Tennis - Italy's Garbin Shocks Petrova

GOLD COAST, Australia -- Italy's Tathiana Garbin shocked second seed Nadia Petrova of Russia 5-7, 7-5, 6-3 in the first round of the Australian women's hardcourt tennis tournament here Monday.

Amelie Mauresmo of France plays a forehand return against Ukraine's Olga Savchuk during their tennis match at the Australian Women's Hardcourt Championships on the Gold Coast, Australia, Monday, Dec. 31, 2007.
Garbin reached the semi-finals of this event last year only to withdraw with breathing difficulties when leading Martina Hingis 4-3 in the first set.

But she had no such problem against Petrova as she chased down almost every shot and used her court coverage to overcome the powerful Russian.

It was her first win over Petrova in five encounters.

"I feel like I didn't finish the tournament last year," Garbin said.

"To come back here and win this first round match was very tough because Nadia is one of the best players in the world. I'm proud of myself today."

After two hard-fought sets, Garbin looked to be cruising to victory when she led 5-0 in the decider, but she began to suffer from nerves and allowed Petrova to claw her way back to 3-5.

But the Italian regained her composure and when the powerful Russian hit a forehand into the net, Garbin was through to the second round.

"The key was to give her back every ball," Garbin said. "I ran so much today -- three hours almost -- I ran for everything."

Eighth-seeded Hungarian Agnes Szavay was also a first-round loser, bowing out to qualifying "lucky loser" Yuliana Fedak of Ukraine.

Fedak only made the main draw when countrywoman Julia Vakulenko withdrew injured at the last minute, but came back from losing the first set to win 3-6, 7-5, 6-2.

Defending champion and third seed Dinara Safina of Russia struggled past Australian-based Slovakian Jarmila Gajdosova 4-6, 6-1, 6-2.

In other matches played on a rain-affected second day, fourth seed Patty Schnyder of Switzerland cruised past Russian qualifier Alisa Kleybanova 6-1, 6-3 and two-time Grand Slam winner Amelie Mauresmo crushed Ukraine's Olga Savchuk 6-1, 6-1 in a little under an hour.

Mauresmo now plays compatriot Nathalie Dechy in the second round.

In a late match, Italian Francesca Schiavone unexpectedly progressed to the second round when Meghann Shaughnessy was forced to withdraw despite the American leading 6-0, 1-0 at the time.

Source: AFP

A New Year Of More Confrontation

WASHINGTON, DC -- A new critical year in East-West relations is fast approaching. It promises to be a year of decision and confrontation. 2008 will present an important challenge for European Union unity, trans-Atlantic cohesion and the determination of the West to stand up to an increasingly assertive and expansive Russia.


The world is waiting for final decisions on the status of Kosovo. Without Russia’s involvement during the past year, Kosovo would already be a state, since Serbia by itself could not have resisted Western objectives to legitimize Kosovo’s de facto independence. Moscow’s calculation to use the disputed territory as a pawn in its “great game” against U.S. interests has made the process of statehood more tense and unpredictable.

Washington continues to demonstrate resolve over Kosovo’s final status despite the difficulties in forging an EU consensus and the hesitation evident among some European states in bypassing the UN Security Council, whose decisions are blocked by the Kremlin. The process of independence will most probably be completed by the time of the NATO summit in Bucharest in April. But the recognition of Kosovo’s statehood will generate fresh regional and international tensions that need to be competently handled by the trans-Atlantic powers.

The stabilization of the Western Balkans is manageable if NATO, the EU, and the United States work in tandem to prevent Belgrade and Moscow from exploiting latent tensions and militant expectations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Although Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica may act irrationally in response to Kosovo’s independence, Belgrade no longer has the capabilities to export war to neighboring states. A display of diplomatic and military force may be necessary by NATO and the EU to convince local actors that the West is serious.

Containing Russian reactions outside of the Balkans, however, may prove more problematic. Some analysts say the Kremlin has drawn a red line across Kosovo’s independence. If the West recognizes the new state, the Kremlin may pursue its “national interests” more vigorously in several neighboring regions and intensify its anti-U.S. alliances. Washington and Brussels need to be prepared for all eventualities.

Moscow has already signaled that it will fortify its economic and political ties with Iran. In addition, it will seek a closer relationship with China to counter “U.S. expansionism,” and it will develop the Collective Security Treaty Organization into a competitor with NATO in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Moreover, Russia will increase pressure on all former Soviet colonies that seek inclusion in Western institutions.

Georgia has become the most vulnerable outpost of Western interests in the Caucasus, a region that Russia is determined to dominate both for reasons of geostrategy and energy politics. Moscow’s military commanders are prepared to assist the Abkhaz and South Ossetian separatist movements and confront the Georgian military if Tbilisi attempts to regain the two enclaves. Indeed, the Kremlin may seek to draw Georgia into a military confrontation to justify an already planned intervention.

The Russian authorities may also seek to apply pressure on Moldova by raising the specter of recognizing the breakaway Transdnestr region once Kosovo becomes independent. They are certain to fortify their military presence in Belarus and Kaliningrad, and they will lean heavily on the new Ukrainian government led by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to undermine the process of democratic reform and Western integration. In recent days, President Vladimir Putin has warned against Western influences in Ukraine and again raised the prospect of instability and disintegration.

The presidential election in March will not change official policy. Putin’s selected successor, Dmitry Medvedev will remain beholden to the KGB clique that controls the Kremlin. Moscow’s policy will remain assertive and aggressive toward the West.

The list of conflict points between Russia and the West expands almost every week. It now includes such contentious questions as the missile defense shield, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, ballistic missile accords, the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, NATO enlargement, energy security and even the ownership rights to the Arctic. Tensions also persist over Kremlin pressures on the three Baltic states and its escalating confrontation with London. It is not surprising that the EU and Russia have been unable to arrange a new partnership agreement.

The Putin leadership has deliberately created a sense of danger through its anti-Western rhetoric. It claims that the United States and its closest NATO allies, such as Britain and Poland, are seeking to encircle Russia and prevent the country from regaining its rightful position as a major global player. The expansion of Western alliances and the promotion of liberal democracies are depicted as direct threats to Russia’s interests.

In these testing circumstances, the U.S. presidential election in November will be a good time to decide which direction the United States is heading.

Among the priority items for the United States will be dealing with an expansionist Kremlin that is once again seeking to divide the Western alliance and diminish U.S. influence. The decision on Kosovo’s statehood will be an early indication of whether Washington is determined to stand by its principles and is capable of ensuring trans-Atlantic cohesion — even at the cost of exacerbating the inevitable confrontation with Russia.

Source: The St. Petersburg Times

Ukraine President Hails New Government's First Budget

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Sunday signed off on Ukraine's 2008 budget, which he hailed as proof that the country's razor-tight parliamentary majority was functioning effectively.

Viktor Yushchenko toasts Yulia Tymoshenko.
"This is the first serious result of cooperation between the president of Ukraine, the democratic parliamentary coalition and the new government," Yushchenko said in comments published on his website.

Yushchenko ally Yulia Tymoshenko secured passage of the budget through parliament on Friday, 10 days after being elected prime minister with one vote to spare in parliament.

Yushchenko's Our Ukraine and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc together secured a narrow majority of seats in September elections to unseat their Russia-backed rival Viktor Yanukovych from the prime minister's office.

Tymoshenko said a 2008 budget deficit of 18.5 billion hryvnias (3.66 billion dollars, 2.5 billion euros) would be financed in part by privatisations, the Interfax news agency reported.

The budget envisages income of 215.36 billion hryvnias (42.6 billion dollars, 29 billion euros) and expenses of 235.43 billion hryvnias (46.6 billion dollars, 31.7 billion euros), the news agency reported.

The budget is based on GDP growth of 6.8 percent and inflation of 9.6 percent, Interfax said.

Source: AFP

Viktor Yushchenko Shows Arresting Recovery As Poison Scars Fade

LONDON, United Kingdom -- Enduring Viktor Yushchenko is looking fresh-faced and recovered after the poison scandal that surrounded his gruelling election battle three years ago.

Road to recovery: Victor Yushchenko shows an arresting improvement after the haggering poison scandal that surrounded his election.
The President of Ukraine's face showed an impressive recovery from the disfigurement and scarring caused by dioxin poisoning in 2004.

Yuschenko long alleged he was poisoned as part of a plot to kill him.

But doctors only confirmed the suspicions after he lost the rigged November election when they found levels of dioxin 1,000 times higher than the norm.

The illness, which left Yuschenko's face bloated and pock-marked, kept him out of the early stages of the first election, which international observers said was marred with vote fraud.

But two months of massive protests and legal challenges saw Yuschenko sworn in as president of the Ukraine in January 2005.

Source: Evening Standard

Ukraine President Orders Speedy Closure Of Chernobyl Reactor

KIEV, Ukraine -- The president of Ukraine ordered Thursday the country's Emergency Situations Ministry to present him with a plan for the closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant within 20 days.

The crumbling Chernobyl sarcophagus
In September Ukraine signed a contract with France's Novarka to build a cover over the damaged Chernobyl reactor, which exploded in 1986 in the world's worst nuclear disaster.

The country also signed a deal to build a "dry storage" facility for spent nuclear fuel on the site of the plant with U.S. company Holtec International.

"I must have a concrete plan for decommissioning the Chernobyl NPP within 20 days," Viktor Yushchenko said as he introduced new minister Volodymyr Shandru.

The president also said that the construction of the cover for NPP should be started in the first quarter of next year to avoid anymore delays.

The plant's reactor No. 4 has been protected by a concrete Soviet-designed "sarcophagus" since the disaster occurred 21 years ago.

The replacement of the crumbling structure, now long overdue, has been repeatedly put off due to funding difficulties.

On July 17 the Assembly of Chernobyl Shelter Fund Donors gave its approval for the deal with Novarka to build a steel cover over the reactor at a preliminary cost of 490 million euros (about $680 million).

The decision came after numerous delays since the organization, which comprises 28 countries including the G8 nations and is run by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), pledged in 2005 to allocate only $200 million for a new vault to contain the radioactive material still inside reactor No. 4.

In August EBRD signed a contract with the Ukrainian Ministry for Emergency Situations and a state company overseeing the plant, granting Ukraine 330 million euros (about $460 mln) to secure the damaged reactor.

The project is fraught with engineering difficulties, due to the high radiation threat. A huge steel vault, which will be constructed away from the reactor site, will then be slid into place on rails sealing the plant for 100 years, and further measures are expected to reduce the threat or remove the radioactive material from the plant.

Estimates by international bodies of the number of deaths caused by the world's worst nuclear disaster vary dramatically. Fifty-six people were reported to have been killed directly and another 4,000 to have died of thyroid cancer shortly after the accident.

Several million more are believed to have been exposed to different degrees of radiation.

Vast areas, mainly in the three ex-Soviet states, were contaminated by the fallout of the explosion. More than 300,000 people were relocated after the accident.

But 5 million people still live in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine classified as "contaminated" with radioactive elements. An 18-mile zone around the reactor remains largely deserted to this day.

The amount of international aid to the affected territories is still to be calculated, but UN experts put the figure at hundreds of billions of dollars, some of which has been misappropriated.

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukraine's Dynamo Kiev Played So Badly, Change Is Possible

KIEV, Ukraine -- The year 2007 was the season Ihor Surkis, the long- suffering president of the Dymnamo Kiev football side, finally got fed up. "I am sick and tired of spending money, and then more money, and not getting results," Surkis told News 24 in an interview. "Things are going to change ... and this time there will be no sacred cows."

Kiev Dynamo owner Ihor Surkis
An irate owner out for blood after having poured buckets of cash into his inept losing side may be unextraordinary in European football, but Surkis' open anger is revolutionary for Dynamo, an organization in many ways unchanged little since the glory days of the Soviet Union.

Once one of Europe's top sides, and the winningest team in Soviet history, Dynamo has hit on hard times of late, dropping game after game to domestic league outsiders, and, as of early December, on track to finish dead last in Champions League Group F.

During the 2006-7 Champions League campaign, Dynamo failed to win a single game in its group, managed only two draws, and allowed 16 goals to five netted. The last time Dynamo won a Champions League match was in 2004.

Domestically Dynamo's season start this year was the worst in the side's 80-year history.

Perenially in first or second place in the league table, as of the Ukrainian Professional League's winter break the club stood in a shameful third place, seven points adrift of the cross-country rival Donetsk Shakhtar.

Painfully, the league losses have come against sides with budgets one-fifth, and less, of Dyanmo's estimated 30-million-dollar a year price tab.

New player recruitment over the years has has been unimpressive, a mix of Latin Americans and Balkan legionnaires mostly, and few able to hold down an unchallenged starting position.

Management has even failed to get all the players to speak Russian - the Serbs and the Croats are willing but the Brazilians aren't.

Ukrainian sports media has had a field day this season reporting about a Dynamo divided into two camps: the Russian-speaking Slavs, and the Portuguese-speaking Brazilians.

"We need to look facts in the face, we are regressing," Surkis said. "And we have no other choice but to take radical steps."

The traditional solution to a side's woes - blame the coach - has not worked for Dynamo.

Since September 2007, Surkis has employed three head coaches; sacking one after a pair of Champions League defeats, only to see the November replacement bow out due to a heart problem.

Hiring a high-profile international head coach is theoretically possible, but difficult due to "chaos and confusion" within the Dynamo organization, making a top foreign coach cagey about taking over such a side, Surkis said in a Dynamomania interview.

This is why, Surkis has declared in recent weeks in television and newspapers, Dynamo players and management soon can expect nothing less than a Soviet-style purge.

"No-one is going to stay on because of what he did for the team in the past," Surkis told the GOL! Television programme. "I have not played football, but I have been the president for years and I have poured my heart and a lot of money into Dynamo ... the thing to ask now is, what can you do for the team in the future?"

Surkis and his energy tycoon brother Hryhory have financed Dynamo at a massive loss since 1994.

Their motivation, both have repeatedly declared, stems from respect of Dynamo's achievements in the 70s and 80s; when the side was a force in Europe, the Surkis brothers were proud Dynamo fans, and legendary Soviet coach Valery Lobanovsky was their hero.

Ukraine's leading Kommanda newspaper has reported frequently on resistance by Lobanovsky associates - assistant coaches, medical specialists, and even groundskeepers still on the Dynamo staff - to reforms suggested by Surkis.

"We need to move beyond Lobanovsky," Surkis was quoted by the authoritative Dynamomania web site as saying. "We can no longer live in the past, and keep wasting money ... and I will not tolerate people who do."

Already two AC Milan front office veterans have joined Dynamo: Revaz Chokhonelidze as the Ukrainian side's new general manager and Vincenzo Pincolini as sporting director.

The hires are unprecedented for Dynamo, which routinely employs foreign players, but up to now never has had on salary a foreign coach or staff member.

"Some (of my employees) may not like the changes that are coming," Surkis said. "But like it or not, they are coming."

Source: DPA

Ukraine Parliament Approves 2008 Budget

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's sharply-divided parliament overcame a critical financial and political hurdle on Friday to pass into law the 2008 government budget.


The polarised house voted 235 out of 450 in favour of increased government assistance to low-income families, reduced tax load on small business, and additional collections from big business.

Ukrainian pro-reform forces won a razor-thin 228-member majority in September elections. The budget vote was a critical test for the two-party coalition's ability to hold a key parliament vote without defections.

The bill obtained out-of-coalition support from eight Communist deputies who deserted party ranks to support the Europe-oriented funding package.

The budget calls for some 42 billion dollars of government collections during 2008, some 46 billion dollars of expenditures, and a deficit of some 4 billion dollars.

All three figures are increases, by between 18 and 36 per cent, over an earlier version of the 2008 budget passed by the previous parliament. The new ruling majority castigated the old budget as promoting the interests of big business at the expense of average Ukrainians.

The present opposition has criticised the new budget bill for its free-spending and wild optimism about Ukraine's 2008 economic performance, given 14-15 per cent inflation during 2007, and the budget's planned 9 per cent inflation figure.

The biggest-ticket spending item is a programme to return to Ukrainian bank depositors some 4 billion dollars in savings lost when the Soviet Union broke up. Critics have questioned whether money can be found to fund the project.

Overall planned GDP growth may also be pitched too high, with the budget projecting a healthy 6.8 per cent expansion, as the country's steel and chemical sectors face record high energy bills and flattening world markets.

A key concession to the Communists, and defeat for reformers, was a delay to President Viktor Yushchenko's plan to make land a legally-traded commodity in the former Soviet republic.

The budget bill, now law, placed Ukrainian land reform on hold until further legislation is passed creating a national land register and legal codes regulating land sales - conditions believed by observers to add years of practical delay to actual land sales.

Most land in Ukraine may not be bought or sold, a situation popular with villagers worried about losing their livelihood, and with Ukrainian businessmen lucky enough to own some of the land that is traded.

The budget bill in addition delayed the imposition of Value Added Tax (VAT) to agricultural businesses - a vote-getting move popular in Ukraine's provinces, but at odds with Yushchenko's announced intention to put Ukraine's economy on line with European Union and World Trade Organization (WTO) standards.

The farmer tax break will remain in effect until such time Ukraine joins the World Trade Organization (WTO). Ukraine has repeatedly announced its readiness to join the WTO, only to stumble because of failure to remove blocks which are popular at home, most often with farmers or big business.

Source: DPA

Open Border Worse For Non-EU Citizens

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The expansion on 21 December of the Schengen border-free zone is great news for the citizens and residents of the European Union's new member states.

The Schengen town on the borders of Luxembourg, Germany and France. The three borders cross each other in the middle of the central square of the town.
For other Europeans, however, it means that the wall dividing them from their lucky EU neighbors will become even higher and more difficult to climb.

Despite some efforts to soften the impact of the new rules, the changes will make EU visas even more expensive and complicated to obtain for the vast majority of people from Eastern Europe, the western Balkans, and Central Asia.

Of the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004, all but divided Cyprus are now incorporated fully into the Schengen area, which abolishes systematic border controls between participating countries and includes provisions for the harmonization of external border controls and a common "Schengen visa."

Ordinary citizens of the new Schengen members will no longer have to queue to have their passports examined at border checkpoints when traveling within the area. The change will improve the shipment of goods within the EU significantly, as lorry drivers will no longer face long delays.

Last but not least, the expansion of Schengen is a politically salient step toward the completion of the EU enlargement process. It will abolish the tacit division between "first class" and "second class" membership.

Schengen expansion, just like the signing of the Lisbon Treaty earlier in December, shows that the EU is emerging from the doldrums following the French and Dutch referenda on the EU constitutional treaty in 2005.

Likewise, the results of the recent Polish elections, in which the voters swept away an EU skeptic and his populist ruling coalition and replaced it with a pro-EU government, suggest that contrary to the "enlargement fatigue" lingering in old member states, the enlarged EU does work.

PAYING FOR THE PRIVILEGE

Unfortunately, things do not look so bright from the other side of the newly beefed-up EU borders. Citizens of countries outside the new Schengen zone must now meet more stringent criteria to travel to neighboring countries such as Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic republics. And they will pay more to boot, because last year the EU raised the price of a standard Schengen visa from 35 to 60 euros.

This decision was justified by the costs of the updated Schengen database of criminal records. In short, non-EU citizens have been forced to contribute to the maintenance of a system the purpose of which is to weed out undesirable visa applicants from among them.

To make the changes more palatable, the EU has negotiated special agreements with Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and western Balkan countries. These agreements provide for similar visa procedures among Schengen members' embassies, simplified application procedures, and lower visa fees.

In some countries, the fee is waived for certain groups. Even then, for ordinary Ukrainians traveling to Poland, Slovakia, or the Czech Republic, who until now have obtained visas free of charge, this will be a change for the worse.

The citizens of other countries will have to bear the full visa costs. For example, the hapless citizens of Belarus will have to pay about one-third of their average monthly salaries in order to visit neighboring Poland or Lithuania, doubtless to the delight of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, a tyrant who thrives on his people's isolation.

A BETTER NEIGHBORHOOD

What can be done? EU policy-makers are careful to draw a line between visa facilitation and visa liberalization -- namely, visa-free travel. Until now, Brussels has been willing to discuss only the former.

The EU should adopt and make public a set of common standards for visa applicants, as has been proposed by the European Commission. The new standards should ensure that visa procedures are not humiliating to applicants. Nowadays, even the people who obtain visas often feel shamed by the arbitrary decisions of clerks asking personal questions and assuming "evil intentions" on the part of the applicants.

Research has shown that a number of EU consulates apply discriminatory criteria toward certain groups of applicants, such as young women, who in some consulates in Ukraine have visa-refusal rates in excess of 80 percent.

Common standards should define clearly the situations in which a visa can be refused and provide for a right of appeal. The standards' application, along with the implementation of the visa-facilitation agreements, should be monitored regularly by the Commission and by independent watchdog organizations.

Consular services should be more accessible to applicants. Part of the solution should be to expand the use of the Internet for making appointments and submitting application documents online.

No one should be obliged to pay more than one visit to a consulate, nor to pay supplementary fees to the new sub-contracted agencies now mandated to process Schengen visa applications in Ukraine.

A big step toward visa facilitation could be achieved through consular cooperation among EU member states, whereby a country with consular departments on the ground could undertake to service applicants wishing to travel to any other Schengen member.

One such initiative is already underway: the Hungarian consulate in Moldova will be empowered to issue visas for Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Estonia, and Slovenia.

A single EU visa-issuing center is also planned for Serbia, and this solution should be emulated elsewhere. It would make a vast difference, filling the gaps in national consular networks and setting high service standards.

Yet making visas easier to obtain is not enough. It is high time to put the question of lifting visa requirements on the agenda of the "enhanced" European Neighborhood Policy for Eastern Europe, which was launched by the German EU presidency in the first half of 2007.

Roadmaps should be drawn in partnership with interested "neighbors" and the western Balkans, setting out clear conditions that the countries have to meet in order to have visas abolished.

It is worth remembering that the Central European countries that overthrew communism in 1989 had to wait no more than two years before their citizens were free to travel to Western Europe without visas. Surely the EU in 2008 could extend similar generosity to its current neighbors in Eastern Europe and the western Balkans.

The adoption of the Lisbon Treaty should provide an ideal opportunity to end the period of EU "navel gazing" and allow EU policy-makers to review their visa policies systematically, giving more emphasis to external relations considerations than to internal security obsessions, and sending a clear welcoming signal towards the Schengen neighbors.

Source: Business Week

Yushchenko Against Making Russian The 2nd State Language

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko opposes assigning the state language status to the Russian language. Yushchenko made the respective statement during the news conference held in Kiev on Thursday.

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko gestures as he speaks during a news conference in Kiev December 27, 2007.
Asked by reporter how he would vote on the referendum for making Russian the second state language, the president said: “I would vote ‘no’ of course, as I refer myself to the citizens that respect provisions of the current Constitution, which spells out that there is a single state language in Ukraine and this language is Ukrainian.”

“Every state and every nation acts accordingly,” Yushchenko pointed out.

At the same time, Yushchenko emphasized that, in Ukraine, they respect the rights of all national minorities, the principles of the European Charter for regional languages and for languages of national minorities.

The country pursues a liberal language policy that corresponds to Europe’s standards, the president assured.

Source: Kommersant

Putin’s Soft Spot

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a letter to President Viktor Yushchenko just as Putin was being unveiled as Time magazine’s 2007 Person of the Year.


Basking in the glory of international recognition, Putin reminded Yushchenko that the Kremlin is upset with the way Ukraine is treating its common history with Russia.

In the Time magazine interview, Putin foretold Ukraine’s destruction because Washington categorizes Ukraine’s elites as either “pro-American” or “pro-Russian.”

Putin called this a mistake, claiming “all of them have to be Ukrainian nationalists in the positive sense of the term.” “Everything that took place” since the Orange Revolution was in violation of the Constitution, Putin said.

Putin said 17 million Ukrainian citizens are ethnic Russians, when the reality is that 7.8 million, not the 38 percent that he alleged, claim Russian heritage.

Revealing chauvinism, he said “almost 100 percent” of Ukrainians consider Russian their native language. He might as well have declared Ukrainian a dead language.

