Wyndham Hotel Group Introduces Ramada Encore Hotels To Ukraine

PARSIPPANY, NJ -- Wyndham Hotel Group today announced an exclusive development agreement with Ukrainian Hotels LLC to build 15 Ramada Encore® hotels over the next 10 years throughout Ukraine.


Ukrainian Hotels LLC will franchise and manage the properties under an agreement with Wyndham Hotel Group.

Initial development targets include the capital, Kiev, and cities with populations of more than 200,000.

Ramada Encore hotels feature contemporary design, innovative multifunction areas and a bright, colorful décor with glass and wood throughout.

All rooms feature power showers, Internet access, work areas, direct-dial telephones, tea and coffee facilities and flat-screen TVs with satellite service. Family rooms accommodate up to two adults and two children.

Olivier Dupont, Wyndham Hotel Group International senior vice president, international development, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, said Wyndham Hotel Group seeks to make Ramada Encore hotels the midscale lodging leader in Ukraine's key secondary cities within the next five to seven years.

Sergii Kozhukhalov, executive coordinator of Ukrainian Hotels LLC, a subdivision of Astron-Ukraine Corporation, said his company elected to develop Ramada Encore hotels because the "boutique design and flexible, operational efficiencies are unique for the midscale segment and will allow us to exceed the expectations of our clientele at a competitive price."

Wyndham Hotel Group, one of three principal components of Wyndham Worldwide, encompasses nearly 6,500 hotels and 541,000 hotel rooms on six continents.

All hotels either are independently owned franchises or managed by a Wyndham Hotel Group subsidiary. Wyndham Hotel Group is based in Parsippany, N.J.

Source: CNN Money

Ukrainian Minister , Mayor Trade Accusations Of Corruption

KIEV, Ukraine -- When Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky publicly accused Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko of corruption, Lutsenko denied that allegation and punched Chernovetsky in the face.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko
Chernovetsky sued him, and Kyiv prosecutors launched a criminal case against Lutsenko. In return, police, whose boss is Lutsenko, re-opened an old case against Chernovetsky.

Neither of the two is going to step down, and both have been openly using the legal system to settle scores, which raises questions about moral standards in Ukrainian politics.

Chernovetsky was the first to break the news of a brawl with Lutsenko on January 18. He issued a statement saying that Lutsenko had “barbarously assaulted” him “in the presence of high-ranking officials” at a meeting of the presidential National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) earlier that day.

Chernovetsky said he received first aid and had to take sick leave.

Lutsenko did not deny that he had punched Chernovetsky in the face, but he said that he was not going to apologize, either.

Lutsenko explained that Chernovetsky had “lied” to President Viktor Yushchenko at the meeting, saying that Lutsenko had asked him to allocate a land plot in Kyiv, otherwise his son would be jailed.

Lutsenko said he had never threatened Chernovetsky’s son, a banker, with jail, and that he had asked for land not for himself, but to build affordable housing for policemen. Lutsenko claimed that Chernovetsky also hit him in the knee under the table.

When Yushchenko left, Lutsenko said, he approached Chernovetsky and slapped him in the face “like a man.”

Reactions from politicians were mixed. Opposition leader and former prime minister Viktor Yanukovych said that Lutsenko “committed an emotional act not worthy of a cabinet member.” President Yushchenko instructed prosecutors to thoroughly investigate the case, and he said that the behavior of both Lutsenko and Chernovetsky “discredits the state.”

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko expressed support for Lutsenko.

On January 24, Lutsenko announced that he had uncovered serious corruption involving land distribution by Chernovetsky, and he urged the Prosecutor-General’s Office to investigate immediately.

Late on the same day, a deputy prosecutor in Kyiv launched a criminal case against Lutsenko for assaulting Chernovetsky. If he is found guilty, Lutsenko could face up to two years in prison.

Lutsenko reacted by claiming that Chernovetsky had bribed Kyiv city prosecutors by illegally allocating land plots near Kyiv to them.

On January 25, the Interior Ministry re-launched a probe into a car accident dating from 2003, in which Chernovetsky’s car killed a man.

The case was closed several years ago as officially no evidence of Chernovetsky’s guilt was found, but now the Interior Ministry “believes that the case was closed too early.”

Chernovetsky said this was Lutsenko’s revenge for criticism at the NSDC meeting.

Lutsenko was one of the main figures in the Orange Revolution protests in 2004 that brought Yushchenko to power. A grateful Yushchenko appointed him interior minister in the first government of Prime Minister Tymoshenko in 2005.

Lutsenko served in this position until December 2006, when he had to go amid accusations of corruption and a lack of professionalism leveled against him by Yanukovych’s coalition – the accusations he denied.

Lutsenko returned to the post of interior minister this past December, when Tymoshenko became prime minister again.

In 2007 Lutsenko was widely viewed as the main rival of Chernovetsky in a possible early mayoral election in Kyiv; hence, their personal enmity. Lutsenko on many occasions accused Chernovetsky of abusing land resources in Kyiv, buying votes in the 2006 mayoral election, and drug abuse.

