claimed 50 lives, while in 2001 another blast claimed 55 lives.

Most of the disasters were caused by build-ups of methane gas, which can occur suddenly in the mine shafts, said Anatoly Akimochkin, deputy head of Ukraine's Independent Miners' Union.

"A lot has been done in the mine since those earlier accidents... but the situation in particular work areas often varies from the standards of the mine as a whole," he said.

Ukraine's coal mines are concentrated in the eastern part of the country and are considered among the most perilous in the world, with many poorly financed and employing outdated Soviet-era equipment.

One miner was killed on Saturday in the Lenin Mine, also in Donetsk region, after a section of tunnel collapsed, Interfax news agency reported, citing the emergency situations ministry.

Source: AFP

Ukraine's Supreme Rada To Hold First Session Nov. 23

KIEV, Ukraine -- The new Ukrainian parliament will gather for its first session since early elections in September on November 23, a spokesman for the pro-Russian Party of Regions said Thursday.

Ukraine's Parliament
Five parties made it into the Supreme Rada, the country's 450-seat parliament. The Party of Regions collected 34.37% of the vote, followed by the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc with 30.71% and Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense with 14.15%. The Communists and the Lytvyn bloc gained 5.39% and 3.96% of the vote, respectively.

Vasyl Horbal said that on Thursday representatives of all five political parties gathered to discuss the date for the parliament's first session and unanimously approved November 23.

An agreement on the formation of the coalition is also expected to be signed at the parliamentary session between the pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense and the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc.

Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, one of the leaders of Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense, said, "We will sign an agreement on the coalition of democratic forces on November 23."

The two "orange" parties will hold 228 seats in the new parliament, with 226 votes needed to form a coalition.

President Viktor Yushchenko dismissed the Supreme Rada in April and called snap elections amid a protracted power struggle with Viktor Yanukovych, who he accused of "usurping power" after a group of pro-presidential lawmakers switched to the prime minister's camp.

Source: RIA Novosti

Blame Drivers, Not Cops

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko did not mince words when he met with the leadership of the DAI State Automotive Inspection Service on Nov. 12. “Every year we lose 7,500 people on the roads,” said Yushchenko, essentially blaming traffic police for 35,000 deaths in the last five years.

In Ukraine, more than 20 people die in traffic accidents every 24 hours.
He also criticized traffic cops for corruption. “I am convinced that some of you need to be fired, because you are unable to do your jobs. New people with clean hands and intentions should come to fill your place,” he said.

Yushchenko spelled out what he considers to be the solutions to the country’s high roadside mortality rate, including more video cameras, higher fines, and a 10-year validation period for licensing drivers.

These solutions appear to be aimed at the lack of driving culture among Ukrainian motorists.

Although the country’s traffic police are far from ideal, the lion’s share of responsibility for the situation on the country’s roadways must ultimately lie with the drivers using them.

The new parliament should not waste time enacting changes to the laws governing traffic fines and policing.

A database of traffic violators should be compiled and repeat offenders should have their driving privileges taken away according to a “point system” similar to the one used in the West.

We also urge municipal governments to set up hotlines that would allow pedestrians and drivers to call in and report life-threatening situations caused by drivers who feel that nobody is more important than they are.

And while some traffic police officials deserve to be fired to set an example, the wholesale dismissal of traffic police officers would fail to address the underlying problem of corruption in the police force in general; namely, that their salaries are far too low.

Raising police salaries is key to weeding out corruption throughout Ukraine’s traffic control system.

The extra funds needed for the raises can in part be generated by firing those who deserve to be fired, while offering early retirement packages to others who are unable to perform their duties.

Source: Kyiv Post

Chicago Man To Be Deported For Ties To Nazi-Linked Police Unit

CHICAGO, USA -- An immigration judge in Chicago has ordered the deportation of an elderly North Side man who allegedly hid the details of his World War II service in a Nazi-controlled police force.


The decision, announced Thursday by the U.S. Justice Department, came more than two years after Osyp Firishchak, 88, a retired carpenter, had his U.S. citizenship revoked following a trial.

At the trial, Justice Department lawyers presented documents showing that an Osyp Firishchak born on the same day and in the same town as the defendant belonged to the Nazi-controlled Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.

Authorities said the unit assisted Nazi soldiers in rounding up, beating and killing tens of thousands of Jews, though the Justice Department leveled no specific allegations that Firishchak took part in the slaughter.

Reached by telephone Thursday, Firishchak's wife, Gertrude, said her husband did not want to talk. "It isn't all over," she said. "We don't know anything. We are in the dark. We are waiting and waiting."

Firishchak has lived in the U.S. since 1949 and has been a U.S. citizen since 1954.

In his five-page ruling, Immigration Judge Robert Vinikoor ordered that Firishchak be deported to his native Ukraine. He has until Dec. 10 to appeal the deportation.

"[Firishchak] was a member of a movement hostile to the United States and ... he made willful misrepresentations on his visa application for the purpose of gaining admissions to the United States," Vinikoor wrote.

Firishchak was prosecuted by the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to hunt Nazis. Since then, 107 individuals have been successfully prosecuted and most of them have been removed from the U.S. Others have appeals pending.

The special investigations office has prosecuted 22 residents in Illinois, the most of any state.

Firishchak's attorney, James Maher, did not return phone calls seeking comment Thursday. But in past court proceedings he argued that the 60-year-old documents used against Firishchak were unreliable, circumstantial and filled with hearsay.

In court testimony, Firishchak denied membership in the police unit.

"This order is another victory for the principle that the United States will not provide a safe haven for human rights violators no matter how long ago the crimes were committed," Eli Rosenbaum, director of the special investigations office, told the Tribune Thursday in a telephone interview.

Rosenbaum acknowledged there was no evidence that Firishchak killed Jews, but he said it was clear that his actions led to the deaths of some of the 100,000 Jews living in what was then eastern Poland and present-day Ukraine.

Firishchak concealed his service in the Ukrainian police unit when he immigrated to the United States.

Rosenbaum said his office is now primarily handling cases involving individuals who persecuted Muslims during the Bosnian War in the mid-1990s. However, he continues to focus on World War II cases, which are becoming increasingly more urgent as the targets age and die off.

"Defendants and suspects are in their 80s and they are meeting actuarial expectations, and the Grim Reaper is sometimes beating Lady Justice to the finish line," Rosenbaum said.

Source: Chicago Tribune

Ecological Catastrophe Overwhelms The Strait Of Kerch

MOSCOW, Russia -- A "colossal" ecological catastrophe is growing even larger in the Strait of Kerch where at least 10 oil tankers and cargo ships loaded with sulfur were wrecked in a fierce storm on November 11. At least six sailors died in the wreckage.

A bird cleans itself on the seashore near the southern port of Kavkaz on the Kerch Strait November 16, 2007. A severe storm broke a small Russian oil tanker in two off the Ukrainian port of Kerch on Sunday, spilling more than 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil in what a Russian official said was an "environmental disaster".
Now the storm in the Strait of Kerch is getting stronger, so it is not possible to stop the flow of oil into the sea and organize its collection and removal. Black oil stains are taking over the entire marine territory and the catastrophe is spreading. The oil is expected to reach the Sea of Azov within 24 hours, according to the Russian emergencies ministry.

The Kerch Strait divides Russia to the east from Ukraine to the west and also separates the shallow Sea of Azov to the north from the deeper Black Sea to the south.

"The fuel oil spill was much larger than was officially announced," said Andrey Rudomakha and Victoria Kucherenko of the NGO Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus.

The first disaster hit the tanker Volgoneft-139, which had 4,770 metric tons of fuel oil on board. It split in two spilling fuel oil from four of its eight tanks. The second, third, fifth and sixth tanks were empty when inspected.

So, they calculate, at least half of the fuel oil on board was spilled - about 2,385 tons.

The official figure, given November 11 by the Russian Ministry for Emergencies, was a spill of at least 2,000 tons.

Greenpeace sent a team to the scene and they report that, "Kilometers of coast are soaked in oil, and more has sunk to the seabed. An estimated 30,000 birds have died. The full extent of the disaster has yet to be assessed."

The pollution has spread to the northern side of the Taman Peninsula on the coast of the Azov Sea. Tuzla Spit, the Chushka Spit - on the side of the Strait of Kerch - and the beaches near the villages of Ilyich and Priazovskii are completely covered in oil.

On the coast of the Sea of Azov oil has reached the Cape of Kammenyi. On the shore of the Black Sea, oil has reached the village of Volna on the southern part of the Taman Peninsula.

Today, environmentalists learned that the oil pollution has traveled as far as the village of Kuchugury. They say Aleksandr Komlevoi, a representative of the NGO Saving Taman!, was there today.

The seashore at Kuchugury is severely polluted with lumps of congealed fuel oil. The sea was continuously dumping new pieces of fuel oil onto the shore and the air was filled with the persistent smell of oil, Komlevoi said. He saw about a dozen people conducting cleanup activities.

There also was a massive spill of fuel from the three freight ships loaded with sulfur - the Volnogorsk, the Kovel, and the Nakhichevan - which sunk off the southern edge of the Tuzla Spit. The thousands of tons of sulfur are lying at the bottom of the sea.

This pollution and the oil slick may spread across the entire southern shore of the Taman Peninsula and reach Anapa Resort.

Samples of sea water that were taken yesterday at the Kuban Estuary Station on Chushka Spit between the Port Kavkaz and the Ulyich Village showed 50 times the maximum permissible concentrations for petroleum products in sea water.

The pile-up occurred in the Strait of Kerch on the anchorage area No.450. It is located in the maritime administration of the Kerch Port's in Ukraine's area of responsibility, and also on the Taman Handling Complex located in the maritime administration of the Ports of Temryuk and Kavkaz in Russia's area of responsibility.

Reasons for the accident included stormy weather, the lack of technical preparedness of the ships to work in such weather conditions and the disdain of the ships’ captains when they were warned of the storms.

Rudomakha and Kucherenko say the region is "exceptionally valuable and vulnerable."

The Strait of Kerch is a body of water of the highest fisheries category as it is the migration route for fish between the Azov and Black Seas, including many species that are included in the Red Book of the Russian Federation and Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Fish and protected dolphins have suffered colossal damage. Oiled birds from a wildlife preserve on the shore of the Azov Sea have been abandoned to their fate.

Rudomakha and Kucherenko say, "Tens of thousands of birds have already died as a result of oil pollution. And at least as many are covered with a layer of oil and are destined for death. There are no plans to save them."

"The roots of what happened lie with the fact that in 1999, in the Strait of Kerch at the Russian Port Kavkaz, the Taman Handling Complex - a new floating oil-chemical port, was built, through which petroleum products, sulfur and fertilizers are transferred from small sized boats to those that hold many tons.

With its shallow water, high winds, lack of any kind of natural shelter for the boats, and the possibility of the rapid formation of water spouts, an accident was waiting to happen.

"Such an oil and chemical port should never have been created in the Strait of Kerch," say Rudomakha and Kucherenko.

The interests of private companies were considered to be more important than environmental protection, they say, so effective systems to liquidate oil spills were not created either in the Port Kavkaz or in the Kerch Port.

"The Port Kavkaz does not even have the ability to collect oil in the event of an oil spill, and currently, there is nowhere to put the spilled oil, which would be collected," the environmentalists say.

"And thus," say Rudomakha and Kucherenko, "the ancient land of Taman has gotten a full taste of what oil is. This is by no means economic prosperity, as many investors have promised. It is dead birds and fish, a polluted sea and beaches. The fuel oil left on the bottom of the sea will be long remembered, and will continue to poison the region’s maritime ecosystem for many years."

"The catastrophe in the Strait of Kerch should stand as a lesson for the authorities in Russia. They are obligated to listen to the opinions of the local population and to public environmental organizations, who have tried to show them for the past 10 years that the Taman Peninsula is not a location for oil and chemical ports.

Source: ENS

Ukraine 'Moving Towards' EU Membership

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Ukraine is ready to put its recent political turmoil behind it and join the EU. That was the message from Edilberto Segura, one of the country's top economists, to a meeting in Brussels.

Click on map for larger view.
Speaking on Thursday, the former World Bank official said, “EU membership will come – it is only a matter of time.”

The timing of his speech is telling as it comes on the eve of negotiations next week on a possible EU-Ukraine trade agreement.

Segura reminded an audience of journalists and representatives from NGOs and think tanks that Ukraine’s political situation remains "uncertain" following national elections on 30 September.

Despite the ongoing political gridlock, he said the Orange Revolution of 2004 had led to “more transparency and accountability” than his country had ever known.

He added, “No-one can be sure what will happen and Ukraine still needs more resolute efforts to achieve international standards of governance and transparency.

“But the risk of Ukraine going backwards is almost nil. Ninety per cent of its population want free market reform and closer relations with the EU, policies which are supported by all three major political parties.”

Such reforms, he said, should include changes to the tax system and to the judiciary, including better salaries for judges.

“However, signing a free trade agreement with the EU must be the single most important objective for Ukraine.

“This would secure long term growth and lead to closer integration with the EU. Whether it actually leads to full EU membership is a very complex question but I am sure membership will come.”

He said that, at present, resistance to such a move came from the EU on financial grounds.

“The French, in particular, are afraid that a mostly rural country like Ukraine will lead to it losing some of the agricultural funding it receives from the EU.”

The event was organised by the EU-Ukraine Business Council.

Meanwhile, parliament this week ratified a process to simplify the visa process with with Ukraine.

The agreement on visa changes, agreed on 13 November, will allow a fixed price for visas at €35, and additionally will waive visa charges for students,journalists and close relatives.

Source: The Parliament

GM, Ukravto To Launch Joint Factory In Poland

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s leading auto manufacturing conglomerate, Kyiv-based Ukravto Corporation, and world giant General Motors, have formed a joint venture to manufacture Chevrolet Aveo cars at the Warsaw-based Fabryka Samochodow Osobowych (FSO) car production plant.

Chevrolet Aveo
GM and Ukravto announced their intention to create the venture on Nov 6 after having earlier expressed their interest in such a joint project.

According to preliminary agreements, 60 percent of the newly created venture will be owned by Ukravto and the remaining 40, by GM.

Ukravto’s press service said that the “total amount of investments into the Warsaw joint venture, in which Ukravto will have 60 percent, will exceed $600 million… $125 million has already been invested into equipment and production launching.”

Ukravto’s existing joint project with GM has the Ukrainian company assembling and distributing Chevrolet cars in Ukraine, where the brand already has more than an 8 percent market share, according to Ukravto.

Tariel Vasadze, a lawmaker and Ukravto Corporation’s president, said: “We are starting a new stage of development at FSO together with our long-time partner, the world leader in the automobile market, General Motors.”

The new joint venture sets ambitious goals in terms of production. In 2008, it plans to manufacture 60,000 units, and by 2009 the plant intends to increase production by 100,000 cars per year. The initial stage of production at FSO will create more than 1,000 jobs for Polish workers.

According to Ukravto, demand in Europe for Chevrolet cars this year increased year-on-year by 32 percent compared with 2006. Cars manufactured in Poland will be marketed in the EU, Ukraine and Russia.

The new joint venture will also manufacture other Chevrolet models, notably two new hatchbacks along with the four-door Aveo.

The Zaporizhia-based Ukrainian auto manufacturing plant, known as AvtoZAZ, itself 80 percent owned by Ukravto, acquired FSO, Poland’s biggest car manufacturer, in 2005. The plant has produced more than 4 million cars in the last 56 years. It is equipped to produce up to 220,000 vehicles per year.

GM official have said the Chevrolet Aveo cars to be produced at the plant would be the first made on EU turf.

They have said that up to 7,000 cars would be assembled this year.

GM has in recent years boosted efforts to produce and sell cars in former Soviet countries, where car sales have boomed. The auto giant is currently mulling the possibility of launching additional production capacity in Russia, where its car sale volumes are reaching European market levels.

This year, GM expects to sell about 250,000 vehicles in Russia.

The corporation has been operating car assembly joint ventures with AvtoZAZ in Ukraine and AvtoVAZ in Russia. GM said it plans to launch the operation of a Greenfield plant in St. Petersburg, Russia in the second half of 2008.

Source: Kyiv Post

Democracy Goes Wild In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Election ballots that magically change votes. Polling stations that burst into flames. Voters hypnotized by a psychic. Ukraine's young democracy is anything but boring.

In a file photo a young couple kiss near a tent displaying the party symbol of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko in Kiev, Ukraine.
This former Soviet republic is still experimenting with democracy, ushered in by the Orange Revolution three years ago. The results are impressive: a stream of competitive elections, vibrant media, and a robust opposition.

Plus comedy.

Having lived under centuries of Russian Czarist rule, 70 years of Soviet communism and a bleak decade of post-Soviet stagnation, today's Ukraine is in many ways Russia's antithesis.

In Russia, critics complain of increasingly heavy-handed rule. Opposition rallies are violently dispersed, election results are all but known in advance and everything is taken very seriously.

Here, the more hotly contested an election is, the better.

The tone was set in 2004 with the Orange Revolution, when the presidential election was rigged in favor of the Kremlin-backed candidate.

Protesters jammed Kiev's streets for weeks, overturned the fraudulent vote and brought the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to power.

Since then there have been three or four national elections, depending on how you count, with the latest less than two months ago.

But unlike in Russia, where an uncertain outcome is perceived by many as a threat to stability and security, Ukrainians seem to thrive on cliffhangers.