However, in his letter to Yushchenko, Putin betrayed a significant soft spot in the Kremlin’s quest to keep Ukraine obedient. He left out an issue that the Kremlin has consistently hammered at earlier; namely, referring to the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainians.

Apparently, Putin preferred not to mention the issue in his letter as one belonging to a “common history.”

Rather than lecturing Ukrainians, Putin might lead Russians by taking Kyiv’s example and declassifying Soviet archives. Russia claims that famine was forced upon its people as well. But how?

The outside world, and more importantly, the Russian people, will not know until the archives are open.

Western policymakers, like Time magazine, should call upon Putin to open up the archives of the Soviet secret police that he served and headed.

This should be a condition of Russia’s G-8 membership. In doing so in 2008, Putin has every chance of retaining his most important person status, and this time, for all the right reasons.

Source: Kyiv Post

Regions Boss Gets Security Post

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko surprised critics and allies this week when he appointed opposition leader Raisa Bohatyryova to a top government post in what is widely viewed as an attempt to stabilize the post-election environment in Ukraine.

President Viktor Yushchenko delivered a double blow against his political rivals by appointing Party of Regions leader Raisa Bohatyryova to the post of National Security and Defense Council.
Appointing Bohatyryova, a leader of the Party of Regions of Ukraine (PRU), to secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) will help foster stable relations between the president and Rinat Akhmetov, Bohatyryova’s close ally and Ukraine’s biggest industrial magnate, observers said.

“This is the president’s team drawing closer to the constructive, moderate wing of the PRU led by Akhemtov and Bohatyryova,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, chairman of the Kyiv-based Penta Center for Applied Political Research.

The Dec. 24 presidential decree appointing Bohatyryova as NSDC secretary, which coordinates key security organs, caught the PRU’s leadership off guard and resulted in the first time an internal PRU conflict spilled into the public eye, he said.

Regional differences

The following day, the presidium of the PRU’s political council opposed Bohatyryova’s appointment and told her to choose between the party and the post.

“She can make this decision as an individual undoubtedly, but I believe her activity as a politician will cease,” PRU leader and former prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych said.

Bohatyryova did not make an official statement explaining why she accepted the job, but was present at the Dec. 26 Cabinet of Ministers meeting where the president officially presented her.

The appointment was likely coordinated by Presidential Secretariat Head Viktor Baloha and PRU member Borys Kolesnikov, the right-hand men of the president and Akhmetov respectively, Fesenko said.

The political insider said Kolesnikov was initially considered for the post, but the presidential secretariat determined his presence would be too controversial.

Today a member of parliament, Kolesnikov was arrested in 2005, when he was Donetsk Region Council Chair, and accused of crimes in Donetsk while acquiring his enormous wealth, estimated at more than $500 million. The charges were subsequently dropped.

The Bohatyryova appointment took Kyiv by surprise, causing various theories to circulate why she was offered the post and why she accepted it.

Her close contact with the presidential secretariat will provide Akhmetov with access to the president’s policymaking, Fesenko said, to defend his massive business interests.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko re-privatized the Kryvorizhstal steel mill, partly owned by Akhmetov, in her first term as prime minister in 2005 and said she would review Akhmetov’s late August purchase of a controlling stake in Dniproenergo, Ukraine’s largest electricity producer, according to Fesenko.

“This is insurance against possible raids by Tymoshenko’s government on Akhemetov’s business,” he said.

Akhmetov and Bohatyryova are also flexing their muscles within the PRU, demonstrating to Yanukovych’s team that their wing’s concerns must be taken into account, observers said.

Bohatyryova grew tired of looming in the shadows of other PRU leaders without being offered any government posts with influence, other observers said.

Her last major post was as Minister of Health in the late 1990s during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma.

Born in the Russian Federation and educated as a gynecologist in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Bohatyryova is a veteran of eastern Ukrainian politics and among the PRU’s most popular figures.

In her rise to success, she perfected her Ukrainian language, lost weight and adopted a telegenic image. On one occasion, she told journalists that she regained youthful good lucks by quitting smoking, coffee and alcohol.

Counterweight to Tymoshenko

From the president’s point of view, appointing Bohatyryova is a way to ensure stability following political crisis, Fesenko said.

Not everyone agrees.

Andriy Yermolayev, a Kyiv political analyst affiliated with the PRU, accused Yushchenko of inflaming political intrigues by making a political decision regarding what is largely a bureaucratic post.

Yushchenko has used the NSDC post as a means to check the prime minister’s influence in the past, observers said.

During Tymoshenko’s first term, Yushchenko appointed his close advisor Petro Poroshenko to the post, which set the stage for a vicious power struggle that ultimately caused the demise of the first Orange government.

The president may be looking to create a buffer once again, observers said.

“The president is practically creating a certain counterbalance against Yulia Tymoshenko and will try to weaken the Tymoshenko government by introducing Donetsk players into the game,” said Kost Bondarenko of the Kyiv-based Gorshenin Institute of Management.

Tymoshenko told reporters it’s solely the president’s prerogative to appoint the NSDC secretary and she looked forward to working with any appointments.

The NSDC chair is not an exceptionally stable post, with six politicians having served during Yushchenko’s three years as president. None have served longer than nine months.

When created, the NSDC was tailored as the Ukrainian government’s version of the US government’s National Security Council.

NSDC members include ministers and heads of the so-called power ministries and agencies. Yushchenko expanded the council to include the heads of regional state administrations – the so-called “oblast governors” that are appointed by the head of state.

Appointments continue

Other key government posts were filled this week.

Mega-millionaire banker and Tymoshenko ally Serhiy Buryak will lead the State Tax Administration, while media magnate Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy will chair the State Customs Service.

Presidential ally and former Zaporizhya Region administration head Yevhen Chervonenko said Dec. 24 he was offered a deputy prime minister post in Tymoshenko’s cabinet to oversee preparations for Euro2012. His nomination needs the parliament’s approval.

Other key posts remain to be filled at the state committee level, including the State Committee for Radio and Television Broadcasting.

“Society will have to monitor not only Yanukovych’s oligarchs, but those of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko as well,” Fesenko said.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Parliament Holds Minute Silence At Bhutto Killing

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Ukrainian parliament on Thursday opened its afternoon session with a minute of silence to condemn the killing of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

Yulia Tymoshenko (L) and Benazir Bhutto (R).
The former Soviet republic's legislature "wished to extend its condolences to the family of the deceased (Bhutto), and to the Pakistani people for their loss," said Arseny Yatseniuk, parliament speaker.

The Kiev reaction coming less than an hour after Bhutto's death was remarkably rapid by the normal standards of Ukrainian officialdom, which traditionally waits a day or more to issue regrets over the death of a foreign leaders.

Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's newly-elected Prime Minister, has been seen by many observers as similar to Bhutto for coming to political prominence as a woman criticising corrupt government.

Source: DPA

Yulia Rated ‘07 Person Of The Year

KIEV, Ukraine -- Newly elected Premier Yulia Tymoshenko was selected “Personality of the Year” by Korrespondent magazine. The fiery 47-year-old won the rating for the second time for “impacting events the most in Ukraine” said Vitaliy Sych, the magazine’s editor-in-chief.

Premier Yulia Tymoshenko was ranked Person of the Year by Korrespondent magazine for the impact she made on the country in 2007.
The Post’s sister publication printed its sixth annual rating in its Dec. 22 issue.

“She convinced the president, for the first time in independent Ukraine’s history, to dismiss the parliament and hold early elections,” according to the magazine.

Korrespondent’s editors and journalists named 10 people who “astonished or shocked Ukraine” in the past year. Ten non-Ukrainians were also selected, with Russian President Vladimir Putin earning the “Tsar of the Year” designation.

“I think Yulia is probably the most charismatic female politician in the world right now,” said Ilko Kucheriv, director of the Democratic Initiatives think tank based in Kyiv.

“She’s also an excellent organizer. Two months prior to the most recent parliamentary elections, her party Byut and [the pro-presidential] Our Ukraine were head-to-head with 17-18 percent ratings. Tymoshenko nearly doubled those figures on election day.”

Superhuman powers

The magazine attributed its choice to Tymoshenko’s “superhuman persistence in achieving goals” and her ability “to combine things others are incapable of doing.”

One example the weekly cited is Tymoshenko’s extraordinary ability to live in a $4 million dollar residence in an elite Kyiv suburb and satisfy her penchant for Louis Vuitton apparel and accessories on a modest income.

According to her income statement, she earned only $30,000 last year and does not actually own the high-end property where she resides. At the same time, she promises to adamantly fight corruption.

“When publications name persons of the year, they don’t necessarily conduct them as popularity contests and they are not positive figures all the time,” explained Mykhailo Mischenko, deputy director of sociological services at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center.

Previous winners

Selection criteria for “Personality of the Year” have remained the same from the outset: editorial staff takes into consideration the quantity and magnitude of events surrounding certain politicians, officials, businessmen and cultural figures.

Tymoshenko first won the nomination in 2005, shortly after her government was dismissed. Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz was deemed the most influential personality in 2006 after he joined the Communist Party and Party of the Regions to form the anti-Orange “Anti-crisis Coalition.”

President Viktor Yushchenko was named in 2004, the year the Orange Revolution swept him into the presidency. In 2003 the honor went to two Viktors: Medvedchuk (then head of the Presidential Administration) and Yushchenko.

In 2002, the first year Korrespondent conducted the rating, President Leonid Kuchma was deemed to have the greatest impact on the country.

A close second

“This was the first year we truly wanted to name somebody other than a politician. Hryhoriy Surkis, the president of the Football Federation of Ukraine, came in a close second for single-handedly bringing the 2012 UEFA European Soccer Championship to Ukraine,” Sych said.

“But Tymoshenko tipped the scales because of her role in turning the political situation in the country head over heels within the course of a few months,” Sych added. Instead, Surkis was named “Winner of the Year.”

The good, the bad and the ugly

Korrespondent also awarded laurels and darts to Presidential Secretariat Head Viktor Baloha, Kyiv city council secretary Oles Dovhiy, Byut billionaire Konstantin Zhevago, former parliament ary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, footballer Anatoliy Tymoshchuk, recently elected Rada speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk, Ukraine’s 2007 entry for the Eurovision Song Contest Andriy Danylko (known better by his female stage name of Virka Serdiuchka), Kharkiv Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin and rich kid Serhiy Kalynovskiy, whose mother recently divorced billionaire Dmytri Firtash, a co-owner of the Rosukrenergo natural gas trader.

Kalynovskiy was included in the rating as the “Lawbreaker of the Year” because he disappeared from Ukraine after two people died in a car crash he allegedly caused. Interpol is still looking for him.

Source: Kyiv Post

Kyiv Mayor: Yushchenko Supports Me

KIEV, Ukraine -- Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy appeared happy and nervous when he threw the switch to light “the tallest Christmas tree in the CIS” on the Maidan last weekend.

Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetskiy.
Happy, because he believes he will ring in the New Year enjoying support from President Viktor Yushchenko, but nervous because his ouster is on next year’s political agenda of Premier Yulia Tymoshenko, her Byut and other political parties.

The forces seeking an early end to Chernovetskiy’s term in office include parties and politicians that formed the pro-presidential Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc for the last elections.

But some Our Ukraine members on the Kyiv City Council have sided with the pro-Chernovetskiy majority on voting through land deals over the course of the year.

Opposition politicians charge that under “Lyonya Cosmos” more that 4,000 hectares of real estate was doled during 2007. (“Lyonya” is the diminutive form of Leonid and “cosmos” refers to the mayor’s often glassy-eyed gaze.)

300,000 signatures

Byut began a signature collection campaign at the end of November to hold a referendum on early mayoral and Kyiv city council elections. Kyiv city officials were elected for a four-year term more than a year-and-a-half ago in March 2006.

Four weeks on, organizers claim to have collected more than 300,000 signatures through a network of 70 canopy tents set up around the capital. Meanwhile, city officials have resorted to force to remove tents from in front of city hall.

On Nov. 29, activists from the Kyiv Byut and Civic Pora organizations attempted to erect the pole-assembled tents in front of city hall.

But four of the temporary structures, a diesel generator and sound equipment worth Hr 20,000 ($4,000), were forcefully disassembled and whisked away in a van by a dozen men in black leather coats while police stood by watching, said Ihor Kozik, a leader of Civic Pora, also known as “Raspberry Pora.”

“Kyiv police have not responded to our criminal complaint and we’ve been told to not expect to get our property back,” he said.

Four weeks later, protesters were subject to violence of the audio kind. On Dec. 20, city officials cordoned the steps to city hall with militia and blocked the broad sidewalk on Kyiv’s central street, Khreshchatyk, with diesel-fuming snow-removal trucks.

Another truck mounted with four giant speakers was positioned to assault demonstrators and passersby with hundreds of decibels of eardrum-busting Ukrainian pop music about how beautiful Kyiv is as a city. The gathered crowd quickly dispersed.

Oleksandr Tarasiuk, a Pora leader, had to wait for breaks in the music to shout, “Chernovetskiy should be sitting in trial!” and “President Yushchenko does not support you!”

He crossed onto the other side of Khreshchatyk to continue yelling epitaphs at the mayor via cordless microphone. “This is democracy and freedom of speech Chernovetskiy-style” Tarasiuk complained.

Mayoral revote?

A poll conducted from late October to the first week of November found that 46 percent of the capital’s residents support the idea of early mayoral election.

The joint Democratic Initiatives-Ukrainian Sociology Service survey of 1,500 adult Kyivans showed 31 percent are opposed to the idea, while 25 percent were undecided about the prospect of cutting Chernovetskiy’s term off.

In the poll, more than half (53 percent) gave Chernovetskiy a negative and “primarily negative” grade.

Poll results presented last month by the Gorshenin Institute of Management confirmed that the majority of Kyivans did not feel the mayor was doing a good job.

Institute director Kost Bondarenko said that more than 60 percent disapproved of the mayor. Chernovetskiy topped the list of eight national politicians who evoked negative responses from the golden-domed city’s residents.

Only 3 percent felt that Chernovetskiy was doing an excellent job and only 4.3 percent said their financial status had improved over the course of the last year.

“Those are probably all workers of Kyiv city hall and administration,” quipped Bondarenko at a Dec. 3 press conference.

Yet the same poll showed that Chernovetskiy would benefit from a vote split among his political opponents and come out on top in a mayoral race, with 18.8 percent of support.

He would have beat out former sexagenarian Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko, who placed well within the 3.2 percent margin of error with 17.3 percent.

Bondarenko described the “the Chernovestkiy phenomenon:” Despite the lowest approval rating, the mayor would win a first-past-the-post mayoral race by garnering more votes than the number split among four candidates, including Internal Affairs Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, Omelchenko and Vitaliy Klitschko.

“If there were two rounds of elections, then Chernovetskiy would lose,” Bondarenko said.

The greatest number of voters – more than 30 percent – were undecided in last month’s poll.

Fate in president’s hands

“I don’t believe in pre-term Kyiv elections. The soonest they can happen is one to one-and-a-half years,” said Bondarenko.

He said that according to law, Chernovestkiy must himself agree to a referendum on pre-term elections.

Bondarenko confirmed that Chernovestkiy’s relationship with the president had improved.

“All pretensions fell [in late November], but it’s situational and depends on Yushchenko’s mood. He dismissed the Rada, why not the mayor? It all depends on what leg President Viktor Yushchenko gets up on,” said Bondarenko.

Meanwhile, the anti-Chernovetskiy protesters were upset by the mayor’s repeated claims that he enjoys the president’s full support.

They demonstrated before the presidential secretariat on Dec. 19, demanding Yushchenko either confirm or deny his support of Chernovetskiy.

But the mayor remains the main object of their protest.

“We’ll be here every Thursday until the job is done,” Kozik said before echoing Our Ukraine’s recent campaign slogan, “If the law should truly to be one for all.”

Source: Kyiv Post

Former Ukraine Coach Blokhin Offers Shevchenko FC Moscow Lifeboat

LONDON, England -- Oleg Blokhin is bidding to end Andriy Shevchenko's woe at Chelsea and take him to Russia. The former Ukrainian coach is now in charge at FC Moscow.

Shevchenko celebrates a rare Chelsea goal.
And he wants Sheva, despite the £30 million ($59.5 million) striker scoring just six Premier League goals in 18 months at Stamford Bridge.

Blokhin told the Sun: "We need at least one pacy forward. I'd love to see Andriy Shevchenko here.

"We worked together successfully with the Ukrainian national team.

"Not everything is going right for him in England but a player of his class would strengthen any team."

Sheva's £130,000 ($257,714) a week wage could be a problem.

Source: Evening Standard

Ukreximbank Debuts New York Office; First Ukraine Bank To Open In U.S.

NEW YORK, USA -- Ukreximbank, the State Export-Import Bank of Ukraine, is opening a representative trade office in New York.

Ukreximbank headquarters in Kiev
One of the most profitable operators in the Ukrainian banking market, Ukreximbank is the country’s leader in trade finance, servicing a large proportion of Ukraine’s export-import activities. Its debut marks the first Ukrainian bank to open its doors for business in the U.S.

Ukraine has experienced impressive economic growth since the Orange Revolution in 2004 largely due to efficiency increases in its economy, a skilled labor force, and an increased foreign investment.

Much of that investment has focused on Ukraine’s rapidly growing banking sector, in which shares of foreign assets have nearly doubled in the past three years alone.

Ukreximbank is a multi-purpose crediting financial institution established with 100% state capital. It is one of the largest banks in Ukraine, with branches in all regions and all major cities of the country.

Ukreximbank holds one of the highest ratings from Fitch Ratings and Moody’s among Ukrainian banks. Earlier this year, Standard & Poor’s named it ‘most transparent bank in Ukraine’ for the second year in a row.

This recognition, along with an impressive list of partner institutions including The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, The World Bank, the Ukrainian government, and Mastercard International INC., contributed to Ukreximbank receiving official approval from the US Federal Reserve to establish a representative office in New York.

“Ukreximbank’s New York office will focus on strengthening the bank’s position in the US market, promoting the interests of Ukrainian companies that export to the U.S. and world markets, and will contribute to the strengthening of Ukraine-US cooperation,” said Ukreximbank Chairman of the Board Viktor Kapustin.

Mr. Kapustin added that the U.S. opening signified a new level of global recognition of the progress made by Ukrainian finance and banking institutions generally.

Source: PR-USA Net

Christmas 1948: Lessons In Freedom, Poverty And `The Bigger World'

KALAMAZOO, USA -- In 1948, when Ben Ciuffa was a third-grader in Herkimer, N.Y., he joined his classmates in teasing and laughing at three new kids from the Ukraine, especially one named Zenon Bagan.


But over time, the taunting lessened, and during a visit to Zenon's home before the approaching Christmas holidays, Ciuffa began to appreciate the years-long journey the boy and his family had made and the few possessions they had.

``The Salvation Army gave them a Christmas tree. It was 2-foot, all twig, with an ornament, and I felt so bad'' for Zenon and his family, the 67-year-old Ciuffa, who now lives in Kalamazoo Township, said via telephone last week from his travels in El Salvador.

After seeing that tree, the younger Ciuffa told his mother, ``I don't care what I get for Christmas.''

But while young Ben was feeling sorry for the Bagans, they were apparently feeling anything but sadness -- they were finally able to put down roots after spending most of Zenon's young life living under repressive Communist rule in their native Ukraine and then trying to escape the invading Nazi army.

The Nazis had targeted Ukrainians for killing, and Zenon's father was a Cossack, a horse soldier, and would likely have been a prime target.

In a letter to the editor of the Kalamazoo Gazette that was published Dec. 17, Ciuffa wrote about how, as a result of meeting Bagan and his family, he learned that ``the world was bigger than my small town and how lucky we were to have the freedom to enjoy the magic of Christmas.''

Lasting Influence

In an interview last week, Ciuffa said that was he saw and learned about the Bagans - a Greek Orthodoc family - influences how he lives his life today and how he views Christmas.

"Absolutely - and I am not a religious person that way," Ciuffa said. "What happened was I realized that (certain Christians) are very, very joyous with Christmas. It's the joy of Christmas and not the toys."

And it was understanding what the Bagans were fleeing and their appreciation for life's smaller things that led Ciuffa to empathize with current-day El Salvadorans and the issues they face as well as the immigration issues facing many Hispanics.

Ciuffa made his first trip to El Salvador in 1999 with a group from St. Thomas More Church and is now there taking photographs to generate interest in raising funds for some of the area's young people to attend school. He also visited the country in 2003 and 2004.

Ciuffa and Bagan last saw each other about 10 years ago at the wedding of one of Bagan's daughters. They had remained good friends throughout their school years and graduated together from high school in Herkimer in 1958.

Ciuffa moved to the Kalamazoo area in 1982 after his 11-year-old son died in a bicycle accident. Bagan moved to the Detroit area and spent 35 years teaching before retiring in 1999.

A Five-Year Journey

In a phone interview last week, Bagan recounted some of his family's early struggles that made such an impression on Ciuffa.

He said that it was after about five years of crossing Europe by foot, train and horse-and-buggy that he, his two sisters and their parents finally found a safe haven in the late 1940s in Herkimer, N.Y., a city halfway between Syracuse and Albany.

Bagan said he remembers arriving with his parents and two sisters in Vienna, Austria, one Christmas , although he acknowledges his memory isn't entirely clear because of his young age at the time.

As in another well-known story, the family was not able to find a place to rest. Then a Viennese farmer offered the family a barn or cottage where animals were housed.

Bagan's sisters went door-to-door, knocking and begging for food for the family.

``(They) kept asking people for bread because we didn't have anything to eat,'' Bagan said. ``World War II was still raging, and the Allies wanted to end the war, so they bombed day and night. They didn't know who was below them, whether they were Russian, Ukrainian, Polish. ... We had no home, actually. We were just wandering around Europe.''

The family made its way to one of Europe's many displaced-persons camps, this one in Bayreuth, Bavaria, Germany, and eventually they traveled with hundreds of other Eastern European refugees aboard a U.S. military ship to the United States.

Bagan figures they were on the ship for about nine days as they crossed the Atlantic Ocean. They were expecting to go work for five years for a Pennsylvania farmer, but while disembarking from the ship at New York's Ellis Island, they were recognized by relatives already living in the United States and taken in by them.

``America to us was like a paradise,'' Bagan said. ``We couldn't believe how people lived and the rights they had and the food, my goodness.''

Touched By Friendship

Bagan said he is touched that Ciuffa remembers their 1948 Christmas and his family's struggles and that he shared the story with Gazette readers. He also said he is thankful for the friendship and understanding that Ciuffa extended to him in those early years.

``Ben was interested in people, and I felt he was interested in what I had to say and what I did.''

And, as Ciuffa recalls, the impact of what he learned from his interest in Bagan has lasted for nearly 60 years.

Source: The Kalamazoo Gazette

Ukraine Says Foreign Films Must Be Dubbed In Ukrainian

KIEV, Ukraine -- A Ukrainian court Monday banned the screening or distribution of any foreign films which are not dubbed or sub-titled in the national language, following a campaign against movies translated into Russian.

Ukrainian movie star Milla Jovovich
The constitutional court said foreign films would not be aired or distributed if "they are not dubbed or post-synchronized or do not have the captioning data in the state language."

The move follows a campaign by the Ukrainian public movement Varto! calling for a boycott of foreign films dubbed in Russian or carrying Russian sub-titles.

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic with 47 million inhabitants, is split over the language issue.

Almost 42 percent of 1,800 people questioned in a poll say Ukrainian should be the only state language, whereas 30 percent want Russian to be also declared an official language, according to a poll released Monday.

Source: AFP

Yulia Tymoshenko Takes Ukraine In Her Iron Hands

MOSCOW, Russia -- Yulia Tymoshenko, the new Prime Minister of Ukraine, has launched her large-scale activities from the very first day of her stay in the office. It is obvious that everything that the lady is doing now is connected with the pre-election campaign, which is set to start in Ukraine in at the end of 2009.

The "Iron Lady" Yulia Tymoshenko.
Yulia Tymoshenko, the “iron lady of Ukraine” is determined to become Ukraine’s next president. The biography of the prime minister and the first steps that she takes of the position which she takes for the second time show that the president’s office is her primary goal.