Chernovetsky denied all the accusations. Lutsenko was not the only individual to make those accusations, but no official charges were brought against Chernovetsky.

Lutsenko has had problems with the law himself. He was accused of illegally giving pistols as presents to “Orange Revolution heroes” when interior minister, and of holding an Israeli passport (dual citizenship is forbidden in Ukraine).

Lutsenko won these respective court cases. He was also accused by his rivals of using government aircraft for private purposes, and of lobbying to secure a contract for his wife’s employer to sell communication services to the police. Lutsenko denied those accusations.

Ukrainians expect higher moral standards from their politicians, according to a popular opinion poll conducted among Kyiv residents by the Razumkov Center.

The opinions of 15% of them about Lutsenko changed for the better after the scandal, but 23% were bitterly disappointed.

Chernovetsky’s popularity suffered even more: 4% said they now think better of Chernovetsky, and 33% think worse.

The same poll showed that 70% of Kyiv residents believe that Chernovetsky is involved in illegal operations with public land resources.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Platini Warns Poland, Ukraine On Euro 2012 Delays

ZAGREB, Croatia -- UEFA president Michel Platini warned Poland and Ukraine on Wednesday to avoid "critical slippages" in their preparations for co-hosting the 2012 European Championship.

UEFA president Michel Platini announcing the hosts for the 2012 European Championship.
After a year of political instability in both countries, Platini said the next few months would be vital for getting things on track for Europe's showcase tournament.

"I have the distinct feeling that the next four to six months will be crucial in order to avoid any critical slippage in sports and public infrastructure projects and to protect the global credibility of the Euro project itself," Platini said at the close of a two-day UEFA executive committee meeting.

His stern comments came amid recent speculation that UEFA could move the championship out of Poland and Ukraine because of organizational delays.

"UEFA is totally committed to do everything possible, in the next few months to assist and support the two associations ... in order to guarantee the success of the project," Platini said, adding that there are problems with "all infrastructure" in the two countries.

UEFA general secretary David Taylor said it is imperative that action is taken now.

"Political instability and infrastructure deficit are too big at this moment," Taylor said. "It is too late to wait - we need action."

UEFA said it had taken a "momentous decision" last April to award the championship to the two Eastern European countries, ahead of bids from Italy and a joint candidacy from Croatia and Hungary.

"It is clear that there has been a certain degree of political instability in both countries in 2007," UEFA said in a statement. "However, this instability now seems to be over with newly established governments in each country, but there can be no doubt that the launch of investment-intensive projects, such as stadiums, airports and motorways has suffered from the instability."

Platini urged the governments to be "aware of the crucial need to set up a governance and management structure to lead all the projects related to UEFA Euro 2012."

Taylor also said that the prospect of possibly increasing the number of teams at UEFA tournaments to 24 will be discussed at Thursday's UEFA congress in Zagreb.

"We will present a general project of enlarging UEFA tournaments from 16 to 24 teams," he said. "This is not an easy decision. Right now, we don't have an answer because we have to study it well."

Source: FOX Sports

Clan Politics

KIEV, Ukraine -- The nepotism of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine political clan reached new depths when Viktor Yushchenko named his oldest daughter Vitalina to lead the “Warm a Child With Love” charity.

Viktor Yushchenko (L) with daughter Vitalina.
Just what a 26-year-old knows about running a multi-million-dollar charity and dealing with Ukraine’s most powerful (and in some cases, corrupt) businessmen is beyond most people.

Our Ukraine presents itself as a political force that best exemplifies European values. Certainly, nepotism permeates all societies to some degree. But among the pillars of modern Western civilization is the notion that the most qualified woman or man gets the job, regardless of family, ethnicity or race.

Vitalina might be bright, but appointing his daughter to such a position only casts a shadow on Yushchenko’s self-declared commitment to transparency and honest politics.

Her appointment is the latest chapter in a series of nepotism jokingly referred to by Ukrainians as “kumivstvo,” referring to Yushchenko’s tendency to appoint family and relatives to government posts.

In Ukrainian culture, kums and kumas are not only the parents of godchildren, but close members of the family who may expect preferences and favors.

Among Yushchenko’s family currently in top positions are fellow kum and Minister of Youth, Family and Sport Yuriy Pavlenko, brother and parliamentary deputy Petro Yushchenko, and kum and National Bank of Ukraine Council Chair Petro Poroshenko.

If Ukraine is to prove itself a European culture, its leader should abandon their Byzantine traditions and recognize the value in appointing people based on their skills and talents, not bloodlines. A competitive application process for positions such as Vitalina’s would be a good start.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yushchenko Bristles At Tymoshenko Threat

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko’s office on Tuesday responded strongly to a warning by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko that she may compete with the incumbent for the presidency next year.

Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Baloha
In a sharply worded statement, Viktor Baloha, chief of staff at the Yushchenko office, said Tymoshenko’s warning was unfounded, opinionated and an attempt to “gain political weight.”

“Two years before the election somebody wants to play on election strings,” Baloha said. “This is not the best overture for the future election campaign. A real statesman cares about the interests of the country, while a politician is concerned only about the election.”