In the Sept. 30 parliamentary election, none of the three main parties won enough votes to form a government, and complex coalition talks are taking place. Yet life goes on.

The media, once toothless, are now free to grill Ukraine's leaders on anything from their tax returns to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's criminal record. He served time in jail as a young man for robbery and assault, but both convictions were later overturned.

Nothing, it seems, is off-limits. Yulia Tymoshenko, the glamorous Orange Revolution heroine, is asked at a news conference whether her rich blond hair, braided peasant-style, is real. It is, she insists.

President Yushchenko is asked on live television about failures to deliver on Orange Revolution promises.

Tymoshenko is grilled on allegations of corruption in her party. Yushchenko is given to barnyard epithets that add a certain earthiness to the campaign trail.

Multicolored protest tents pop up regularly in central Kiev, sometimes right in front of the presidential administration building — something that would be unthinkable in Moscow, where such protests tend to be broken up before anybody notices them.

Ukrainians rally against anything from foreign policy to city construction plans. And nobody seems to mind.

But it's not all serious. Natalia Vitrenko, known for going barefoot and staging fiery protests, appears on a TV talk show to claim that votes for her aggressively pro-Russian, anti-American party were stolen with a high-tech mechanism funded by U.S. billionaire George Soros.

As her host struggles to keep a straight face, Vitrenko produces a ballot cast for Tymoshenko's bloc and says it was actually checked for her party until the mechanism moved the tick to the wrong box.

In Ukraine, lurid claims are a bipartisan thing. As the Sept. 30 election neared, a Tymoshenko supporter said her opponents could resort to dirty tricks such as spraying voting slips with a mysterious liquid that would set them on fire in the ballot box.

Yanukovych's team hit back by accusing Tymoshenko of hiring a psychic to brainwash voters.

Someone did try to set a polling station on fire in western Ukraine, where Tymoshenko's party did extremely well. Her supporters were quick to blame Yanukovych's party. His party denied it.

Then came the vote count, and election officials were determined it would be beyond reproach. They took 2 1/2 days to count 99.5 percent of the votes, and another 2 1/2 days to count the remaining 0.5 percent.

The result has finally been validated by a court, but peace and quiet are nowhere in sight.

While Tymoshenko is poised to return as prime minister, her opponents have threatened lawsuits, street protests or a boycott of parliament to challenge her victory.

So what, they say — that's democracy.

Source: AP

Take Lead, Yushchenko

KIEV, Ukraine -- Three weeks after winning his country’s parliamentary elections, Poland’s Donald Tusk put together a coalition after he was nominated as the nation’s next prime minister by his defeated rival, Lech Kaczynski.

Viktor Yushchenko
Meanwhile, Denmark’s ruling coalition was re-elected in its Nov. 14 election, and the slim, one-seat advantage that it won did not appear to threaten the coalition’s majority.

As for Ukraine, six weeks after the election, and two weeks after its results were officially published, no coalition is in sight. In fact, no coalition may actually be the option that prevails.

Most observers doubt that the Democratic Forces Coalition can hold together despite its two-seat majority, and the potential coalition’s own members are the source of their problems.

Numerous elected deputies threatened to abandon a coalition agreement reached by the Yulia Tymoshenko and Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense blocs, which was initially drafted as far back as February.

When it comes to the “political porno” of Ukrainian politics (as political analyst Vadym Karasyov recently described it), the nation’s leaders have demonstrated they are far removed from Western pragmatism and European sensibility.

In the latest bickering among the pro-Western Orange forces, most blame belongs with the elected deputies of the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc.

Despite his alleged commitment to the Democratic Forces Coalition, President Viktor Yushchenko either wants to keep his options open, or he is utterly indecisive.

Of course, it wouldn’t be classic Ukrainian political porn without the Party of Regions playing the lead role. Despite their claims of wanting to unite the country and put politics aside, its elected deputies have stalled the first session of parliament for at least two weeks.

Acting, and not just talking, would be the deepest impression Ukraine’s leaders could make on their European colleagues, demonstrating they are capable of governing with the same professionalism and accountability.

The president needs to firmly decide whether he truly wants a coalition with Tymoshenko, and move decisively in that direction, keeping tight discipline over his party operatives. Stop the political porn once and for all, because most Ukrainians have already tuned out.

Source: Kyiv Post

To Pliushch Et Al: Toe The Line Or Step Aside For Someone Who Will

KIEV, Ukraine -- Politics in Ukraine’s fledgling republic has a reputation of being a dirty business. While political assassinations and massive vote rigging belong more and more to the past than the present, the country’s status as a democracy remains tenuous at best.

Ivan Pliushch (L) and Yuriy Yekhanurov
In Ukraine, those holding public office often cause the greatest harm to the country and its democratic institutions, particularly parliament, by disregarding the spirit in which these institutions were created and putting individual interests ahead of the nation.

As the great British statesman Benjamin Disraeli once put it, it is these institutions – not merely individuals – that collectively define and create a nation. Sadly, the erosion of these institutions only increases when ignorance and naivety are introduced into the mix, especially by the president of the republic.

It’s been more than a month since the Sept. 30 early parliamentary elections, and several months since President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party and a cluster of other pro-presidential parties signed an agreement with Yulia Tymoshenko’s eponymous bloc (Byut) to form a government following a positive election outcome. The elections went in their collective favor and, as had been long understood, members of the Our Ukraine bloc and those of Byut negotiated and reached an agreement on forming the government – a government that would be exclusive of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian-leaning Party of Regions. Today, the agreement remains in limbo and in jeopardy of falling apart.

Three figures in the Our Ukraine bloc have openly defied the president and refused to sign the coalition agreement. Instead of finalizing it, they are being openly critical of it. Among them is Ivan Pliushch, the former head of Ukraine’s powerful National Security and Defense Council and a long-time ally of former President Leonid Kuchma, who himself has unsurprisingly called for the Regions to be included in the new government.

Former prime minister and Our Ukraine deputy-elect Yuriy Yekhanurov has also joined the fray, saying he will not serve under Tymoshenko.

The present deal has been long in coming, however, making it farcical that powerful men such as these could come out and say they did not know or agree on the details of the pact beforehand or failed to understand its implications – that it entailed a Tymoshenko-led government.

In what is already a razor-thin governing coalition, this kind of a rebellion at such an early stage could be extremely damaging for the parliamentary process in Ukraine. While voting one’s conscience is a hallmark of democracy, so is backing up election promises. This rebellion puts people ahead of politics and completely flies in the face of the Our Ukraine campaign slogan of “One law for all.”

Crucially here, President Yushchenko has so far neither admonished these men publicly, nor called for them to sign on. To make matters worse, he has not given public support to the coalition and has even reiterated remarks he made immediately following the vote regarding the need for as broad a governing coalition as possible – meaning one that includes the Regions. The new parliament could be doomed before it is even sworn in, though it needn’t be. All Ukraine needs is for Yushchenko to enforce a simple but important lesson in parliamentary democracy: Toe the line, or step aside for someone who will.

The time for disagreements over the coalition deal is over; 225 of 228 deputies are already onboard; Pliushch, et al, are stonewalling democracy. Governments with the narrowest of majorities, such as OU-Byut, require the strictest of party discipline to survive in the face of determined opposition. Given the overwhelming support that Byut received in the September poll, Pliushch has little right to speak out against the present agreement. Without Byut, he and Our Ukraine would be a sorry stepsister in a Regions-led governing coalition, and not on the equal footing they are close to enjoying today.

Yushchenko needs to make that abundantly clear to everyone involved in this issue.

Despite the president’s bungling of his first year in power and his handling of everything, from his alleged poisoning to the ongoing murder investigation of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, it’s hard to imagine that he is so ignorant and naive as to forget recent lessons from history.

Will Yushchenko really allow this hard-won but fragile coalition to be undermined, and throw away yet another chance to build on Ukraine’s democratic foundations by letting party backbenchers shoot their mouths off in the press? He’s running out of time to show his current and future allies, or more importantly, Ukrainian voters, that he supports parliamentary democracy, the Our Ukraine-Byut coalition, and will bring party backbenchers to heel to support both.

I applauded President Yushchenko when he spoke after the election about the need for as broad a governing coalition as possible, but now it’s time for him to silence the critics and use his power to close this deal. Is the pre-election coalition agreement not what he agreed to or saw as a possible outcome before the election? Then he should resign, or voters will show him the door anyway. If the president needs any examples as to what happens to “Orange” parties that negotiate in bad faith, he should consider the fate of his one-time allies, Oleksandr Moroz and the Socialist Party.

For the sake of the country and for parliamentary democracy in Ukraine, President Yushchenko needs to make an example of Pliushch, the other two holdouts, and any other loose cannons in Our Ukraine, by sacking them. The good of the country and all Ukrainians depends on it.

Source: Kyiv Post

EU Investigator Targets Ukraine In Fresh CIA Allegations

STRASBOURG, France -- The European Parliament's appointee to investigate the alleged cases of illegal CIA prisons in Europe and extraordinary rendition flights over EU territory has called for a follow-up inquiry, suggesting he has fresh evidence that Ukraine was linked to the operations.

Italian Socialist MEP Claudio Fava
There is "strong and very specific evidence that a military base in Ukraine was made available for the CIA," Italian socialist MEP Claudio Fava told journalists on Wednesday (14 November).

Along with his fellow Italian deputy Giulietto Chiesa, he made reference to a secret Ukrainian government document they had both seen and which was also presented in a Russian TV documentary that the two lawmakers arranged for journalists and MEPs to watch in one of the parliament's buildings in Strasbourg.

The secret document appeared to show Kiev's authorization of the landing on the country's territory of a CIA-operated Gulfstream jet plane five times in August 2005.

The Italian deputies suggested that the same plane was used by the CIA in several previously highlighted cases, including the kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar in Milan and his transfer to US bases in Italy and Germany for interrogations.

Moreover, the Russian documentary quoted several sources claiming that they had seen or participated in building the prison within a military base in Ukraine, close to Poland, which was used for ten prisoners and ten guards.

In reaction, Ukraine's defense minister Anatoly Gritsenko told the AP agency that the Italian MEPs' statements were "nonsense," and did not comment further.

But the parliamentarians are ready to ask the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog of 47 member countries including Ukraine, to further investigate the issue. They also called for a special report by the European Parliament's committee of civil liberties.

Earlier this year, the EU legislature adopted Mr Fava's report which stated that there had been over 1,000 secret CIA flights with stopovers on EU territory since 2001, with several of them used to transfer terror suspects.

The Council of Europe report published in June concluded that there was "enough evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA [existed] in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania."

Source: EU Observer

Ukraine Gives Israel 'Secret Papers' On World War II Mass Graves

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday gave his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres hundreds of declassified documents shedding new light on mass graves of Jews dating from World War II.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (R) shakes hands with Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko during their meeting in Jerusalem November 14, 2007, in this picture released by the Israeli Government Press Office.
Yushchenko, on a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, "surprised" Peres at their meeting in Jerusalem by "giving him a large box containing hundreds of documents and maps with the exact location of mass graves and Jewish graves," Peres's office said in a statement.

Ukraine's security and intelligence bodies recently declassified the previously confidential papers at the request of Yushchenko, who said that "Ukraine wishes to turn over a new leaf in its relations with Israel.

"We do not deny our past, but we are looking towards the future and want Israel to consider us a loyal partner," he was quoted as telling the 84-year-old Nobel laureate.

More than 800,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed during World War II. The most notorious massacre was at Babi Yar, Kiev, when 34,000 Jews were machine-gunned over two days, on September 29 and 30 in 1941.

The killings there continued until 1943, where up to 100,000 victims -- Jews, resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war -- are thought to have died.

Yushchenko also gave Peres documents on Jewish underground movements in the Ukraine from the 1920s onwards, Peres's office said.

Source: Times of India

Black Sea Oil Spill Effects To Last For Decades

PORT KAVKAZ, Russia -- As hundreds of Russian soldiers worked Tuesday, Nov. 13, to clean up a massive oil spill, Russian and Ukrainian environmentalists have predicted that the ecological impact of the spill in the Black Sea will be long-term.

Thousands of birds have died in the disaster that destroyed the habitat of thousands more.
Waves caused an oil tanker to split in two on Sunday allowing some 2,000 tons of heating oil to spill into the Kerch Strait that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. The waterway between Russia and Ukraine is an important migration route for birds and home to the Black Sea porpoise.

High winds have caused helicopters to be grounded, but clean-up efforts by Russian and Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are continuing with use vehicles along beaches. The Interfax news agency reported that about 200 tons of oil had been removed from the water by midday on Tuesday.

On the weekend, the 100 kph (62 mph) gales that causing the tanker to split also prompted four other ships to sink and drove another 15 vessels aground.

Sailors still missing

Rescuers saved 36 other crew members from the shipwrecks on Sunday. But 20 sailors were still missing from the wrecks, while the bodies of three were washed ashore on Monday on the Tuzla Spit, near the maritime border between Russia and ex-Soviet Ukraine.

"The clean-up of the water is going to take six months, and a complete clean-up of the coastal areas is going to take decades," environmentalist Aleksander Minin told DPA news agency.

Thousands of bird have died

Regional governor Alexander Tkachyov told AFP news agency that 30,000 birds had already died.

On the Tuzla Spit, near the location of the spill, an AFP reporter saw some 200 emergency workers, soldiers and volunteers shoveling sand and seaweed caked with fuel oil into trucks.

"We're clearing up the shore and the water and we're pumping oil out from a tanker damaged in the storm," Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian government's environmental monitoring agency, told AFP.

"If that 2,000-ton spill moves further into the Sea of Azov, there will be serious environmental consequences," Mitvol added. "It has a fragile ecosystem."

Oil won't budge

Much of the water in the Black Sea -- generally at depths below 200 meters (656 feet) -- cannot support life due to a high concentration of hydrogen sulfide and low levels of oxygen.

If the oil from the spill sinks, it could remain there almost indefinitely until returned to the surface or land by currents, Minin said.

"Some of these petroleum products can sink to levels in the water, particularly those without oxygen, and they will not dissolve, and just stay there for dozens of years," he explained to DPA.

Sergei Golubchikov, an environmental scientist, also told DPA that dozens of kilometers of seashore had been or soon would be polluted.

The largest section was last reported to be in the middle of Kerch Strait and slowly drifting toward the Russian shoreline.

Source: Deutsche Welle

Ukrainian President To Arrive On A Three-Day Official Visit

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko is due to arrive on an official three-day visit on Tuesday, 13 November, as guest of President Shimon Peres.

President Viktor Yushchenko
President Yushchenko will be accompanied by his wife, Keteryna, representatives of the Ukrainian government, a delegation of business executives, leaders of the Jewish community and members of the Press.

During his visit, President Yushchenko will meet with President Peres, Speaker of the Knesset Dalia Itzik, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Ukrainian President will visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and lay a memorial wreath in honor of Ukrainian Holocaust victims.

Diplomatic relations between Israel and Ukraine were established after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union in 1991.

The relations are founded on communal chapters in the history of both the Jewish and Ukrainian Peoples, chapters that interweave periods of good neighborly relations together with periods of horrific pogroms and disaster.

Current relations are founded on a new chapter of cooperation in many fields, based on the active assistance of some 500,000 former Ukrainians living in Israel.

This visit of the Ukrainian President constitutes an important opportunity to discuss the strengthening of bi-lateral relations in the political, economic and cultural spheres.

Source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs

President Slams Traffic Police

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Victor Yushchenko met with the leaders of Ukraine’s interior ministry on Monday and said in a speech Ukraine’s traffic safety rules must be “profoundly revised”, according to the President`s press-office.

Kiev traffic jams are some of the worst in Europe.
Yushchenko urged the participants of the meeting to put forth their ideas on how to improve traffic safety which could be later incorporated in his decree and said he expected the ministry to “draw deep conclusions” from today`s discussion.

He insisted that Ukraine’s traffic police, local authorities, courts and prosecution offices must cooperate to prevent road accidents and criticized courts and prosecution offices for being “not very active in investigating traffic violations.” He said the poor state of the country’s roads and negligence of Ukrainian drivers were among the major causes of so many accidents.

The president said 35,000 people have been killed in road accidents over the last five years in Ukraine and added that the country had one of the world’s highest road mortality rates. “This rate is almost eight times higher than in western Europe and four times higher than in eastern Europe. This is a direct assessment of your job,” he said and added that the traffic police department was sufficiently funded and fully staffed but failed to work effectively.

He said such a high mortality rate showed that “those state officials that are in charge of the road situation work unprofessionally." “They cannot fulfill their duties and implement their tasks," he said, suggesting that the interior ministry hold a special meeting to evaluate the performance of Ukraine’s traffic police.

Yushchenko described the state of Ukrainian roads as “unsatisfactory” and said there are over 4,000 places in Ukraine where accidents occur regularly. He said such roads must be repaved and added that Ukraine spent UAH 16 billion annually to deal with the consequences of road accidents. He suggested imposing harsher fines on those violating traffic rules and also toughening the current procedures to train drivers and give them driving licenses.

The president said bribery among traffic police officers was unacceptable. “…those people that have to protect and help go with extended hands,” he said and added that such cases contributed to the nation`s growing distrust of traffic police. He also said traffic police officers often falsified their documents.