To begin with, Tymoshenko decided to clear the power of corruption. “We start the power-cleansing process. I will do everything not to let dirty shadow money become the key factor of the Ukrainian politics, so that it could no longer buy deputies like cattle on a marketplace, so that no other politician would be eager to easily earn tens of millions,” Tymoshenko stated during her televised address to the nation.

In just several days Tymoshenko has managed to shake the Ministry of Finance and replace more than a half of ministerial deputies there. Ukraine’s national oil and gas corporation – Naftogaz - will be the lady’s next goal. She has already specified her stance on the energy matter: there should be no mediators between Ukraine and Russia on the natural gas market.

“My position remains unchanged: there should be no mediators on the gas market. There is Nftogaz of Ukraine, which we will return to its normal financial state,” Tymoshenko said.

It is worthy of note that Ukraine’s Naftogaz is rumoured to be on the edge of bankruptcy.

Tymoshenko’s predecessor on the position of the Ukrainian prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, who enjoys highest popularity ratings in the country, stated that his opposition party, the Party of Regions, will not let resignations be based on political motives. The party, Yanukovich added, will continue to cooperate with the power.

It is worthy of note that over 18,000 officials were fired from their positions in Ukraine in the beginning of 2005, when Viktor Yushchenko became elected president of the country. Viktor Yanukovich threatens to organize massive riots in the country not to let history repeat itself.

Yulia Tymoshenko decided to make her first visit as the new prime minister to the Donetsk region of Ukraine, where Yanukovich once took the position of the governor and where he still enjoys high popularity. In Donetsk, Tymoshenko met with families of miners who had been killed in Ukraine’s recent coal mine explosion. She promised to set up a new governmental committee to investigate Ukraine’s worst mine disaster in decades.

Tymoshenko has already managed to meet with Russia’s Ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, and have phone conversations with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney.

At the same time, the iron lady has taken a variety of other issues under her personal control. One of them is connected with the investigation of Yuri Tashenko’s death (a private of the Ukrainian Armed Forces). The issue of army hazing is another trump card for Tymoshenko in her initiative to introduce the contractual basis in the Ukrainian army.

Source: Pravda

European Border-Controls Cause Traffic Jams

KIEV, Ukraine -- Nine, mainly Eastern European EU member states, have loosened some border controls, but the measures have caused remaining border posts to be inundated with cars.

Ukraine border with Poland.
Most of the bottleneck has occured at the Ukrainian border.

Cars travelling through the passport-free Schengen zone are able to reach Ukraine far more quickly now, as they do not have to stop at other border control posts.

The passport-free zone means that vehicles arrive at the Ukrainian border en masse.

Passport controls and inspections at all the new Schengen borders have been significantly tightened and rigorous searches for people smugglers have been taking place.

This process has led to traffic jams of several kilometres at the border crossing between Ukraine and new Schengen countries of Poland and Hungary.

At one stage, the waiting time at the Polish-Ukrainian border lengthened to 30 hours.

Most of the vehicles waiting to cross the border have been cargo laden trucks.

Source: Calcutta News

Ukraine PM Has Goodwill

KIEV, Ukraine -- Yulia Tymoshenko, the newly appointed prime minister of Ukraine, has pledged that her pro-western governing coalition will seek to "harmonise" relations with Moscow.

Dmitri Medvedev, the presidential favourite backed by Vladimir Putin.
Many observers expected the charismatic 47-year old, who was appointed last week, to shake up bilateral relations between Kiev and Moscow. Relations between the countries have been strained since the Orange Revolution of 2004.

The trigger, many thought, would be her plans to cut intermediaries out of the multi-billion-dollar natural gas trade between Ukraine, Russia and central Asian suppliers.

However, in a Financial Times interview, Ms Tymoshenko expressed confidence that the Kremlin was ready to adopt a more transparent gas supply arrangement with Kiev, whose vast pipeline system pumps the majority of Russian supplies to Europe.

As proof, she pointed to public comments made on the issue in recent months by Dmitri Medvedev, the presidential favourite backed by Vladimir Putin, Russia's outgoing president.

"The leading presidential candidate in Russia, Mr Medvedev, publicly said that the Russian side is not set on any shadowy intermediaries. He said that they are ready to do away with these intermediaries," she said.

At stake is the position of Swiss-registered company RosUkrEnergo, which controls the supply of central Asian gas to Ukraine and significant sales to European markets. The company is owned equally by Russian gas group Gazprom and two Ukrainian businessmen, Dmytro Firtash and Ivan Fursin.

Ms Tymoshenko has called for direct gas supply agreements between Gazprom and Ukraine's state energy group, Naftogaz. US officials have backed her in criticising the role of intermediaries such as RosUkrEnergo, insisting they pose an energy security risk to Ukraine and Europe, which is itself dependent on Russia for more than a quarter of its gas needs.

While reasserting her resolve on the issue, Ms Tymoshenko pledged to seek pragmatic talks with Moscow to avoid a repeat of the 2006 gas price stand-off that disturbed supplies to Europe.

"I have not returned as premier to strain relations with Russia - this is not my intention. I will strive to establish a relationship of equal partnership," she said.

Ms Tymoshenko regained her position as the premier after a strong showing in snap elections held in September. A previous 2005 stint as prime minister was cut short after a falling out with Viktor Yushchenko, whose presidential candidacy she backed during the 2004 elections.

The premier said her new governing coalition would strive to seek compromise with a strong opposition to consign to the past years of paralysis that have plagued Kiev's politics.

She said her priorities would be to fight corruption and to adopt concrete reforms that would bring Kiev closer to its long-term goals of joining the European Union and the Nato military alliance.

Ms Tymoshenko's cabinet is working ahead of the new year to address an array of pressing problems. Topping the list is sky-high inflation, expected to finish the year at more than 15 per cent.

Ms Tymoshenko is rushing to pass a budget for 2008 before the end of the year as well as attempting to prevent a technical default on Eurobonds issued to investors by Naftogaz.

"It is very difficult to bring in a completely new government just a week before the new year, evermore so considering that so many problems have piled up. We will probably break the Guinness World Records by adopting a new budget within several days," she said.

Ms Tymoshenko was quick to assign the blame for the problems her cabinet will face on the previous governing coalition led by Viktor Yanukovich.

She said she aimed to have the budget passed this week as well as the swift adoption of state guarantees on debt obligations in order to reassure increasingly edgy investors with debt interests in Naftogaz.

However, with her coalition controlling only a hairline majority in parliament, the opposition, led by Mr Yanukovich, is a formidable force that could complicate such plans.

Source: Financial Times

Mikhaylo Zubkov's Lifetime Coaching Ban Cut

MELBOURNE, Australia -- A Ukrainian swimming coach, whose Melbourne brawl with his daughter became world news after it was videotaped, will be free to coach again for the Beijing Olympics.

Mikhaylo Zubkov with daughter, Kateryna.
Mikhaylo Zubkov will be back poolside with his daughter, Kateryna, from this Thursday after an international court ruled his lifetime coaching ban was too harsh.

"It's a huge relief," Zubkov, 39, told the Herald Sun yesterday. "I feel my name has been cleared."

Speaking from Ukraine yesterday, Kateryna, 19, said she was delighted with the news and excited her father could resume training and supporting her at competitions.

"I am very happy," said Kateryna who recently returned from the US, where she swims and studies. "I can now concentrate on the Olympics."

The pair clashed at the 12th FINA World Swimming Championships in Melbourne last March over Kateryna's choice of boyfriends.

Zubkov was accused of bringing swimming into disrepute after video of the coach and swimmer violently quarrelling at Rod Laver Arena was beamed across the world.

An exclusive series of Herald Sun articles revealed the story behind the heated exchange, their regrets about the incident and their hopes of being reunited.

The severe life ban imposed by a FINA disciplinary panel was appealed by a Melbourne legal team led by Paul Hayes and Paul Horvath, who travelled to Switzerland and represented Zubkov.

In a backflip at the weekend the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ban and replaced it with an eight-month suspension, which expires on December 27.

The Swiss court accepted submissions from Zubkov's Melbourne legal team that he had not hit or otherwise assaulted his daughter.

It found that although Zubkov's conduct was "aggressive, violent and unbecoming an accredited team official", he did not bring the sport of swimming into disrepute.

The court ruled that his lifetime expulsion from coaching or any future FINA activities by the FINA disciplinary panel was too severe and disproportionate to their findings.

"We are of the view that the appropriate sanction is that of suspension rather than expulsion," said the hearing panel before president Dr Kaj Hober.

"Given the special nature and unusual circumstances of (Zubkov's) conduct, we find that a suspension for a period of eight months from 27 April to 27 December constitutes an appropriate and proportionate sanction."

Zubkov and his daughter were the subject of close media attention on their return to Ukraine, which placed great stress on their family and caused the coach's business to suffer.

Kateryna also had to find another coach.

Zubkov said although he did not think he deserved the penalty, he believed justice had been served. "I am very relieved that it's finished now," he said. "This has been a constant cloud hanging over my head."

Zubkov also profusely thanked his Melbourne legal team and the help and support of Australia's Ukrainian community members, in particular Mike Tkaczuk.

"They believed in me and in getting a fair hearing for me. Without their help I would not have been able to return to coaching," he said.

Sports law specialist Mr Horvath said the court's landmark ruling sent a strong message to sporting disciplinary bodies.

"Imposing tough penalties because the world media is watching . . . is not delivering justice or fairness," he said.

Source: Herald Sun

Netto Heads For Ukraine

LONDON, United Kingdom -- Danish-owned supermarket giant Netto, which has 181 UK stores, has announced plans to open in Ukraine. Netto says it will be the first discount retailer from western Europe to have operations in the country.


The Dansk Supermarked-owned chain believes it could open more than 1,000 stores in Ukraine.

Richard Lancaster, Netto’s UK managing director, said: "We see big potential and many opportunities in Ukraine. The country has a population of almost 50 million, all of whom have increasingly substantial purchasing power.”

Development pace would be faster than in the other European countries in which Netto has a presence, the company said.

It hopes to have up to 30 stores ready to open before the business becomes fully operational in 2009.

These will be followed by a further 25 a year, on average.

Netto is set to open a minimum of 25 more stores a year in the UK in 2008 with similar plans in place for Germany and Sweden.

Poland will get another 50 stores per year.

Said Lancaster: “This year we opened 20 new UK Netto stores. With research showing us that our shoppers’ purchasing is on the increase, as is the amount they spend with us when they visit, we are very confident in the future of our business at home and abroad.”

Source: Talking Retail

Ukraine: Ani Lorak For Eurovision

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's national broadcaster, NTU have confirmed via their website this afternoon that Ani Lorak will represent the 2007 runner-up at the Eurovision Song Contest in Belgrade.


Double click to play video.
The former two time Ukrainian national finalist will represent the country with her third attempt.

The 29 year old singer was the runner-up in the 2005 national final in Ukraine, after qualifying from the semi finals only to be beaten by Greenjolly who were parachuted into the final as a wildcard entry.

She shot to fame on Russian tv show 'Morning Star' before going to the USA where she won the Big Apple Music Festival in 1996.

She returned to Ukraine where she has become one of the most popular pop stars in the country.

She is also a United Nations good will ambassador in Ukraine helping to fight HIV and AIDS.

Source: Esctoday

Ukraine: Tymoshenko Vows New Anti-Corruption Drive

KIEV, Ukraine -- Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Thursday declared a crusade against corruption in Ukraine and promised „no amnesty” to those found guilty of embezzlement or illegal transactions that had benefited them.


Tymoshenko, in her first televised address to the nation since her appointment as premier on Tuesday, pledged to deliver on all her campaign promises - from canceling Ukraine’s military draft to paying out billions of hryvnias in failed Soviet bank debts.

„I want you to mark today’s date on the calendar,” Tymoshenko said in the address aired by Inter, Ukraine’s most popular television channel. „This is the day when the government is turning its face towards the people. We begin the process of cleaning the country and I will make sure that dirty money will not be a factor in Ukrainian politics. Lawmakers will not be purchased as cattle on the marketplace,” she said.

„Besides, those who paid up to $30 million to lawmakers [to switch sides in her approval vote], will not have these shadow millions,” Tymoshenko said.

The carefully staged address and Tymoshenko’s strong remarks were reminiscent of her first arrival as prime minister in early 2005, when she declared a number of initiatives that had later failed.

Two years ago Tymoshenko pledged to redo the privatizations of up to 3,000 companies that she claimed had been illegally sold off by the government in the 1990s.

Her government also canceled tax breaks in some regions originally intended for foreign investors. Both measures then tarnished Ukraine’s investment reputation and forced many to postpone their investments, while domestic businessmen refused to re-invest their profits.

Coupled with weak steel prices on world markets, which reduced Ukraine’s main exports, this led to a major slowdown of the economy, which had registered negative growth seven months after Tymoshenko’s appointment.

This time around, Tymoshenko said her anti-corruption drive would identify - and punish - officials that had embezzled or illegally spent money in the past. „This does not mean we will announce amnesty to all violators of the law,” Tymoshenko said. „This will not be so.”

„I guarantee that we will check every penny spent, every tender, every license sold and every illegal act,” Tymoshenko said. „Let everybody have no doubt that they will be responsible for all their dark and illegal deeds.”

But Tymoshenko also admitted that her government will probably face major opposition in the anti-corruption campaign. „I am not naïve and I know that real order in the country is not needed for anybody, except for the people. We realize what colossal opposition we will face from corrupt structures, oligarch groups, sabotaging middle-level bureaucrats, hired experts and political scientists,” she said.

„If they spent millions of dollars to prevent democratic coalition, they will now throw billions to stop our government, to destroy the democratic coalition,” Tymoshenko said. „That’s because they are neither going to clean themselves nor to live in an honest way.”

Source: Budapest Business Journal

Ohryzko Confirms Ukraine Determined To Join NATO

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko has said that Kiev wants to join the NATO's (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Membership Action Plan as soon as possible.



"I would like to stress our desire to join the NATO's Membership Action Plan as soon as possible," he said at a meeting with ambassadors accredited in Ukraine in Kiev on Friday.

Ukraine's possible neutral and non-NATO member status 'makes no sense' in a situation where other nations are forming a single global security zone, Ohryzko said.

"Ukraine is aware of the advantages of the common European architecture of collective security," he said.

At the same time he said that it would be early and premature at this stage to talk of Ukraine's possible accession to NATO. All necessary stages of annual NATO-Ukraine action plans must be completed first, he said.

"I am pleased to state that recently there has been more support from the Ukrainian public in favor of our EuroAtlantic course," Ohryzko said.

"We continue to develop a strategic partnership with the United States and a dialogue at the highest level. We must approach with pragmatism a number of complex bilateral issues," the minister said.

It is important to agree upon the road map of bilateral U.S.-Ukrainian relations, which must 'renew and strengthen' the political and economic dialogue between the countries, he said.

Ukraine is determined to strengthen strategic partnerships with Poland and Georgia, Ohryzko said.

With regards to EU-Ukraine relations, the signing of a new enhanced agreement is the priority, he said. "The new document must be long-term and innovative and reflect the new quality of our relations with the European Union," the minister said.

Ohryzko also pointed to the importance of forming a free trade zone between Ukraine and the EU, Ukraine's integration into European energy space, integration between Ukrainian and EU electrical grids and further creation of a single electricity market, combining both parties' efforts to increase security and stability in Europe.

Source: Interfax

Ukraine's Second Chance

KIEV, Ukraine -- Travel south from Kiev along the arbored R-12 highway and you will see perhaps the most public symbols of Ukraine's rampant corruption: a wide array of luxurious estates that have sprung up in Koncha-Zaspa, a leafy suburb of the capital.

An unfinished property in Koncha-Zaspa selling for just €1,367,000 ($1,968,000).
Many of these multimillion-dollar homes belong to senior state officials with only modest salaries. Investigative journalists have compiled evidence suggesting quite a few of these mansions were bought with ill-gotten gains.

This prompted President Viktor Yushchenko to demand in August that the public servants explain how they came to possess such lavish accommodations. But at the time his political opponents from the Party of Regions still ran the government, and they responded to his call for accountability with stony silence.

Ukraine's graft problems are hardly of recent vintage, though. It was the massive corruption during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma that helped spark the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Public anger at large-scale vote buying and voter fraud swept Mr. Yushchenko and his camp, who promised to rid Ukraine of sleaze, to power. But political infighting brought down the Orange government under Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in September 2005 and prevented any real progress on corruption.

Now she has a second chance, after Ukraine's Orange reformers re-elected her Tuesday to lead a new government. If the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko team fails again, the Orange coalition's hold on power will prove tenuous. More importantly, corruption could reverse Ukraine's record of recent economic growth and even threaten its national security.

Transparency International's Global Corruption Perception Index ranks Ukraine 118th out of 180 states. A recent World Bank study on corruption and good governance shows that after the Orange Revolution, the country actually slipped from its lower-middle position and now has a worse record than nearly three-quarters of the countries surveyed.

Practically all sectors of Ukraine's government, business and civic life are affected by widespread corruption. Bribery and extortion are particularly common in Ukraine's judiciary, where favoritism rather than merit determines the appointment of judges. Evidence is routinely "lost" at Ukraine's courts and bribes can facilitate almost any desired ruling.

In a famous case involving the 2000 murder of journalist and anti-corruption crusader Heorhiy Gongadze, police destroyed evidence related to the case, including some that may have implicated a police unit that had been tailing Gongadze.

In 2004, a judge summarily closed the case against a police general who had ordered the evidence destroyed in what press freedom groups and the International Union of Journalists denounced as a cover-up.

Similarly, corruption among politicians is rampant. Alleged vote buying of parliamentarians, who can hide behind extensive immunity rules, has in part been responsible for the political paralysis plaguing the country over the past two years.

Corruption has also serious consequences for Ukraine's national security, as much of the graft is concentrated in the energy sector. Ukrainian analysts and investigative reporters assert that massive bribery has played a key role in perpetuating Ukraine's overreliance on Russian gas.

Such corruption, experts say, has halted or impaired Ukraine's efforts to promote internal energy exploration and diversification. The net effect has been to expose Ukraine to Russia's authoritarian influence.

These views are corroborated by Western officials, including U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer who at a talk earlier this month at Harvard University called on Ukraine to get rid of all "Middlemen companies" which he said "thrive on non-transparent arrangements ....[,]...fester in a corrupt environment...[and] serve no useful purpose."

He specifically cited RosUkrEnergo, a Swiss-registered company that plays a dominant role in gas imports to Ukraine.

There are a number of key steps Ukraine's reunited Yushchenko-Tymoshenko tandem should take in the first 100 days of the new government:

• Strengthen weak and contradictory anticorruption legislation and update government ethics codes that are currently ambiguous or absent altogether.

• Establish a new judicial chamber, staffed by a new generation of judges untainted by sleaze.

• Create an independent national investigative bureau to uncover and root out grand corruption.

• Eliminate or reduce the scope of parliamentary immunity, which lawmakers have used to escape prosecution.

• Increase transparency by obliging senior public officials and politicians to publish annual statements of assets and incomes.

Anticorruption campaigns must not become mechanisms of political retribution. Thus, prosecutions cannot only focus on the activities of members of the opposition. They must target officials from across the political spectrum, wherever the evidence leads.

But Ukraine is unlikely to win the battle alone. The U.S. and the EU need to step up their assistance in helping Ukraine face this challenge by quickly deploying teams of anti-corruption advisors to Kiev to work with the new government.

If they do, the hopes and aspirations of the Orange Revolution will be realized and will contribute to the emergence of a mature and prosperous democracy.

Source: Wall Street Journal

EU Expands Border-Free Zone Farther East

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Border controls along the old Iron Curtain from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic cease to exist from midnight Thursday as most of the European Union's former communist new members join the bloc's passport-free travel zone.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
It's a major step in their transition from Soviet satellites to full-fledged EU members, but has also triggered fears of a flood of illegal immigrants that could stick Europe with a crisis similar to America's along its border with Mexico.

The entry of nine nations into the EU's so-called Schengen area means citizens can travel by land or sea between 24 European nations from Portugal to Poland, Iceland to Estonia without facing border checks. The move has also forced the EU to tighten up controls on its new eastern borders to prevent infiltration by criminal gangs, illegal immigrants, and even terrorists.

"Together we have overcome border controls as man-made obstacles to peace, freedom and unity in Europe," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. He said the expansion of the open-border zone will boost trade and tourism, inject new life into border-region economies and end the hassle of frontier delays.

As a condition for joining, the new members have strengthened security on their borders with non-EU nations such as Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia. They have also linked into an information exchange system for police and border guards around the EU.

Such measures are needed because any illegal migrants from the less prosperous nations to the east would be able to roam as far as Paris or Madrid without any additional checks if they breach the EU's easternmost border.

"It would have been better to wait a year or two longer to abolish the border controls," said Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister of the German state of Bavaria. "It's all a matter of how well protected the border is from Belarus to Poland, from Ukraine to Slovakia."

The EU's former communist members have been introducing tighter controls on the eastern border since they joined the EU in 2004, with funding from their richer neighbors.

So far, it seems to have paid off. Michal Parzyszek, the spokesman for Frontex, a Warsaw-based EU agency that coordinates border management, says the number of illegal immigrants getting through has declined in recent years, although it's impossible to know for sure.

Poland's Border Guards say the number of people arrested trying to enter Poland illegally fell more than 20 percent over the past year, from 3,763 in 2006 to 2,973 in 2007. Poland bears the burden of protecting the longest external border among new Schengen countries — 736 miles facing Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Meanwhile, the EU's front line in the fight against illegal immigration remains to the south where thousands of poor Africans make the hazardous sea journey to the coasts of Spain, Italy, Malta and Greece, while would-be migrants from the Middle East and Asia take the overland route through Turkey and the Balkans.

Austria's Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer dismissed concerns the expansion would aid criminals or illegal immigrants as he symbolically joined Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico to saw through a barrier the countries' border.

"Schengen is not crime, not insecurity, not fear," Gusenbauer said. "Schengen stands for freedom, security and stability."

From the other side of the EU's external border, Ukrainians fear the tightened controls will cut them off from the West.

"I certainly don't greet this news with happiness," said Alexander Voitenko, 54, a Ukrainian scientist doing research in Warsaw. He complained that it's already more difficult to travel west since Poland joined the EU.

The Schengen agreement is named after the village in Luxembourg where it was signed in 1985 by France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands to allow citizens to travel freely between them. Since then they have been joined by Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, as well as non-EU nations Norway and Iceland.

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta joined the EU in 2004, but have had to wait before gaining access to the frontier-free zone pending reforms to bring standards of their police and border guards in line with EU norms.

Source: AP

Make Way For The Lady In Braids

KIEV, Ukraine -- Yulia Tymoshenko was approved as Ukrainian prime minister on December 18. This marks the beginning of Ms. Yulia's second stint as head of government. She was nominated both times by pro-Western president Viktor Yushchenko, whom she helped rise to power during the country's 2004 Orange Revolution, and then hold on to authority during this year's power struggle.

PM Yulia Tymoshenko with braids (2007) and without (2004).
But, since there can be only one Ukrainian head of state, the lady in braids may end up helping Mr. Yushchenko out of office during the country's next presidential elections in 2009.

Personal ambitions aside, the December 18 vote in parliament also marks the reunification of Orange power in Ukraine. Eastern-oriented Viktor Yanukovych, whose presidential dreams were dashed by Yushchenko and Tymoshenko during the mass street protests of 2004, is now back in opposition. Yanukovych had been bullying executive power away from the mild-mannered Yushchenko ever since last year's parliamentary elections allowed him to form a coalition with leftist defectors from the Orange camp. Only with support from Tymoshenko was Yushchenko able to push through fresh elections in September, yielding a new Orange parliamentary majority.

But the new Orange coalition is paper thin (227 out of 450 seats), and a half-dozen or so Yushchenko loyalists within it have made no secret of their hostility toward Tymoshenko. Yushchenko has tried to remain above the dog fight in the legislature, but no one has forgotten that it was he who ended Tymoshenko's first term as premier in September 2005, laying the ground work for Yanukovych's return to power a year later.