The comment is a response to Tymoshenko’s warning on Monday that she will run for the presidency at the end of 2009 if disagreements between Yushchenko and her government continue to persist.

Baloha’s statement shows that mutual distrust between Tymoshenko and Yushchenko has been growing rapidly, and at some point may even threatening the existence of the governing coalition.

The coalition, created by Yushchenko’s and Tymoshenko’s groups, controls a slim majority of 227 seats in the 450-seat Parliament. The withdrawal of two lawmakers from the coalition would effectively undermine the government.

Tymoshenko has long been suspected by her opponents of seeking to run for the presidency, pointing to the largely populist rhetoric she has been using while running the government.

Tymoshenko pledged to return within the next two years failed Soviet-era bank deposits, lost due to hyperinflation in 1990s, estimated by analysts to cost the government at least 132 billion hryvnias ($26.4 billion).

Tymoshenko has also refused to allow an increase in natural gas prices for households on the domestic market, a move that is expected to cost dearly for Naftogaz Ukrayiny, the national oil and gas company.

The developments come amid mounting speculations that should disagreements with Yushchenko continue, Tymoshenko’s group would join forces with the Regions Party, the largest opposition group, to try to impeach the president.

Tymoshenko has already joined forces with the Regions Party a year ago to overrun a veto from the president, which had eventually triggered a chain of events that had led to the snap election in September 2007.

Baloha said the speculations were caused by Yushchenko’s recent warning that the government has been seeking to sell power assets non-transparently to increase legislative support for its initiatives.

“Yushchenko’s insistence to prevent the attempts to reanimate political corruption face tough opposition from those whose corporate interests” are affected, Baloha said.

“It can’t be ruled out that in confronting the course of the president, the most unexpected political alliances are possible,” Baloha said. “That’s why an idea of the impeachment has been pulled out."

Source: Ukrainian Journal

UKRAINE: The Poison Is In The Politics

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- The investigation into the 2004 alleged poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko when he was a candidate for the presidency remains unsolved, but there is no lack of chilling theories, some of which stain the President himself.

Viktor Yushchenko before (L) and after poisoning.
The poisoning supposedly occurred Sep. 5, 2004, when Yushchenko was running for presidency as leader of the pro-Western opposition against the incumbent pro-Russian authorities. The poisoning is believed to have drawn sympathy for Yushchenko and helped him win.

Following a dinner with Ihor Smeshko, then head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) at the summer house of his deputy Volodymyr Satsyuk, the presidential candidate fell unwell and said later he noticed a metallic taste in his mouth. The SBU is successor to the KGB of the Soviet days.

Yushchenko claimed he was poisoned, and blood tests carried out shortly after confirmed the presence of a dioxin in the President's blood and tissues, leaving his face disfigured.

"The Yushchenko poisoning is among the biggest Ukrainian mysteries of the decade," Zenon Zawada, chief editor of the English language Ukrainian weekly Kyiv Post told IPS. "There is really a lack of consensus about what happened.

"Among Ukrainians the most common theories are that the one responsible is either the SBU, or that Russia was somehow involved, though those who do not support Yushchenko say he had an allergic reaction or food or medication poisoning."

Yushchenko claims to know who poisoned him, and hinted in September last year at the involvement of Ukrainian politicians. He says the three main suspects are in Russia.

Just a few days after the statement the Kommersant-Ukraina daily tracked down the names of three individuals Yushchenko was allegedly referring to, citing unnamed sources at the Prosecutor-General's office.

The daily named Satsyuk, the infamous host, Taras Zaleskyy, an aide to Satsyuk who was also present at the dinner, and Oleksiy Poletukha, also a former aide to Satsyuk who could have played a role in transporting the dioxin from Russia.

But the President refuses to go public with his information in order not to hamper the investigation that he claims is being "stalled."

After mercury vapour was found in the office of the Prosecutor-General's deputy Mykola Holomsha last December, some interpreted the attempt on his life as a warning to prosecutors to slow down the inquiry.

Holomsha, who is a potential candidate to replace the contested Prosecutor-General Oleksandr Medvenko, is also in charge of other high profile cases, such as the murder of opposition journalist Heorhiy Gongadze in 2000.

The criminal case on Yushchenko's poisoning was instituted by the Prosecutor-General's Office three weeks after the poisoning occurred, but changes in personnel have had a role in delaying the inquiry.

Stefan Schocher, an Austrian journalist who investigated the case in its early stage and was in Austria when Yushchenko received treatment in Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus clinic, told IPS he cannot be sure the poisoning occurred at all.

"Everything seemed to be a game," Schocher told IPS from Kiev. "It was completely unclear who was playing what, different agencies were organising press conferences at the clinic, and depending on who was organising it they said something different."

The uncertainty of the case was confirmed to Schocher following a conversation with a doctor from the Austrian hospital who treated Yushchenko.

"He told me the dioxin doses were given over a longer period of time and not at once, like Yushchenko claims. Strangely, the doctor later denied it, but he definitely told me this."

The Austrian journalist says that "if it was a dose given over a longer period, it must have been someone from Yushchenko's team."

Other international media outlets, such as the Telegraph, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or Le Figaro reported on an atmosphere of intimidation at the clinic, especially against those who questioned Yushchenko's poisoning.