Yushchenko said it was important to promote traffic safety. “We must teach the nation and state institutions to treat this problem exclusively in the context of the law,” he said, expressing hopes the situation would improve in 2008.

Source: UNIAN

Russian Oil Tanker Spills 560,000 Gallons

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- Massive waves split a Russian oil tanker in two during a fierce storm Sunday, spilling at least 560,000 gallons of fuel into a strait leading to the Black Sea. It was the worst environmental disaster in the region in years, and some officials said It could take years to clean up.

People view ships thrown on the rocks by a fierce storm in the Strait of Kerch, which links the Black and Azov seas in this image made from television broadcast Sunday.
The 18-foot waves also sank two Russian freighters nearby, in the Strait of Kerch, which links the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov to the northeast. Eight sailors from one freighter were missing, but rescuers saved all the crew members of the other vessel.

The two ships together were carrying about 7,150 tons of sulfur, said Sergei Petrov, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry.

In total, as many as 10 ships sank or ran aground in the Strait of Kerch and in the nearby area of the Black Sea, and reports said three other sailors were dead or missing.

The Russian tanker's 13 crew members were rescued, emergency authorities said.

The tanker, the Volganeft-139 -- loaded with nearly 1.3 million gallons of fuel oil -- was stranded several miles from shore. Stormy weather was preventing emergency workers from collecting the spilled oil, which was sinking to the sea bed, authorities said.

"There is serious concern that the spill will continue," Oleg Mitvol, the head of the state environmental safety watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said on Vesti 24 television. He said it would take "several years" to clean the spill.

Two barges loaded with fuel oil also ran aground in the area but did not leak, Petrov said. A Turkish freighter, Ziya Kos, also ran aground, he added.

Vesti 24 also reported the sinking of a Russian freighter carrying metal near the port of Sevastopol on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. Two members of its 16-man crew drowned and one was missing, it said.

Maxim Stepanenko, a regional prosecutor, told Vesti 24 that captains had been warned Saturday about the stormy conditions. He said the oil tanker -- designed during Soviet times to transport oil on rivers -- was not built to withstand a fierce storm.

Mitvol said that the sulfur did not present an environmental danger, but the two freighters might also leak fuel oil from their tanks, adding to the pollution.

Jim Farr, a chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ocean Service office of response and restoration, said the sulfur wouldn't create a "hazardous situation."

Farr said that on land, sulfur can be used as a fungicide, but it would not act as one in a marine setting. He compared the spill to dumping a load of sand in the water and smothering a reef, or covering a patch of grass with a blanket.

He added, however, that it was difficult to speculate on the long-term effects without better knowledge of the area, including its depth and currents.

Alexei Zhukovin, an expert with the Emergency Situations Ministry's branch in southern Russia, also said sulfur was not dangerous to the region's habitat.

The Black Sea is bordered by Russia, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Georgia.

Source: LA Times

Storm Smashes Russian Oil Tanker, Causing 1,300-Tonne Spill

MOSCOW, Russia -- Five-metre high waves smashed a Russian tanker in half on Sunday, spilling 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil into the Kerch Strait between Russia and Ukraine and sank two other cargo ships, officials said.

Map locating the Kerch Strait -- between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
Two vessels each carrying some 2,000 tonnes of sulphur went under nearby and eight crew members were reportedly missing amid worsening weather in waters between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

As wind speeds in the area reached 108-kilometre (67-mile) per hour, several other ships were also reported damaged in and around Kavkaz, a busy Russian commercial port some 1,200 kilometres (746 miles) south of Moscow.

A total of 42 vessels have been evacuated from the port and 17 others have remained because of the risky weather conditions, Russian news agencies reported, citing a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

There have been no reports of any deaths or injuries.

"This is a serious environmental accident that will require a large amount of work," Oleg Mitvol, head of Russia's environmental monitoring agency Rosprirodnadzor, said on the Vesti-24 news channel.

"This problem may take a few years to solve. Fuel oil is a heavy substance and it is now sinking to the seabed," he said.

"Five-metre high waves just broke the tanker in two," he added.

The prow and the stern of the oil tanker, called Volgoneft-139, tore apart in the storm and "around 1,300 tonnes of fuel oil were spilled," a transport ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

Rescue efforts were being hampered by the harsh weather conditions but the lives of the 11 crew members stranded in the stern of the tanker were not in danger, the spokeswoman said.

Sunday's spill is however marginal when compared to the Prestige disaster off the Spanish coast five years ago.

On November 19, 2002, the Liberian oil tanker Prestige broke up and sank off Galicia in northwestern Spain, spewing out 64,000 tonnes of thick, heavy fuel oil into the waters and fouling thousands of kilometres (miles) along the Atlantic coast of France, Spain and Portugal.

Following Sunday's disaster, Russia and Ukraine have set up a joint crisis centre to deal with the situation and a plane and a helicopter were on standby to fly to the area as soon as the weather allows.

Ukraine's maritime agency said one ship had sunk off the Black Sea coast with 17 crew members aboard and officials said all the country's ports have been put on a heightened state of alert.

Russian television reported that the spill from the Vologoneft-139 tanker, which was carrying 4,000 tonnes of fuel oil, was continuing and that the accident happened in Ukrainian waters.

Local prosecutors were looking into possible criminal charges for the spill.

The tanker was carrying fuel oil from the southern Russian city of Samara on the Volga River to an oil terminal in Ukraine, agency reports quoted a Russian official as saying.

Source: AFP

Revolution Now

KIEV, Ukraine -- Democrat Saakashvili did what dictator Shevardnadze had never done. He used tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful marchers in Tbilisi. Democrat Yushchenko did what dictator Kuchma had never done. He dissolved parliament in spite of the Constitution.

Viktor Yushchenko (L) with Mikhail Saakashvili
Events in Georgia in 2003 and in 2004 in Ukraine were not revolutions. Both countries have simply changed presidents without changing the system of power. In spite of the people’s expectations, both Yushchenko and Saakashvili renewed authoritarian rule set by their predecessors.

Moreover, both presidents went even further than their ‘political fathers’ – Shevardnadze and Kuchma. They began to compete with Putin and Lukashenka in the nomination of “Dictator.”

Both of them, like Shevardnadze and Kuchma, will be overthrown by the people.

1. THE SYSTEM AND THE REVOLUTION

Ukraine, Georgia, Russia and other post soviet countries come from the same state – USSR. In the early 1990s the system of oligarchic capitalism was established in these countries.

A small group of people received a great part of the state property due to their connections in the authority, privatization frauds and ‘shock therapy’.

This social group of capitalists, called oligarchs by mass media, together with the high ranked state official and top management became the favorites of the new social system.

To survive and develop this system requires a special political structure and governance style. This is authoritarian regime, something like a presidential republic. This regime was established in all post-soviet countries.

But ‘outsiders’ of the system (i.e. all other social groups) did not like such state of things. Hired workers and pensioners did not like their place in the outskirts of life while small and middle sized business refused to accept monopolization of all business spheres and lack of competition.

In the late 1990s post soviet countries lived through social explosions. It does not mean that only poor people came out to the streets demanding a piece of bread (although this factor must not be underestimated). The thing is that ‘outsiders’ felts the courage and strength to change the system.

Ukraine was the first country to protest against the regime. In 2000, a protest action “Ukraine without Kuchma” began. In autumn 2001, Georgia witnessed protest action “Georgia without Shevardnadze” (they followed Ukraine’s example), and in spring 2002 thousands of people came to the streets in Kishenyov, Moldova.

Despite the fact that every country had its own reasons to protest (murder of journalist Gongadze in Ukraine, search in Rustavi-2 TV company in Georgia and change of school curriculum in Moldova), all these rallies has social backgrounds.

Thousands of Ukrainians even those who did not know Georgiy Gongadze came to Kyiv’s streets because they were tired of social injustice. Thousands of Georgians, even those who had nothing to do with the television and had been never bothered with the freedom of speech came to Rustaveli square. Discharge of President Kuchma was a number one demand of the people. But still, change of the social, economic and political system was their main demand. In spring 2001, sociologists first registered popularity of the prevailing ideas of the parliamentary republic in Ukraine.

Having gained a number of tactical victories (for example discharge of heads of Security Service and Interior Ministry) protesters both in Ukraine and in Georgia failed to win strategically. Both Kuchma and Shevardnadze preserved their offices and the system of power remained unchanged.

But Ukraine without Kuchma and Georgia without Shevardnadze became the first stage of democratic revolutions in these countries. In 2001, a democratic revolution failed to become a social reality but it became a part of people’s thoughts and soles.

After that even journalists who obeyed owners of media holdings started protesting against one-sided media policy. We knew that the revolution was going on even without protest rallies. We knew that the second stage of the democratic revolution was inevitable. We did not know when it would happen.

There is another important factor. Ukraine without Kuchma and Georgia without Shevardnadze were civil movements and no political party or its leader could run these rallies.

The fact that we had no answer to the question “Ukraine without Kuchma, so with whom is Ukraine?” was our advantage. This helped us unite around the idea of changing the system, which Mr. Kuchma feared most of all. Without any exaggeration, one can say that it was then in the early 2000s during the first stage of democratic revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia that the civil society was born. These were the people who refused to accept injustice.

2. CHANGES WITHOUT CHANGES

The second stage came so fast that no one really expected it. In November 2003 Georgians overthrew Shevardnadze’s regime, in December 2004 Ukraine witnessed the last days of Mr. Kuchma’s reign. In 2005, Kyrgyzstan waved good-bye to Akaev.

In all countries mass protests were caused by elections. But people in Kyiv, Tbilisi and Bishkek wanted more. They wanted not only to change authoritarian regimes but change their lives.

But people standing on the stage set on Maidan in Kyiv reduced all demands of the people to one – “Yushchenko is the President.” They never wanted to change the system. They wanted to chair it. Events in Kyiv and Tbilisi in 2004 and 2003 became a political but not a civil action.

Unfortunately, a group of politicians and oligarchs who used to serve regimes of Shevardnadze and Kuchma managed to take advantage of people’s aspirations. Ukrainians changed the president but the constitutional reform that has slightly reduced the president’s authority became the only systemic change. In Georgia Mr. Saakashvili chose to keep the authoritarian system unchanged.

The thing is that state bourgeois is divided into clans that compete with each other. State power is the battlefield in this fight. At the same time, state power is the administrative and financial resource for such oligarchic clans.

In 2004, having taken advantage of mass protests, people close to Yushchenko (so-called ‘dear friends’) and Tymoshenko (Hubsky, Abdulin, Zhevago), who had earned their fortunes in Kuchma’s era, defeated the Donetsk clan, thus becoming the new favorites of the system.

Both Orange governments (Tymoshenko’s and Yekhanurov’s) never intended to change anything in the social and economic life of the people. From revolutionists they turned into counter-revolutionists.

Their goal was adjusting existing schemes of capital accumulation to the new authority. The Orange Counter-revolution personified by authoritarian parties like NU-NS and the BYuT is going to abolish the only achievement of the year 2004 – the Constitutional Reform.

In fact, that was the reason why Viktor Yushchenko called an early parliamentary election. Cancellation of this reform as well as share of capital and state power are the main negotiations subjects between Yushchenko’s dear friends and Akhmetov’s oligarchs.

One journalist said that DFPR party will run Ukraine. DFPR reads as follows: Dear Friends and the Party of Regions. However, whatever coalition is formed in parliament one of the clans will lose. The winner will take everything. Only the citizens of Ukraine will see no changes.

In 2006, disappointment of the people in the Orange leaders resulted in the high election results of the Party of Regions. In 2007, success of the BYuT and Lytvyn Bloc, as well as failure of the Socialist Party is not the main result of the election. The most important thing is the highest number in Ukraine’s history of those who voted ‘against all’.

One third of Ukrainians refused to choose between the orange and the blue-and-white oligarchs. Voting ‘none of the above’ is now not a passive but the most active civil position. It proves that the society is discouraged by the current state of things which will end in the third stage of a democratic revolution. This will be a true revolution which will destroy everyone, both orange and blue-and-white. This revolution will lay foundation of social changes.

Neither Ukraine without Kuchma nor the events of 2004 were a true revolution because they never changed the system. Thus, social reasons which forced people to come into streets in 2000 and 2004 are still acute. This deep social discouragement must have its outlet. That is why Ukrainians will rise once again. Revolution is not over.

3. GEORGIA AS A MIRROR OF UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION

These words would be a theoretical assumption if it were not for the riot in Georgia. Georgian referred to Ukraine’s experience during the protest action Georgia without Shevardnadze. Now, they are ahead of us. If the revolution broke out in Georgia it will soon come to Ukraine.

On November 2nd, the third stage of a democratic revolution started in Tbilisi. This is a civil stage, without any political interference. Rallies in Tbilisi, Kutaisi and Poti are organized by the political parties sometimes with a different ideology. But they all have a very clear program: “Georgia without the president”, which also means “Georgia for the parliamentary republic.”

Cruelly beaten by the police thousands of Georgians are defending democracy in their country. Even if Saakashvili manages to temporarily preserve power by resorting to a forceful scenario, introducing the state of emergency and shutting up opposition mass media, changes in Georgia after these events are inevitable.

This “baptism of blood” changed Georgians. Most importantly, they must not repeat their own mistake by substituting Saakashvili with the new dictators like Defense Minister Okruashvili or Speaker Burdzhanadze who have suddenly turned into oppositionists and peacemakers.

Hopefully, Georgian revolution can do without the help of oligarchs Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili who have brought Saakashvili to power in exchange of considerable business preferences in this country.

As to accusations that the riot in Georgia has been initiated from outside the country, this is not the problems of the protesting people. This is the problem of dictators who seek traces of Moscow and Washington in mass protests instead of analyzing own policy that resulted in this riot.

Of course, parliamentary republic is not the best system of power. However, there is no better system now. Parliamentary republic will not resolve all problems but it will unbalance administrative resource (rule of the President’s Secretariat and appointment of governors by the President). It will also enlarge representation in authority of all social groups.

Parliamentary model will promote freedom of speech and conscience in the country. Small and middle-sized business will profit from this model of power which will introduce competition in the market instead of monopolizing the national economy.

Other social groups will not profit from such a change that much. But switch to the parliamentary republic is the first step in the right direction.

Georgians set us an example. Events in Georgia are a warning signal to Yushchenko and his administration. However, Ukraine President and his entourage have not learned a single lesson from mass protests in Georgia.

Like a Georgian dictator Saakashvili, Viktor Yushchenko wants to establish control over all security agencies, including the Interior Ministry, which is the coalition’s quota, as provided by the Constitution. Does he want to bring interior forces to the capital like he intended to do it in May of this year?

Like a Georgian dictator Saakashvili, Viktor Yushchenko is trying to control public opinion through discharges of journalists (Novy Kanal and 5 Kanal) and closing TV projects (for instance, Double Proof on 1+1 TV Channel).

Like a Georgian dictator Saakashvili, Viktor Yushchenko was breaking up opposition rallies with the help of the Orange ministers in 2005-2006. Like a Pakistani dictator Musharraf, Viktor Yushchenko dissolves parliament and discharges unsuitable judges.

Unfortunately, all these attacks at the civil rights meet no resistance of the public in Ukraine and in the world community that has been keeping a watchful eye on observance of human rights in our country. I think that the public will react. But that is not the point.

The point is that Georgia has showed us: any authoritarian regime will be overthrown, no matter who personifies it: Saakashvili, Yushchenko, or Putin.

DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION IS NOT OVER!

Source: Ukrayinska Pravda

Ukraine Vets Pioneer Stem Cell Cure For Dogs

KHARKOV, Ukraine -- Veterinary scientists in Ukraine are claiming a medical breakthrough. For the first time ever, they've used stem cells extracted from canine liver to cure diseases in dogs.

Manya (L) was the first dog ever to receive the treatment. The breakthrough gives sick dogs who don't respond to traditional treatments a chance to survive.
It took researchers from the Ukrainian city of Kharkov three years to develop the treatment. The breakthrough gives sick dogs who are not responding to traditional treatments a chance to recover.

The Head of the Animal Diseases Laboratory in Kharkov, Nikolay Kelebirda, says the drug could soon be available.

“The medicine has been tested and is now ready for licensing in Ukraine”, he said.

The ingredients are being kept secret, and inventors have yet to come up with a name for the new wonder medicine.

It's stored in test tubes at minus 196 degrees Celsius before being mixed with saline solution. It's then injected into the animal's bloodstream.

During trials, forty dogs suffering from a range of serious diseases were given the drug. Eighty per cent survived. The stem cell treatment failed only in cases of severe poisoning.

Researchers say they were surprised at how well the treatment worked. In one instance a dog dying from old age showed improved organ function.

Manya was the first dog ever to receive the treatment. She fell ill and her owners tried all traditional medicine before they resorted to stem cells.

“We had no chance - either the dog dies or we try the stem cell test drug. We decided to go with it,” Manya’s owner said.

Manya improved on the third day. She hasn't been ill since and last summer she had four healthy puppies.

Encouraged by their success, the vets want to expand their stem cell experiments to other animals. Cats and horses are next in line.

Source: RussiaToday

Yushchenko Urges Byut, Party Of Regions To Reformat Relations

POLTAVA, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has urged the political forces of the country to take sufficient steps to form a democratic coalition in the parliament.