Facing a numerous and openly hostile opposition, a president eager to blemish her reputation among Orange voters in the run up to next year's presidential poll, and treachery in her own ranks, Ms. Tymoshenko could be forgiven for treading carefully along the country's much needed path of reforms. Instead, the lady in braids appears defiant of the gauntlet of political adversaries who line her path toward greater power, confidently making her way toward the center stage of public attention, from which she has always drawn her political strength.

Branded as a populist, Tymoshenko has promoted policies no less reformist and pro-Western than those of Mr. Yushchenko. Under Yanukovych, who enjoys much warmer relations with Moscow than either Orange leader, Ukraine's liberal reforms have ground to a halt. Tymoshenko now wants to push forward with reforms and quickly, if for no other reason than to show voters that she is a servant of the people rather than a protector of the elite.

Under Yushchenko, Ukrainians have enjoyed unprecedented civil liberties and economic growth, but the president also turned the constitution into a minefield, while allowing the courts to lose any semblance of respectability that they may have once enjoyed. Such problems will take a lengthy, and more importantly, bilateral effort to resolve. That's why election-minded Yulia is concentrating on what at least appear to be more readily achievable goals.

For example, Ms. Tymoshenko promised on December 18 that Ukraine would join the World Trade Organization "very soon." Yanukovych as well as Yushchenko have promised the same, but the deadline has kept getting pushed back. With most if not all obstacles to WTO entry already overcome, Tymoshenko could hardly accept the credit for success, but Euro-friendly Ukrainians would probably give it to her anyway.

One prominent issue that Tymoshenko could call her own is the fight to clean up Ukraine's shady gas sector, which is inexplicably entrenched with middlemen who profit at the expense of the state. "My position remains unchanged, there cannot be middlemen on the gas market," she told a news conference on December 18. Unlike WTO entry, however, making gas imports from Russia to Ukraine more transparent treads on a lot more well heeled feet.

Other policies advocated by Tymoshenko's team are more controversial, leaving the braided lady open to charges of pandering to the masses. For example, Tymoshenko has promised to immediately end army conscription, instead of phasing it out over the next two years as proposed by the president. She also vowed to return the savings lost by Ukrainians to the inflation that hit the country after the fall of the Soviet Union, without explaining where she'll get the money.

On one of the most controversial issues of all in Ukraine – NATO membership – Tymoshenko seems to have outsmarted both Yanukovych and Yushchenko. Yanukovych has called for an immediate referendum, which Yushchenko supporters say should be preceded by a fair public information campaign. Tymoshenko, who has positioned herself as somewhat less pro-American than Yushchenko, also supports a referendum but has not specified when it should be held.

However, it's not policy that determines a Ukrainian leader's chances for power, but the other way around. In her rise to power, Yulia has decided to keep one opponent at a distance - her declared enemy Yanukovych - while allowing the other to lead her up the isle to center stage, as she steals the show from under his arm.

Yanukovych and the well-organized band of lawmakers that he leads in the parliament have for their part made no secret of their hostility toward Tymoshenko, whom they have publicly characterized as reckless.

''In my opinion, the election of Tymoshenko as premier will deepen political instability and unfortunately facilitate confrontation in society,'' the outgoing premier said during his own news conference on December 18.

After it had become clear that the two Orange parties (Tymoshenko's BYuT and Our Ukraine-People's Self Defense, which Yushchenko sponsored) could form a coalition on the basis of the early elections held on September 30, Yanukovych's team did everything they could to stall the formation of a new government for over two months.

Moreover, Tymoshenko's first confirmation vote on December 11 came up short for what BYuT members said was technical tampering with the parliament's electronic voting system.

Even now, as Tymoshenko settles into her new job, Yanukovych's Regions party, together with its Communists allies from the last coalition, remains defiant. ''We are convinced that the existence of a coalition of 227 [seats held by Orange parties in parliament] will not last for long. The people of Ukraine will oust the populists like they throw out garbage during spring cleaning,'' reads a press release from Yanukovych's office.

The president, who went from staunch Orange loyalist to distant inter-party arbitrator following the September 30, denied any double dealing in the coalition forming process, which he was accused of following the 2006 parliamentary elections that brought Yanukovych to power. ''All suspicions of duplicity have been proven unfounded. The government has gotten a leader, and the country - hope for an effective new government team,'' Yushchenko said on December 18.

At the same time, Yushchenko, who will control the new Cabinet's defense and foreign ministries, made it clear that he would hold his Orange colleague publicly accountable during her term in office. ''Society wants to see real implementation of electoral promises ... The coalition has been given a clear field to act, and the actions of the majority as well as the Cabinet,'' he said.

However, unlike Yushchenko, Ms. Yulia has yet to miss an opportunity to act and has rarely misread her voters. If Yushchenko and Yanukovych cannot do the same, they had better make way for the lady in braids.

Source: Eurasian Home

Stop The Awards

KIEV, Ukraine -- Serhiy Kivalov, considered among the most odious figures in modern Ukrainian history, was recently awarded a certificate of honor by the Central Election Commission for his “important contribution toward ensuring the observance of citizens’ constitutional voting rights” when he served as CEC chair.

Serhiy Kivalov (L), Borys Kolesnikov (R) and Mykhailo Potebenko (C)
This is the same Kivalov who was sacked from his post by parliament at the height of the Orange Revolution for validating the mass election fraud.

Borys Kolesnikov was among those who led an eastern Ukrainian separatist movement during the heat of the Revolution. To honor such an upstanding citizen, President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Kolesnikov with the second degree of the Yaroslav the Wise Order, among the nation’s most prestigious awards, on the anniversary of Ukraine’s independence referendum.

Earlier in the spring, Mykhailo Potebenko also received a Yaroslav the Wise Order, which is given for wisdom and honor, among other qualities.

For those not around during the Kuchma years, he was Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2000, when the investigation into the murder of muckracking journalist Heorhiy Gongadze was stalled and covered up.

In the presidential statement accompanying the award, Potebenko received it for his “great personal contribution toward the building of a law-abiding state, the strengthening of legality and the rule of law.”

While all three deny the wrongdoings mentioned above, and have not been found guilty by Ukraine’s dysfunctional courts, outrage over the awards is widespread.

Many question whether these individuals deserve awards, or time in jail instead.

To restore legitimacy to the practice of giving out state awards, a committee of experts needs to be formed to debate, consider and vote on honorees.

Operating in a transparent manner, the committee would need to state clearly what the award is being given for and place the nominees’ achievements in clear historical context, so that the cover-up of a murder is not equated with the strengthening of the rule of law, and massive election fraud is not equated with ensuring citizens’ voting rights.

Source: Kyiv Post

Return Of The Orange Princess

MOSCOW, Russia -- It was a telling contrast. Just one day after President Vladimir Putin more or less appointed himself Russia's next prime minister, the Rada (parliament) in Kiev chose in a free vote to make Yulia Tymoshenko Ukraine's prime minister. It also exposed the fallacy that post-Soviet Slav countries cannot be democratic.

Yulia Tymoshenko in Parliament after she was voted prime minister on December 18, 2007.
Ukraine has been cited by the Kremlin as an example of democratic turbulence to be avoided. Russian television has gloated over Ukraine's chaotic politics, pointing up the advantages of Russia's stable system, in which decisions are taken by the Kremlin and rubber-stamped by the Duma.

Ukraine's politics have been messy ever since the orange revolution of late 2004, when Viktor Yushchenko became president.

Yet for all the disillusion in the orange camp, Ukrainians gave it one more chance in the parliamentary election on September 30th. Ms Tymoshenko's party did well, taking votes from the Party of the Regions led by Viktor Yanukovich, the outgoing prime minister. With the pro-Yushchenko Our Ukraine block, Ms Tymoshenko had enough seats to push out the Party of the Regions.

But it took two months for her to form a coalition. Nerves were further frayed on December 11th, when the electronic voting system failed to register two votes for Ms Tymoshenko. But on December 18th the parliament at last backed Ms Tymoshenko, by a one-vote margin.

The good news is that Ukraine has proved itself to be a genuine democracy, with a fierce competition for power and now a functioning opposition. As one Russian oligarch notes, Ukrainian politicians have tried it all to win power: election-rigging in 2004, money to bribe politicians to switch sides in 2005-06 and now democracy.

Ms Tymoshenko and Mr Yushchenko have been here before.

He made her prime minister in early 2005, only to fire her months later. She blames her failure on the fact that she did not have her own team and was undermined by Mr Yushchenko's friends.

Now she is in a stronger position and has already shaped her own cabinet. She promises judicial and economic reform, more open government and an end to murky intermediaries in the gas trade with Russia. But some pledges may be impossible to deliver.

Her first challenge is to keep the orange coalition together. The Our Ukraine block consists of ten parties. Some of Mr Yushchenko's supporters cannot stand Ms Tymoshenko.

Mr Yushchenko may feel justifiably threatened by her as a potential presidential candidate in 2009. But to be credible, Ms Tymoshenko must tame her populist instincts. In a presidential election she will be judged on her record as prime minister.

If the orange coalition fails to modernise and reform Ukraine, it would betray those who three years ago helped stage the orange revolution in the snow of Kiev. It would also set a bad example for other ex-Soviet republics—and give even more cause for Russian gleefulness.

Source: The Economist

U.S. Split Ukraine Into "Pro-Western" And "Pro-Russian" - Putin

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's president told Time magazine that the United States had divided the Ukrainian people into "pro-Western" and "pro-Russian" sides.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin
Some Russian officials have accused Washington of funding the "orange revolution" in Ukraine in 2004 when the West-leaning government came to power after forcing the Moscow-backed rival to hold new elections.

Western countries have in turn accused Russia of trying to retain its Soviet-time influence over the former neighboring republics, including Ukraine.

"For some reason, the U.S. decided that part of the Ukrainian political elite was pro-American and part of it pro-Russian, and chose to support those who in their opinion were pro-American - the so called orange revolutionaries," Vladimir Putin said on December 12 in an interview with the U.S. magazine, which declared him "Person of the Year".

Putin, whose second term expires in May 2008, said this division was a mistake. He said a politician who wants to be popular in his country must defend national interests and be a Ukrainian nationalist in a good sense.

"And they are indeed like that: they are neither pro-Russian, nor pro-American, nor pro-European, they are pro-Ukrainian," said Putin whose popularity rating in Russia still tops 70%.

The Russian leader also accused the U.S. of causing a rift among Ukrainians which led to distrust between some political factions and Ukrainians within the country.

"You began to destroy Ukraine with these actions, demolishing its territorial integrity and undermining its sovereignty," the president said.

Ever since the "orange revolution," Ukraine has been torn apart by a power struggle between the "orange" forces and the opposition. The latest early elections on September 30, have not eased the situation with the "orange" forces forming a coalition of 227 seats in the 450-seat legislature, which is unlikely to make the political process easy.

Putin said when it became evident that the situation in Ukraine was becoming unstable, people tried to force Russia to subsidize the Ukrainian economy, and politicized energy supplies.

Russia is Ukraine's only energy supplier. It delivers a mixture of Russian and cheaper Turkmen gas to its neighbor.

"If you want to support somebody, you must pay for it. Nobody wants to do that. I talked to a European economy minister. I told him: 'Why don't you pay then?' And he said: 'I am not stupid.' And I said: 'Do I look like an idiot?'"

Putin said Russia had subsidized the Ukrainian economy with low energy prices for 15 years by around $3-5 billion annually.

Putin denied any ambition to annex Ukraine. He said that out of a population of 45 million in Ukraine, 17 million were ethnic Russians and 80% of those consider Russian their native language, but there is no desire to be part of Russia.

"We do not want to incorporate anyone into Russia because it would be an additional economic burden for us," the president said.

Source: RIA Novosti

In Ukraine's Tymoshenko, Winning Looks Match Steely Determination

KIEV, Ukraine -- Yulia Tymoshenko's party logo may be a red love heart, but with her approval by parliament as prime minister yesterday, she has once again proved a steely will to dominate politics in this strategic state.

Prime Minister elect Yulia Tymoshenko in a file photo.
The photogenic firebrand known for her traditional gold braid and uncompromising personality was the driving force of the 2004 Orange Revolution in which tens of thousands of people came onto the streets to protest a rigged presidential election.

The uprising achieved its goal, securing an election re-run that brought President Viktor Yushchenko to office and in turn led to Tymoshenko's first appointment as prime minister in 2005, the first time a woman had held the job.

A figure who has long courted controversy, Tymoshenko made a fortune in the gas industry in the 1990s before serving as deputy prime minister from 1999 until 2001, when she was briefly jailed on charges that were subsequently dropped.

As prime minister from February to September 2005 she struggled with the messy business of day-to-day government in this sprawling ex-Soviet state, which lies sandwiched between Russia and the European Union.

She irritated investors by threats to overturn post-Soviet privatisations and by introducing price controls on fuel and other products.

But since her sacking by Yushchenko that year, Tymoshenko has strengthened her position as an outspoken critic of both the president and a series of successors in the prime minister's role.

Her Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc took over 30 percent at September elections that were called to resolve an impasse between Yushchenko and the pro-Russian prime minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Once perceived as an outspoken nationalist, she no longer derives her support exclusively from the west of the country, where cultural ties to neighbouring Poland traditionally go hand-in-hand with antipathy towards Russia.

At the latest elections she crucially built support in the industrial east and above all in central Ukraine, home to the capital Kiev.

She has remained vague on the issue that crystallised the east-west divide in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution: whether the country should join the NATO military alliance.

While Yushchenko has spearheaded efforts to join NATO, the alliance is seen by many in eastern Ukraine and Russia as a vehicle of American imperialism.

Not that Tymoshenko will avoid ruffling feathers in the prime minister's post.

While she may take more care over any move that threatens the country's economic foundations, she has sworn to look into one highly contentious issue: the murky financial mechanism by which Ukraine obtains its gas from Russia.

She has said she would scrap a new deal on the price the country will pay for gas from next year. Last year, Russia briefly interrupted supplies as the two countries wrangled over pricing, causing knock-on disruption in the European Union.

Gazprom has warned there could be a similar dispute if Tymoshenko attempts to revise the existing gas price deal.

As for the rivalry between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko, that may only get fiercer as the country approaches presidential polls in 2010 or 2011.

While she recently suggested she would support a re-election bid by Yushchenko, this great survivor of Ukrainian politics may find entering the contest an irresistible challenge.

Source: Macao Daily News

75 Years Later, Survivor Helps Commemorate Ukrainian Famine

NEW YORK, NY -- Seventy-five years ago, in a small village in eastern Ukraine, Daria Schulha Kira recalls huddling with her three siblings as Communist Party officials ransacked their home looking for grain.

Since 1954, Daria Schulha Kira has lived in the East Village, the heart of the Ukrainian community in New York. She came to America after surviving the 1930s famine in her native country.
“Your government needs your food,” she remembers the armed men shouting. “Then they took iron bars and poked in the walls and the floors looking for anything they could find.”

But they didn’t have any food. Ms. Kira, now 85 and living in an apartment on East Houston Street in Manhattan, was living through one of the worst periods of Stalin’s brutal reign in the Soviet Union.

It is widely recognized that the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, which killed 3 million to 6 million people, resulted from the Soviet government’s policies, said Alexander J. Motyl, a political science professor at Rutgers University who has written extensively on 20th-century Ukraine. Without the government requisitioning grain at levels far beyond the capacity of the Ukrainian peasantry to fulfill, Professor Motyl said, there would have been no famine.

Even when the scale of the suffering became apparent, Soviet officials continued to insist that unattainable grain quotas be met, refused to open up grain reserves or ask for international aid, and prohibited starving peasants from moving into cities or other Soviet republics.

The New York Ukrainian community, long centered in the East Village, has begun commemorating the 75th anniversary of what it calls the Holodomor, or death by hunger. For the start of a year of activities, scores of Ukrainian-Americans marched in November from St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church on East Seventh Street to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown for a requiem Mass.

Few famine survivors with clear memories of the tragedy remain, so the bright-eyed Ms. Kira has necessarily become an object of much attention. On Nov. 27, she was the only survivor who appeared at a conference of scholars and diplomats at the United Nations. Ms. Kira said she relished her role. “I want the world to know what happened,” she said.

This is also a pressing mission of the Ukrainian government, which is dedicating 2008 to compiling testimonies, supporting scholarly research, restoring burial places and planning a national museum. Ukraine’s president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, has spoken of the importance of recovering memories of an event that had long been denied by the Soviet Union.

Yushchenko’s government is also leading a drive to have the United Nations declare the famine an act of genocide, seeing it as part of Stalin’s continuing effort to destroy any trace of Ukrainian national feeling. While some scholars question a genocide designation by arguing that Stalin was singling out the peasant class rather than Ukrainians or that the famine also touched other areas of the Soviet Union, few are as vociferous in their opposition as the current Russian government. In a Nov. 19 statement released by the Foreign Ministry, it said Ukraine was engaged in “a one-sided distortion of history to suit modern opportunist political-ideological directives.”

Surrounded by dolls dressed in Ukrainian folk costumes, Orthodox Christian icons and old family photographs in her apartment, Ms. Kira said that Stalin “wanted to destroy Ukraine.” As proof, she added that Russians were resettled in the homes of Ukrainians who had died in her village, Tajky. She told a harrowing story of being orphaned before the famine and then struggling to survive its deprivations with her siblings, the oldest of whom was a 17-year-old brother. “We went into the forest and searched for mushrooms,” she said. “We ate every kind of mushroom, except for the poisonous ones. We even ate the ones that were full of bugs. Thank God for mushrooms.”

She said she remembers sneaking into “golden” wheat fields to steal a few stalks, which she would thresh into flour with a small millstone hidden at home. It was an act that could have resulted in jail time or even execution.

In a 1986 book about the famine, “The Harvest of Sorrow,” Robert Conquest tells of a woman sentenced to 10 years of forced labor for gathering 70 pounds of wheat stalks for her family. Ms. Kira ruefully recalled when the combines arrived to cull the 1932 wheat harvest. After the machines completed the job, “everyone who could walk” picked through the bare fields for anything that might have been left behind.

And death was everywhere, she said. “I remember the dead bodies looked like skeletons with big stomachs,” she said. Cannibalism was not unknown. She told a macabre tale about a neighbor who ate her dead children and talked to their bones in hopes that they would return to life. Young people were afraid to walk into town for fear of being abducted by people crazed by hunger, she said.

Ms. Kira was lucky enough to survive the famine. A decade later, she was forced to confront the Nazis, who took her to a labor camp in Austria. She eventually made it to the United States, settling in the East Village in 1954. She vows never to leave the still-thriving pocket of Ukrainian churches, social clubs and restaurants.

The neighborhood is happy to have her. “She holds a special place in the community’s heart,” said Tamara Olexy, executive director of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, located on Second Avenue. “She’s able to bring a human face to a tragedy that is so little known throughout the world.”

Source: New York Times

Merkel Says Germany To Back Ukraine After Tymoshenko Win

BERLIN, Germany -- Ukraine can bank on Germany's active support in implementing needed reforms, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a letter of congratulation Tuesday to newly elected Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel
'Important reform decisions are pending in Ukraine, which will be of great significance as a lasting basis for further democratic and legal reforms in your country,' Merkel said.

Ukraine could continue to rely on Germany's support, she added.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Tymoshenko's election marked 'an important first step on the road to a stable government.'

Welcoming the vote in the Ukraine parliament, Steinmeier said the coalition led by the reformist politician faced 'numerous tasks and reforms that needed to be approached with courage.'

The main tasks, he said, were 'the strengthening of democracy, investment protection and law and justice.'

'Germany will continue to back Ukraine in its reforms and in its approaches to the European Union,' the minister said in a statement.

Tymoshenko was elected by a one-vote majority in the 450-seat Ukrainian legislature, the Verhovna Rada.

She will lead a coalition replacing the previous pro-Russia government headed by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Ukraine's Parliament Backs Tymoshenko For PM

KIEV, Ukraine -- Yulia Tymoshenko was on Tuesday endorsed as Ukraine's prime minister after winning a wafer thin majority in a parliamentary vote. The charismatic Ms Tymoshenko will head a pro-western coalition of her political bloc and allies of Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko.

Ukraine's new Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko waves after voting in parliament in Kiev Decamber 18, 2007. Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday restored Tymoshenko as prime minister, sealing a political comeback for a leading figure from the former Soviet country's 2004 "Orange Revolution".
Ms Tymoshenko will replace Viktor Yanukovich, the Moscow-friendly premier whose year-long tussle over authority with Mr Yushchenko culminated in the president dissolving parliament last spring.

Ms Tymoshenko regained the premiership after a strong showing in snap elections in September. A previous stint as prime minister in 2005 was cut short by Mr Yushchenko.

Her coalition is expected to rejuvenate the president's hopes of Ukraine joining Nato and the European Union. But Ms Tymoshenko is also expected to shake up relations with Moscow, which has in recent years imposed stiff rises in the price of natural gas exports to Ukraine, a large consumer and key transit artery for Russian supplies to Europe.

Ms Tymoshenko has pledged to remove murky intermediaries from the multi-billion-dollar natural gas trade between Kiev Moscow and Central Asian producers.

Speaking ahead of the vote, Ms Tymoshenko pledged to adopt "deep reforms" and fight corruption. She warned influential business interests that have opposed her that if a vote on her candidacy should fail, "sooner or later the entire mob will have to account before Ukraine for what they have done thus far and what they will do in the future."

"I think today's vote will be a good test of how corrupt our politics is or isn't today," she said.

After a first vote on her candidacy failed last week due to an alleged tampering with an electronic computerised voting system, Ms Tymoshenko's on Tuesday won by a one-vote majority in a show-of-hands.

She will lead a razor-thin coalition majority in which trust from pro-presidential lawmakers is weak due to fears that she will use the premier post as a springboard to challenge Mr Yushchenko in a 2010 presidential campaign.

Ms Tymoshenko's candidacy mustered 226 votes, the minimal requirement for a majority in the 450-seat legislature. Backed by 156 seats in Ms Tymoshenko's Byut bloc and 72 within the pro-presidential Our Ukraine grouping, the coalition marks the first majority held by Mr Yushchenko since he was propelled to the presidency in the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Voting in parliament to form Ms Tymoshenko's new cabinet is expected later on Tuesday but sources said it could be put off until later this week.

Ms Tymoshenko's government will seek to maintain the impressive economic growth that Ukraine has seen in recent years, but will also strive to raise average living standards and fend off high inflationary pressures, which were sparked largely by sharp price rises on fuel imports.

In recent days, Russia's Gazprom has warned of a repeat of the 2006 natural gas supply standoff that triggered supply shortages to Europe could materialise if Ms Tymoshenko pushed to renegotiate an agreement signed late this year by the outgoing government.

In the agreement, Ukraine accepted a third stiff price increase on natural gas supplies in as many years. A repeat standoff poses serious risks for Europe; The majority of Russian supplies to EU countries are pumped through Ukraine's vast pipeline system.

Andriy Kozhemyakin, an ally of Ms Tymoshenko, said her government would not rush to review the agreement this year, opting instead for pragmatic talks that would start next year.

Some analysts question how long Ms Tymoshenko's fragile governing coalition will last, saying it could be cut short if she is seen as using the premiership as a springboard to challenge Mr Yushchenko in a presidential campaign that kicks off in 2009.

"There are growing signs of mistrust between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, which first appeared back in 2005, and have yet to be repaired," reads a recent report by Renaissance Capital. "Unless she conducts a balanced policy, she may not survive in the position for long."

Ms Tymoshenko established herself as a major political figure rallying street side protestors during the Orange Revolution in support of Mr Yushchenko's presidential bid.

The chances of a future clash with Mr Yushchenko are high. Ms Tymoshenko has not clearly ruled out a run for the presidency. Fearing their shadowy privatisation dealings would be reversed, influential oligarchs are said to be pulling strings against her.

Source: MSN Money

Russia, Ukraine Trade Harsh Words Over Historical Memory

WASHINGTON, DC -- On December 14 Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued a strongly worded statement complaining of “open nationalist, anti-Russian, and Russphobic feelings and developments in Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko (L) and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Attempts are being made, it claimed, to “use difficult periods in our joint history to receive brief political rewards based on doubtful ideological pretensions.”