Medical director at the clinic Dr. Lothar Wicke received death threats after casting a shadow on the poisoning thesis, and resigned his job just one day after Yushchenko was to receive another round of tests.

Dr. Wicke told the Telegraph in 2005 that the death threats came from Yuschchenko's entourage because he had cast doubt on the poisoning diagnosis. He said his resignation was forced upon him after 25 years of working for the clinic.

The medical director, who has received the Cross of Honour First Class for Science and Art from late Austrian president Thomas Klestil, accused Yushchenko's entourage of putting heavy pressure on the clinic to publicly support the poisoning thesis, which it eventually did.

"The first two times Mr Yushchenko was examined, there was no evidence of poisoning whatsoever," Dr. Wicke told the Telegraph. "I was directly involved, and I can tell you that the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Vienna did not find any traces of poisonous agents in his blood. If there is no poison, there cannot be poisoning, and there was no trace of it whatsoever."

But the latest developments in the case show that the prosecution is focusing on the Russia-based suspects.

Yushchenko, who claimed to have personally asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to assist with the case, complained in September of silence from the Russian side, and implied that Moscow was hindering the investigation.

Russian media reacted with contempt at the insinuation, noting that Yushchenko's statements came only a couple of weeks ahead of the crucial Sep. 30 parliamentary vote. Russian media accused him of trying to boost his ratings by playing the 'anti-Russian card'.

But shortly after the President's complaints Russia promised to facilitate the inquiry, and a joint commission was set up.

By November Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Oleksandr Medvenko said the inquiry was focusing on individuals living in Russia, but praised Moscow's "active cooperation".

Medvenko says the dioxin in question was produced in Russia before 2004 but says it was never exported. The Prosecutor-General promises to solve the matter this year.

The dioxin which was allegedly used to poison the President is only produced in the U.S., U.K. and Russia, but the Ukrainian prosecution established that the dioxin had been manufactured in Russia.

Investigators in Ukraine are still awaiting samples of the Russian dioxin, and have put further questions to their Russian colleagues.

The Russian side invited Ukrainian investigators to attend tests in Russia, but the Ukrainian prosecution insists on a test held in Ukraine in compliance with its legislation.

Ukrainian officials say that with a test in Russia, the evidence could not be used in court. They have invited Russian experts to attend the test in Ukraine.

The Russian side says its legislation only allows the test to be carried out in its territory. But such a stand will do little to improve the big neighbour's image in Ukraine. "The less helpful Russia is, the more people suspect there was some involvement from Russia," Zawada told IPS.

Source: IPS

Who Lost Ukraine?

WASHINGTON, DC -- If Western capitals are not bothered, one of the nations that has to worry about Russia is its neighboring former republic, Ukraine.

Russia's Vladimir Putin
Russia has done its best to try and keep Ukraine from spinning out of Moscow's orbit and has a long history of engaging in dirty tricks in order to make sure the now-independent nation remains a vassal state.

Under Putin some rather extreme measures were taken to keep the current pro-western Ukrainian President, Viktor Yushchenko, from coming to power.

This included an attempt to kill him during the 2004 election campaign with a highly concentrated (and normally fatal) dose of dioxin poisoning--a case that has yet to be solved.

Some questions remain as to who was the actual culprit -- a Ukrainian agent acting on behalf of Moscow or the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) itself.

In any event the fact that the attempt failed is probably why the Russian secret services moved on to the much more lethal and radioactive material Polonium 210 when it came time to eliminate the London-based Putin critic Aleksandr Litvinenko.

What is Moscow's defense for murdering political candidates and its critics abroad? At the Davos forum First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, heir-apparent to Russian President Putin, told the assembled delegates that "We are not trying to push anyone to love Russia. But we will not allow anyone to hurt Russia."

If actions as of late are any indicator, "hurting" Russia means anything that diminishes its influence in the post-Soviet space. This includes making sure that Russian troops remain on the soil of former republics even though they are now independent nations.

In 1999 President Boris Yeltsin promised at an OSCE summit in Istanbul that all Russian troops would be withdrawn from their two bases in the Republic of Georgia by January 2004.

When this 2004 deadline finally arrived, the then-Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Ivanov, was offered by the Georgians another three years beyond the deadline to complete the withdrawal.

Ivanov responded with the traditional spirit of accommodation and generosity Russia has historically demonstrated in these matters and stated he needed not three more years but 11.

The reason for Ivanov having demanded more than a decade to move was a complete mystery. The total number of troops at these two bases was just 4,500 men, and most were local contract soldiers who would have no reason to leave their homes in Georgia to relocate to Russia.

The non-Georgian contingent that would actually have to move back to Mother Russia totaled no more than 200. In the meantime, Moscow was doing its best to try and move military equipment on those bases back to Russia even though by the terms of the treaty dissolving the USSR most of the equipment belonged to the Georgians.

The last Russian troops were finally removed in November 2007, but Russian peacekeeping troops still remain on the ground in the Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russian Air Force aircraft also continue to violate Georgian air space and one occasion even dropped an unexploded Raduga Kh-58 (AS-11 Kilter) missile that landed near a village some 60km northwest of the capital Tbilisi.