President Viktor Yushchenko with PM Viktor Yanukovych (Background).
“The coalition must be based on the results of political elections and of the bids formulated: an ‘Orange’ coalition of democratic forces must be formulated in parliament. I urge everyone to take sufficient steps towards the settlement required in order to form a democratic coalition,” Yushchenko said at a news conference in Poltava on November 8.

“I would like to tell the leaders of all political forces which have got into the parliament: you have assumed political responsibility, you have come to the Rada and your task now is to form a majority quickly and to shape the parliament’s leading bodies,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

“Political stability is Mission number one, which the political forces now in the parliament must see as their task,” Yushchenko added. “But with an advantage of just a few votes, the parliamentary majority will not be able to work smoothly,” he said. “This is what I said to Timoshenko (the leader of the Yulia Timoshenko bloc Byut) and to (Prime Minister Viktor) Yanukovich: a new format of relations must be found.

But the policy cannot be formed on the basis of revenge. It must not be a policy of individuals,” Yushchenko said.

Source: New Europe

Patriots On The Loose

KIEV, Ukraine -- The race fight in Ukraine is starting to look like a war. On one side of the front are special units under the SBU [Security Services of Ukraine] and on the other organized crime that is getting stronger.

White power graffiti in Lviv.
On 14 October, the day Ukraine first officially commemorated the anniversary of the OUN-UPA [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Ukrainian Insurgent Army] people with swastikas on their clothes marched down the streets of Kyiv along with columns of Ukrainian nationalists. Uninhibited by those around them, they demonstratively raised their arms in the requisite salute. The jubilee which President Viktor Yushchenko thought would bring the nation together only showed its defects.

Moreover, on the same night a 31-year-old Bangladeshi was killed, the murderers stealing his coat and mobile phone. That allowed the police to consider the tragedy a robbery, despite the deceased being buried after a closed-casket ceremony – his face had been that severely beaten.

And 10 days later the SBU announced it had created a special unit to fight xenophobia and ethnic intolerance. This was done on instructions from the president after he met representatives of Jewish non-governmental organizations.

In a conversation with Korrespondent, SBU press secretary Maryna Ostapenko clarified that the unit is being formed more for prevention since "incidences of xenophobia in Ukraine are not a mass phenomenon." "But in light of world trends and world experience, the decision was made that growing xenophobia is a general trend in the challenge of security," she explained.

No matter how "not mass-like" the SBU believes xenophobia to be, people are more and more often attacking others based on skin color.

Organizations fighting for purity of race and nation function openly in the country. However, there is now a precedent in a Ukrainian court of a criminal case involving racial intolerance leading to a person's death.

FIRST CASE

"Look, a negro!" these were the words spoken by a few drunk Ukrainian youths on the night of 25 October last year when they attacked 45-year-old Nigerian Mievi Godi. He, a non-white person, was simply riding with them in one carriage of a Kyiv underground train. The youths decided that was quite enough to commit murder.

Godi was beaten and stabbed with a knife. The ambulance came 40 minutes later when help was no longer needed. The murderers were detained quite quickly – because they were not careful. Now Godi's case is being heard in court.

Since a large number of witnesses testified to the words heard when the crime began, Article 161 – violating a person's rights based on his race, ethnicity or religion – is being used for the first time in Ukraine. Until this case, all other murders of non-Slavic looking people were classified as hooliganism.

"We cannot be outside later than seven o'clock at night. If you are walking alone on the street, always look back to see who is following you. The doorways must be lit and when you enter the flat [be careful because] there could be an ambush. The most important thing is to not walk on the street late at night," Edwin, Godi's acquaintance and fellow countryman, counts off the safety steps for non-Slavs.

Like Godi, Edwin came to Ukraine from Nigeria in the 1980s, studied and started a family. He speaks Russian rather well and is an officially registered business owner; he pays his taxes and his son, born in Ukraine, was recently admitted to university, Edwin notes with great pride. But the ex-Nigerian's son does not leave home after six in the evening. Because his life is in danger in many places in Kyiv.

"The underground stations Leo Tolstoy, Palats Ukrayina and Kontraktova Square near McDonald's, the Lisova stations and near the Trade University and on Independence Square. And the Polytechnic Institute," Edwin's fellow countryman Oniken [?] Johnson, who has been living in Ukraine for over 20 years, counts off places that are potentially dangerous for non-whites. He says these places are where youths from about 16 to 20 years of age dressed in military clothing and heavy boots congregate. Mainly they are young men, but sometimes there are girls, too. They usually attack without saying a word.

Edwin sadly interrupts his friend: "First they might ask: Why do you live in Ukraine? Get out of here." He was stabbed six years ago with a knife and is lucky to be alive.

"First they pick people based on their appearance. The most vulnerable groups are people who always go to the synagogue at the same time, wear strange clothes or take the same roads. People who live in dormitories for foreign students and shop for food nearby," says Iryna, describing the prey of those keepers of racial purity. She is an activist in an organization which monitors human rights and she preferred to remain anonymous.

In one recent episode of violence, female Chinese students were attacked: unknown assailants stabbed them a number of times. This happened on Kikvidze Street in central Kyiv not far from the dormitory of the National University of Technology and Design. "There are always attacks there, and constant ambushes," Iryna says.

According to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 45 percent of today's youth from 18 to 20 years of age do not want to see Jews living in Ukraine. And 18 percent of the entire population in the country would not be happy to live next to blacks. Part of these people try to make their desires reality – in particular by joining organizations.

One of them, Patriot Ukrayiny (PU), has cells in several cities and a nucleus in Kharkiv. Their Kyiv office is in the center of the capital in premises which belong to the Freedom Association. This is a well-known organization represented in the councils of a number of western Ukrainian [towns] and which took part in the recent parliamentary election. The Freedom Association did not get into Parliament, but it got 0.76 percent of the vote. Overall that is not much, but still it is eighth place and almost 200,000 votes from Ukrainians.

When asked what links PU to Oleh Tyahnybok, the Freedom Association leader, PU members cringe slightly. "The Freedom Association is a political party, PU is a public organization. We simply work together as legal entities," explains Andriy Ilyenko, one of the "patriotic" organization's activists.

PU and the Freedom Association are united in a hostility felt towards dark-skinned foreigners moving to Ukraine. They explain the reasons for this enmity quite simply: in their opinion, the migrants threaten the future of the Ukrainian nation. "People settle down here, bringing their diseases and their enemy culture which we do not accept, and they do not accept out culture; they set up their ethnic districts here," Ilyenko argues calmly and convinced.

He believes that essentially a hidden policy of genocide against Ukrainians is under way in Ukraine. And he compares it to the Great Famine of 1932 and 1933.

Widely varying methods are used to fight the migrants: they march, hand out leaflets and even carry out "hunting raids," tracking down illegal immigrants. In particular, in May this year Patriot members captured six Vietnamese.

"It was the organization's own independent initiative," relates activist Serhiy Bevs, "We were given the lead by our brothers from another organization, but they did not take part in the act directly. We handed them [the Vietnamese] over to the authorities and they deported them from the country. There is a video on the site."

A source told Korrespondent that after the act, the police opened two criminal cases – one on deporting the illegal immigrants and the second against the activists for illegally depriving people of freedom. But the second case was crushed even before it reached court.

But the Patriot members do not focus only on illegal immigrants, they also look at those who have obtained citizenship and even those born in Ukraine. "All these mixed marriages between Ukrainians and the members of other … other types – because from a scientific point of view that is what they are, so let's use scientific terms," another Patriot activist, Volodymyr Shpara, says hotly, "These mixed marriages … if these people are so underdeveloped culturally that they let themselves fall to such a level, well then we are going to give them the chance to go down even lower than that level."

Shpara explained right away how that should look: "Let them go to the homelands of these Afro-Ukrainians, as you call them, and there they can fall to their level.

"We don't need them," he concludes.

PU is not a poor organization. In the summer it financed a military camp for its members, so-called education schools. Participants got good uniforms and equipment. And they carry out events beyond the capital as well. For example, they tried to thwart the Korea-2007 festival of Korean culture in Chernivtsi.

There are other organizations in Kyiv thirsting "to rid the country of other people." For example the well-known Ukrainian Movement Against Illegal Immigration (UMAII), which is most developed in Crimea. "The Tatars came to Crimea in the 1990s. They are migrants. They are not long-time residents," UMAII director Yaroslav Dunayev is convinced. He is happy to talk about how the fight is going, supporting himself with propaganda.

His group acts as a public organization. "Membership dues and what we earn at paid political rallies, that goes into our funds," he says not ashamed of UMAII's source of income, "You know 99.9 percent of rallies are paid for, all these public protests [meaning rally organizers pay people to show up]."

Beside UMAII and PU there are many organizations in Ukraine based on the skinhead persuasion which promote the idea of Eurasianism. It is harder for them to operate since the government sees them as apologists for restoring the Russian empire.

PU is not threatened by accusations of chauvinism. It positions itself as a patriotic organization. Its members speak Ukrainian, become indignant when Ukrainian national symbols on Hoverla [highest peak in Ukraine] are desecrated and take part in all sorts of marches, from those to protect the white race to those in support of the OUN-UPA.

It was at one such march that the youths who killed Godi met.

Source: BBC Monitoring

Gazprom Says Ukraine Will Accept $160 Gas Price

MOSCOW, Russia -- Ukraine has signaled it will be content with a Russian natural gas price of $160 per 1,000 cubic meters, a top manager of Russian energy giant Gazprom said on Friday.

Gazprom's Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev
Alexander Medvedev, a deputy chairman of Gazprom's management committee, told state English-language TV channel Russia Today that a preliminary agreement was reached with Kiev at talks on Russian natural gas supplies in 2008.

"The debt issue has been solved, and we have achieved considerable progress at talks on pricing mechanisms for Ukraine," Medvedev said.

Asked whether Gazprom was satisfied with a price of $160 per 1,000 cu m, he replied: "the most important thing is that this price suits Ukraine."

He said a gas deal will be signed well before the end of this year. "Not December 31. Much earlier," he said.

Gazprom set an official price for Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine at $230 per 1,000 cu m from the start of 2006.

However, Ukraine paid an average of $95 per 1,000 cu m for the mixture of Central Asian and Russian gas supplied at the border.

After Turkmenistan hiked its gas price, the rate for Ukraine was raised to $130 per 1,000 cu m from January 1, 2007.

Source: RIA Novosti

Tycoons On Course To Buy Historic Polish Shipyard

GDANSK, Poland -- Facing bankruptcy, the historic Gdansk shipyard, the birthplace of Poland’s Solidarity movement, has a buyer in one of Ukraine’s largest business groups – the Industrial Union of Donbas – but new complications are tying up the sale.

Gdansk shipyard, the birthplace of Poland’s Solidarity movement.
The Ukrainian group, co-owned by billionaires Serhiy Taruta and Vitaliy Hayduk, hopes to bail out the state enterprise, which has seen 90 percent cuts in jobs in the last 18 years and faces restructuring orders from EU Competition authorities in Brussels.

EU competition authorities claim the shipyard illegally received over $1.8 million in state subsidies since Poland joined the EU in 2004, and subsequently asked management of the shipyard to shut down two of its three slipways to ensure fair competition with other European shipyards.

These developments have raised fears with Gdansk shipyard workers that Poland’s newly elected liberal Civic Platform government would delay the sale of the shipyard to the Ukrainian conglomerate to investigate whether it was carried out fairly along with other former government dealings it considers non-transparent.

Close to 200 Gdansk shipyard workers voiced their fears Oct. 29 that the pro-business Civic Platform government would reconsider the shipyard’s takeover.

Back in September 2007, EU Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said that the restructuring of the shipyard was necessary to limit the distortion of competition through state intervention.

Now, the Gdansk shipyard risks paying Brussels back the millions of dollars it received in state subsidies if it does not reach an agreement with the Brussels competition authority, which opened a probe into the matter in August 2007. A Competition Commission decision on the shipyard’s future is expected in the coming weeks.

“We are aware that there exists the possibility that Brussels will make a decision to return the subsidized funds, however, we take this into consideration in our plans for the shipyard and are ready to pay the money back if required [by Brussels],” said Industrial Union of Donbas (ISD) Vice President Oleksandr Pilipenko.

Although Civic Platform supports further economic reforms and privatization of state enterprises, the new government has yet to give a definite timeframe for the deal to go ahead.

“Privatization of the yard is necessary, and under no circumstances will it be jeopardized,” Civic Platform deputy Tadeusz Aziewicz was quoted as saying.

Former Polish President Lech Walesa and former trade union leader of Gdansk shipyard, who led the Solidarity movement that toppled the communist regime in 1989, voiced his opposition to the sale.

“It’s a crime to sell the historic shipyard to a foreign investor,” Walesa said on Oct. 22.

Economic Counselor at the Polish Embassy in Ukraine, Anna Skavronska-Luchynska, doesn’t see what all the fuss is about.

“The new [Polish] government is even more liberal than the previous ones. In fact, I think they will privatize it [the Gdansk shipyard] even quicker than what has been done by the previous government,” she said.

ISD’s Pilipenko agrees and remains confident his company will take control of the shipyard soon.

“I don’t see any cause for concern regarding the new government. We have been shareholders and still are. We patiently waited for the [Polish government] to find a buyer and we kept to all the transparent procedures determined at a general shareholders’ meeting,” he said.

The Ukrainian group currently holds a minority stake. ISD’s intended 83 percent share buyout worth $400 million could settle the matter on all sides, since it stated it would not cut jobs and plans to diversify and modernize the shipyard using shipbuilders to produce metal parts for bridges or windmills.

Alexander Martynenko, an analyst at the Kyiv offices of brokerage Troika, said the purchase makes economic sense for the Ukrainian industrial group, the country’s largest steel-producing company.

“The move to vertically integrate downstream along the metal supply chain will offer security to this [industrial] group from its raw materials [in Ukraine] to the finished goods [in Poland].”

The Ukrainian group is ready to use its other holding, the Huta Czestochowa steel mill, which it purchased in 2005 for $468 million – especially its assembly lines, which fills orders for the shipbuilding industry – to supply metal products to the shipyard.

“This is very good positioning by the Industrial Union of Donbas,” said Concorde Capital’s analyst, Eugeniy Cherviachenko.

“They could build ships to supply metals while simultaneously strengthening their supply chain.”

Founded in 1995, ISD controls steel mills in Ukraine, Poland and Hungary and holds an interest in a mill in the US.

Source: Kyiv Post

Inflation Woes Re-Emerge As Prices Surge

KIEV, Ukraine -- Inflation re-emerged as a prime concern for the Ukrainian economy in recent weeks, as the protectionist policies of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s governing coalition have exacerbated world commodity price rises and stiff price hikes on natural gas imports.


Domestically, rising incomes, a retail lending boom, monetary policy and political instability have also contributed to rising inflationary pressures that exceeded the National Bank of Ukraine’s (NBU) expectations, analysts said.

Poor global harvests also had a big effect, coupled with grain export restrictions that spooked farmers, leading them to plant less wheat.

Consumers prices surged 14.8 percent in October from the same year-ago month, according to a report by credit rating agency Moody’s, while increasing 12.2 percent year-to-date.

“The situation raises certain risks for the country’s economy, including middle and large-sized businesses,” said Oleksandr Zholud, an analyst at the Kyiv-based International Center for Policy Studies.

“However, it is not disastrous, and certainly we cannot speak about an economic crisis.

The single-month inflation jump of 2.2 percent in September sounded alarm bells within the government.

For the first time, President Viktor Yushchenko attended a Cabinet of Ministers meeting led by Yanukovych on Nov. 2 to propose adjustments to customs policy, budgetary policy, monetary policy and balancing economic sectors.

“The tempo of inflation growth this year evokes concern,” Yushchenko said.

October consumer prices rose 2.9 percent the government reported on Nov. 6.

Inflation factors

Agricultural and food prices are the most significant factor this year, analysts said, while utility prices were the most influential drivers the prior year.

Still-higher natural gas prices are driving up utility bills, while the summer drought has increased food prices, Moody’s reported.

The Ukrainian economy was particularly vulnerable to poor global and domestic harvests because they led to deficits in food products, said Vitaliy Vavryshchuk, an analyst at Dragon Capital, a Kyiv-based investment bank.

“The above factor wouldn’t have been so hurtful for Ukraine if the country was more integrated into the international economy and the local agriculture market was less monopolized,” he said.

“In other countries, the effect is far less noticeable due to higher integration and competition on the market.”

Restricted food supplies significantly boosted overall inflation since they comprise between 40 and 60 percent of the total consumer basket of goods in Ukraine, analysts say.

Specifically, year-to-date prices surged in October by 73 percent for sunflower oils, 43 percent for eggs, 38 percent for fruit, 31 percent for food oils, 30 percent for wheat, 28 percent for milk and 14 percent for grain and bread, the State Statistics Committee reported Nov. 7.

Poor global harvests affected Ukraine’s neighbors too.

September consumer prices in Bulgaria increased 11 percent from the same year-ago month, Latvian prices rose 11.5 percent, Polish prices increased 2.7 percent and German consumer prices rose 2.7 percent, according to Zholud.

In the Russian Federation, consumer prices accelerated by 9.4 percent in September from the same year-ago month.

Another factor driving inflation is the lack of economic competition in Ukraine, according to analysts.

Suspected collusion among sunflower oil producers has done little to ease food price pressures, Moody’s reported.