The number of historical issues dividing Ukraine and Russia continues to grow and aggravate the already strained relations between a reformist Ukraine and a resurgent, autocratic Russia. In late November both countries exchanged diplomatic notes after the Eurasian Youth Movement (EYM), a Russian nationalist group proscribed in Ukraine, destroyed an exhibition at the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow marking the 1932–33 famine.

The Ukrainian side described the vandalism as “provocative and anti-Ukrainian.” One month earlier the EYM had destroyed Ukrainian national symbols on Hoverla Mountain in western Ukraine and launched cyber attacks that shut down the presidential website.

Since December 9 the servers supporting the orange youth NGO (www.maidan.org.ua), the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (www.khpg.org), and the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (www.helsinki.org.ua) have all faced sustained attacks.

Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), called upon his Russian counterparts to “not permit on each other’s territories extremist and, God forbid, terrorist actions, which are undertaken by such structures.”

Reportedly officials foiled a terrorist attack that had been planned to coincide with a “Russian march” in Crimea’s capital Simferopol. The banned group Proryv, with underground branches in the Crimea and ties to extreme left and pan-Slavic groups, was suspected of being behind the planned provocation, which would have been blamed on “Ukrainian nationalists.”

Ukraine and Russia have embraced differing interpretations of key historical events and personalities since the late Soviet era. The divergence continued under presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma (1991-2004), with a return to Ukrainian national historiography, which had been banned in the 1930s but kept alive in the Ukrainian diaspora.

The process has become more heated with the rise of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Yushchenko has actively sought to investigate the “blank pages” of Ukrainian history, while Putin has returned to a neo-Soviet synthesis of Russian imperial and Soviet ideology in historiography and national symbols.

Some of the most heated debates have occurred around two primary issues: Ukrainian leaders and independence movements and crimes committed by the Soviet regime in Ukraine.

New Ukrainian symbols, holidays, and commemorations have prompted protests from Moscow. For example, the Tsarist and Soviet regimes regarded 18th century Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa to be a traitor, and the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him.

But he is a hero in Ukraine. Mazepa’s face appeared on Ukraine’s currency in 1996, Kyiv’s Sichnevo Povstannia street was renamed after him in October, and a new monument is planned. The Ecumenical Synod of the Russian (“Ukrainian”) Orthodox Church in Ukraine denounced the monument plans.

An October 9 decree outlined detailed instructions to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, where a combined Swedish-Ukrainian force led by Mazepa lost to Russia. The 1709 battle is seen as a turning point that transformed Russia into an empire.

Ukraine lost autonomy and was eventually absorbed into the Russian empire under Empress Catherine II. A monument unveiled to her in October in Odessa sparked violent clashes between Russian and Ukrainian nationalists.

A December 13 decree contained plans for commemorating the 90th anniversary of Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Tsarist Empire next year.

A monument to Symon Petliura, who led the drive for Ukrainian independence after the Russian Revolution, was vandalized in Poltava, his home region.

World War II also remains a divisive issue. A new monument to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, assassinated by the KGB in Munich in 1959, was vandalized after it was recently unveiled in Lviv.

An October 12 presidential decree outlined instructions to local authorities about how to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the formation of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a nationalist guerrilla force that fought a decade-long war against Nazi and Soviet forces.

Another presidential decree awarded the “Hero of Ukraine” designation to UPA commander Roman Shukhevych on the centennial of his birth. The decree noted Shukhevych’s “individual contribution to the national-liberation struggle for liberty and Ukrainian independence.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s December statement specifically complained that Pushkin Street in Lviv had been renamed after Shukhevych.

Kyiv’s efforts to honor the victims of Soviet crimes have also irritated Moscow. While Yushchenko supported the opening of a new Museum of Soviet Occupation in Kyiv, the Russian MFA complained that Ukraine was attempting to “nationalize” the suffering experienced by all Soviet peoples in the 1932-33 famine.

The head of the Ukrainian MFA press service responded by advising his Russian colleagues that it was too late to discuss whether the famine was “genocide,” as Ukraine had already taken this step. “I would like to advise my Russian colleague,” he offered, that they should “read historical books” and “on this basis reach a conclusion.”

Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Foreign Ministry, and media have all condemned Ukraine’s designation of Stalinist crimes and the famine as acts of genocide. The two sides have opposite views on Stalinism and Russia, as the legal successor to the USSR, is also concerned at possible future demands for compensation.

In late November Ukrainian nationalist parties sent an open letter to the president and parliament demanding that Ukraine seek compensation from Russia through the European Court of Human Rights.

As the two countries move in separate directions, the individuals branded as traitors in Tsarist, Soviet, and post-communist Russia are increasingly becoming Ukraine’s national heroes.

Source: Jamestown Foundation

Ukrainians Tune Out Of Political Bickering

KIEV, Ukraine -- When Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s pro-west president, dissolved parliament in April, he hoped an election would clear the air, punish corruption and end a deadlock dating back to the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Viktor Yushchenko
It has not turned out that way. Nearly three months after the September 30 poll, the country is still without a government, and politicians are still embroiled in murky coalition-building manoeuvres.

For weeks, Mr Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party has been holding talks about forming a government with the party headed by Yulia Tymoshenko, Mr Yushchenko’s Orange Revolution ally. But negotiations have been hampered by the two leaders’ rivalry, which erupted in 2005 when Mr Yushchenko sacked Ms Tymoshenko as his prime minister.

They are also fiercely opposed by Viktor Yanukovich, the acting prime minister, and his Regions party, which remains the biggest single parliamentary grouping.

Together, Mr Yushchenko and Ms Tymoshenko’s forces hold 227 seats in the 450-member assembly. But the Orange camp’s fragility was exposed in parliament last week when Mr Yushchenko’s motion to make Ms Tymoshenko prime minister secured only 225 votes.

In farcical scenes, the security services were called to check the electronic voting machine but found nothing amiss. A repeat vote on Ms Tymoshenko’s candidacy is scheduled for Tuesday.

There is speculation in Kiev that although Ms Tymoshenko shares Mr Yushchenko’s western-oriented ideas, the president might prefer a coalition with the less volatile Mr Yanukovich. Meanwhile, Ms Tymoshenko may decide to bide her time in opposition to magnify her chances of winning the next presidential election in 2010.

Ukrainian voters tuned out of the political saga long ago, preferring to enjoy the fruits of an economy now in its eighth year of unprecedented growth, with a 7 per cent rise forecast for 2007.

But investors worry the power struggle will delay badly needed reforms and undermine further growth. “The political turmoil that has been a hallmark of 2007 has unfortunately begun to have a negative impact on both current investors, who are looking to strengthen their operations, and for new investors who would like to enter the market,” says Jorge Zukoski, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.

Edilberto Segura, chief economist in Kiev at the private equity firm Sigma Bleyzer, warns, “Past sources of growth are being exhausted . . . New sources of economic growth will be needed. New investments will be needed.”

Ukraine has attracted record amounts of foreign direct investment since the Orange Revolution, including about $7bn (€4.8bn, £3.5bn) this year, but its accumulated total of $26.9bn since 1991 is, on a per capita basis, still far below the figures of its central European neighbours. Accession to the World Trade Organisation, a basic step towards internationalising trade and investment, has yet to be completed.

The new government may avoid another gas dispute with Russia as the outgoing government signed a 2008 deal this month. But this envisions the third sharp price rise for fuel imports in as many years and economists say inflation, expected to end the year at 16 per cent, could take off.

Meanwhile, bickering lawmakers have yet to pass next year’s budget, or adopt tax relief for Naftogaz, the state-owned energy company, on the verge of a technical default on eurobonds placed with investors.

A default could raise the cost of corporate and sovereign debt for Ukraine, a country that has borrowed heavily on world markets in recent years.

In the chaos, influential oligarchs have prospered, but other investors are nervous. They fear corruption is rising again and dealing with officials is becoming more difficult. With nobody clearly in charge, there is nobody to turn to.

The worry is that even if a new government is formed soon it will be weak – and will become weaker as the 2010 presidential poll approaches.

Source: Financial Times

World's Oldest Living Person Dies At 116 In Ukraine

LVIV, Ukraine -- The planet's oldest living person, Hrihoriy Nestor, died at the age of 116 in the Lviv Region in western Ukraine on Sunday.

Hrihoriy Nestor a few months ago.
According to church documents and his passport, Nestor was born on March 15, 1891.

Nestor, who worked as a shepherd in the village, used to say that he had lived to an old age because he had never been married and had not had his nervous system "undermined on the marital front."

Nestor, who loved Ukrainian, Russian, German and Polish songs as he learnt them after living through the first and second world wars in his west Ukrainian village, actually never fell ill, never took any medicines and never used alcohol in large amounts.

According to Guinness World Records, today the world's oldest living person is 115-year-old Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico who assumed this title after Elizabeth Bolden, an African American woman, died at the age of 116 years and 118 days in 2006.

Source: RIA Novosti

Worries As EU's Schengen Borders Expand East

LONDON, United Kingdom -- Just one porous border will stand between most of Europe and tens of thousands of illegal immigrants under changes that take effect on Friday, December 21.

Illegal immigrants, captured by Ukrainian border guards while trying to cross into Europe, queue for breakfast in a detention camp.
Hungary and Poland are among nine recent additions to the European Union who will join most other members in throwing open their EU frontiers to travel without a passport.

Under the latest expansion of the Schengen agreement, countries such as Germany and Austria will stop checking people entering from the east, and anyone who can make his or her way over the 1,800 miles of borders from the Baltic to the Adriatic will be able to travel throughout most of the EU without being checked.

Border officials have already reported an upsurge in people trying to cross the EU's new outer frontier. Britain has not signed up to the Schengen zone, but many of those heading for the eastern frontier say they want to cross the Channel.

Franco Frattini, the EU's commissioner for security, described the expansion of the EU's free movement zone as a "quite nice Christmas gift" to the people of central and eastern Europe.

But Knut Paul, the head of Germany's police trade union, has warned that the new Schengen members will not be able to defend the EU's borders. "We are exposing ourselves to the threat of being swamped by criminals and illegal immigrants," he said.

On its visit to the border between Hungary and the Ukraine, The Sunday Telegraph found evidence of serious weaknesses in controls over immigrants from outside the EU. Officials said that they caught fewer than a third of those attempting to cross illegally.

Roger Helmer, a Conservative MEP, said levels of immigration were "completely out of control… These changes will make things even more difficult. The border between the UK and the Continent is not insuperable."

Source: Telegraph

Protect Privacy

KIEV, Ukraine -- In September, the government of Viktor Yanukovych issued regulation No. 1169 “On obtaining court permission for activities that temporarily restrict human rights.” The order simplifies procedures for law enforcement to enter our homes, tap mobile phones and intercept e-mails.


Instead of court rulings, police need only obtain permission from the head of regional administrative courts. The resolution eliminates any oversight of the “information collection activities” by the public or other government agencies.

It also allows eavesdropping procedures to be put in place even if they are not allowed by law.

On Dec. 11, the Ukrainian Internet Association (UIA) provided a progress report on its efforts to have the measure repealed. The association sent letters to seven institutions, including the Cabinet of Ministers, Presidential Secretariat and the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The association’s appeal was brushed aside by all recipients, except for the Office of the Ombudsperson for Human Rights. Ombudsperson Nina Karpachova, herself an ally of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, agreed with the UIA and recommended that the Cabinet cancel the regulation.

Her opinion has been left unheeded by the government run by the party that elected her to parliament.

We are not arguing that law enforcement should be denied the right to monitor criminal communications. The problem lies in the lack of public and intergovernmental oversight of the state’s right to spy on its citizens.

The government should at least be required to provide reports on the number of people whose communications are monitored every year.

The last full-year report publicly available was for 2003, when 40,000 eavesdrop orders were sanctioned. The number has been kept secret since, according to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union.

The new Cabinet should cancel the order that allows for the potential uncontrolled spying by the state. Parliament should adopt a law to regulate eavesdropping and introduce progressive measures in force in European countries, such as informing innocent citizens when they have been spied on by the state.

Otherwise, Ukraine’s claim of being a democracy will be skating on very thin ice.

Source: Kyiv Post

Suspected Serial Killer On Trial In Ukraine For Multiple Slayings, Rapes

KIEV, Ukraine -- A criminal expert has gone on trial in Ukraine accused of raping and murdering dozens of young women and girls over a period of 25 years, prosecutors said Friday.

Suspected serial killer Sergei Tkach.
Sergei Tkach has been charged with multiple premeditated murders and prosecutors have evidence he committed at least 60 rapes, murders or both, said Yuriy Boychenko, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office.

Authorities say Tkach, who has training in criminal investigation, has confessed to more than 100 rapes or murders, and investigators are working to verify his claims.

A court in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk began hearings Wednesday, Boychenko said. The trial, conducted behind closed doors as it involves minors, is expected to last several months. Tkach faces life in prison if convicted.

Prosecutors say Tkach, a gray-haired man in his fifties who is originally from Russia, committed his first crime in 1980. But he was not arrested until August 2005, when a surviving victim gave authorities enough information to identify him, according to Boychenko.

He said Tkach's experience as a criminalist helped him escape prosecution for so many years.

"His professional skills helped him conceal his crimes," Boychenko said.

Ukraine's most notorious serial killer to date, Anatoly Onoprienko, was arrested in 1996 and eventually convicted of murdering more than 40 people over about a decade.

He was sentenced to death, which was commuted to life imprisonment after Ukraine suspended capital punishment.

Source: International Herald Tribune

EU Feels Heat From Russia

EDMOND, OK -- Russia is mounting pressure on the European Union on two fronts: Ukraine and the Mediterranean. Tensions will rise till a pact is agreed between these two powers.

Russian naval vessels like this one will soon patrol the Mediterranean — in the EU’s “backyard.”
Little if any press and media coverage is currently being given to a situation that is slated soon to become one of Britain’s and America’s main foreign policy concerns. The trouble is, when the Anglo-Americans finally wake up to this threat to their national security it will inevitably be too late.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, European Union foreign policy gurus are deeply concerned on two fronts. For some time, Russia and the EU have been involved in a tussle over just where the eastward and southward push of the hegemonic European Union would stop.

During the time that Russia was down on the mat, mired in the mess of its failed command economy and struggling to come to grips with the loss of its Soviet empire, the European Union, encouraged by the Vatican state and the Western democracies, in particular the U.S., steamrolled across the old divide of the Berlin Wall to swallow up scads of old Soviet satellite nations destined to become new member states of this emerging European federation.

All Russia could do through the 1990s was watch helplessly as much of its post-World War II empire east of Berlin rapidly shrank way back to the Ukraine plain.

Came the 21st century, a new Russian premier, plus an unslakeable thirst for energy from the rising EU and Asian economies raking in the revenues for sale of Russia’s huge oil and gas resources, and Russia rebounded economically.

Now, with a cash box overflowing with rubles and a czarist president as leader of the new Russia, Red Russia is again sounding the drums of Cold War psychology against the West, and it is the EU that is feeling the pressure.

Since the time of the Orange Revolution, Russia and the West have been involved in a tussle over just who will control Ukraine, the breadbasket of the old Soviet Union. During the early winter of 2005, Ukrainians took to the streets in protest against vote rigging that had denied their favored candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, a legitimate electoral victory in the vote for the country’s presidency.

Known as the Orange Revolution for the color adopted by Yushchenko’s Ukraine opposition party, a color sported by the masses that gathered in largely peaceful protest outside the presidential palace in revolt against the rigged election, the outcome was a reversal of the vote counters’ earlier decision, victory then going to Yushchenko and his supporters.

Viktor Yushchenko, the darling of the West, became the country’s president, with defeated pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovich retaining the office of prime minister. The Orange Revolution resulted in what some termed a “seismic shift Westward in the geopolitics of the region.” Putin pouted at this defeat of his favored Communist candidate for Ukraine’s presidency, foreseeing the prospect of the EU’s eastern border penetrating even further eastward into old Soviet territory, and most strategic territory at that!

Not only was Ukraine crucial to the Russian economy as a prime supplier of foodstuffs; whoever possessed this great flat plain of the Ukraine had possession of a prime corridor of significant military value!

In a gigantic snub to its former Russian overlord, Ukraine instantly applied for membership of the European Union.

Vladimir Putin’s response to Ukraine’s swing toward the West has been to not so subtly threaten the EU with interruption to the flow of energy from Russian-controlled resources. Russia is one of the EU’s main suppliers of natural gas, much of which transits through Ukraine. In the winter of 2005-2006, Russia and Ukraine began a major natural gas battle during which Russia cut supplies to Ukraine, triggering a Europe-wide energy crisis.

Russia has recently placed further pressure on Ukraine by concluding a rather messy deal, in the closing days of Prime Minister Yanukovich’s cabinet, over the pricing of natural gas. Pro-Russian Yanukovich is being ousted from the prime minister’s post by the populist, braided-haired Yulia Timoshenko.

The combination of Timoshenko and a messy gas deal with Russia may lay the groundwork for a similar crisis to that of 2005-2006 emerging during the current winter. Yulia Timoshenko, Yushchenko’s fellow traveler during the Orange Revolution, has stated that “any deal made by the Yanukovich cabinet will be ‘renegotiated’ once she comes to power”.

This will no doubt involve challenging the latest price hikes that Russia has imposed on Ukraine. Timoshenko has given the impression that she is spoiling for this fight. Should battle be joined again on this score, it may well culminate in a veritable rerun of the 2005 natural gas crisis plunging the EU into another winter of gas cuts.

In the meantime, the European Union is working frantically to diversify its energy supply sources so as to make it less dependant on Russia, a dependency that is viewed as an extreme strategic weakness in the European Union’s security fabric. Hence Germany and France agitating for more direct involvement in the Middle East peace process, a vital key to influencing energy suppliers in that crucial energy resource region.

Second Front

Yet, Russia is now mounting pressure on the European Union on two fronts.

At the same time as he tightens the screws at the EU’s eastern flank, Vladimir Putin plans now to apply pressure to the EU on its southern perimeter.

Earlier this month Russia announced its intention to resume naval patrols in the Mediterranean. This will place Russian naval vessels in the same waters as NATO’s Standing Naval Force Mediterranean, currently under the command of the EU’s principal economy, Germany.

The German command’s brief (which it has held for the past five years) is to secure the Mediterranean’s crucial waterways from Gibraltar to the Middle East. The presence of the Russian Navy patrolling the same beat is bound to raise tensions between the EU and Russia.

Since 2002, the German government has been establishing its navy’s global reach. “German warships are controlling a maritime area 10 times larger than Germany, from the entrance of the Persian Gulf (the Strait of Hormuz) and the entrance of the Red Sea (Bab el Mandab, near Dijbuti) — a route of great importance for the trade with East and Southeast Asia.

German naval units are stationed along the Lebanese coast and at times navigate into larger areas of the Mediterranean, as part of NATO’s Active Endeavor operations.

The point about the Mediterranean is that the EU sees it increasingly as its own backyard, given that the crucial sea gates of Gibraltar, Malta, Crete and Greece are all either EU member states or fall under the administration of EU member countries, as in the case of Gibraltar (Britain) and Crete (Greece).

Thus, any allusion to Russian interference in the region of the Mediterranean is bound to raise hackles in Berlin and Brussels. Stratfor hit the nail right on the head seeing this latest move by Russia as, for the present, being more along the lines of a foreign-policy initiative designed to apply pressure in its bargaining with competing nations, rather than an overt military strategy.

“Russia is searching for a way to use its military to achieve more in its foreign relations, and while Russian military technology should never be scoffed at, this is a move laden with political implications — not military ones. For now”.

As we have pointed out in the past, tensions are bound to continue to rise between the EU and Russia until EU expansion east and south and revived Russian imperialist thrusts cease to be perceived as threats from each by the other.

A Russo-EU pact must be agreed soon on these border and perimeter issues so that the EU and Russia cease wasting time, energy and rhetoric on matters that hinder the progress of each in working toward their major foreign policy goals of becoming global powers of significance.

This is what the latest Russian moves are designed to exact from the rising imperialist EU which has taken so much of the territory of the old Soviet empire from it.

Keep your eye on the EU and Russia.

As Herbert Armstrong consistently forecast, Russia and a European Union dominated by Germany will conclude another type of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact so that each may secure their common borders before they can continue to pursue their independent goals for global dominance.

Indications are that Russia is presently exerting pressure on the European Union to bring matters to a head such that this coming pact will be drawn up sooner rather than later. Once it is concluded, then will be the time for a titanic shift of European foreign policy against any who dare resist its attempts to take possession of the Middle East oil and gas fields.

Meanwhile, the British and American peoples remain largely ignorant of the dire consequences of this mounting crisis.

Source: Trumpet

Ukraine Parliament To Vote On Tymoshenko As PM On Dec. 18

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's parliament will once again vote on 'orange' coalition leader Yulia Tymoshenko's nomination for prime minister on Tuesday.


Lawmakers changed voting procedures Friday after the flamboyant pro-Western Tymoshenko narrowly failed by a single vote to get backing for her appointment first time on December 11.

Two votes were held, with Tymoshenko both times receiving 225 votes, one short of the 226 required. The coalition blamed technical malfunctions.

"Most MPs met the Party of Regions halfway and decided to consider the premier's candidacy Tuesday," Rada Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk said.

A total of 274 MPs voted for the decision Friday with 226 required.

Yatsenyuk said pro-Western lawmakers did not trust the electronic voting system and would vote by a show of hands.

On Wednesday, the coalition's opponents, the Party of Regions led by acting Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, blocked a new vote on Tymoshenko, who briefly held the post of premier in 2005, by obstructing the rostrum.

Tymoshenko's coalition won a total of 227 seats in September's parliamentary elections, one vote above the 226 votes required to form a majority in the 450-seat Supreme Rada.

Source: RIA Novosti

Moscow Slams "Anti-Russian" Practices In Ukraine

MOSCOW. Russia -- Russia said on Friday it was "seriously anxious about a rise in openly nationalistic, anti-Russian and Russophobic sentiments and practices in Ukraine."


"Effectively, attempts are being made to use complicated periods in our joint history to gain immediate political advantages in satisfaction of dubious ideological principles," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

"One has the impression that certain political forces in Ukraine deliberately encourage actions of this kind and thereby knowingly pursue a line that may cause Russian-Ukrainian relations to deteriorate and inflict serious damage on feelings of good-neighborliness and confidence that our fraternal peoples have traditionally had for each other," the ministry said.

"Not only do radical nationalistic forces in the country feel unrestricted and immune to punishment. They are building up their provocative action," it said.

"Russia expects that not only those in authority but also the Ukrainian intelligentsia, veterans and youth will speak their minds," the statement said.

"Russia will continue to unflinchingly pursue its course of protecting and promoting Ukrainian culture and strengthening humanitarian ties between the two fraternal peoples," it said.

Source: Interfax

'Gas Princess' Strives To Become Ukraine's PM

KIEV, Ukraine -- For the fourth day in a row, Ukraine’s Rada, or parliament, will try to appoint the leader of the parliamentary coalition, Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister. President Yushchenko has again put forward Tymoshenko.

Yulia Tymoshenko meeting the press in Parliament.
Tymoshenko lacked just one vote in her favour. Twice in a row 225 deputies supported her instead of the required minimum of 226.

The leaders of Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc did not hesitate to accuse their rival Party of Regions of falsifying electronic voting results.

Tymoshenko said the system tripped-out two votes of deputies who supported her. Meanwhile, the Party of Regions denied the accusations.

Experts later confirmed there was no external interference in the voting system.

The Party of Regions demanded an apology saying it would block the work of parliament until it receives it.

Parliament will now decide on the voting method as deputies of Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc insist the voting system is unreliable.

“The Party of Regions is trying to slow down the whole process - of this voting and of Tymoshenko’s appointment. And it is trying to put some other issues on the parliamentary agenda,” said Ivan Presnyakov, a political analyst, the International Centre for Politics studies.