The perils of Ukraine are even greater than in Georgia, but more subtle. The stakes have now become higher with the accession to the Prime Minister's job of the controversial politician Yulia Tymoshenko.

When Yushchenko first took office in Kiev in January 2005, Tymoshenko was his choice as PM. It seemed a logical choice at the time since she and her party had been his stalwart partners in the Orange Revolution that brought him to power.

Seven months later she was dismissed after a mixed record in the position that included some dubious economic measures, the most famous of which was an overnight change in the exchange rates in Ukraine that raised the value of the local currency, the Hyrvna, against all foreign currencies by 15 percent.

This was a great "gift" for the population, which now had more buying power, but a disaster for the country's ability to attract foreign investment. If you were a multinational preparing to invest $5 million in a business project you now needed $6.5 million.

This and other ill-advised decisions sent prices for most commodities in Ukraine--especially real estate--soaring. No one wanted to use the "h" word (hyperinflation), but in 2006--according to the world cities cost of living index compiled by Mercer Consulting--Kiev jumped 33 positions from 54th most expensive city in the world in 2005 to the 21st--one of the largest one-year increases in the scale's history.

Now Tymoshenko is back in the PM's job with a slim two-vote majority in the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada. In the interim period, continuous creeping inflation made Kiev one of the most expensive cities in all of Europe.

This, combined with a carnivorous Customs Service that makes some African kleptocracies appear tame by comparison, has made prices in Kiev for a bottle of imported red wine, a jar of Barilla pasta sauce, or most other foreign commodities, equivalent to "robbery without a gun."

This is all about to get worse as Tymoshenko has just decided to do her best to discourage foreign business and tourism by telling the customs service and tax police that they need to triple their income in the next 6 months.

This is like telling these two institutions that they now have a green light to steal, rob and otherwise make off with whatever they can from those trying to import goods into the country or run a business inside of its borders.

But there is more. Earlier this month the new PM began a program to compensate Ukrainian citizens for the losses they incurred when the USSR dissolved and the fall in the value of their Soviet-era ruble-denominated bank accounts evaporated.

Many people had bank balances of 10,000 roubles or more (which had about the same value as $10,000 in the economy of that day) and saw these life savings wiped out in the 1990's.

Now many Ukrainians will receive payments from the central government to supposedly recoup some of these losses, but the amounts are little more than symbolic. The maximum that Ukrainians can receive is 1000 Hyrvna (about $200), but the program will pay out $26 billion over the next several years, with $1.2 billion being distributed this year.

Anton Struchenevsky, an economic analyst from Troika Dialog, criticised this as a populist move that "can destabilise the economy and lead to hyperinflation." Official Ukrainian state budget estimates (which are known to downplay any negative forecasts) have projected that 2008 inflation will be 9.6 percent, but independent analysts state that 15 percent or more is far more realistic.

At a time when most of the rest of the world is trying to stimulate its economies and keep a lid on inflation, Ukraine seems to be doing the complete opposite.

The real fear is that if prices rise much higher beyond their already stratospheric levels, support for Yushchenko and Tymoshenko's pro-western policies could evaporate.

If so, when the presidential election in Ukraine takes place in early 2009 the candidate favored by Moscow in the 2004 election, Party of the Regions leader Viktor Yanukovich, can waltz into the president's job and Russia will have achieved complete proxy control neighbor.

Some would argue that this takeover may already be under way. On January 17, Aleksandr Galaka, the head of the Ukraine Military Intelligence Service, was removed from his position without so much as a by-your-leave.

Galaka was one of the real heroes of the Orange Revolution and was instrumental in making sure the popular revolt did not turn into a Tiananmen Square-type massacre.

Removing Galaka, a pro-western military official who has done more than perhaps any one of his colleagues to move Ukraine closer to NATO cooperation and keep Russian influences from turning his country into a puppet state, seems ill-advised in the extreme given the situation at present.

About this time next year people may very well be asking "who lost Ukraine," by which time the train will have left the station a long time back, so to speak.

American and EU officials need to be spending time worrying about--and acting on--this issue now, rather than listening to the happy talk of the Russian delegation from Davos.

Source: The Daily Standard

Senator Hillary Clinton Welcomes Ukraine`s Joining NATO Membership Action Plan

WASHINGTON, DC -- Senator Hillary Clinton has issued a statement on the Ukrainian Membership in NATO, according to a press release from Hillary Clinton campaign.

US Senator Hillary Clinton
The statement reads as follows:

"I enthusiastically welcome the January 11 letter from Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, and Verkhovna Rada Chairman Arsenii Yatsenyuk to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, which outlines Ukraine`s desire for a closer relationship with NATO, including a Membership Action Plan.

Like Ukraine`s leaders, I hope that important steps toward reaching these goals will be made at the NATO summit in Bucharest in early April.

I applaud the fact that Ukraine aspires to anchor itself firmly in the trans-Atlantic community through membership in NATO and look forward to working with Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Americans to reach that goal.