“Many firms tend to merge de facto, but remain separate de jure for a number of reasons that include tax evasion, which intensifies the monopolistic hold and consequently the tendency to keep prices high,” Zholud said.

The demand for goods and services in Ukraine continuously exceeds supply, particularly in agriculture, which exacerbates inflationary trends already in place, said Balazs Horvath, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) representative in Ukraine.

Analysts differ on the inflationary effect on income growth, the rate of which is slowing but still significant.

The retail lending boom contributed 1.5 percent to consumer price growth, with $25.6 billion in outstanding retail loans, enabling households to remain solvent with decelerating wages, according to Alfa Capital.

Another inflationary factor was the 15.8 percent rise in producer prices from the same year-ago month, a large part of which were energy prices, Alfa Capital reported. Domestic oil refineries increased their prices by 15.5 percent in response to the increase in the price of imported oil.

Indirectly, Ukraine’s recent political instability has influenced inflation, with “the opposition continually repeating to the public that prices are growing,” Zholud said.

“Producers began raising prices and consumers tended to spend more than save.”

The effects

Inflation will have its most significant effect on the macroeconomic level, analysts say.

“Business players are going to hesitate where and whether to invest, since it will be difficult to plan price increases, and thus expenses and business as a whole,” Vavryshchuk said.

Zholud also mentioned the possibility of a so-called spiral effect, in which the high inflation rate will cause workers to demand salary raises, which will coincide with increased prices for resources.

The banking sector will be immediately affected, as it becomes confronted with higher interest rates and declining savings, Alfa Capital reported.

As a result of low incentives for households to save, banks will be forced to raise deposit rates, which will decrease their net income margins, Alfa Capital said.

Importers may benefit because they buy their products abroad at stable prices, while selling them domestically amidst rising prices. The opposite is true for exporters, Vavryshchuk said.

Dealing with it

In addressing the Cabinet of Ministers, Yushchenko called on the government to deal with the problem of inflation collectively. He proposed examining electronic-based customs and customs appraisal to enhance Ukraine’s borders and trade control.

Ukraine’s economic sectors need to be balanced to ensure supply and demand are in check, he said, and budget spending needs to fall under stringent control.

Grain will be sold from official reserves at 75 to 80 percent of current market price to ease prices in that market, but Yushchenko criticized the state of current reserves, which amount to 200,000 tons of grain. National grain reserves should contain no less than 1.5 million tons of grain, he said.

“If we don’t have clearly formulated grain reserves next year, then we won’t have an elementary mechanism to influence price speculation somehow,” Yushchenko said.

He also urged a tight monetary policy.

“Empty money doesn’t cure anything,” he said. “Only strong money motivates everyone to work, and money is only strong when it’s stable.”

The national Hryvnia currency’s strength will curb consumer price growth, said NBU chair Volodymyr Stelmakh.

The NBU should switch to a monetary-targeting policy that involves freeing the Hryvnia from the US Dollar to allow for a broader floating range, which proved to be effective in many transition countries and is also highly recommended by the IMF, Dragon Capital’s Vavryshchuk said.

The IMF recommends containing demand and scaling back money-supply growth, since policymakers can’t influence energy import prices, Horvath said.

Productivity needs to outpace wage growth, social payments need to be targeted and limited to avoid large budget deficits, he said.

Monthly inflation will decelerate through the year’s end, according to analysts.

The IMF increased its inflation forecast for Ukraine to 12.5 percent in 2007 from 11.3 percent, well above the government’s official target of 7.5 percent.

It projects 11.3 percent inflation next year, depending on what macroeconomic policies the new government will implement.

“Our projection is in line with the Ministry of Economy’s latest consensus forecast, foreseeing double-digit inflation both in 2007 and 2008,” Horvath said.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Central Bank To Extend Reserve Requirements

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's central bank indicated on Thursday it would extend minimum reserve requirements to funds obtained from foreign institutions in Ukraine, and take other measures against inflation.

Ukraine's central bank
It said in a statement it was worried by the quick growth of borrowing and credits from external banks in foreign currencies, which may destabilise the domestic financial market.

"In the long term that will lead to an accumulation of risks destabilising the financial sphere, linked with the currency risks brought in by market participants and also dependence on the conditions of global financial markets," it said.

At the moment, banks are required to keep reserves of 1 percent for hryvnia funds which they are free to move about any time and 0.5 percent for hryvnia funds kept for a set period of time.

Reserves of 5 percent and 4 percent are required for funds in foreign currencies and these levels will apply to the funds received from from institutions and banks from Nov. 20.

The bank also said it would keep its overnight refinancing rate, now 9-10 percent, no lower than inflation.

But it was unclear which calculation it would use -- accumulated price rises in the first ten months of the year (11.7 percent), year-on-year rises in the ten months (12.2 percent) or rises of the past twelve months (14.8 percent).

The bank said it would also actively sell certificates of deposit.

Soaring inflation, boosted by higher staple food prices, has led to debates as to whether the central bank should free up or revalue the hryvnia, which is kept in a narrow 5.0-5.06 band to the dollar.

The central bank has said that revaluation could help fight inflation, but President Viktor Yushchenko has spoken out against this and called for an end to all public discussion of the issue.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Ukraine Ranked Low In Global Competitiveness Study

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine placed 73rd among 131 countries in the Global Competitiveness Report 2007-2008 released by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum on Oct. 31.


Ukraine’s ranked on par with the Philippines, Brazil, Uruguay and Romania. The Baltic States received the highest scores among all former Soviet countries, while Russia placed 58th, according to the report.

The US led the ranking, followed by Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland and Singapore.

The index is compiled on the basis of 12 “pillars of competitiveness,” including institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods and market labor efficiency.

Ukraine dropped four positions from 69th place in 2006, and received a score of 3.98 out of seven this year.

Market size, higher education and innovation were the only three pillars in which Ukraine scored in the top half of the list.

The economic study revealed that institutions and goods market efficiency are Ukraine’s weakest points, placing Ukraine 115 and 101, respectively.

Volodymyr Dubrovskiy, a senior economist and member of the supervisory board of think tank CASE Ukraine, a WEF-partner institution in Ukraine, said despite dropping slightly, Ukraine’s position is roughly the same as last year.

“There was a big leap in 2005, mostly because of the post-revolutionary euphoria, but afterwards there was just as large of a drop due to euphoria ending,” he said.

Ukraine’s competitiveness index can be expected to improve in three to five years after going through a “very painful and complex process of change in governing institutions,” he added.

Source: Kyiv Post

New Visa Rules Confuse Expats

KIEV, Ukraine -- For the past two years, Annamarie has lived and taught English in a Cherkassy university on a volunteer basis, all the while without a visa.

Ukrainian visa
Relaxed restrictions, decreed by President Viktor Yushchenko in July 2005, required that she merely cross the border and re-enter Ukraine every 90 days, which she did five times through Poland.

Today, she’s concerned with a July Cabinet of Ministers order, which restricts the term visitors from Western nations can remain in Ukraine visa-free to 90 days within a 180-day period, could derail her classes.

“This is my gift to Ukraine,” said Annamarie, 68, who has taught more than 200 students.

“I am giving my help to anybody who wants to learn 21st-century English. My students are excited to learn, and this new rule threatens what I’m doing.”

In the last several weeks, expatriates living extendedly in Ukraine have begun scrambling to apply for visas they didn’t need earlier, as the 90th day since their last border crossing began to approach.

In Annamarie’s case, her 90-day period will expire on Dec. 12. She hasn’t yet decided whether she will return to the US or apply for a visa and try to stay in Ukraine.

Others are traveling to cities in neighboring countries, such as Krakow, Poland and Prague, Czech Republic, because expatriates can only obtain visas outside Ukraine’s borders.

Lack of enforcement

In the months since the controversial July decree, many expatriates haven’t been sure whether they should bother obtaining the visas, partly because they’ve heard conflicting reports on whether the State Border Service of Ukraine is even enforcing the new restrictions.

“There is a lot of contradictory information regarding the law, and people have different perceptions,” said Canadian Phillip McGinn, 26.

“Some people have been easily able to cross the border even though they’ve been here for 90 days, while others have been turned away.”

It remains unclear whether the decree is being actively enforced by the State Border Service, which did not respond to inquiries by the Post.

McGinn said his English-teaching colleagues crossed the Moldovan border in recent weeks and re-entered Ukraine without any hassles from guards.

“No one mentioned to them they had only five days left in the country, and they were given another 90-day stamp,” he said.

Part of the confusion also stems from conflicting information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

When examining his options, expatriate Jerry Schoeberlein, 46, considered applying for a business visa at the Ukrainian Consulate in Chicago, where he planned to be for the holidays.

The Chicago Ukrainian Consulate’s website stated the 180-day restriction was part of the president’s July 2005 decree, leading him to believe that the Border Service hasn’t been enforcing the rule for two years.

However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Post that the information on its Chicago Consulate website is erroneous.

The July 1, 2005 decree allowed visa-free visits to Ukraine for 90 days, without any 180-day restriction.

Expatriates said they are puzzled why the Ukrainian government would suddenly place harsher restrictions on visitors from wealthy countries, after relaxing the rule for two years.

McGinn speculated the Russian-leaning government led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych wants to restrict the Western presence in Ukraine, since it was his government that passed the July 11 decree.

However, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Andriy Deschytsia said the new restrictions aren’t related to domestic politics, though he declined to state which government agency initiated the 180-day rule.

The new measures, which he described as a “concretization,” are merely the Ukrainian government’s decision to bring its visa policies in line with those imposed on Ukrainian citizens by the nations of North America, Europe and Japan.

While Westerners can still enter Ukraine for 90 days visa-free, Ukrainian citizens can’t enter any Western countries without a visa, Deschytsia said.

The president’s July 2005 decree was a “gesture of good will, for which Ukraine received nothing in return” from other governments, Deschytsia said on Nov. 6.

“This is a step by the Ukrainian government toward applying those rules that Western countries apply to Ukrainians,” he said.

If Westerners are dissatisfied with the new restrictions, “then please lobby your governments to simplify visa regimes for Ukrainian citizens visiting your countries,” he advised.

Ukraine less attractive

To apply for and obtain student, business or tourist visas, expatriates must travel to foreign consulates or embassies. Poland and the Czech Republic have emerged as popular options. The TryUkraine.com website specifically recommended Krakow.

“The workers in the Krakow, Poland consulate are cooperative and will have the visa done within a few hours if you visit them in person,” the website reported.

“There are almost never lines, but be the first to be waiting at the door in the morning.”

Some expatriates reported non-responsiveness from consulates for Internet requests, and Deschytsia acknowledged that applying for a visa via the Internet won’t go very far.

“If you present your visa application supported by all the necessary documents to obtain a visa, then our consulates can’t deny a visa,” he said.

“If you don’t receive a visa, or consulate staff doesn’t respond to questions, then direct your complaints to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ call center.” The center’s number in Kyiv is 238-1550.

McGinn said he plans to visit the Krakow Consulate in mid-November and learned that processing a visa application should take no longer than a single business day.

The added hassle of obtaining a visa will make Ukraine a less attractive option for Westerners wishing to teach English abroad, or engage in charity work for example, expatriates say.

But forcing visitors, such as English-language teachers, to get business visas will also make it difficult to work in Ukraine without official employment papers. The measure could force many foreigners working in Ukraine to pay taxes in the country, as they will now need to get business visas, which require proof of employment.

“It’s certainly something that would cause someone considering staying here for an extended period to go elsewhere instead of getting a visa,” McGinn said.

Though Annamarie could apply for a visa, she hasn’t decided whether it’s worth the effort to travel to an overseas consulate.

Furthermore, Cherkassy State Technological University staff informed her they don’t sponsor visas for visiting teachers. Her next semester was slated to begin next February.

“I’m not here to abase anybody or cause trouble,” Annamarie said. “I’m here to help, so why not make it easy for me? Look at me as an asset to this country.”

Source: Kyiv Post

Dynamo Again Replace Coach, Set For Shake-Up

KIEV, Ukraine -- Dynamo Kiev have named their third head coach this season, less than three days before a critical Champions League match against Manchester United.

Josef Szabo (L) and Oleg Luzhny.
Management at the Ukrainian side appointed assistant coach Oleg Luzhny to the top job late Sunday evening, after his predecessor Josef Szabo bowed out citing heart problems.

Kiev face United at Old Trafford in a Group F match on Wednesday.

Szabo had taken over Dynamo in September, in the midst of the side's worst season start in a decade.

Historically Ukraine's strongest football team and during the 1970s and 80s one of the most feared sides in Europe, Dynamo have lost all three of their Group F games so far, including a 4-2 defeat to United in Kiev last month.

Luzhny made clear he was only a caretaker in the head coach job, and conceded his work would be cut out ahead of the match against Manchester United.

"I am only temporary, and we have only three days to prepare," Luzhny said in a statement.

"Of course I hope our players will do their best and our team will succeed ... but we can only do the best we can."

United go into the match coming off of a draw Saturday at Arsenal, with the Gunners scoring an equalizer in injury time.

Normally dominant in Ukraine's domestic league, Dynamo are currently joint third. Dynamo are a perennial Champions League participant but, if present Ukraine league standings hold out, they would fail even to qualify for next season's competition.

Dynamo president Ihor Surkis in an interview with Sehodnia newspaper hinted broadly club managers had given up even the hope of a third place in Group F.

"We only have to get through the next eight (domestic and Champions League) matches before the winter break, and then there will be a purge," he warned.

"We (Dynamo management) know what we need to do, and we are ready to take steps ... we are even prepared not to compete in Europe at all next year, in order to build a new team."

Surkis compared Dynamo's upcoming transition to the recent overhaul and massive cash injection by Germany's Bayern Munich.

"Bayer went down this path only recently, and it will not be shameful for us to follow in their steps," he said.

Surkis's comments were the most open public admission yet that the club's traditional policy of trying to build a team using training techniques and staff developed by legendary coach Valery Lobanovsky during the team's glory days prior to the break-up of the Soviet Union, will this winter be finally abandoned.

"We can no longer afford to live in the past, we must move forward," Surkis said. "And to do that we will have to overhaul almost every aspect of our organization."

Surkis said Dynamo's next coach "almost certainly" would not be a former player of the side, and in an even more dramatic break with club tradition warned that other functionaries not pulling their weight would be sacked, even if they had once been Dynamo's greatest footballing stars.

"Many people (on the staff) want to get a result without much effort," Surkis said. "Things do not work that way."

Surkis named as other upcoming priorities in the upcoming shake-up the jettison of up to half of the side's foreign players, the replacement of senior Ukrainian players by a new generation in their late teens and 20s, and the removal of excess support staff through voluntary retirement or sacking as the main priorities in the planned overhaul.

"This winter, there will big changes in the club," Surkis said. "We are waiting for winter like manna from heaven."

Source: EARTHtimes

Ukraine Still Waits For Government

KIEV, Ukraine -- More than one month since Ukraine’s parliamentary election, the country remains in leadership limbo, as negotiations over a new government drag on.

Yulia Tymoshenko must have nerves of steel to put up with Ukrainian politics.
While a government coalition including the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) and President Viktor Yushchenko`s Our Ukraine-People`s Self-Defense Bloc (OU-PSD) has seemed likely since preliminary results were released, the lengthy negotiations suggest that this is not a done deal.

Some within OU-PSD instead are encouraging a coalition with the party of the current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

The sluggish pace of the new government’s formation has led to frustration not only among Ukraine’s voters, but also among international investors and officials who must wait to finalize meetings, agreements, and future plans.

It is difficult, after all, to negotiate over things like WTO membership, visa protocols, future gas deals, and implementation of EU cooperation accords when there is no final word on who will be in charge next month.

This is particularly problematic since a new government led by Yulia Tymoshenko — Ukraine`s former prime minister and current opposition leader — would differ significantly from that of the Yanukovych government.

In particular, while the Yanukovych government drastically has slowed reforms, including those necessary for WTO membership, Tymoshenko has vowed to implement rapid Western-style reforms.

It is not a surprise that the greatest progress toward WTO membership since 2004 came during the nine months of Tymoshenko’s premiership.

However, Tymoshenko needs the support of President Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense (OU-PSD) to return to the prime minister’s post.

While the vast majority of OU-PSD members strongly support such a coalition, a small group of roughly 15 deputies within the bloc prefers a coalition with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.

Furthermore, Yushchenko has been lukewarm on the idea of a premiership for a woman he views as a rival, particularly since the prime minister’s position has about equal power to that of the president.

This same issue helped lead to her dismissal in 2005.

The negotiation process also has been stalled by inexplicable delays in submitting election count protocols to the Central Election Commission and now-dismissed court challenges to the results.

Despite the political stagnation resulting from the lack of a clear plan for government formation, the majority of Ukraine’s politicians seem unconcerned.

It is now likely that the new parliament will not sit until the end of the week of November 4 at the earliest. A vote for a new government, it seems, could take yet another week (at least).

The calls of the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko and its allies in OU-PSD for a speedy confirmation of the coalition government have fallen on the deafest of ears.

This scenario is precisely one that EU officials hoped Ukraine would avoid. The country has been mired in a series of political crises since Tymoshenko’s dismissal in September of 2005.

In March 2006, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko could not overcome differences following regular parliamentary elections, in order to form a new majority coalition and government.

Instead, Yushchenko agreed to the premiership of Yanukovych—his 2004 presidential opponent—after almost five months of negotiations, while the country was overseen by a caretaker government.