Source: Russia Today

Punish Rada Rats

KIEV, Ukraine -- For those brave or bored enough to watch the sessions of parliament, many Westerners inevitably ask themselves why their own parliaments are so comparably calm. The Dec. 11 Rada session provided more food for thought.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko (R) speaks with Parliament Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk after voting in the parliament in Kiev. Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday narrowly rejected the candidacy of Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko for prime minister amid accusations of vote tampering.
The coalition blamed its failure to approve the president’s nomination of Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister on «technical provocations» by the opposition, which it accused of fixing the Rada computer system. The Security Service of Ukraine said it did not find evidence of tampering.

Then how did three deputies fail to vote properly in what experts say is a secure and easy system? The mystery remains unsolved.The inanity was capped off by Regions MP Vladyslav Lukyanov’s swiping Parliamentary Chair Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s card while voting was in progess.

If not for that, the Tymoshenko vote would have been repeated, perhaps successfully. But Lukyanov said he was on a mission to save parliamentary procedure from being trampled upon by the rookie speaker.

Perhaps one reason these antics don’t occur in the West, or at least with the same frequency, is members of parliament don’t have the luxury of enjoying prosecutorial immunity.

Ukraine’s members of parliament can essentially get away with murder, literally, because they enjoy immunity from prosecution. It’s one of the reasons why so many businessmen, who gained their riches through corruption, become deputies in the first place.

Yatsenyuk submitted a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s Office against Lukyanov’s deeds, but that isn’t likely to produce results, given the PGO’s track record. To echo Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense’s recent campaign slogan, the law applies to all. Let’s eliminate prosecutorial immunity now.

Another nuance of the Ukrainian parliament is its procedural rules are not entrenched in law. The rules of order are being constantly violated.

Most Western parliaments don’t have the need to enforce regimen because a culture of respect for the law is in place. Most Ukrainian parliamentarians, on the other hand, haven’t been able to shake off the Soviet tradition of ignoring the law, which is considered an impediment instead of a benefit.

The Rada should make adoption of a law on its regimen a top priority.

Source: Kyiv Post

IMF Tells Ukraine To Fight Inflation, Deficit

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine must take tackle its most serious economic problem -- inflation -- next year, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday, suggesting lower social benefits and a freer currency regime as solutions.

Parliament Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk (R) shakes hands with IMF's European Department mission head Robert Ford during their meeting in Kiev.
The IMF also urged Ukraine's government to draw up a budget next year that is balanced or has a small surplus, which would also help dampen inflation.

"Next year and in 2009, measures must be taken to make sure the (inflation) situation does not become worse," IMF's Europe department chief, Robert Ford, told Radio Era in comments translated into Ukrainian.

"It could do this by reducing social benefits, because these payments directly raise internal demand and this pushes up inflation."

Inflation climbed to 14.2 percent in the first 11 months of this year, far exceeding initial government and analysts' forecasts.

The central bank's monetary policy is aimed at maintaining a stable hryvnia, kept at 5.00-5.06 to the dollar.

"Talking in the longer-term, we think a more flexible currency exchange rate is necessary, which will allow monetary policy authorities to better control inflation and ease pressure on the currency," Ford said.

"I don't think you could win by tying the hryvnia to the euro instead of the dollar. It would be better if the peg is wider so the currency can fluctuate."

The central bank has a long-stated aim of gradually moving towards greater currency flexibility, but signalled recently that it will make no moves until the political situation in the country stabilises.

Politicians are yet to form a government more than two months after a parliamentary election. All parties promised higher social spending during the election campaigns.

Ford also said the IMF had no concerns about the ability of Ukraine's economy to weather a rise in gas prices from Russia to $179.50 per 1,000 cubic metres from $130 paid since the beginning of this year and $95 in 2006.

"The Ukrainian economy can handle this, because it came through fine the last time," he said.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Tymoshenko Vote Shows Coalition's Limitations

KIEV, Ukraine -- The coalition of President Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc (NUNS) and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) has failed to ensure Tymoshenko's return to the post of prime minister, from which Yushchenko fired her in fall 2005.

The 'Orange Team' - Yushchenko (L) and Tymoshenko.
This time it is not disagreements within the coalition that stand in her way, but what looks like a glitch of the “Rada” electronic voting system and the opposition's determination to capitalize on it. Tymoshenko's bid for prime minister was supported by exactly half of parliament – but not a majority.

The voting on Tymoshenko on December 11 demonstrated that the BYuT-NUNS coalition will have to fight for every important issue in the newly elected parliament, as it numbers 227 members, just one vote more than the simple majority needed to pass laws in the 450-seat legislature.

The opposition – the Party of Regions (PRU), the Communists, and the Lytvyn Bloc – refused to cast a single vote for Tymoshenko, so all members of NUNS – even those who happened to be seriously ill – had to come to parliament.

Their turnout was in vain. Tymoshenko mustered 225 votes, just one short of her premiership. Two coalition members complained that, for some reason, their votes “in favor” were not counted by the electronic voting system. Rada Speaker Arseny Yatsenyuk, despite loud protests from the opposition, ruled to re-vote.

At that point, PRU deputy Vladyslav Lukyanov snatched the speaker’s voting card. Without Yatsenyuk’s vote, the Rada displayed the figure 225 again. In addition, another coalition member claimed that his vote was not counted.

The opposition did not allow a re-vote. Furious, NUNS and BYuT claimed that the opposition had tampered with the Rada system and threatened Lukyanov with criminal prosecution. The PRU, however, defended Lukyanov, saying that he had only prevented a procedural violation.

Technical experts interviewed by Channel 5 said that the Rada system could not possibly be tampered with. They suggested that the incident during the voting was an unfortunate coincidence. After checking the voting system the Security Service reported that nothing suspicious was found.

Yesterday, December 12, Yushchenko again submitted Tymoshenko’s nomination to parliament. The opposition, however, blocked the session hall. The PRU said that the December 11 voting was just a one-off concession to the coalition, and now they want parliament to continue working according to the usual procedure, which stipulates that the parliament speaker and deputy speakers should be elected and standing committees should be formed before voting on a new prime minister.

Only the speaker has been elected so far. It is not clear when parliament will vote on Tymoshenko's bid again if the opposition does not drop their demand.

The composition of Tymoshenko’s future cabinet has already been made public. It is not ruled out, however, that some changes may be made to the list by the time of Tymoshenko's appointment.

Her proposed cabinet will include representatives of the BYuT and NUNS in equal proportion. The foreign and defense ministers are picked by the president, as this is his privilege according to the constitution.

The four deputy prime ministers designated by Tymoshenko are: Oleksandr Turchynov, her key ally since the late 1990s, when both were on the team of former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who was later imprisoned in the United States for graft; Ivan Vasyunyk, a former deputy head of Yushchenko’s office; Yosyp Vinskyy, a former number two in the Socialist Party, who left the Socialists when they abandoned Yushchenko and Tymoshenko and joined Yanukovych’s camp in 2006; and Hryhory Nemyrya, a foreign relations expert who has accompanied Tymoshenko on foreign trips.

Yushchenko’s choice for defense minister was a surprise for many, as it had been expected that Anatoly Hrytsenko, who survived several cabinets in this position since 2005, would stay. Instead, Yushchenko picked Yuriy Yekhanurov, who succeeded Tymoshenko as prime minister in 2005-2006.

Yekhanurov opposed the alliance with Tymoshenko, preferring a “grand” coalition with the PRU. Vadym Karasyov, an analyst close to Yushchenko’s team, told Channel 5 (5 Kanal) that Yekhanurov would be a counterbalance to Tymoshenko in the cabinet. He also suggested that Hrytsenko might be promoted to secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.

Yushchenko’s choice for foreign minister is Volodymyr Ohryzko, a pro-Western diplomat who served as deputy foreign minister in several cabinets. Ohryzko’s appointment may not play well in Moscow, as he has been a tough negotiator on border issues and the Black Sea Fleet for many years.

Ohryzko does not miss opportunities to challenge Russians even in matters of secondary importance. He once sparked a scandal by refusing to speak Russian at a meeting with Russian experts who complained that their poor understanding of Ukrainian hindered normal dialogue.

Yuriy Lutsenko, who spearheaded the anti-corruption drive immediately after the December 2004 Orange Revolution, is slated to return to the post of interior minister. Viktor Pynzenyk, who has served in many Ukrainian cabinets since the early 1990s, should return to the chair of finance minister. Vasyl Kremin, who was education minister for many years under former president Leonid Kuchma, should be education minister again.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Life-Quality Index Ranks Ukraine Low

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine ranked 76th of 177 countries in the United Nations’ Human Development Index based on life expectancy, literacy, education and purchasing power.

'Quality of Life' is lacking in Kiev.
Compiled by the UN’s Human Development Report Office (HDRO), the HDI ranks countries according to three developmental dimensions, namely, a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.

Wedged between Colombia and Samoa, Ukraine is sixth of the 85 countries deemed to be in the “medium human development” range. 70 countries ranked as “high development” countries, with Iceland, Norway and Australia taking the top three spots.

The bottom 22 slots were all occupied by Sub-Saharan African countries with Sierra Leone ranking last. Each country’s achievements in these dimensions were determined through statistical measurements of average life expectancy, adult literacy and combined gross enrollment in primary, secondary, and tertiary-level education, and GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity, or PPP, US dollars). The HDI refers to statistical data gathered in 2005 and made available to HDRO by July 2007 by various international and national agencies.

Ukraine scored an HDI value of .788 in the 2005 benchmark year, rising from .761 in 2000. The HDI has been compiled every five years since 1975. The country scored highest when it was first analyzed in 1990 with a value of .809, slightly lower than the Bahamas and Kuwait. Ukraine scored lowest in 1995 with a .756 value, which was only slightly better than Brazil and Belarus. Ukraine has gradually regained HDI value in the past decade.

In 2005, an average Ukrainian’s life expectancy was 67.7 years, according to HDRO, and the country’s GDP per capita totaled $6,848 (PPP US$). Meanwhile, its adult literacy rate was entered as 99.4 percent of the population, while its combined gross enrollment ratio for education totaled 86.5 percent.

“While the concept of human development is much broader than any single composite index can measure, the HDI offers a powerful alternative to GDP per capita as a summary measure of human well-being,” according to the report.

At the 76th spot, Ukraine ranked lower than all of its freshly-minted EU neighbors Poland (37), Hungary (36), Slovakia (42) and Romania (60), and behind Belarus (64) and Russia (67). Both Russia and Belarus were included in the “high human development” category. The other CIS member states lagged behind Ukraine, with Tajikistan bottoming the bunch in the 122nd position.

The HDI report also measured countries according to a myriad of other criteria affecting human development as diverse as technology diffusion, water, sanitation and nutritional status, maternal and child healthcare, labor rights and unemployment, and environmental policy and energy use.

The substantial 384-page report pinpointed climate change as the most substantial challenge to human development in the coming years.

“In the long run, climate change is a massive threat to human development and in some places it is already undermining the international community’s efforts to reduce extreme poverty,” according to the report’s authors.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine's Journalists Fight To Save Image After Bribe Claims

KIEV, Ukraine -- Under the motto "We can't be bought," television journalists in Ukraine are fighting for change after some broadcasters succumbed to bribes from politicians during the last elections.

Corruption is a fickle path.
Just as they did three years ago during the so-called Orange Revolution, Ukrainian journalists are once again out to save their profession's reputation.

Last time, the government under then-President Leonid Kuchma had subjected journalists to censorship; now politicians are using monetary incentives to influence the news coverage in their favor.

The most recent parliamentary elections on Sept. 30 were the last straw: Never before had so many reports by national broadcasters on political topics been paid for, according to independent observers.

Big business for campaign reports

Unprecedented sums flowed from the parties' secret coffers into those of the television broadcasters, said Victoria Siumar from the Kiev Institute for Mass Information: A two-minute PR report cost around $5,000 (about 7,400 euros), while a broadcast with a live appearance from politicians went for $50,000 to $70,000.

A total of between $200 and $300 million was paid to broadcasters during the campaign, according to different estimates, Siumar added.

Campaign leader wants to name names

A major part of the "We can't be bought" campaign is monitoring broadcasters across the country in order to identify paid news reports. The initial findings would be published soon and include specific examples of bribery, said campaign co-founder Yegor Sobolyev.

Sobolyev emphasized that his group wasn't out to condemn politicians who had paid for broadcasts, but, above all, to spare the journalism profession.

"I insist that we don't just talk about broadcasters and tendencies, but that the names of those involved -- from the managers to the journalists -- are given," Sobolyev said. "The country has to know who is responsible."

The campaign leader isn't so worried about getting flack from colleagues; he's more concerned about bribery becoming common practice in the field.

Reliable news is better for broadcasters

"Paid news reports usually force lies onto the viewer, which some of them may believe," but it's even worse when those reports take the place of more important news, Sobolyev said.

Another of the group's concerns is that the younger generation of journalists who didn't experience censorship under Kuchma is less aware of the danger that media bribes present to press freedom. After all, the incentives could soon be replaced with harsh limitations, said Sobolyev.

"We see this tendency and want to beat this sickness before it kills us."

The campaign leader is convinced, however, that broadcasters will come to their senses, since bribes can't constitute a sustainable income. To raise their ratings and maintain a stable income, broadcasters have to present reliable information and gain credibility with their viewers, he said.

Source: Deutsche Welle

Traditional Family Restaurant, Dixie Lee International, Expands Its Franchise Offering Into Ukraine Via A Master Franchisee

DALLAS, Texas -- Dixie Lee International Industries, Inc., parent company of the 40-year-old "Dixie Lee" brand name, with more than 80 franchised restaurants open, announced today that its international expansion campaign is moving into the Ukrainian market.


The company's franchisee, Olgoria Holdings Ltd., the Ukrainian Master Franchisee for the Dixie Lee Chicken & Seafood Restaurant chain, plans to open 20 to 25 units in the next five years.

The first of many restaurants planned for the city of Kiev, will open in January 2008, with the second store under development.

Joe Murano, CEO of Dixie Lee International, said, "The situation and timing are ideal to kick-off our European expansion effort."

The economic growth that the Ukraine has recorded in recent years has sent personal income, especially within the middle class, skyrocketing.

As people earn more disposable income they spend more money going out to eat and socializing with friends and family, so our potential in the market is virtually wide open.

"We plan to open an average of two new Restaurants per week system-wide, as we aim to establish a recognized global brand with our goal of 300 Restaurants awarded within the next few years."

Source: Dixie Lee Industries

Miss World 2008 To Be Held In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Beauty will save the world – at least it looks like it might be the only thing around to save it, since whatever happens, beauty contests never cease taking place, all year round.

Lika Roman - Miss World Ukraine 2007
And I’m not even talking about the local, Ukrainian contests, but the number of global ones seems to be growing just the same.

Ukraine has of late taken active part in the beauty pageant movement, and not only by sending its gals out there to compete – it’s more than common – but by holding those contests as well.

Last autumn it received the Miss Europe contest which was attended by some foreign celebrities, including designer Roberto Cavalli.

And now the news is that Miss World 2008 will be held in Ukraine – it was announced at the finale of Miss World 2007, which took place in China and was won by a Chinese.

The Ukrainian participant in the pageant didn’t enter the finals, but was included in Top-20 beautiful figures of the contest, which might well mean she will join the army of Ukrainian models storming the world’s major catwalks with great success.

As for the reason why next year’s beauty show will take place in Kyiv, it clearly had something to do with Olena Franchuk, founder of the Ukrainian charitable fund ANITSPID, who became the first Ukrainian representative in the Miss World jury of the entire 56 years of the contest’s existence.

As it appears, it was just enough to bring the famed contest to Ukraine’s capital.

Miss World has been held annually since 1951.

Till the beginning of the 90s, it was permanently located in London, but later on it started moving around the globe.

The finals are being broadcast live to more than 70 countries of the world, and its overall audience totals two billion people.

In the meantime, yet another beauty pageant took place in Ukraine – it was the 8th International Festival of Beauty and Success Pani Ukraina.

The title was given to Tatyana Vorobyova of Simferopol, who appeared before the jury disguised as Marilyn Monroe.

Source: Kyiv Post

World’s Second-Biggest Cargo Plane Loads At Niagara Falls

NIAGARA FALLS, USA — Tuesday was a day of superlatives at Niagara Falls International Airport, as the world’s second-largest cargo plane sat on upstate New York’s longest runway and got loaded up with equipment for the world’s tallest building.

A Ukrainian Antonov 124 cargo plane.
A Ukrainian Antonov 124 arrived in the region to take on a 65-ton (58,968 kilograms) load of compressors from Ascension Industries of North Tonawanda.

“It was awesome,” said Frank Pastori, Ascension’s sales director. “The flat bed trailer we used to load the plane looked miniature by comparison. It was really quite impressive.”

The four-engine plane is 69 feet (21 meters) high, 226 feet (69 meters) long and has a 240-foot (73-meter) wingspan.

It landed in Niagara Falls because the main runway, at just under 10,000 feet (3,048 meters), is the only one in upstate that can handle an aircraft of such size.

“It was enormous,” said Mark Pierson, Ascension’s project manager. “It was [roughly] the length of a football field.”

It took six tractor-trailer drops and seven hours to load the aircraft with the four compressors, which will be used to run a power generating station to produce electricity for the world’s tallest building, at 1,922 feet (586 meters), currently under construction in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The aircraft touched down at 7 p.m. Monday after a 10-hour flight from Guinea in Africa, and had motorists on Niagara Falls Boulevard doing a double-take until it lumbered off the airport runway Tuesday afternoon.

Many pulled into the airport parking lot for a closer look at the huge white aircraft gleaming on the tarmac. “It attracted a lot of motorists,” said Debbie Doyle, general manager of Niagara Falls Aviation, the fixed base operator at the airport.

The world’s largest cargo plane — an Antonov 200 — is owned by the same company, Ruslan International of Kiev, Ukraine. The bigger plane is 59 feet (18 meters) high and 275 feet (84 meters) long, with a 290-foot (88-meter)wingspan.

Ascension Industries assembled the compressors for Atlas Copco of Voorheesville, outside Albany. Brown Electric of the City of Tonawanda did the electrical work and Hilcrest Coating of Attica painted the compressors battleship gray.

“All these Western New York companies working together,” Pierson said. “It was great to be a part of that.”

The plane’s 18-man crew — seven flight crew and 10 laborers — spent most of the night loading the compressors.

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, gorged with 92,000 gallons (348,258 liters) of fuel and weighing 893,000 pounds (405,058 kilograms), the plane began its roll down the runway.

“The aircraft took off very slowly,” said Doyle. “It needed all of that runway.”

Source: Buffalo News

Ukraine's Tymoshenko To Continue Fight For PM Post

KIEV, Ukraine -- Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of Ukraine's "Orange Revolution," makes another attempt in parliament on Wednesday to get back the job of prime minister after failing to secure the position on Tuesday.

Yulia Tymoshenko was denied premiership on Tuesday, December 11.
Tymoshenko fell one vote short of returning to the job after two members of her "orange" coalition failed to vote, according to the electronic voting system. She and her allies accused rivals of tampering with the system.

Analysts and observers were divided on whether the setback amounted to a betrayal by some members of the coalition said to be wary of her return to power, or the result of a genuine technical problem.

Tymoshenko's bloc and the party of President Viktor Yushchenko, Our Ukraine, have 227 seats out of 450 in the chamber, just one more than needed to pass most legislation.

"I think it is most likely that Tymoshenko will be elected tomorrow," analyst Olexiy Haran at the Kiev Mohyla University told Radio Era late on Tuesday.

"As deputies did not publicly withdraw their support for Tymoshenko, this amounts to proof that she has the 227 votes," he said. Two coalition members, one from Tymoshenko's own bloc, said their votes for her had not been registered.

Other analysts said the events bore out skeptics' predictions that members of Our Ukraine considered Tymoshenko an unpredictable populist and wanted to form a "grand coalition" with outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich's Regions Party.

Parliamentary speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a coalition member whose election to the post last week indicated unity was tight, closed the session saying Yushchenko would soon again submit his nominee. That would mean another parliamentary vote.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko have had an uneasy relationship since they stood side by side during weeks of 2004 when orange-clad protestors swept him to power.

He sacked her as his first prime minister after just eight months during which they constantly sniped. She spooked investors by calling for a major review of privatizations and worried them she was trying to influence markets.

That allowed Yanukovich, Yushchenko's rival in the "Orange Revolution," to form a government after a 2006 parliamentary election, but their fight for power as parliament reduced the president's authority led to over a year of political deadlock.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko reconciled this year for a September parliamentary election which produced the slender orange majority. That vote had been intended to end three years of political crises which forced vital economic reform down the agenda.

Source: Washington Post

TTI Telecom Announces Agreement To Acquire Telesens LLC

PETACH TIKVA, Israel -- TTI Team Telecom International Ltd., a global supplier of Operations Support Systems (OSS) to communications service providers, announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Telesens LLC, a software house headquartered in Ukraine with a strong presence in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) market.


Telesens, with an annual turnover of over $2 million and approximately 100 employees, has been developing, implementing and promoting software solutions and related professional services for the telecommunications market since 1998.

Amongst Telesens' customers are Kievstar, Kazakhstan Telecom, UKR Telecom and MTS Ukraine.

The acquisition of Telesens is part of TTI Telecom's strategy to expand its sales platform within strategic territories, as well as to lower software development costs through offshore development and be better equipped to develop new products for growing markets.

"This acquisition is an excellent growth opportunity for TTI Telecom," said Meir Lipshes, CEO and Chairman of the Board. "Bringing Telesens onboard achieves two important goals for TTI Telecom, enlarging and enhancing our footprint in the CIS market and enabling us to provide more cost-effective and efficient software solutions to our customers worldwide through off-shore development. I believe that within the first year of the acquisition, we will see a positive contribution to our financial results."

Under the terms of the agreement, the aggregate purchase price is $ 2.7 million, subject to downward adjustments related to amongst other, actual 2007 annual turnover and certain performance parameters, and will be paid in cash over a three-year period.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in mid-January 2008.

Source: CNN Money

Tymoshenko Fails In Bid For Ukraine Premiership

KIEV, Ukraine -- Yulia Tymoshenko, leading force in Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution", failed to win parliamentary backing to restore her as prime minister on Tuesday, adding to confusion after three years of political uncertainty.

Yulia Tymoshenko
Tymoshenko fell one short of a majority in the 450-seat assembly. Her allies immediately complained of technical problems and speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk proposed a motion to return to the motion. That however also failed to carry and parliament went into recess in some disarray.

Tymoshenko, with her trademark peasant braid and designer outfits, and President Viktor Yushchenko who had proposed her both appeared distraught by the unexpected outcome.

Tymoshenko rallied protests that catapulted Yushchenko to power in 2004 and was named premier within days. But the two fell out after Tymoshenko frightened investors with attempts to intervene in markets and review privatizations.

The personal and political dispute culminated within eight months in Tymoshenko's dismissal as prime minister.

Tymoshenko, 47, was formally put forward for the job on Tuesday by Yushchenko after two orange parties won enough seats in a September election to form a wafer-thin coalition majority.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko had been reconciled during the campaign, which pitted their pro-Western policies against those of Viktor Yanukovich, who steers a course closer to former imperial master Russia.

CORRUPTION

Tymoshenko had told parliament earlier on Tuesday she would fight corruption and unite a country, which is divided between a nationalist west and eastern territories closer to Russia.

"When the national team is playing we must all cheer in the same way," Tymoshenko, sporting a white dress and her trademark peasant braid, told the assembly.

"I want a national team to be born so that we are able to turn Ukraine into a strong European state...The main task of our team, our government, must be the introduction of clear, professional changes in every sphere of our lives."

That meant conducting an inventory of corrupt practices 16 years after independence from Soviet rule and measures to close the "dirty pits" behind them. It also meant urgent introduction of pension and tax reform.

If her government were approved, she said, the government would meet from Wednesday to adopt an approve the 2008 budget by the end of the year.

She had been more reserved in the weeks since the election, but has promised to uphold the liberal, pro-Western ideals of the 2004 revolution.