Since the earliest days of Ukrainian independence, the strategy of the United States has always been to respect and support the Ukrainian people`s democratic choices in shaping their future.

Ukraine has been and remains an extremely important partner for the United States, and I take great pride in Ukraine`s contributions to our common goal of building a Europe that is whole and free, peaceful and prosperous.

When I traveled to Ukraine in 1997, I visited a memorial to the victims of Communist repression in Lviv, and made a commitment to the Ukrainian people on behalf of the United States: "In your fight for freedom, your fight for democracy, the American people will stand with you."

In recalling that commitment more than ten years later I applaud the immense contributions that Ukrainian-Americans have made to our country and the indispensable role they have played in broadening and deepening the bonds between the United States and Ukraine.

I have been greatly impressed by the courage of the Ukrainian people as they emerged from decades of Soviet oppression and as they have experienced both victories and struggles on the path to democracy and freedom.

I have worked for more than 15 years to strengthen the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and help improve the lives of Ukrainians. Even before my first visit to Kyiv in 1995, I supported health care programs for Ukraine, including partnerships between hospitals in the United States and Ukraine and airlifts of critical pharmaceuticals and other medical supplies.

After hearing pleas from Ukrainian women in 1997 to help combat human trafficking, which had become a growing problem in Ukraine, I helped initiate an international effort to combat trafficking, including several programs specifically to help Ukraine.

In 1996, I organized a 10th anniversary White House commemoration of the Chornobyl disaster and, as honorary chair of Chornobyl Challenge `96, committed to continuing support for humanitarian efforts on behalf of those who suffer severe health consequences from the tragedy. I was honored to receive the Children of Chornobyl`s Relief Fund Lifetime Humanitarian Achievement Award in 1999 for my work in helping to improve the health of women and children in Ukraine.

As Senator I traveled to Ukraine in 2005 and met with President Yushchenko and offered the U.S. government`s support for reform efforts to strengthen Ukraine`s democracy.

The United States has always favored the closest possible ties between NATO and Ukraine, including the creation of the NATO-Ukraine Council. We have always insisted on an open door policy for European democracies that want to join the Alliance.

The enlargement of NATO is not directed against any state; NATO does not see any nation as its enemy. I pledge to support Ukraine`s efforts to meet the criteria for MAP and eventual membership. The United States should actively encourage our NATO Allies to deepen their own ties with Ukraine, a country that has broken with an authoritarian past and pursues good relations with all its neighbors.

Ukraine deserves a chance to pursue its aspirations for a wider role in the Euro-Atlantic community. In the same spirit, I call on the Bush Administration to give Ukraine all the support it needs to complete its accession to the World Trade Organization.

As President, I will ensure that the United States does everything necessary to help Ukraine realize these important and achievable goals."

Source: UNIAN

Tymoshenko Sees New Transparency

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Monday linked the recent arrest of suspected crime boss Semyon Mogilevich to the need to rid the gas trade between the two countries of murky middlemen.

Yulia Tymoshenko
The arrest comes ahead of planned talks between Tymoshenko and Russian officials in Moscow next month, in which she is expected to demand a better price for Ukraine's gas imports that arrive through a chain of intermediaries.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko will also hold talks in Moscow on Feb. 12.

"We don't need any shadowy intermediaries," Tymoshenko told reporters after talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels when asked about Mogilevich's arrest in Moscow last week. "There will be transparency in our government and society. It also concerns energy policy," she said.

Ukraine imports Central Asian gas via Russia through RosUkrEnergo, a joint company between Gazprom and Ukrainian businessmen Dmytro Firtash and Ivan Kursin.

Tymoshenko has been advocating a removal of the gas trader from the supply chain, saying Ukraine should buy gas directly from Gazprom.

The Ukrainian Security Service, or SBU, in 2005 investigated RosUkrEnergo and its possible links to Mogilevich but was unable to complete the probe after Tymoshenko was fired as prime minister later that year.

Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchinov, who headed the SBU at the time, on Monday stopped short of linking Mogilevich to RosUkrEnergo but said the company copied its "opaque" business style from the gas trader that it replaced as intermediary between Russia and Ukraine, Eural Trans Gas.

Asked if Mogilevich could have been arrested because of his possible links with RosUkrEnergo, Turchinov said in e-mailed comments sent by his spokeswoman that Ukraine sought transparency in energy relations with Russia but that he did not think the arrest was politically motivated.

"I am confident that the Russian special services have just done their duty," Turchinov said.

RosUkrEnergo last week strongly denied that it had anything to do with Mogilevich, who was arrested on charges of tax evasion with the owner of the Arbat Prestige cosmetics chain, Vladimir Nekrasov.

Marina Ostapenko, a spokeswoman for the SBU, said Monday that the agency had never filed a criminal case against Mogilevich.

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said the company had no information about Mogilevich's possible involvement in RosUkrEnergo.

Gazprom's contracts with RosUkrEnergo, including the prices, were fixed for this year, Kupriyanov said. Ukraine has not formally sought any changes in the contracts, he said.

Tymoshenko has said she wants to scrap an agreement reached two weeks before she became prime minister in December, which set the gas price at $179.50 per 1,000 cubic meters. She is also seeking to raise transit fees for Gazprom exports through Ukraine.