The negotiated agreements were never fulfilled, leading to Yushchenko’s dismissal of parliament and last month’s snap elections.

The worst scenario for Ukraine would be to repeat those missteps. And yet, Yushchenko remains reluctant to embrace a coalition with BYuT fully.

In recent statements calling for a “democratic coalition,” he rarely speaks Tymoshenko’s name or the name of her political bloc.

Most recently, Yushchenko suggested that the signing of a new "unity pact" by the country`s political leaders "would be welcomed."

(1) The first such pact was signed by Yushchenko, Yanukovych and other party leaders in 2006, and the five-page document was said to provide the foundation for all future policy decisions in the country. “The basics of the definition of Ukraine`s domestic and foreign policy, of its continuity, have been completed,” Yushchenko said at the time.

(2) Tymoshenko refused to sign that document, suggesting it was unworkable and essentially worthless. In essence, the document was designed to remove all differences among parties by committing them to the pursuit of one vague "national" program. Following the pact, Yushchenko introduced Yanukovych`s name to become premier.

Less than two months later, the "pact" was in tatters. "Ukraine`s process of integration into the WTO is being wrecked, the program of Ukraine`s accession to the EU has been basically stopped and there has been a fundamental block on Ukraine`s entry into NATO,” Yushchenko`s bloc said.

(3) The bloc suggested Yanukovych was not following the policies agreed upon in the pact. Within one year, Yushchenko had dissolved parliament, accusing Yanukovych`s party of "betrayal."

(4) Yet inexplicably, Yushchenko is considering repeating the same idea. It is likely that Tymoshenko again will refuse to sign a "unity agreement" with Yanukovych`s party and the Communist Party, since their programs differ so greatly. This could create new potential for disagreement between the two former Orange leaders.

In order to meet Yushchenko`s concerns, Tymoshenko has proposed a sweeping new Law on the Opposition, which would give Yanukovych`s party—as the largest in the opposition—unprecedented rights to control parliamentary committees overseeing the budget process.

She also has agreed to grant the opposition a new position of Deputy Prime Minister for Relations with the Parliament and several deputy minister portfolios.

It is unclear why a new "pact" would be needed, given these concessions.

As these discussions continue, Ukrainians sit and wait for a government, much as they’ve been sitting and waiting for most of the last two years.

Since 2004’s Orange Revolution, Ukraine has seen three Prime Ministers and many more changes at the level of minister. Fully 13 months of this time, the governments have been forced to function in a caretaker fashion, unable to implement changes or new initiatives.

The country has had no functioning parliament for eight months this year, following its dismissal. But Ukraine’s leaders are in no rush to usher in a new government.

This may be partly to force Tymoshenko into concessions, and partly to ensure that some individuals are able to maximize their informal “severance packages.”

It is no secret in Ukraine that outgoing governments and/or ministers routinely receive (or create) “deals” involving property or other financial bonuses from the state. More time likely equals more deals – and a larger budget deficit for the new government.

In the meantime, Western governments are left to puzzle over Ukraine’s inability to form a stable parliamentary majority and cabinet. Prior to the elections, several Western representatives privately suggested that, following the poll, Ukraine’s leaders had a perfect opportunity to demonstrate their ability to work efficiently, decisively and productively – an ability they have not shown abundantly in the past.

While many promises have been made since 2004’s Orange Revolution, very few have been kept. Ukraine has been unable to reform its tax, customs, justice, or security systems.

Should the country continue to be mired in political crisis, indecision and confusion, it risks not only angering voters, but also losing its international credibility.

Source: UNIAN

President's Party Is Weakest Link In Orange Coalition

KIEV, Ukraine -- Friday, November 2, was the last day that the Our Ukraine-People’s Self Defense (NUNS) bloc could collect signatures to support a “democratic” (orange) coalition with the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT).

Yulia Tymoshenko and Vyacheslav Kyrylenko at a press conference.
BYuT deputies have openly expressed their fear that disunity in NUNS will lead to an unstable orange coalition and a political crisis in 2008.

By last Friday, 69 of the 72 NUNS deputies had signed. The fact that three deputies have not signed is significant.

As the orange coalition only has a slim majority of 228 deputies (156 BYuT + 72 NUNS) in the 450-seat Rada, a parliamentary motion for Tymoshenko to become prime minister would fail if the trio sat out.

The three absentees are National Security and Defense Council (NRBO) secretary Ivan Pliushch and two deputies from Trans-Carpathia, the only district NUNS won in the September 30 elections.

The two — Ihor Kril and Vasyl Petiovka — are allies of the head of the presidential secretariat, Viktor Baloga, himself a native of Trans-Carpathia.

This situation is yet another indicator that NUNS would be an unstable partner in either the planned orange coalition or a theoretical grand coalition with the rival Party of Regions.

First, it shows that President Viktor Yushchenko has no control over his deputies.

They have ignored his October 30 demand that “all of those colleagues who had not signed the declaration on a personal level [should] do so as quickly as possible.”

Second, Yushchenko is now wavering on key agreements, including Our Ukraine’s February 24 agreement to cooperate on a future coalition with BYuT, an inter-party agreement on August 2 that ruled out either BYuT or NUNS joining a coalition with the Party of Regions or the Communists, and an October 15 draft coalition agreement between BYuT and NUNS that was reinforced by an October 29 NUNS presidium meeting.

Any betrayal of these commitments and agreements risks voter wrath. The Socialists learned that lesson this year, when voters angry over their betrayal of the orange coalition in summer 2006 kept the party out of parliament for the first time in its history.

Third, even though Our Ukraine was overhauled in the first quarter of 2007 with a new leader (Vyacheslav Kyrylenko), an alliance with Yuriy Lutsenko and his eponymous group, and the removal of businessmen accused of corruption, NUNS received the same 14% of the vote as Our Ukraine did last year.

Fourth, prior to the elections NUNS leaders committed themselves to unite their nine marginal parties into a single pro-presidential force.

However, this has not happened and is unlikely to occur while Yushchenko wavers over which coalition to support.

Two of the parties in NUNS have already stated that their deputies will not vote for legislation according to the imperative mandate, which penalizes deputies for leaving their factions with the threat of losing their seat.

YuT initiated that regulation in the outgoing parliament, but the legislation was never adopted.

Baloga reminded NUNS that it had agreed to unification steps prior to the elections and that the aim is to build a presidential party.

But so far there is no legal mechanism to merge parties; instead the members of the eight parties would need to self-liquidate and then join Our Ukraine.

In contrast, BYuT and the Party of Regions emerged from the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections as Ukraine’s only real party machines.

The personal charisma of Tymoshenko in BYuT and the Soviet-style discipline in the Party of Regions means their ranks act as a united front.

Fifth, there are five influential groups in NUNS who are openly hostile to a coalition with the “populist” BYuT and to Tymoshenko’s return as prime minister.

These include the pro-grand coalition wing of NUNS grouped around former prime minister Yuriy Yekhanurov, Sobor party leader Anatoliy Matvienko, and Petro Poroshenko, a businessman who withdrew from the NUNS 2007 election list in exchange for the position of National Bank chairman.

A second group has coalesced around NRBO secretary Pliushch. The NRBO under Yushchenko has morphed from an institution involved in formulating national security policy into a shadow government.

A third group is aligned around Baloga, who has been tempted by a Party of Regions offer to back him as prime minister in a grand coalition that would make incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych parliamentary speaker.

The Party of Regions has continued to combine inducements for Yushchenko to switch to a grand coalition by agreeing to drop contentious issues (i.e. referendums on NATO membership and Russian as a second state language).

A fourth faction is grouped around presidential legal adviser Stepan Havrysh, the coordinator of the pro-Kuchma parliamentary coalition in parliament prior to the Orange Revolution.

The return of Tymoshenko would lead to a “deep systematic crisis,” Havrysh predicted.

Finally, opposition comes from the First Lady Kataryna Yushchenko, whose personal dislike for Tymoshenko is well known in Kyiv.

Although personal, economic, and ideological conflicts serve to dampen these groups’ support for Tymoshenko, gender cannot be ignored as an additional factor.

Antipathy toward Tymoshenko from the president and within NUNS is also a product of unreformed gender relations inherited from the Soviet era.

If Tymoshenko is not elected prime minister, the resulting political turmoil would likely plunge Ukraine into crisis, as new elections could not be held for one year.

For Yushchenko it is better to have Tymoshenko inside the government than her leading the opposition from the outside and launching what she has termed as “Plan B” —her presidential candidacy.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

US Ambassador Urges Reform In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- The U.S. ambassador urged Ukraine Monday to form a government quickly and push through reforms to hasten its economic and political integration with the West.

US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor
Addressing students at a university in Kiev, Ambassador William Taylor called on the former Soviet republic's feuding leaders to put together a governing coalition.

He said the country should implement judicial reforms and anti-corruption measures, and take the final steps necessary to join the World Trade Organization.

The two pro-Western parties central in staging the 2004 peaceful Orange Revolution that helped bring President Viktor Yushchenko to power won enough parliament seats in elections Sept. 30 to form a Cabinet together.

They have pledged to forge a coalition once the new legislature convenes.

While he urged economic integration with the European Union, Taylor said the issue of NATO membership must be resolved following broad public discussion.

"My simple view on Ukraine and NATO is that it's up to Ukrainians decide," he said. "If you want to join, we will be very helpful, but we are not going to push you to want to join."

Ukraine is sharply divided over NATO membership. Most Ukrainians, particularly in the largely Russian-speaking east and south, remain skeptical about joining former Cold War adversaries in the military alliance.

Taylor also said it should reduce its energy dependence on Russia by developing its own oil and gas fields and looking into alternative energy sources such as bio, wind and nuclear.

He urged Ukraine to get rid of RosUkrEnergo, a middleman company, through which it buys Central Asian gas from Russia, and adopt a more direct and transparent method.

Yushchenko's Orange Revolution partner Yulia Tymoshenko, who has a good chance of returning to the prime minister's post, has criticized the RosUkrEnergo arrangement as corrupt, and pledged to get rid of it.

Source: Houston Chronicle

European Police Smash Worldwide Child Sex Network

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Police and prosecutors from across Europe have arrested 92 suspects allegedly linked to a network that produced and sold child abuse videos to 2,500 customers around the world, authorities said Monday.

Europol deputy director Mariano Simancas, left, Eurojust president of the college Michael Kennedy, second left, and Belgium national Eurojust member Michele Coninsx, third from left, react during a press conference on the dismantling of a worldwide child sex offender network, in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday Nov. 4, 2007. More than 90 arrests were made in the case named 'Operation Koala'.
The videos, ranging from girls in provocative poses to a father raping his young daughters, were sold to clients in 19 countries including teachers, doctors, lawyers and computer experts, prosecutors said.

The 23 victims, aged 9 to 16, were mainly Ukrainian girls duped into performing sex acts with promises of lucrative modeling careers.

The 15-month investigation — code-named Operation Koala — was triggered by the Australian police discovery in July 2006 of a video depicting a Belgian father raping his daughters, aged 9 and 11, said Menno Hagemeijer of the serious crime department of pan-European police organization Europol.

The huge investigation should "give a really clear signal to everybody that this activity is illegal, unacceptable and revolting," said Belgian prosecutor Michele Coninsx. "It is touching on the lives and souls of youngsters who cannot speak for themselves."

As of Monday morning, 92 suspects had been arrested, most of them in coordinated raids last month, and nine remained in custody.

The alleged mastermind, Italian Sergio Marzola, and the Belgian suspected of abusing his children, were arrested last year.

Many of those arrested and released have been charged. In France, 20 people have had preliminary charges filed against them, prosecutors there said last week.

Michael Kennedy, president of Eurojust, a group that coordinates the work of European Union prosecutors, paid tribute to the close cooperation of police and prosecutors across the continent. He said the ongoing investigation was likely to lead to more arrests.

Marzola, 42, allegedly made some 150 videos in Ukraine, the Netherlands and Belgium. He was arrested last year in Bologna a day before he was due to move permanently to Ukraine, where prosecutors say he ran a studio for producing the abuse films.

Police say he sold the videos online. Customers mainly paid via the Internet and were sent links and passwords allowing them to download the films, said Hagemeijer. Those from countries with slow Internet connections sent cash and were mailed DVDs. When police raided his home, they found €70,000 (US$100,000)in cash.

Some of Marzola's customers also sent requests for particular poses and even slips of paper bearing their names for "models" in the videos to hold, said Hagemeijer. Others sent underwear for them to wear and Marzola allegedly auctioned off the lingerie used in some of his shoots.

Customers paid extra to be present while films were shot, while others sent gifts of poetry and jewelry to their favorite girls, he added.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Ukraine To Deliberate On Entry To NATO For A Year Or Two

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine will probably deliberate on the need to join NATO for a year or two, said U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor.

A rally staged in Kiev to protest against NATO membership. The discussion on the NATO’s membership is at full blast in Ukraine. This idea is strongly advocated by President Viktor Yushchenko, but opposed by over a half of the nation.
It will probably take a year or two to decide on launching the campaign for joining the NATO, which doesn’t guarantee the entry, Mr Taylor made clear Monday, when lecturing students of one of the Kiev universities.

If the authorities in Ukraine, the ambassador went on, will decide on the membership in the alliance, Ukraine will join the Membership Action Plan.

At the same time, no quick entry is guaranteed, as some states jointed the MAP more than seven years ago but aren’t its members yet.

For Ukraine, the door will be open, the ambassador pointed out, specifying, however, that it is for the country’s government and the nation to make this decision.

The discussion on the NATO’s membership is at full blast in Ukraine. This idea is strongly advocated by President Viktor Yushchenko, but opposed by over a half of the nation.

Regions’ Party of Yushchenko’s opponent, Viktor Yanukovich, is calling for a referendum on NATO’s membership.

Source: Kommersant

Ukraine, Central Europe To Experience Strong IT Growth

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s information technologies sector is set to experience strong growth over the next four years and will be worth nearly $3 billion by 2011, according to a recent study commissioned by Microsoft Corporation.

The study was conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC), an IT research firm.

It also found that Ukraine’s IT sector will generate more than 41,000 new jobs over the next four years and account for the creation of over 850 new companies working with information technologies.

IDC’s Economic Impact Model, which studied the impact of IT in 82 countries in 2007, was presented at a conference in Budapest on Oct. 18. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was represented in the survey by 21 countries.

In terms of projected worldwide IT spending growth rates for 2007-2011, CEE will grow 13 percent annually – one of the fastest rates in the world – surpassed only by Russia (15 percent) and India (19 percent).

While there is strong growth, IDC Senior Vice President of Research Stephen Frantzen noted that IT spending in CEE is still relatively small. In contrast, France spent more than $60 billion on IT in 2007 compared to around $45 billion in the entire CEE region, Frantzen explained.

The study said that Ukraine’s IT market has the profile of an emerging economy, with 84 percent of IT spending concentrated on hardware in 2007. Although software spending accounted for only 7 percent, software-related employment in 2007 is expected to be 32 percent of total IT employment in the country.

Ukraine’s software spending is expected to grow at 17.4 percent annually, with overall IT spending reaching $2.8 billion and 15 percent growth per year until 2011.

As a percentage of GDP, Ukraine’s IT spending for 2007 reflects the worldwide average of 2.5 percent for the year, up from 2.2 percent in 2006. For the entire CEE region, IT spending as a percentage of GDP is 1.7 percent.

“In 2007, these countries in CEE will account for 6 percent of the total GDP of the countries studied, 4 percent of total IT spending, and 2 percent of total software spending,” the study concluded. The study also described the profile of the IT market in the CEE region as resembling that of a developing economy, with 62 percent of IT spending in 2007 on hardware and 13 percent on software.

IDC’s study also measured Microsoft’s share of the IT market in what it referred to as the “Microsoft ecosystem,” which includes companies that sell, service and distribute products that run with or on Microsoft software. Microsoft-related employment totaled 52 percent of Ukraine’s total IT employment of more than 72,100 employees.

“For every one [hryvnia] of Microsoft software revenue in the country, 26.33 [hryvnias] are generated through the Microsoft ecosystem of hardware OEMs, software companies, and channel and service firms,” IDC’s report said.

Source: Kyiv Post

Books Being Destroyed In Kyiv

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Day has frequently reported that Kyiv is the scene of the destruction of publishing houses, bookstores and public parks, and illegal seizures of medical institutions. Meanwhile, city bureaucrats are allowing park and woodland areas to be used for the construction of offices, entertainment centers, and highrises.

Kiev book destruction, 2007 (L). Berlin book destruction, circa 1933 (R).
Last Thursday, opposite the Kyiv City Council, where a meeting was in session, powerful loudspeakers were blasting cheerful songs from the soundtracks of children’s cartoons. Singing along were crowds of brawny men holding white flags printed with the logo of Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky’s bloc. A few people in white smocks, holding placards next to an iron barrier set up to keep undesirables from entering the corridors of power, were trying unsuccessfully to outshout the loud music.

“We’ve come to City Hall to be heard by the Kyiv City Council members, who are voting today on reorganizing our central city hospital into a district-level one. This means staff and funding cuts, and the gradual closure of this medical institution. But the mayor deliberately gave orders to play loud music so that nobody will hear us,” says Lev Maloletnii, chief of the Central City Clinical Hospital’s trade union committee.