Source: Canada.com

China, Ukraine Vow To Further Develop Ties Between Armed Forces

BEIJING, China -- China and Ukraine on Monday vowed to further develop ties between their armed forces. Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan on Monday morning met with the Chief of General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces Serhi Kyrychenko.

Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan (R) meets with the Chief of General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces Serhi Kyrychenko in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 10, 2007.
The Chief of General Staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China Chen Bingde also held talks with Kyrychenko.

The military officers from both China and Ukraine highlighted the importance to enhance bilateral friendship and cooperation between the two sides.

Cao said in his meeting with Kyrychenko that China appreciated Ukraine's adherence to the one-China policy and is willing to bring the relationship between the two countries and that between the two armed forces to a new high on the basis of mutual respect, equality, mutual benefit and non-interference into each other's internal affairs.

Kyrychenko said Ukraine hopes to make new contributions to the friendship and cooperation between the two countries and the two armed forces.

Chen said in his talks with Kyrychenko that China and Ukraine treat each other as sincere friends and reliable partners, conduct cooperation and exchanges with each other and support each other in dealing with international affairs, adding that the PLA is willing to make joint efforts with the armed forces of Ukraine to develop their relationship in different areas and at various levels.

Kyrychenko echoed that Ukraine is also holding an active attitude towards developing the friendly ties with the PLA.

Kyrychenko started his four-day official visit to China on Dec. 9 at the invitation of Chen.

Source: Xinhua

Ukraine To Be Invited To Number Of Visegrad Group Meetings In Bid To Boost Cooperation

WARSAW, Poland -- Ukraine will be invited to participate in a number of future meetings of the Visegrad Group - a regional alliance of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia - in a bid to boost EU cooperation with its eastern neighbors.


"We will invite Ukraine to take part in a number of the Visegrad Group's future sittings," Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said at a joint press conference of leaders from the Visegrad Group and Slovenia, broadcast Monday by news channel TVN24.

The two-day meeting focused on EU neighborhood policy towards eastern countries, Kosovo independence, adhesion to the EU passport-free Schengen travel area and priorities for Slovenia's EU presidency for January-July 2008.

The four countries agreed to tie cooperation with the so-called 'B3' Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to better carry out "higher responsibility" in the field of EU relations with ex-Soviet republics.

"We will cooperate more closely with the group of Baltic states, which means that an Eastern dimension of the EU neighborhood policy could be fortified by practical undertakings," Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Monday.

"It matters a lot to Poland that Slovenia, the Baltic States and countries of the Visegrad Group take higher responsibility in creating an eastern dimension of the EU foreign policy."

The leaders also agreed to lower visa costs for Belarusian citizens, after the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia join the Schengen zone on December 21.

Source: Interfax

Church's Chicken Restaurants Open In Russian Markets

MOSCOW, Russia -- Texas Chicken®, the international brand of U.S.-based Church’s Chicken® continues to expand its brand overseas, as European Active Corporation (EAC) has been awarded the rights to open 100 restaurants over the next seven years in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

Texas Chicken®
The company recently opened stores in the Moscow and St. Petersburg markets.

“We are committed to the expansion of Texas Chicken® in Russia and beyond,” said Yuri Tetrov, President of EAC. “I’m very proud of my decision to get involved with a family-oriented brand that has a passion to serve the best fried chicken overseas.”

On November 30, the first Texas Chicken® restaurant opened in Shelkovo, Russia. On December 2, the second restaurant opened in the Piter Raduga Shopping Mall in St. Petersburg, with plans for two more store openings by the end of the year in the Moscow and St. Petersburg markets.

“The key to long-term success in the restaurant industry is in international business,” said Harsha V. Agadi, CEO of Church’s Chicken. “Forecasted increases in commodities and rising labor costs in the US will have serious impact on operating margins domestically, so the challenge is to offset greater operational efficiency onshore while expanding overseas.”

Although chicken is the primary meat consumed in Russia, adjustments were made to the menu to suit the local palate. For instance, seafood and ice cream are core menu items, the mashed potatoes are yellow in hue and the coleslaw is less sweet than the American version.

Texas-based Church’s Chicken® began expanding internationally in 1979. Today, it is one of the largest quick-service chicken concepts in the world. While the Church’s Chicken® logo has been trademarked in many countries, the company developed alternative branding under the name Texas Chicken® in select international markets to accommodate cultural sensitivities. Church’s Chicken® will open 40 restaurants internationally this year.

Source: Church's Chicken

Vital Political Bills Get Priority In Ukraine Parliament Over Tymoshenko's Nomination As Prime Minister

KIEV, Ukraine -- While the Ukrainian Parliament has calendared on Tuesday voting on Yulia Tymoshenko's nomination as prime minister, vital political bills get higher priority.

Parliament is scheduled to vote on Tymoshenko's nomination as PM on Tuesday, December 11th.
President Viktor Yushchenko, who nominated the popular female politician, asked the Parliament to tackle first pending bills that will stabilize the relations between the presidency and the state.

The bills include a revised bill on cabinet and the revision of a law that shifted some presidential powers to the prime minister and the coalition.

The shift caused a power struggle between President Yushchenko and resigned Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Oleksandr Turchynov, the future prime minister's ally in Parliament, promised to pass the vital legislation first before voting on Ms. Tymonshenko.

He said, "If lawmakers feel like it, why not work on Saturday and Sunday?....The speaker of Parliament must do everything for the prime minister to be approved within five days."

Newly elected Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk confirmed, "Voting on the prime minister's candidacy will take place regardless on Tuesday." He said if all nominations for cabinet posts are in on the same day, the new cabinet will also be confirmed on Tuesday.

Jockeying for cabinet posts is expected among members of the coalition.

Source: AHN News

Light Passenger Plane Crashes In Ukraine, Five Dead - Summary

KIEV, Ukraine -- A light passenger aircraft crashed in Ukraine on Sunday, killing five, according to news reports. The apparent accident took place near Kiev's Zhuliani airport, a secondary airfield in the western suburbs of the Ukrainian capital.

A Beechcraft make, similar to this file photo, crashed in Ukraine on Sunday.
The plane was of Beechcraft make, and had been a charter en route from the Czech Republic, the Interfax news agency reported.

The Beechcraft crashed in a field some 300 metres from a highway, according to unconfirmed reports after catching fire and exploding in mid-air.

There were no ground injuries reported.

Searchers found debris from the aircraft up to 200 metres from its impact point, officials at Ukraine's Ministry of Emergency Situations said.

The victims included two pilots and three passengers, none of whom were Ukrainian nationals, according to the report.

Air traffic radars lost the plane shortly before its planned arrival at Zhuliani.

Fog due to rising temperatures and wet ground was present in many areas of the Kiev region throughout the day.

Source: Earth Times

Struggle Surrounds Ukraine Extradition Request

JERUSALEM, Israel -- The extradition of an immigrant from the Ukraine who is wanted for murder in his home country is raising the issue of whether Israel can be sure he will be provided with a fair trial in his former country.

Alexander Pertzov
On Sunday, Jerusalem District Court Judge Zvi Segal is due to hand down his decision on the state's request to extradite Alexander Pertzov, former coach of the Ukrainian all-star Taekwondo team, who immigrated to Israel in 1999 and performed his military service in an IDF combat unit.

"This is the most problematic extradition case we have seen in the past few years," Pertzov's lawyers, David Halevi and Vadim Shub, of the Jerusalem branch of the Public Defender's Office, told The Jerusalem Post last week.

But representatives of the International Department of the Justice Ministry, who filed the extradition request, say there is nothing unusual about this case. "We examined it in a very detailed manner," said department head Gal Levertov.

Going by statistics, the chances that Pertzov will not be extradited are slim. Over the past 10 years, ever since the High Court of Justice rejected an American request to extradite Samuel Sheinbein and helped trigger a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, the court has not rejected a single extradition request filed by the state.

But there are three main reasons, according to Halevi and Shub, why the court should decide otherwise this time.

The first involves the allegedly highly problematic evidence that the Ukrainian government has supplied to the Justice Ministry.

The second is Ukraine's troubling record on human rights and government corruption. Also at issue is the government's general policy of not questioning the evidence provided by states requesting extradition, even when questions are begging to be asked, as they allegedly are in the Pertzov case.

In 2001, the Ukrainian authorities informed Israel that Pertzov was wanted for the murder of a policeman which had taken place four years earlier. The authorities said the allegation arose from testimony by two men who had been with Pertzov on the night he allegedly shot the policeman.

According to Halevi and Shub, the Ukrainian authorities did not "provide any explanation of the breakthrough in the investigation or the way they found the witnesses four years after the incident. We know the witnesses were originally interrogated as suspects but we don't know how long they were kept in detention, and whether pressure was applied to make them accuse Pertzov."

The authorities also did not explain why they released the witnesses conditionally, even though they claimed they were with Pertzov when he allegedly killed the policeman.

During the investigation, Pertzov's lawyers received taped testimony from the two witnesses, Maksim Apter and Igor Viskrevitz, as well as Oleg Shtenko, a friend who provided an alibi for the suspect.

Apter said in a taped and filmed statement to the Justice Ministry that police had arrested him in October 2001 after planting a pistol and explosives among his possessions. He said he was held in jail for seven months during which the police tried to pin the policeman's murder first on him, then on Viskrevitz and finally on Pertzov.

Viskrevitz charged that he had been a fugitive from justice when he was picked up four years after the killing, and the police used his predicament to blackmail him into fingering Pertzov. Both maintained that Pertzov was innocent in their taped testimony.

Halevi and Shub said there was no doubt the testimonies were authentic because the pictures of Apter and Viskrevitz in the tape tallied with still photos the Justice Ministry had of the two witnesses.

Meanwhile, Shtenko testified that he had told Ukrainian police that Pertzov had been with him at a Taekwondo practice at the time of the murder.

When the Israeli prosecutors asked the Ukrainian authorities about these testimonies, the authorities claimed all three witnesses had disappeared in the meantime. Shtenko then sent a second tape, telling Israeli officials he had not disappeared but that since sending his first testimony, he had been summoned to the Ukrainian prosecution and questioned about his account. The officials had hinted they would link him to the murder if he persisted in providing an alibi for Pertzov, he charged.

Halevi and Shub pointed out that according to the Extradition Law, Israel may only extradite a suspect if it believes there is sufficient evidence to try him for the alleged crime in an Israeli court.

However, if the only witnesses who claimed Pertzov had killed the policeman had ostensibly disappeared, and there was no other evidence linking Pertzov to the murder, he could not have been tried in Israel.

Not only that, but the one witness who had not disappeared would have testified for the defense.

In its second argument, Pertzov's attorneys maintained their client would not get a fair trial in Ukraine and faced the prospect of torture and anti-Semitic treatment. Many state and private international organizations have written highly damning reports about the state of human rights in Ukraine, including one by the Council of Europe's European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

"The alleged forms of ill-treatment mainly consisted of punches, kicks and baton blows," the Committee wrote in a report published on June 20. "Allegations were also made about slaps on the ears with open hands, painfully handcuffing (behind the back with one arm over the shoulder,) belt or baseball bat blows. Further, mention was made of a metal weight placed on a part of the body, of asphyxiation using a gas mask and of being beaten while handcuffed, with hands and feet tied or maintained in a hyperextended position, or of a stick being inserted into the anus. In some cases, the severity of the ill-treatment alleged was such that it could be construed as torture."

Halevi and Shub also pointed out that Ukraine does not extradite its citizens to Israel and that therefore there was no genuine reciprocity between the two countries. Finally, if Pertzov is extradited, he will have to serve his sentence in Ukraine because he was not an Israeli citizen when he allegedly committed the murder.

Levertov explained that Ukraine does not extradite suspects to Israel just as all countries using Continental Law do not, including most European countries. Common Law countries, including Israel, do extradite suspects because otherwise they would have to subpoena all the witnesses in the case, with all the prohibitive cost to the state that this would entail.

Secondly, Israel does not have to determine whether the evidence against the suspect is sufficient to warrant putting him on trial here. It is "only" obliged to determine whether there is enough prima facie evidence to justify conducting a legal procedure, a lower requirement threshold.

Levertov added that the fact that the witnesses had reversed their testimony was not an unusual occurrence in criminal procedures. The contradictions in testimony should be addressed by the Ukrainian court that tried Pertzov.

As for the critical report by the Council of Europe, Levertov said the fact is that Ukraine was still a member of the Council. Had its human rights record been unacceptable, it would either not have been accepted to the Council in the first place or ejected afterwards.

Regarding this last argument, Halevi and Shub replied that membership in the Council of Europe was strongly influenced by political considerations. The West wants to keep Ukraine out of the Russian orbit and is therefore willing to bend over backwards regarding the red lines it sets for it.

Source: The Jerusalem Post

Semin Appointed At Dynamo Kyiv

KIEV, Ukraine -- Former Russia coach Yuri Semin will take over at the helm of FC Dynamo Kyiv when the players return from their winter break on 8 January.

Yuri Semin is a former coach of the Russian national team.
Cup success

Semin was unveiled by club president Igor Surkis at a press conference following Dynamo's 3-0 win against SC Tavriya Simferopol that took them into the Ukraine Cup semi-finals, recovering from a two-goal first-leg deficit.

The new coach, who guided FC Lokomotiv Moskva to the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup semi-finals in 1999, has signed a two-and-a-half-year deal.

Experienced coach

The 60-year-old Semin played for FC Spartak Moskva, Lokomotiv Moskva, FC Dinamo Moskva, FC Kuban Krasnodar and FC Kairat Almaty before switching to a coaching role in 1983 when he took charge of FC Pamir Dushanbe.

During his spell as Loko's boss between 1983 and 2005, he won the league title twice and claimed the Russian Cup four times.

He then took the helm of Russia's national side but failed to reach the 2006 FIFA World Cup, finishing third in their qualifying group.

Fourth leader

Taking over a team third in the league at the winter break, Semin's first fixture when the competition resumes will be at leaders FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk on 1 March, as they attempt to close a four-point gap.

Semin will be Dynamo's fourth coach this season after Anatoliy Demyanenko, József Szabó and caretaker Oleh Luzhny, who will continue on the bench when Dynamo play their final UEFA Champions League Group F fixture away to Sporting Clube de Portugal on Wednesday, with their hopes of progress in Europe already dashed.

Dynamo defender Goran Gavrančić said: "I am a professional and I have to play under any coach. The most important thing is to have stability and to win games."

Source: UEFA

Interpol Catches Russian Wanted In Ukraine

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbian border police caught a Russian businessman wanted in Ukraine since he bought a big stake in a Black Sea shipyard, after a chase across Europe, Cuba and Jamaica, Ukraine's interior ministry said on Friday.


It now expects Igor Churkin to be extradited to Ukraine from Serbia after he was apprehended at Belgrade Airport on an Interpol warrant to answer Ukrainian accusations that his acquisition of a 90 percent stake in the shipyard was illegal.

Ukraine's privatisation agency accuses Churkin of buying the Black Sea shipyard illegally in 2003 by "misleading" the agency through what they called fictitious companies registered in Britain and Canada and talks with another bidder in the privatisation process.

The deal was worth 120 million hryvnias ($24 million now).

Interpol had tracked Churkin to Brussels at the beginning of October but found that he had already flown to Cuba and then to Jamaica, where a search found he had disappeared once again.

"However, on Dec. 4, Igor Churkin was stopped at passport control of Belgrade airport as he was trying to enter Serbia," the ministry said in a statement. "... Interpol in Ukraine is preparing documents ... to proceed with his extradition."

Ukrainian courts have overturned a number of state sell-offs that took place at the start of the decade in opaque conditions, the largest of which was a steel mill later resold for $4.8 billion after an initial sale for $800 million.

Source: Javno

Leading Equity Firm To Invest $200m Into Volia Cable

KIEV, Ukraine -- The world’s leading media and communications private equity firm announced on Dec. 3 it inked an agreement to purchase “a significant stake” in Ukraine’s leading cable TV and broadband Internet provider, without disclosing the equity percentage targeted.


The investment by Rhode Island-based Providence Equity Partners into Kyiv’s Volia Cable marks the arrival of a leading equity firm onto the Ukrainian market and illustrates the continued interest of Western investors in Ukrainian companies.

Volia was set up by the SigmaBleyzer equity investment firm, founded by Michael Bleyzer, a Ukrainian-born emigre who held top positions in Western multinationals before returning to Ukraine.

In a statement, Providence only said that it would invest more than $200 million into Volia. But neither company, nor advisors involved in the deal, including Goldman Sachs International and UBS Investment Bank who acted as financial advisors to SigmaBleyzer, would disclose the percentage of equity acquired.

“Providence bought a controlling stake in Volia, having offered better overall terms than large strategic investors viewing the purchase,” commented Andriy Boyechko, managing partner of Capital Strategy, a strategy advisory and investment banking firm in Kyiv.

On Nov. 30, Ukraine’s Anti-Monopoly Committee announced it would permit the acquisition of a majority stake in Volia in four cities.

Controlled by a SigmaBleyzer-managed private equity fund, Volia connects more than 900,000 homes. Most clients are located in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, where the company built a broadband network from scratch.

Volia has recently expanded into Lviv, Alchevsk, and Chernivtsi, providing services such as analog cable TV, digital cable TV, high-speed cable Internet access, VoIP and data services.

Analysts predict Volia Cable will use the investment from Providence to further expand in the regions and solidify its market share.

Experts said competition will heat up in the near future, coming mostly from companies using Ethernet-based fiber networks. Volia Cable was initially created through the consolidation of three separate cable companies acquired in 1999 and 2000.

Source: Kyiv Post

NATO FMs Support Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic Aspirations

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- NATO foreign ministers voiced hereon Friday their support for Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations aimed at joining the European Union and NATO.


"We will continue to support Ukraine as and when it pursues its Euro-Atlantic aspirations, without prejudice to any eventual Alliance decision," said a communique released after a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.

NATO recognized the importance of the NATO-Ukraine partnership and "our determination to make full use of our Intensified Dialogue and NATO-Ukraine Commission to enhance practical assistance" to the former Soviet country.

The communique spoke highly of Ukraine's contribution to NATO's common security.

It pledged to continue to assist Ukraine in the implementation of reform efforts, especially in the field of defense and security sector, the document said.

A NATO-Ukraine Council meeting was held following the NATO foreign ministers meeting to discuss bilateral cooperation and Ukraine's bid to join the 26-nation military alliance.

Source: Xinhua News

Ukraine: Tymoshenko's Rocky Road Ahead

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Dec. 6 nominated Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister once again -- and once again, it is unclear how long she will fill the post, if at all.

The Party of Regions does not want to have Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister despite efforts of new Parliament speaker Arseny Yatsenyuk (R).
First, it must be said that Ukraine's current constitutional, governmental and political party structure is inherently flawed in such a way that not only is it easy to change laws on a whim, but chaos and instability are inevitable.

Tymoshenko's eponymous party, in a coalition with her former Orange Revolution partner Yushchenko's party, took back control of the government in elections Sept. 30. Though the win looked like a triumph for the pro-Western Orangists, the political jostling has led to more than two months without a government.

The main point of contention -- among so many -- has been Yushchenko and his camp's wariness to have Tymoshenko reinstated as premier.

Yushchenko does have many reasons to fear what will come. His popularity is nearly nonexistent, and presidential elections are just a year away. Though it is no secret that Yushchenko does not have the support that brought him to power in the Orange Revolution in 2004, he is still set on running for re-election.

It is also not a secret that Tymoshenko is hungry for as much power as she can get, meaning her eye is also on the presidency. Yushchenko held out on her nomination as premier until the two reached a deal in which Tymoshenko agreed not to run for his post. Though such a deal has been reached, Tymoshenko will not necessarily abide by it once the presidential election rolls around.

But first, Tymoshenko must survive a vote in parliament on her prime ministerial nomination. The Orange Coalition had a two-person majority in parliament until late Dec. 5, when one defected and sided with the pro-Russian Party of Regions -- the party of outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

Of course, rumors are flying that the Party of Regions paid off the parliamentarian and is attempting to purchase another. A fistfight even erupted during the opening of the Dec. 6 parliamentary session. Deputies from both the Party of Regions and Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko brawled at the foot of the speaker's podium before the Party of Regions deputies left the session. But the fact remains that Tymoshenko's election as premier hinges on just one vote.

It is also possible that one parliamentarian could defect after Tymoshenko becomes premier, Yanukovich's party could call for a vote of no confidence, and Tymoshenko would be expelled. And there is always the possibility that the Orange Coalition could collapse, as it did in 2005.

In short, instability is inevitable.

But the continued chaos comes as a very dark crisis looms: energy negotiations with Russia. The interim government, made up mainly of the outgoing Party of Regions ministers, recently struck a deal with Russia's Gazprom concerning a hike in natural gas prices.

However, Tymoshenko has already stated that she will nullify the deal once she takes office and restart negotiations. Tymoshenko was prime minister in the lead-up to the last energy crisis, which ended with Russia cutting supplies to Ukraine, creating shortages in a large portion of Europe. She has proven to be more of a hindrance than help in negotiations; many Russian energy officials and Gazprom executives refused to even meet with her during the last crisis.

Yushchenko is trying to head off the crisis by tweaking the laws to pull energy decisions into the president's realm of control. But this does not mean he will succeed -- or that he will even be president in a year.

Moreover, Tymoshenko taking back her premiership and eyeing the presidency could be just what Russia wants right now: She might create a crisis in Ukraine without Russia having to do much prodding.

Source: Stratfor

Oleh Blokhin Resigns As Ukraine Coach After Team Fails To Reach Euro 2008

KIEV, Ukraine -- Oleh Blokhin resigned as coach of Ukraine on Thursday after the team failed to qualify for next year's European Championship.

Oleh Blokhin
Blokhin and his assistants quit during a meeting with the executive committee of the Ukrainian soccer federation, the organization said in a statement.

Blokhin had pledged several months ago that he would resign if the team failed to reach Euro 2008. Ukraine finished fourth in Group B behind Italy, France and Scotland.

The 55-year-old Blokhin became Ukraine coach in November 2003, and led the team to the quarterfinals of last year's World Cup before losing to eventual winner Italy.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Ukraine's President Accepts Tymoshenko As Prime Minister

MOSCOW, Russia -- Leaders of Ukraine's Orange Revolution, who suffered a bitter falling out more than two years ago, may be working together again following the nomination of Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister. VOA Moscow Correspondent Peter Fedynsky has this report.

She's back... and she's ready!
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has quickly agreed to the nomination of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former ally and recent foe, as prime minister. Her name was advanced Thursday by supporters in Ukraine's parliament, the Supreme Rada. The president could have waited as long as 15 days.

Mr. Yushchenko insists, however, that lawmakers must follow through on an understanding to institute political reform as a condition of his agreement to approve the nomination of any candidate for prime minister.

The Ukrainian leader says there are a number of issues facing the coalition that are worth resolving before a new government is formed. He says he will discuss these matters with the new Rada speaker, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, but is also not opposed to confirming the prime minister followed by passage of reforms.

These include lifting parliamentary immunity and returning some powers to the presidency that had been transferred to the cabinet of ministers.

The Supreme Rada has five days to approve Ms. Tymoshenko's nomination.

Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko stood side by side during the mass street protests, known as the Orange Revolution, against a fraudulent presidential election in late 2004. Within nine months of assuming power, however, they had a bitter falling out over mutual accusations of corruption and lack of professionalism. The dispute disenchanted many participants in the Orange Revolution.

Ukraine then had several more heads of government before the president agreed to the nomination of Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister. He was Mr. Yushchenko's rival in the fraudulent 2004 presidential poll and is also head of the Regions Party, an organization with wide support in Ukraine's industrial and Russian-speaking east.

That party ran in parliamentary elections on September 30 against the rival political organizations of Tymoshenko and Mr. Yuschenko, both considered Orange parties. The president's Our Ukraine party came in third, but with enough seats to give Mr. Yushchenko an option of forming a coalition.

After about two months, Mr. Yushchenko opted for an Orange Coalition, disappointing Regions supporters, who won a plurality of the recent parliamentary vote.

Analysts say Ukraine is likely to face continued political turbulence as its three leading politicians jockey for position in the country's presidential election two years from now.

Oleksiy Haran, political science professor at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, a leading Ukrainian university, says Regions could benefit from being in the minority.