Yushchenko, however, has opposed higher transit fees.

Tymoshenko first planned to come to Moscow on Wednesday, but delayed her visit on instructions from Yushchenko, who is hoping to hammer out a road map with Russia first for both governments to follow, Yushchenko's press service said last week.

Tymoshenko told a Kiev news conference last week that she had yet to talk to Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov to fix a date for her Moscow visit next month.

Yushchenko sent the chief of his National Security Council, Raisa Bogatyryova, to Moscow on Monday through Wednesday to prepare his trip.

RosUkrEnergo and Ukraine's state oil and gas company, Naftogaz Ukrainy, on Monday resumed talks on Naftogaz's gas debts, after halting them Friday.

Ukraine owes $598 million for fuel deliveries, RosUkrEnergo spokesman Andrei Knutov said Friday. He accused Naftogaz of unwillingness to conduct a "civilized dialogue," but Naftogaz said it considered the gas trader's demands "energy blackmail designed to discredit Ukraine's oil and gas policy."

Source: The Moscow Times

Ukraine's PM Wants Direct Gas Purchases

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Ukraine is seeking to buy natural gas supplies directly rather than going through an intermediary company partially owned by Russia, the country's prime minister said Monday, citing corruption concerns.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko attends the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee in Brussels January 28, 2008.
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, on a two-day visit to Brussels, was meeting with EU officials about energy and economy issues.

She said her government planned to eliminate the middlemen from Ukraine's energy contracts, saying "the presence of such intermediaries is the first indication of some corrupt actions."

"Ukraine does not need any additional shadowy middlemen for its gas contracts with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan," she said.

Nearly all of Ukraine's gas imports come through Russia from the energy-rich central Asian nation of Turkmenistan. The gas is imported through the Swiss-based trading company RosUkrEnergo, half of which is owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom and half by two Ukrainian businessmen.

The deal has been in place since 2004. Losing influence over gas imports to Ukraine would likely anger Russia, which is already unhappy with Ukraine's pro-Western policies.

Ukraine and Russia have clashed over gas imports in the past. Moscow temporarily cut off gas supplies to Ukraine two years ago - a shutdown also felt in Western Europe - in a move widely seen as punishment for Ukraine's pro-Western course.

Tymoshenko's talks with officials at the EU headquarters were dominated by trade and energy issues. She got a pledge from the EU to begin negotiations for a comprehensive free trade agreement with Kiev within weeks.

"It's now just a technical matter. When our experts on both sides are ready, we'll start ... it's just a question of weeks," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.

The talks on establishing a free trade agreement with Ukraine would offer the ex-Soviet republic better access to the EU internal market, but are contingent on Ukraine's accession to the World Trade Organization.

The EU cleared the way for Kiev to join the WTO earlier this month, after Ukraine guaranteed it would cut export duties on some raw materials.

Barroso urged Tymoshenko to carry out political and economic reforms, saying Ukraine's political stability was key to its forging better ties with the EU. The 27-nation bloc has so far rebuffed Ukrainian requests for EU membership talks.

Tymoshenko said that, if Ukraine did get a chance to open accession talks, "it will do its homework." Her government has promised to end years of political turmoil and turn Ukraine into a law-abiding European nation.

The EU is Ukraine's largest trading partner and its largest market. In 2006, it absorbed 25 percent of Ukraine's exports, worth 8.7 billion euros, and accounted for 42 percent of Ukrainian imports, worth 17.8 billion euros.

Ukraine is also an important transit route for western Europe's oil and gas supplies from Russia and the Caspian Sea region.

In Brussels, Tymoshenko also planned to discuss energy issues with the EU energy commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, and the coordinator for the Nabucco gas pipeline project, Jozias van Aartsen.

The Nabucco pipeline, backed by both the EU and the United States, is designed to ease Europe's reliance on Russia by carrying gas from the Middle East and Caspian countries other than Russia via Turkey.

"There will be more pathways ... for greater diversification of energy supplies and energy security," Tymoshenko said.

Source: AP

EU Urges Stability In Ukraine For Closer Ties

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Ukraine needs a period of political stability and to reform its economy if the former Soviet republic is to improve ties with the European Union, the EU said on Monday.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (L) and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso address a joint news conference after a meeting in Brussels January 28, 2008.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko chose Brussels, not Moscow, for her first foreign visit since her cabinet was approved in December after months of political turbulence, underlining her pro-Western credentials.

"After ... the creation of a new government, we have now have a sense of unity as far as our wish for European integration is concerned," Tymoshenko said.

"The time has come for our relations to take on an entirely new dimension," she told a joint news conference after meeting European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Politics in Ukraine have remained turbulent since the 2004 "Orange Revolution" brought President Viktor Yushchenko to power.

"To achieve progress we need political stability, we need a Ukraine that is really committed to political and economic reforms," Barroso said after the meeting.

Tymoshenko has settled her differences with Yushchenko, who also strongly backs Ukraine's drive to join the EU one day.

But the wafer-thin majority she received in parliament for her cabinet augurs ill for reform, analysts say.