The medical staff at the Central Clinical Hospital began having problems last summer, when Liudmyla Kachurova, chief of the City Administration’s General Public Health and Medical Care Directorate, ordered the dismissal of the hospital’s chief doctor Valentyn Bidny, who was on vacation. But the doctor managed to get reinstated after a series of court actions. Bidny says that Kachurova is not exactly rushing to obey the court ruling.

“At first, the directorate decided to fire the chief doctor, then it will reorganize the hospital, and after some time it will own several hectares of land in a posh area of Kyiv. Our hospital is not the first medical institution to end up in this situation. So the city doctors chose to raise this matter in an open letter to the president of Ukraine,” Maloletnii says.

The staff of the Central Clinical Hospital is still pinning hopes on bureaucratic common sense, because their institution is home to 11 academic departments. If they are disbanded, this will deal a heavy blow to Ukrainian research.

While the people in white smocks were trying to attract the bureaucrats’ attention near City Hall, the nearby Planeta Bookstore was hosting a closed-door conference “Vandals Are Seizing the City.” The participants — artists, book publishers, and writers — supported the doctors’ protest against the destruction of Ukrainian spirituality by the Kyiv authorities.

“Nineteen bookstores have recently closed in Kyiv, and the closure of 18 more is imminent. We have repeatedly appealed to Mayor Chernovetsky and the city councilors in this matter, but they won’t listen to us. Meanwhile, local bureaucrats are telling the media that all the problems have been solved, that artists have returned to their studios on Andriivsky uzviz, and nobody is going to shut down bookstores. But this is a lie,” says Yevhen Karas, president of the Ukrainian Association of Modern Artists.

“On Oct. 11 the Supreme Court ruled on the transfer of the Planeta Bookstore to the Kyiv City Administration. At 8 a.m. the next day some tough-looking men broke through the back door of the bookstore, blocked the entrance, splashed the windows, and prevented the staff from entering. The only answer to all their questions was that the bookstore no longer exists. It has been here for 55 years, and now City Hall is going to use it to house one of its departments.”

The Raiduha Publishing House, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, is also being evicted from its building on Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street. “Raiduha was evicted once before: this was in 1937 and now the clock seems to be turning back. It is no surprise that City Hall is encroaching on our premises because the land is worth an estimated 40 million dollars,” says Kostiantyn Klimashenko, manager of the Book Supermarket chain.

The organizers of the Culture Against Vandalism campaign are pinning their last hopes to save Ukrainian culture on support from the public and President Yushchenko whom they are urging to stem the tide of the destruction of Kyiv’s cultural environment.

Source: The Day Weekly Digest

Julia Tymoshenko: The Iron Princess

LONDON, UK -- She is the Orange revolutionary who seduced a nation and became a global style icon. Now, despite losing her billion-dollar fortune, Julia Tymoshenko is set to become Ukraine's next president – if her enemies don't kill her first.

Yulia Tymoshenko at a meeting with Colin Powell on 25 October 2007.
The transformation of Julia Tymoshenko from mere politician to leader of a revolution took place on a freezing night in November 2004 in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. With hundreds of thousands of people on the streets to protest against the falsification of election results denying victory to the presidential hopeful Viktor Yushchenko, tensions were running high. Amid rumours that troops were moving on the city to quell the uprising, and with her ally Yushchenko ensconced elsewhere, Tymoshenko led a vast crowd to face down the soldiers guarding the presidential administration.

With this one act, her transformation was complete. In less than a decade, Tymoshenko had changed her image from reviled oligarch, detested across the country, to darling of the masses. Her journey has been far from easy. In a country notorious for its dismissive attitude towards women, Tymoshenko has seen off presidents and prime ministers, endured imprisonment and a probable assassination attempt to emerge as the most popular politician in the country. If she so chooses, the 47-year-old could well be the next president of Ukraine. As leader of this geopolitically important country, the effects of her policies have the potential to reverberate across the continent.

The story of her rise to power gives an insight into the volatile, dangerous world of Ukrainian politics. The Orange Revolution, with Tymoshenko among its key figures, spelt the end of the self-serving, undemocratic regime of Leonid Kuchma, who rigged the elections in an attempt to install his anointed successor, Viktor Yanukovych. Once in power, though, the alliance of President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko collapsed in acrimony, opening the way for Yanukovych to return as prime minister in September 2006. To pre-empt Yanukovych taking full control of parliament, Yushchenko dissolved the parliament, on somewhat spurious grounds, this spring. While Yanukovych won the biggest share of the ballot in the elections that followed, Tymoshenko took nearly a third of the vote – and Yushchenko supporters would unhesitatingly switch to her if she were to launch a presidential challenge to Yanukovych, putting victory within her reach.

Her inauspicious beginnings gave little hint of what was to come. She was born in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk in 1960; the family was abandoned by her father when Julia (or Yulia) was three. Little is known about her past; even her maiden name remains a mystery. While at university studying economics, she married Oleksandr Tymoshenko in 1979 and bore their only child, Eugenia, in 1980. (Her daughter, incidentally, studied at the London School of Economics and, in October 2005, married Sean Carr, a British rock singer and market trader.)

The video-rental shop the Tymoshenkos had opened in 1988 soon became a lucrative chain, and in 1991, Julia became the director of the Ukrainian Oil Company (UOC), a small business trading in oil. Sensing the opportunities that offered themselves following the collapse of the Soviet Union, ' she reorganised the UOC into an energy-trading company, United Energy Systems, which emerged as the primary importer of natural gas from Russia to Ukraine in the post-Soviet bonanza years of the mid-1990s.

Opponents claim that during this period her company imported and sold vast quantities of stolen gas while evading taxation – something she vehemently denies. Whatever the truth, it is alleged she emerged with a personal fortune (estimates have put it as high as $11bn), the nickname "Gas Princess" and an incomparable insight into the lucrative, corrupt and highly opaque gas-trading regime between Ukraine and Russia.

Appointed deputy prime minister for fuel and energy in 1999 in the reformist government led by Yushchenko, Tymoshenko reformed the sector by closing lucrative loopholes. But the gas barons, whose shady practices she had halted, got her sacked by President Kuchma in January 2001. Her politically motivated arrest the following month, on charges of bribery, smuggling, forgery and tax evasion, and the month-long imprisonment which followed, was perhaps the defining moment of her life: whether because of her taste for power, desire for revenge, or simply moral indignation, Tymoshenko the crusading politician was born.

Following the creation of Bloc of Julia Tymoshenko (BYuT), she led a street-level campaign to bring down the regime of Kuchma in 2001 after he was implicated in the murder of a Ukrainian journalist. Although she failed, Tymoshenko became a continuous thorn in his side, culminating in her pivotal role in the Orange Revolution. More than anything, her inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising stance towards Kuchma's chosen successor, Yanukovych, for his role in electoral fraud, mobilised the masses to demand justice – justice that was served when Yushchenko was elected president in a repeat round of elections. Tymoshenko's trophy was the post of prime minister. Now the question is how much further she can go.

D espite Tymoshenko's frequent successes, her opponents are struggling to get the measure of her. In a country in which women usually have only support roles, she plays her own game. Whereas the Soviet-era, male-dominated political elite issues edicts to underlings from behind closed doors, Tymoshenko is wooing her Ukrainian audience with high-profile publicity campaigns. (A factor which led to her fallout with Yushchenko was his contention that as prime minister she should spend less time in television studios.) With one of the slickest image-making machines in Europe, she is well ahead of her opponents who are only now cottoning on to the value of self-presentation.

That she is very tough, there is no doubt. Anybody who can challenge presidents and survive the forces deployed by the state deserves the title "Iron Lady", which she is particularly proud of. (She welcomes comparisons withMargaret Thatcher, very much still an icon in Ukraine; when in the UK in September, Tymoshenko insisted on being photographed with her.) Her opponents are ground down by her ferocity, tenacity and resilience. In fact, if there is one thing her main challengers, Yanukovych and Yushchenko, agree on, it is the need to keep Tymoshenko in check. She is certainly capable of keeping both of them out of power.

Tymoshenko exploits her looks unashamedly; it is no coincidence that BYuT, is pronounced "beaut". As prime minister in 2005, she appeared on the front cover of Ukraine's version of Elle, posing in a designer dress, and when asked in an earlier interview whether she would prefer to be on the cover of Time or Playboy, Tymoshenko implied a preference for the latter, though added that she would plump for the former. The official website of BYuT is plastered with images of its leader.

Tymoshenko even uses her hairstyle as a political tool. The cut, that of a Ukrainian peasant, is a bold but risky choice in a country where many people try to forget about their bumpkin origins. Yet the strategy has paid off, as the braids' traditional connotations have boosted her national political credentials. The plait has become her trademark and she is now instantly recognisable across the globe. Recently, it was replicated by Kylie Minogue in a calendar, and Sienna Miller, that doyenne of style, adopted it at this year's Golden Globe Awards. When Tymoshenko's detractors tried to undermine her credibility by accusing her of wearing hair extensions, in perhaps one of the more remarkable press conferences given by a politician and former minister, she undid her plait in front of the international press corps to prove that it was her own hair.

Her masterstroke was to counterbalance her peasant style with designer outfits, always colourful and often daring. Despite claiming that her familial income was less than $10,000 in 2005 when she was prime minister, it was estimated that she had worn at least $30,000 worth of designer outfits. The fate of her fortune acquired in the 1990s remains covered in a veil of mystery. Tymoshenko claims it was destroyed by Kuchma during her opposition to him, bolstering the riches to rags myth. '

Her charisma is legendary. Russian president Vladimir Putin is alleged to have a soft spot for Tymoshenko, while one EU official offers the following advice on negotiating with her: "Don't look at her; write copious notes; afterwards, go home and take a shower; then read your notes." She can grab, and hold, a crowd as few others can: fiery, caring, coquettish, it was she who put fire in the bellies of the protestors during the revolution. Although they supported Yushchenko, she was the one they believed in. After the two subsequently fell out in 2005, many people felt betrayed – he was, in their eyes, just the soft-talking figurehead. A year later, when Yushchenko came on to the stage on the main thoroughfare in Kiev to celebrate the anniversary of the Orange Revolution, the crowd chanted "Yu-li-a, Yu-li-a".

In a country regarded as among the more corrupt in the world, Tymoshenko's anti-corruption message resonates. Thanks to her unrelenting castigation of the political and economic elite of Ukraine for their abuse of power, voters have little difficulty in putting her murky past out of their minds when it comes to elections. Indeed, with her bile targeting rent-seeking politicians, her popularity has rocketed: in parliamentary elections in 2002 she had 8 per cent of the vote; in 2006, 22 per cent; and last month her bloc picked up nearly 31 per cent. In a presidential election, due in 2009 or 2010, on current ratings she would suck voters away from the incumbent. As it is, her main challenger, Yanukovych, would have a real battle on his hands.

Her success in the recent elections is therefore bitter-sweet for Yushchenko in their tentatively renewed alliance: without Tymoshenko, he loses control of parliament; with her on-side, power is in her hands. He is outshone, outwitted and, eventually, may end up out of power because of her.

Most worryingly for Yushchenko and Yanukovych, Tymoshenko's appeal is national; theirs is not. Yushchenko is supported almost exclusively by western Ukraine and Yanukovych by eastern and southern; each is detested in the other's heartlands. In contrast, Tymoshenko won the majority of Ukraine's electoral districts in September's parliamentary elections; she now appears to be the only politician capable of holding together a country fragmented along linguistic, ethnic and religious lines, as it seeks to find its place in the world. Ukraine is perennially torn between the pull of Russia and lure of the West, and could easily tear apart if the tensions become too great. Tymoshenko seems for the first time in the history of independent Ukraine to offer a message that appeals to its diverse parts.

It is her overwhelming appeal that presents Tymoshenko with her greatest threat: to her own safety. She unnerves the prevailing powers in Ukraine: she knows the political system inside-out, gets things done, and tends not to compromise. As prime minister, she threatened to re-nationalise many of the companies that made a number of Ukrainians billionaires. In an environment where politicians who don't toe the line have met with unfortunate road accidents, and where Yushchenko, notoriously, was poisoned while campaigning for the presidency, she is highly vulnerable. She has already been involved in a serious car accident, in 2002, not unlike those which have killed numerous other Ukrainian politicians.

Tymoshenko's unwillingness to pull punches does not leave much room for reconciliation. Her success is ringing alarm bells in Moscow – and any clashes between Kiev and Moscow cause consternation in the capitals of the European Union. Her pan-Ukrainian appeal threatens to undermine the Kremlin's "divide and conquer" strategy towards the country, while her anti-corruption crusade would infringe on vested interests in Russian energy affairs. It is likely that the threat made earlier this month by the Russian energy giant Gazprom to reduce gas supplies to Ukraine unless $1.3bn of arrears are repaid, is related to BYuT's electoral success. Once back in power, she would undoubtedly impede any moves by Russia to take control of Ukraine's gas-transit system. As more than 90 per cent of the EU's gas from Russia comes via Ukraine's pipeline, securing its ownership is key for Moscow. The EU's dependence on Ukraine's energy-transportation system makes western Europe uniquely vulnerable to any moves by Moscow to cut supplies as a means of getting its way in Ukraine.

Aware of her image as a somewhat volatile and opportunistic politician, Tymoshenko is working hard to come across as more moderate. During the recent campaign, she spoke noticeably more slowly and used more controlled body language. At the same time, she relaunched herself on the international arena, knowing that showing off her international respectability would do no harm to her political ambitions in Ukraine. She met a number of European public figures and on those occasions avoided making populist, uncompromising pronouncements.

Yet, despite her remarkable rise and recent efforts to foster a new image, Tymoshenko has yet to prove that she can take the final step from leader of a revolution to leader of a country. With a natural inclination to confront and fight, rather than negotiate and pacify, and a predisposition to follow her instincts rather than consult and reflect, Julia Tymoshenko has one more transformation to make if she is to attain the stature her country will require of her. *

Source: The Independent

Ukraine Lashes Back At Russian Ambassador Over History

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's Foreign Ministry dismissed statements by the Russian ambassador about a Ukrainian WWII army and Soviet-era famine as being against diplomacy.

Russian Ambassador Viktor Chernomyrdin
In an interview with Russia's Vremya Novostei popular daily Friday, Viktor Chernomyrdin spoke critically of the attempts to romanticize the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which has been said to cooperate with the Nazis in WWII.

He also slammed President Viktor Yushchenko's initiative to prosecute those who deny the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine known as Holodomor.

"Ukrainian political and scientific elite and the public can well qualify historical events of their nation without any additional commentaries based on ideological and stereotyped principles," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

The UPA was formed in 1942 on the initiative of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). UPA operated mostly in western Ukraine, historically opposed to Russian domination, and fought against the Soviet Army.

UPA is known to have cooperated with the Nazis, even though at the end of the war, it fought against them and the Soviet Army altogether.

In 2007, President Yushchenko signed a decree to celebrate the date of UPA formation as a state holiday.

He also awarded a title of the Hero of Ukraine posthumously to UPA leader Roman Shukhevich.

Source: RIA Novosti

Hands Off The Market

KIEV, Ukraine -- Prime Minster Viktor Yanukovych’s stern warning to sunflower oil exporters last week suggests that his government is incapable of learning from past mistakes.

PM Viktor Yanukovych
Instead of recognizing that inflation is to be expected when social payments are increased just before elections, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions has looked to pin inflation on business and political opponents.

Ukraine is the world’s second largest sunflower oil producer after Russia. Export restrictions on this staple are not a solution to higher prices because they ultimately create additional problems.

The last time the Yanukovych government imposed export restrictions (on grain last year), farmers were hit the worst, as they were unable to fetch the best prices for their produce.

Multinational traders also incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

Farmers unable to secure higher revenues will be unable to reinvest into their operations. Furthermore, the international business community will have additional proof that Ukraine is unpredictable and chaotic – an image the country’s detractors would like to promote.

As we have emphasized in the past: Soviet-style management of the economy is bad for business, bad for the market, bad for the country and bad for the farmers.

The Ukrainian government needs to be told again and again: Stay out of the market.

Source: Kyiv Post

Russia In Ukraine Refinery Spat

LONDON, UK -- Russia says the armed seizure of a Ukrainian oil refinery in which it has a stake is a "flagrant outrage". Russian First Deputy PM Sergei Ivanov accused Kiev of "inaction" after a former head of the Kremenchuk refinery, backed by armed guards, was reinstated.

Sergei Ivanov says the refinery row is harming ties with Kiev.
Pavel Ovcharenko cited a court order returning him control of the refinery.

Kremenchuk's Russian oil supplier - and shareholder - has suspended deliveries, prompting fears of a fresh row between Moscow and Kiev over energy supplies.

The Russian firm Tatneft, based in the Tatarstan region, has a 28.8% stake in the refinery.

The Tatarstan government has urged Ukraine's chief prosecutor to launch criminal proceedings against those who seized the plant.

Russia and Ukraine only recently ended months of dispute by negotiating a deal over the supply of natural gas.

Russian giant Gazprom had been threatening to suspend gas deliveries to Ukraine over alleged unpaid bills.

Ukraine had in turn accused Russia of using energy as a political lever against its pro-Western government.

'Heading for crisis'

Mr Ivanov said on Friday that the dispute over Kremenchuk had "harmed greatly the relations between Ukrainian and Russian investors".