Being in the opposition, says Haran, will allow Regions to criticize the government and score political points in the lead up to the upcoming presidential election.

But he also notes a tendency of many Ukrainian politicians to engage in populist rhetoric before elections, which could delay long-overdue political and economic reforms.

Source: VOA News

Pits Of Death

KIEV, Ukraine -- Almost two weeks after Ukraine endured its worst mining disaster in history, two separate accidents occurred at precisely the same coal mine. As a result, the death toll at the Zasiadko mines increased by five to 106, while the number of miners who had to be hospitalized rose by 116 to 156.

Rescue workers at the Zasiadko mines
Nothing exemplifies the indifference of government officials to average Ukrainian citizens more than how they play to the interests of business tycoons, providing them with cheap, subsidized coal at the expense of people’s lives.

As standard practice in Ukraine, no causes have been determined and no one has been held responsible for the accidents.

Compensation of $20,000 for every victim’s family has been promised.

We can only hope the government keeps that promise.

The nation needs to produce more coal, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych said on Dec. 3 after the repeat accidents.

He said that Ukraine has a coal deficit of 6 million tons, and the Zasiadko mines produce 3 million tons of coal a year, indicating that closing the mines would lead to huge economic problems for the country.

Now that three explosions have occurred in two weeks, the problem can’t be swept under the rug any longer.

Before any more coal is extracted, the need for industry reform is an absolute requirement. While the president and premier were correct to call for the closure of the Zasiadko mines until an expert evaluation is obtained on their condition, they have been way too slow in closing down dangerous mines in general.

Meanwhile, influential tycoons have continued to raise barriers to foreign investors, who have sought to sell safety equipment for Ukrainian mines, and introduce new technologies, such as for methane extraction from coal beds.

Such technologies could help cut down on natural gas imports into Ukraine.

But more importantly, it would help stop so many people from dying in the country’s deathtrap coal mines every year.

And if Ukraine needs to import coal, nothing is wrong, for example, in buying better quality, reasonably-priced Polish coal.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yulia Slams Gas Supply Agreement

KIEV, Ukraine -- Reacting to news of the stiff price hike on natural gas inked by Ukraine’s outgoing government, Yulia Tymoshenko, the opposition leader who is poised to return as Ukraine’s prime minister, lambasted the deal and vowed to eliminate middleman companies in negotiating energy deals.

Opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko
“This is a result of an absolutely brainless policy of setting up RosUkrEnergo as a broker,” the Associated Press reported Tymoshenko as saying on Dec. 4, the day Russian energy giant Gazprom announced stiff price hikes for Ukraine.

“There is no logic here. This is corruption,” she was quoted as saying. “Undoubtedly, if our team comes to power, we will do all we can so that Ukraine and Russia have the opportunity to work without any go-betweens,” she added.

Late on Dec. 4, Gazprom announced Ukraine would pay nearly $180 per 1,000 cubic meters of Russian natural gas beginning next year, a 40 percent increase over current prices.

Nearly all the gas Ukraine uses is imported via Russia from the energy-rich Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan. Some of the gas is also of Uzbek and Kazakh origin. The gas is imported through a Swiss-based trading company, RosUkrEnergo, half of which is owned by Gazprom and half by two Ukrainian businessmen.

RosUkrEnergo spokesman Andrei Knutov said no official documents have been signed, but that was expected to happen in the coming days.

Ukraine’s energy minister said a final deal could be inked on Dec. 5.

The deal comes one week after Gazprom announced it would pay up to 30 percent more beginning next year for natural gas from Turkmenistan, which Gazprom resells to Ukraine.

The increased price that Russia will pay for Turkmen gas was seen as a concession by Moscow in an effort to spur Turkmenistan to speed up construction of a Caspian shoreline pipeline. In accepting the price hike and passing it on to Ukraine, Moscow moved to thwart efforts by Brussels and Washington in lobbying support from Central Asian producers to build pipelines bypassing Russian turf. The new pipeline system would preserve Moscow’s control over Central Asian gas exports to western markets.

Recently, both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have sought to increase the price for their gas.

As a result, the new $179.5 price tag that Ukraine will have to pay for gas next year, up from $130, is higher than Ukrainian officials had expected. Officials in Kyiv last month predicted Ukraine would pay around $150-160 per 1,000 cubic meters in the first half of 2008, and $180 in the second.

The deal comes after months of negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv and is part of what Russia describes as an effort to end its practice of providing energy supplies to former Soviet republics at cut-rate prices.

That effort escalated into a full-blown dispute two years ago, during which Russia cut supplies to Ukraine, triggering supply shortages in Europe. The dispute raised worries about Russia’s reliability as Europe’s main energy supplier, and Ukraine’s reliability as a transit country.

In addition to the new price that Ukraine will pay for natural gas, Gazprom said in a statement that, under the deal, transit prices for gas pumped through Ukraine to Europe would be increased slightly to $1.70 for 1,000 cubic meters per 100 kilometers from the current $1.60 rate. Transit of gas destined for Ukraine through Russian turf was also set at a $1.70 rate.

Economic impact

While Ukraine’s economy has put in a strong performance in the last few years, it has also been saddled with annual inflation of around 13 percent, and the new hike in gas prices is expected to put additional upward pressure on this indicator.

The higher gas price also puts the Naftogaz Ukrainy state oil and gas monopoly at greater risk of a potential Eurobond default, according to analysts.

On Dec. 5, state gas production company Ukrgazvydobuvannya called for subsidized prices on domestic gas produced and resold to households and state-controlled public utilities to be raised. Ukraine has in recent years kept gas prices for the public below market prices to protect citizens from price shocks.

Industry, which consumes imported gas, however, has felt the brunt of the price hikes.

According to Kyiv-based investment bank Dragon Capital, any sharp gas price hike will be negative for gas-intensive chemical and cement companies.

“Mining and metal industries should feel a minor impact, as gas accounts for only up to 10 percent of their input costs,” Dragon said in a Dec. 5 report.

“The announced gas price increase will widen Ukraine’s 2008 trade deficit to an estimated $8.9 billion, up 47 percent year-on-year, up from $6.9 billion we currently forecast. However, we think even this wider gap will be covered by foreign currency inflows through the financial account,” Dragon added.

Ukrainian industry has made great strides in the last two years in improving its energy-efficiency, although public utilities and communal services continue to be energy-devouring holdovers from the Soviet era.

“The majority of industrial consumers will be able to deal with the higher price for gas,” said the director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Ukraine, Kamen Zakhariev.

“The problems could arise only in the chemical industry. For the same reasons, communal utility services, in fact, is that sector, in which the biggest problems exist,” he told journalists Dec 5.

Zakhariev said that generally speaking, the EBRD sees no reason to revise its economic forecast for Ukraine for 2008.

“I do not see any radical changes in the situation. Gas prices were on the rise, and everyone knew that they would go up. That they grew a bit more than expected doesn’t change anything. Our forecast for GDP growth was around 6.5 percent for next year. I think that for now there is no basis for revising it,” he said.

ING analysts in Kyiv said in a Dec. 5 report that with a $180 price for gas, the bank concludes that Ukraine’s current account deficit would rise, “but not dramatically, to 4.2 percent of GDP from the 3.8 percent expected for 2007, mainly because global steel prices would grow in 2008 as demand, especially from the continued industrialization of large emerging economies in Asia, should continue to be firm.”

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Elects Parliamentary Speaker

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's parliament elected a speaker late on Tuesday, approving the candidate nominated by the majority pro-West 'orange' coalition.

Newly elected Parliament Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk, 33, was economics minister from September 2005 to August 2006, and was appointed foreign minister in March 2007.

The Yulia Tymoshenko bloc and pro-presidential Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense faction formed on Thursday a majority coalition in parliament, paving the way for the formation of a government.

The two blocs also nominated Tymoshenko as prime minister.

Mykola Shershun, head of the Supreme Rada's vote count commission, said 227 parliamentarians had voted for Yatsenyuk, with 226 votes necessary for the approval of the nomination.

Yatsenyuk is a member of the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense party.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who had reportedly planned to congratulate Yatsenyuk on his appointment, failed to make an appearance at parliament on Tuesday night.

Parliament is due to hold another session on Thursday.

Source: RIA Novosti

Gazprom: Ukraine To Pay Nearly US$180 Per Thousand Cubic Meters For Russian Gas

MOSCOW, Russia -- Ukraine will pay nearly US$180 (€122) per thousand cubic meters of Russian natural gas beginning next year, Russia's state-run gas monopoly said Tuesday — a 40 percent increase over current prices.

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller.
The deal comes after months of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev and is part of what Russia describes as an effort to end its practice of providing energy supplies to former Soviet republics at cut-rate prices.

That effort escalated into a full-blown dispute two years ago, during which Russia cut supplies to Ukraine. The dispute affected some European countries farther along the export pipeline and raising worries about Russia's reliability as Europe's main energy supplier.

OAO Gazprom said in a statement that, under the deal signed by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Ukrainian Energy Minister Yury Boiko, Ukraine had agreed to pay US$179.50 (€121.70) per thousand cubic meters beginning in 2008. It also said transit prices would be set at US$1.70 (€1.15), the same transit price for gas shipping across Russian territory.

Ukraine currently pays US$130 (€88.19) per thousand cubic meters of gas imported from Russia.

Andrei Knutov, a spokesman for the joint gas concern RosUkrEnergo, said no official documents had been signed yet, though that was expected in the coming days.

Since the January 2006 supply disruption and a similar incident involving oil shipped across Belarus, Russia has sought to assure the European Union that export supplies would not be affected.

In October, Russia urged Ukraine to make good on what it said was a US$1.3 billion (€890 million) debt for gas shipments, a demand some Ukrainian officials described as an attempt to exert influence on Ukrainian politics after September's parliamentary elections.

The deal comes one week after Gazprom announced it would pay up to 50 percent more beginning next year for natural gas from Turkmenistan. Russia controls nearly all gas exports from the Central Asian nation and nearly all of it is destined for Ukraine.

The increased price that Russia will pay for Turkmen gas was seen as a concession by Moscow in an effort to spur Turkmenistan to speed up construction of a Caspian shoreline pipeline. The new pipeline system could give Moscow yet more control over Turkmen gas exports.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Ukrainian Coalition Nominates Tymoshenko For Prime Minister

KIEV, Ukraine -- Two reformist Ukrainian political parties have formally nominated Yulia Tymoshenko as their candidate for prime minister, opening the way for the leader of the 2004 pro-Western "Orange Revolution" to return to power.

Yulia Tymoshenko
Lawmakers representing the "Our Ukraine" party of President Viktor Yushchenko joined with Ms. Tymoshenko's bloc in unanimously approving the nomination Tuesday.

The president now has 15 days to approve the nomination, before sending it to parliament for approval.

The coalition also nominated Foreign Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as parliament speaker.

These votes follow a deal announced last week under which Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko agreed to reform their alliance from 2004.

Ms. Tymoshenko served as prime minister after Mr. Yushchenko won the presidency that year. But he later fired her.

Source: Voice of America

Praktiker To Build 25 Outlets In Ukraine

FRANKFURT, Germany -- Praktiker AG, the German home-improvement retailer, plans to add 25 stores in Ukraine over coming years, making the country its largest foreign market, Handelsblatt said, citing management board member Michael Arnold.

A Praktiker AG home-improvement store in Bulgaria.
Ukraine may overtake Greece, where Praktiker has annual sales of 259 million euros ($380 million), the newspaper reported.

The stores will have revenue of about 300 million euros, it said.

Praktiker, which opened its first Ukrainian store in the city of Donetsk at the end of last week, aims to open three to five outlets a year in the country, Handelsblatt said.

Construction of a store in Lviv already started and building work on another in Kiev will start soon, the newspaper said.

Praktiker is entering the market ahead of German competitor and market leader OBI Bau & Heimwerkermaerkte GmbH, which plans to open several stores in Ukraine next year, Handelsblatt said, citing an unidentified OBI spokeswoman.

Source: Bloomberg

Ukraine Coach Concerned About Kiev Stadium For Euro 2012

KIEV, Ukraine -- A dispute surrounding a construction site next to Kiev's main stadium could lead to Ukraine losing the chance to host the final of the 2012 European championship, national coach Oleg Blokhin warned on Monday.

Current Kiev Olympic Stadium
Ukraine are co-hosting the tournament with Poland but both FIFA and UEFA have said the construction of a shopping and leisure centre by Kiev's 84,000-seat Soviet-era Olympic stadium would break safety rules by blocking some emergency exits.

President Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree in September, ordering the dismantling of the half-built facility but compensation is still being worked out.

"If the complex being built in front of the Olympic Stadium is not torn down then we may not have a tournament," Blokhin was quoted by news agencies as saying.

"If this continues -- that the president talks, the government talks, and the Kiev mayor talks but all these problems remain unresolved -- then I think we will be left without Euro 2012."

Former communist Ukraine and Poland must undertake a colossal amount of work on stadiums, transport infrastructure and hotels to prepare for one of the world's largest sporting events.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

New Airplane For Pressa

KIEV, Ukraine -- Obozrevatel, a Ukrainian Internet newspaper, and others report that President Yushchenko will soon be getting a ’new toy’ - a brand-new Airbus A319 presidential airplane priced $40-$60 million, even though only about half that sum had been ear-marked for upgrading the President’s flight.

An Airbus A319 fitted with a custom executive interior.
Until now Yushchenko has been using a Ukrainian-built 2004 Antonov, registration UR-YVA, [Yushchenko Viktor Andriyevych - cheesy eh?] or one of two Illushins.

Obozrevatel quite rightly insists the President should exclusively promote and use home-built planes, which are as good any in the world.

This is no way for the President to gain support in Kharkiv - home of Antonov aircraft, or Zaporizhzha where Motor Sich, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of aircraft engines and turbines is located.

Others thinks the President should get his head out of the clouds and his feet back on the ground - and think more about Ukrainian aircraft engineers and designers.

They will be around much longer than he will be as President.

Source: Agoravox

Ukraine President Says Shut Stricken Mine Pending Probe

DONETSK, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko called on Monday for the closure of a colliery in eastern Ukraine while an investigation is carried out into three explosions which have killed 106 men in two weeks.

President Yushchenko at the Zasyadko mine on November 19th.
Acting Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the president's longstanding rival, acknowledged that the Zasyadko mine, a major producer of coking coal, could be closed, but said doing so would have severe economic consequences for Ukrainian industry.

Yanukovich flew to Donetsk to confer with experts at the mine on the latest blast, which killed five men and injured 66 in the heart of the Donbass coalfield.

The first of the three methane explosions at the mine two weeks ago killed 101 miners in Ukraine's worst mining accident.

"In connection with the latest accident at the Zasyadko mine, which has caused casualties, I insist the mine be completely closed until all circumstances and reasons for the tragedies ... are determined," Yushchenko said in a statement.

The president's Internet site said the statement had been sent to Yanukovich, who was chairing a session of the commission of inquiry into the blasts.

Yanukovich said the blasts had taken place in circumstances never before observed. He said Ukraine's steel industry, a major consumer of coking coal, would be badly hit by any closure.

"...Given that Ukraine has a shortfall of six million tonnes of coking coal (annually), we are encountering huge economic consequences," he told reporters.

"But this issue is not under discussion. The main thing is to prevent any more deaths. Everything necessary will be done. And if it is necessary to close the mine, we'll close it."

CLEAN-UP OPERATIONS

Ukraine's mining inspectorate said the five men died on Sunday in the same area as earlier blasts, more than 1 km beneath the surface, during clean-up operations.

All mining has been halted in the affected part of the sprawling pit, hit by four major accidents since 2001.

Sixty-six men were in hospital after the latest explosion -- half of them maintenance workers, half miners. After a blast in the same section on Saturday, more than 40 required treatment.

Several dozen miners remain in hospital after the November 18 blast. Fires are still burning and about 10 bodies have still to be recovered.

Miners have expressed concern at the accidents, but with average monthly wages of $500-$800 (242-388 pounds), far above the national average of nearly $300, many feel they have few options.

Zasyadko is described by officials as one of Ukraine's most advanced and profitable mines. But experts say working seams far below the surface increases the risk of explosions.

Accidents regularly strike Ukraine's collieries, many of which date from the 19th century. This year's death toll in the industry, in Donetsk region alone, stands at about 200.

Source: Scotsman

Hospitals Jammed After Third Ukraine Mining Accident

KIEV, Ukraine -- Hospitals in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region were jammed with victims on Monday in the wake of a string of deadly mine accidents, the Interfax news agency reported.

Rescue workers at the Zasyadka mine.
City clinics were treating 156 miners injured in one of three blasts taking place in the Zasyadko mine over the last two weeks.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich left the capital Kiev early Monday morning to travel to Donetsk by plane.

Yanukovich, a native of the Donetsk region, visited the site of the explosions in the heart of Ukraine's coal mining territory, and met with local officials.

Donetsk health providers were doing what they could to give the injured aid, but at the present accident rate the local medical system could become overtaxed, Ihor Krol, a Donetsk health official, said.

The most recent explosion in the Zasyadko pit, on Saturday, killed five rescue workers and left dozens of emergency personnel and coal miners injured.

A November 18 blast killed 101 in Ukraine's worst-ever coal mining accident. The bodies of ten victims are still buried more than a kilometre underground, according to the report.

A December 1 explosion caused no fatalities but put 50 into hospital. From January to July of this year, more than 250 Ukrainian miners died in accidents and nearly 6,000 were injured.

Methane gas accumulation and poor safety procedures during coal mining are the most likely cause of the first two accidents, while the last, on Saturday, was linked to emergency workers' efforts to clear damaged shafts, Ukraine's Minister of Coal Mining ,Serhy Tulub, said.

Ukraine's Zasyadko coal mine, in operation for more than a century, is among the world's most dangerous. A May 24, 1999 explosion in the mine killed 50 miners, and a August 19 2001 blast left 55 dead.

Explosions on July 31, 2002 and September 20, 2006 killed 20 and 13 miners respectively. Reform politicians in Ukraine have called for the closing of the Zasyadko shaft for years, but Donetsk industrial barons have kept it open as a source of cheap fuel, and raw material for steel manufacturing.

Source: Earth Times

A Slippery Slope

KIEV, Ukraine -- Viktor Yushchenko couldn’t have hoped for better election results in September. His Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense Bloc maintained its presence in parliament, while the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc surged to 30 percent.

Viktor Yushchenko
Few expected both pro-Western parties to perform so well, achieving the ability to form the next government without help from any third party, which wasn’t the case last year when they needed the Socialists. With such positive results, one would think President Yushchenko would take extra care to ensure things didn’t unravel this time around.

Not only does his 2010 presidential run depend on the emergence of an Orange coalition, but so does the future of Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense – a bloc growing increasingly marginal as Tymoshenko’s popularity surges. But apparently the president hasn’t learned his lesson.

His latest blunder was abandoning Vyacheslav Kyrylenko’s candidacy as parliamentary chair to back Ivan Pliushch, proposed by his Secretariat Chair Viktor Baloha, as a candidate that would appeal to the Party of Regions.

When the bloc’s political council rejected Pliushch’s candidacy, Yushchenko switched his support back to Kyrylenko, as yet another example of his utter lack of vision and leadership.

Yushchenko’s indecisive waffling only exacerbated tensions between the Baloha and Kyrylenko camps within his bloc, which burst into the media on Nov. 27 when a council called by Kyrylenko was boycotted by Baloha and his circle as revenge.

Given that Yushchenko’s political future – and more importantly, Ukraine’s future – depends on the following days’ events, one would imagine the president would take a lesson from Tymoshenko and spend a few late nights at the Secretariat to make sure everything falls into place.

Instead, the president couldn’t resist testing the Carpathian slopes on Nov. 26, the day before his party could not gather a quorum. According to Baloha, the president cannot attend such meetings because they conflict with his daytime schedule.

Another defense offered is that the president is only the honorary chair of Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense – the bloc that depends on Yushchenko for its survival. This is an excuse employed every time Yushchenko should be leading his bloc and making critical decisions, instead of creating a leadership vacuum in which factions form and conflicts erupt.

Ukrainians have long hoped the president would use the authority he has. Repeatedly and consistently, Yushchenko has squandered his opportunities.

It is not excluded that Yushchenko is a keen player in the current machinations, rather than a passive victim. One of his closest allies, Yuriy Yekhanurov, has been a vocal opponent of uniting with Tymoshenko.

Late on Nov. 28, Yushchenko’s administration declared they had mustered full support for their coalition with Tymoshenko. Time will tell, but more needless damage had already been done. Strong leadership and less backroom dealings could have avoided this week’s fiasco.

Source: Kyiv Post

New Blast Hits Ukraine Mine, 44 In Hospital

DONETSK, Ukraine -- An explosion injured 44 miners on Saturday at the same coal mine in eastern Ukraine that suffered the country's worst mining accident two weeks ago, officials said.

The Zasyadka mine towers rise in the twilight sky, Donetsk, Ukraine, Monday, Nov. 19, 2007. An explosion early Saturday Dec. 1, 2007 hit the Ukrainian coal mine where 100 workers died in a methane blast in November, the Interfax news agency reported.
Ukraine's Mining Inspectorate said 63 miners were in the affected section just before the early morning blast. It was the same area of the Zasyadko pit as last month's deadly methane explosion. All 63 were brought to the surface.

"An explosion occurred at 5.55 a.m. in a section of the mine isolated by fire. Sixty-three people were in the immediate vicinity," an inspectorate duty officer said.

"All have now been brought to the surface. There are no miners remaining below."

Regional officials said 44 miners were in hospital -- 35 for gas poisoning, three for various injuries and six undergoing intensive care in Donetsk, in the heart of the Donbass coalfield.

Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuev, quoted by Interfax Ukraine news agency, said two men were seriously hurt. Miners in the section had been conducting reconstruction work after last month's accident, rather than extracting coal.

All work in the section had been halted, he said, and assigning miners to other jobs would be considered next week.

The Emergencies Ministry said a miner died in an incident involving a coal wagon at another mine near Donetsk.

The explosion on Nov. 18 at the Zasyadko mine, the site of four major accidents since 2001, killed 101 miners. About 10 bodies have yet to be brought out of the mine and fires are still burning more than 1 km (0.6 miles) below the surface.

Ukraine's mining industry, with some pits dating from the 19th century, has been plagued by a long series of accidents. At least 193 miners have died in Donetsk region this year.

Zasyadko is viewed as one of Ukraine's technically most advanced and profitable pits. But experts say that mining far below the surface at this and other Ukrainian collieries increases the risk of accidents.

Source: AlertNet

Ukraine AIDS Epidemic "Most Severe" In Europe: UN

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's AIDS epidemic is the "most severe" in Europe, and is headed towards the general population, not only high-risk groups, UN officials said Friday in Kiev.

A woman lights a candle at a symbolic red ribbon for AIDS victims.
Twenty years after the debut of the epidemic in Ukraine, the situation was continuing to deteriorate, UN Special Envoy Lars Kallings said on the eve of World AIDS Day, December 1.

"If the spread of HIV is not stopped in the next three years, I fear that Ukraine will become the first generalised AIDS epidemic in Europe," he said.

During the first 10 months of the year, 14,480 new HIV cases were officially registered among Ukranians, said a statement from the UN.

Officially, 119,000 HIV cases have been registered to date, but the real number has been estimated at 377,600 since the end of 2005, the statement continued.

"That means that less than one-third of all people contaminated are aware that they have the disease," it added.

Nearly 22,000 Ukranians currently have AIDS and more than 12,000 have died, according to official statistics.

The transmission of HIV through the sharing of dirty needles between drugn users is the main cause of the epidemic in the former Soviet republic, the UN reported.

But heterosexual transmission is increasinly frequent, up 20 percent per year, which the UN fears is a sign the disease is making its way into the general population.

The UN noted that 7,000 HIV-positive people were receiving retro-viral treatment in Ukraine.

That had helped slow the rate of people developing full-blown AIDS, with 3,700 new AIDS patients registered during the first 10 months of 2007 against 3,900 during the same period last year.

The UN called on Ukraine to improve its control of treating the disease.

Source: AFP