He urged Kiev to intervene, saying the "Ukrainian authorities' inaction is bewildering".

Armed men entered the Kremenchuk complex on 19 October.

The refinery's boss, Sergei Glushko, was forced from office and its former chief, Pavel Ovcharenko, was reinstated.

The change prompted Tatneft to suspend oil supplies.

On its website, Tatneft says the members of a private security firm had forcibly entered the refinery, "battered" its guards and briefly corralled board members into a room.

Mr Ovcharenko told AFP news agency the raid had been conducted by bailiffs and had the backing of a court order.

Mr Glushko, quoted by Reuters news agency, said Kremenchuk would stop functioning if it turned to domestic oil supplies and imports from other sources to replace the Russian oil.

"Without Russian oil we cannot do anything," he said. "Give it a week more and we will be in crisis."

Source: BBC News

Yulia Tymoshenko, Milton Friedman And The Liberation Of The Peasants

KIEV, Ukraine -- Of all the different planks of Yulia Tymoshenko’s campaign platform, the issue of military reform, most notably getting rid of the draft, is the one that is most likely to have the biggest effect on Ukrainians’ lives.

Yulia Tymoshenko has a battle on her hands in wanting to end the forced conscription of young Ukrainian men.
Simply put, if she is successful in ending the forced conscription of young men into the Ukrainian army, Yulia will have liberated 50,000 men a year from a one-year term, sentenced for the simple crime of being Ukrainian.

Sadly, it seems that the proposal to end conscription is going to be bogged down in political infighting.

The Our Ukraine political bloc is claiming that it would be too costly to end the draft before 2011. Even worse, the Party of Regions has connected ending the draft to a conspiracy by those trying to force Ukraine to join NATO.

At a recent press conference, Party of Regions member Valeriy Konovaliuk stated: “The policy of the wholesale reduction of the armed forces has led to its complete degradation and absolutely total lack of combat readiness. To a large degree, these processes have taken their cue from the ideologies of those foreign strategists who have seen Ukraine as part of NATO at any cost, and who have understood that the less significant the [Ukrainian] armed forces, the more vigorously those policies will be pursued.”

All of them are overlooking the most important reason to end the draft in Ukraine. As Milton Friedman, the great economist and political thinker pointed out, there is simply no justification for a democratic government to force conscription on its young men during peacetime. As he wrote in “Capitalism and Freedom,” “the appropriate free market arrangement is volunteer military forces; which is to say, hiring men to serve. There is no justification for not paying whatever price is necessary to attract the required number of men. Present arrangements are inequitable and arbitrary, and seriously interfere with the freedom of young men.”

Everything that Milton Friedman wrote about the draft in reference to the United States in the 1960s and 70s resonates deeply in reference to the draft here in Ukraine. The present status of conscription in Ukraine is simply a substantial forced tax on the least educated citizens.

As is well-documented in Ukraine today, the only people serving in the army are the poorest Ukrainians with the fewest alternatives.

It is telling that neither Viktor Yanukovych Jr., nor Andriy Yushchenko, the son of President Viktor Yushchenko, served in the army. In fact, I would challenge you to find any politician’s child who did serve.

As for Yanukovych Jr., his ticket out of the service was a supposed spine injury that he suffered as a young boy. That near-crippling childhood spine injury, however, did not stop Yanukovych Jr. from listing wakeboarding and football as his favorite hobbies on his resume on dovidka.com.ua.

Bribing doctors for a note that will excuse a young man from the service is a widespread practice in Ukraine for those who have the money to do so, but it is not an option for the country’s poorest young men, who by-and-large fill the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Meanwhile, the example of Yushchenko’s son shows that anyone with enough money to attend a university or other institution of higher learning with a military faculty attached to it can walk out of that university with the rank of second lieutenant after being on its register of cadets for two years without ever marching a step in the rank-and-file armed forces.

Both methods of avoiding the service are a free pass out of forced labor.

Meanwhile, the poorest, least educated young men are denied freedom and forced to pay a tax on their meager earnings by working basically for free. To quote Friedman again, “When a young man is forced to serve at $45 a week, including the cost of his keep, of his uniforms, and his dependency allowances, and there are many civilian opportunities available to him at something like $100 a week, he is paying $55 a week in an implicit tax.”

Of course, this does not even include the tax that is paid by society. In addition to what is paid by a young conscript, Friedman pointed out, “if you were to add to those taxes in kind, the costs imposed on universities and colleges; of seating, housing, and entertaining young men who would otherwise be doing productive work; if you were to add to that the costs imposed on industry by the fact that they can only offer young men who are in danger of being drafted stopgap jobs, and cannot effectively invest money in training them; if you were to add to that the costs imposed on individuals of a financial kind by their marrying earlier or having children at an earlier stage, and so on; if you were to add all these up, there is no doubt at all in my mind that the cost of a volunteer force, correctly calculated, would be very much smaller than the amount we are now spending in manning our armed forces.”

Going even further, in the three decades since the United States got rid of its draft and switched to a professional army, the military has become one of the most important paths for career advancement for the poor in America.

By forcing the military to compete for young men in a competitive environment, it has forced the military to offer training, career advancement and fair pay. So, instead of it being a short period of forced labor, it acts as a key step in the career ladder for thousands of individuals with lesser opportunities.

By ending conscription, Ukraine will open opportunity to its poorest citizens, save money in its military budget, improve its military capabilities, give its economy a boost by bringing more people to productive labor, and most importantly, free its citizens from forced labor.

This seems like one idea that everyone can support.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Woman Forced To Dance At Strip Club Testifies In D.C.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Lured from Ukraine with the promise of a student visa, the young woman believed she was headed to the U.S. to study and to Virginia Beach to work as a waitress -- not to Detroit, where she was forced to dance at a strip club.

Logo from Cheetah's in Detroit where "Katya" was forced to strip.
Using the alias "Katya" to protect herself, the 22-year-old woman spoke publicly for the first time today, describing to a congressional panel how she was forced to work at the Detroit club for months until she and another young woman escaped with the help of one of the patrons of the club.

"They forced me to work six days a week for 12 hours a day," she said of the men who made her work at Cheetah's in Detroit. "I could not refuse to go to work or I would be beaten." While she was forced to dance at the strip club, she said she was not made to be a prostitute.

"I was their slave," she said.

Still afraid of retribution, she has been unable to see her mother in Ukraine and won't reveal her real name, where she lives or where she works.

The testimony came before the House Judiciary Committee and its chairman, Detroit Democrat John Conyers. The committee is looking at reauthorizing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which was intended to stiffen penalities for people engaging in human trafficking and make it easier for victims to get temporary visas.

Earlier this year, two Eastern European men were sentenced for their roles in the human trafficking ring that lured Katya and 11 other women to the U.S. and then forced them to work as exotic dancers by threats and coercion, taking away their passports, imposing huge debts on them, beating them and threatening to turn them into authorities.

In one case, according to federal prosecutors, a car belonging to a dancer who escaped was firebombed.

Michail Aronov, a Lithuanian national who lived in Livonia and the Chicago area, was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison in August and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution to his victims.

Another man, Aleksandr Maksimenko, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ukraine who also lived in Livonia, was sentenced to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay $1.5 million in restitution.

In all, nine people were sentenced. Documents released by federal prosecutors also said Maksimenko sexually abused two of the dancers. Both Maksimenko and Aronov pleaded guilty.

In her testimony, Katya described how, after landing in Washington in May 2004 -- where she had been told she'd be headed to Virginia to work as a waitress -- Aronov, Maksimenko and another man were waiting for her with a bus ticket to Detroit.

"Once I got off the bus in Detroit, everything changed. They took me to a hotel and took all of my identity documents from me. ... They told me that I owed them $12,000 for travel to the United States and $10,000 for the identification document, and that I only had a short time to pay them off," she said, speaking with a strong Ukranian accent.

She said her captors kept close tabs on her, even searching her apartment when she wasn't there. During her time there, she said she handed over as much as $4,000 a week to Aronov Maksimenko.

Her escape finally came, she said, after she and the young woman she lived with approached a patron of the club they thought they could trust. They put their belongings in trash bags -- figuring they could claim they were taking the garbage out if one of the men stopped them -- and left with the patron, who took them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Once the men were arrested, she said, "I felt safe for the first time."

But she still has worries, saying Maksimenko has at least one relative still in Ukraine.

"If the trafficking law had allowed for my mother to come and live with me in the United States, it would have helped me and protected her," Katya said.

Conyers said the reauthorization bill would open immigration avenues to victims and their families to ensure they are protected.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the committee, said those provisions may go too far, potentially allwing "people who knowing and willingly violate U.S. law to get immigration benefits for themselves and their families."

Source: Detroit Free Press

Kyiv Moves Up In EIU Biz Ranking

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine placed 70th in rankings released by the Economist Intelligence Unit Oct. 25 measuring the business environment quality of 82 countries over the next four years.


The new ranking puts Ukraine five notches higher compared with the ranking established for 2003-2007.

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is the business information arm of The Economist Group, which publishes The Economist.

EIU’s business environment rankings model, which was launched in 1997, measures the attractiveness of a country’s business environment and its key components. The model measures each country according to 10 categories and 91 indicators, assessing them through quantitative data, business surveys and expert assessments. Each of the 82 countries receives a final score on a 1-10 scale.

According to EIU’s Oct. 25 press release, the model is “designed to reflect the main criteria used by companies to formulate their global business strategies and investment location decisions.”

Ukraine placed 70th with a score of 5.48, moving up an entire point from its last assessment of 4.48 over the last four-year period. Despite its advancement, the country still ranked lower than every other country in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that was assessed.

Estonia led the CEE pack, taking 21st position with a score of 7.85, followed by the Czech Republic (28), Slovakia (30), Poland (34), and Hungary (36), all with scores in the 7-7.5 range. Ukraine was surpassed by Russia (62) and Kazakhstan (68), which both fell three and two spots, respectively, since the last rankings.

“The pursuit of EU membership has driven improvements in business environment in much of [CEE], although the incentive to reform is blunted after a country becomes a member,” reads a statement issued by the EIU.

Denmark took first place with a score of 8.78, followed by Finland and Singapore. East Asia remains the most attractive emerging market (EM) in the world for investment. Lowest in the rankings were Iran (80), Venezuela (81), and Angola (82).

Despite Ukraine’s business environment ranking being the weakest in the CEE region, according to Nenad Pacek, an expert at EIU, Ukraine is the region’s fourth most important corporate priority for business development expansion over the next three to five years, surpassed only by Russia, Turkey, and Romania, which take first, second and third positions, respectively.

Pacek explained that the CEE region is attractive for business development. It has a high degree of predictability and offers significantly lower risks for businesses than China, India, the Middle East, Latin America or Africa.

Within CEE, Ukraine is one of the fastest growing markets, and the CIS, where 74 percent of companies are seeing double-digit growth, is the best region for investment.

The region’s high real GDP growth rates in part reflect its continuing attractiveness to companies. In 2006, the CEE region had one of the highest real GDP percentages worldwide, at 7 percent, and was surpassed only by Asia (excluding Japan) at 7.1 percent.

CEE is expected to undergo 5.5 percent real GDP growth in 2007-2011, once again surpassed only by Asia with 5.6 percent.

However, Pacek emphasized several points that companies should keep in mind to avoid inflated expectations from the region. Firstly, CEE only produces 4 percent of world GDP at market exchange rates, and represents only 5.5 percent of global sales for an established multinational corporation.

As for the economic performance of the world’s emerging markets (EMs) overall, in 2006, EMs collectively produced more than half of the world’s GDP.

They also accounted for more than 80 percent of the global population and presently consume 49 percent of the world’s oil.

EMs also buy more than 50 percent of all developed world exports and hold 70 percent of world forex reserves.

According to a 2006 CEO survey conducted by EIU, demand in EMs is the single most important force shaping today’s business world.

Source: Kyiv Post

Coalition Deal In Doubt

KIEV, Ukraine -- More than a month has passed since early parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine, but the country is not likely to get a workable government and coalition any time soon, much less one made up of parties heir to the 2004 Orange Revolution, analysts say.

Former Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov, a pro-presidential lawmaker, is considered one of the main opponents of a revived Orange coalition in which Yulia Tymoshenko would once again serve as prime minister.
Orange Revolution hero President Viktor Yushchenko called the snap elections in the spring to halt the usurpation of his executive authority by the coalition of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the villain of the Orange Revolution.

Now, the president looks set to once again share power with Yanukovych’s Regions faction, sidelining the Byut faction of Orange Revolution heroine Yulia Tymoshenko and prolonging the country’s political instability.

“We had an agreement with Byut that we would work together in parliament. But we also should be open to those [other parties] that want to be in a coalition,” Yuriy Yekhanurov, a close confidant of Yushchenko and member of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine grouping, told journalists last week.

“This means, primarily, of course, the Bloc of [Volodymyr] Lytvyn, and also the Party of Regions should be in the majority. And I insist that they be included in the [coalition] talks,” he added.

Following a stunning showing by Tymoshenko’s Byut faction in the Sept. 30 election, the pro-Western Orange parties got a chance to form a majority of two seats in the next parliament and send the eastern-looking Regions and Communists into the opposition.

The Orange parties paraded their would-be coalition agreement after the official results of the elections were announced in the middle of last month. But the coalition process is dragging on.

In an Oct. 28 interview on Ukrainian Television, the president himself seemed to waffle on the issue.

“As regards my position on the formation of a coalition, I would say that first and foremost the coalition must correspond to the results of the elections. Therefore, it seems to me that there is one answer: The coalition must be formed in the context of a coalition of democratic forces,” he said.

But, the president added that an Orange coalition would be complicated due to its slim majority of parliamentary votes: “Is it easy to deprive the democratic forces of these votes? Yes, I think it would be easy.”

It was the president who allowed Yanukovych to recover from his humiliating defeat in the 2004 presidential elections. Regions came in first in the March 2006 parliamentary poll, but were not able to form a coalition with the Communists alone until the Orange-aligned Socialists broke rank.

The president’s party was accused by observers at the time of holding coalition talks with Orange parties and the Regions simultaneously. The 2006 Orange split was preceded by infighting in 2005, which ended in Yushchenko replacing Tymoshenko as premier with Yekhanurov. Since then, trust among the former revolutionary allies has been weak.

Yevhen Korniychuk, a Byut lawmaker involved in the coalition talks, has accused Yekhanurov and other members of the president’s Our Ukraine grouping of sabotaging the alliance.

For example, he said Yekhanurov and Our Ukraine member Anatoliy Matviyenko have already started criticizing Byut policy initiatives, such as the repayment of Soviet-era bank deposits.

“My personal feeling is that they are apparently being influenced by the Party of Regions,” he said.

Political analyst Andriy Yermolayev said Yushchenko doesn’t like the idea of a slim coalition between the two Orange parties, because it would limit his own power base.

“Yushchenko realizes that he needs some kind of a grand coalition, as the lawmakers in his own faction are more interested in pursuing their own interests.”

Unlike Regions, Byut and the Communists, Our Ukraine lawmakers are sure they’re on the right team. The president’s Our Ukraine party only got its 14 percent of the vote on Sept. 30 by blocking with the People’s Self-Defense Party of former Socialist Yuriy Lutsenko. Byut came in second, receiving 30 percent of the vote – an increase of almost a third from March 2006.

Regions came in first with 34 percent – not enough to form a coalition with its Communist allies (5 percent), even with the help of the Lytvyn Bloc, which barely slipped past the 3 percent barrier.

In addition, blocking with Byut would return Tymoshenko to head the government, which equals or exceeds the presidency in executive power thanks to Yanukovych’s constitutional maneuvering over the past year.

If, on the other hand, Yushchenko could set himself up as a power broker between the irreconcilable Yanukovych and Tymoshenko, he might be able to hold on to the presidency after 2009. But the path between then and now is fraught with instability.

According to Yermolayev, “Both the Orange and the [Regions] Blue factions know the current coalition being tabled isn’t workable.”

Regions, along with the Communists and the Bloc of Lytvyn, would be able to keep parliament in a deadlock from the opposition. Byut wants real power in the next parliament and government, or they are prepared to fight it out during the resulting power struggle right up until 2009.

To avoid such an outcome, some kind of union between Regions and the president’s party is being sought, Yermolayev said.

Unfortunately, getting into bed again with Regions’ Donetsk clan would be a slap in the face to Orange voters.

That’s why the nation can expect more instability, which Yushchenko can use as a pretext to work with Regions.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s provoked by the issue of approving next year’s budget or the vote for Tymoshenko. The Orange coalition will prove unworkable and lead to a period of instability that could last into the first quarter of 2008.”

It was Tymoshenko who pushed through legislation that obliges lawmakers to vote along with their parties or risk losing their mandates. However, the supporting draft laws were never passed. There is still no procedure for ejecting lawmakers for voting against party lines.

Moreover, currently legislation allows lawmakers to vote secretly on Tymoshenko’s nomination as premier, which will be able to be blocked by just two votes.

The result of this or one of a half-dozen other potential destabilizing scenarios would prolong the current absence of a parliament and thus make it politcally acceptable for Yushchenko to seek a compromise.

Yermolayev said this could either be the outright announcement of a coalition between the Regions and Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense or the introduction of a legal mechanism that would allow lawmakers to choose whether they want to join the majority or opposition, regardless of how they were voted in.

Source: Kyiv Post