The EU has so far not offered Ukraine the prospect of full membership, opting for close political cooperation and a future free trade zone with the country that is a major transit route for energy to the West.

Barroso pledged the EU would soon start talks with Ukraine on a free trade pact after Brussels this month cleared the way for the country to join the World Trade Organisation.

During her two-day trip, Tymoshenko was to meet NATO officials. She favours NATO membership for her country, but Ukrainians are deeply divided on joining the military pact, a move strongly opposed by neighbour Russia.

Tymoshenko reiterated promises to make Ukrainian politics honest and transparent after international watchdogs repeatedly said the country has been plagued by corruption.

Transparency would apply to energy policy, she added.

Source:EARTHtimes

Prez: PM Using Power Co Shares To Buy MPs

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko alleged Sunday that Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been seeking to sell state power assets to her opponents through non-transparent arrangements to win greater legislative support for her government.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
Yushchenko, who cited undisclosed sources for the intelligence, warned the government against any plans for the privatizations and pledged to take immediate action to stop them.

“I’ve got the signals that the privatization may appear to be simply a transfer of power distribution assets to certain [lawmakers] to make sure they vote in line with somebody’s wishes,” Yushchenko said in an interview with Studio 1+1 late Sunday.

“Unfortunately, the signals are there, and when time comes my reaction will be immediate,” Yushchenko said. “For now I am simply warning that I’ve been informed, I’ve got mail, and I will press firmly for conducting a reasonable privatization of assets, not the sell-off of Ukraine.”

The comment is an attack on the government of Tymoshenko, underscoring complicated relations between the president and the prime minister, despite the fact that both supposed to be united in a pro-Western coalition.

This is the second warning issued by the president to the Tymoshenko government over the past two weeks. Yushchenko demanded the government must not revise gas transit fees that Ukraine charges Russia for shipments of gas to the EU, but Tymoshenko had insisted the fees must be increased.

The pro-Western coalition commands a slim majority of 227 votes in the 450-seat Parliament, which makes the government vulnerable. By selling the power assets to undisclosed members of the opposition, the government could technically increase legislative support for some of its controversial initiatives that otherwise may not have been approved.

One such initiative might be the nomination of Serhiy Portnov, Tymoshenko’s lawyer, to the post of chairman of the State Property Fund, the government’s privatization agency, analysts said.

Portnov is thought to be one of the strongest lawyers focusing on privatization issues, and critics said Tymoshenko may be planning to use his skills to re-privatize some of the assets that had been earlier sold to some of her foes.

Portnov’s nomination is apparently not favored by some lawmakers within Our Ukraine-People’s Self-defense, Tymoshenko’s coalition partner, but the attraction of some votes from the opposition groups may help Portov’s approval.

“Now, of course, I believe that Parliament will approve decision to appoint Portnov as the new chairman of the SPF,” Tymoshenko said in an interview with ICTV television Sunday. “His candidacy has been nominated: we’re talking about Serhiy Portnov.”

Tymoshenko defended the nomination, which she said is aimed at eliminating corruption at the SPF, which is currently led by Valentyna Semeniuk, a member of the Socialist Party.

“Under Semeniuk, the SPF has been operating at the most corrupt schemes,” Tymoshenko said. “We will prove this on tens of enterprises that had been transferred to well-connected people for unrealistic prices lowered by thousands times.”

Tymoshenko pledged to go ahead with her commitment to return what she claims illegally sold assets to the state by winning court rulings.

“If the court stipulates that there was something illegal, the state will be selling those enterprises legally in a clean and transparent way,” Tymoshenko said.

Source: Ukrainian Journal

Mogilevich Arrested (Update)

MOSCOW, Russia -- Semyon Mogilevich, a suspected organized-crime boss who is wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigations for alleged fraud and racketeering, has been arrested along with Arbat Prestige owner Vladimir Nekrasov.

A screen grab from Russia's "Vesti" news program showing Mogilevich's detention.
A posse of about 50 armed police commandos detained Nekrasov and Ukrainian-born Mogilevich near the city's World Trade Center, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

The Ukrainian security service, the SBU, has investigated the purported involvement of Mogilevich with RosUkrEnergo, the controversial gas trader that acts as a middleman in Russian gas exports to Ukraine.

Mogilevich, 61, was using the name Sergei Shnaider when detained.

Mogilevich's lawyer, Alexander Pogonchenkov, confirmed in a Friday interview that his client was born in Ukraine as Semyon Mogilevich, but has changed his name to Sergei Shnaider.

The Ostankinsky District Court placed Mogilevich and Nekrasov under arrest on suspicion of large-scale tax fraud late Thursday, Moscow City Court spokeswoman Marina Malygina said.

Mogilevich, has been wanted by the FBI on racketeering, fraud and money-laundering charges since 2003. He is believed to have been living in Moscow for several years.

State television showed footage Friday of Mogilevich as police held him and some bodyguards up against a car. It also showed footage of the seldom-photographed Mogilevich in custody wearing jeans, a leather jacket and a cap.

Both Pogonchenkov and Nekrasov's lawyer, Alexander Dobrovinsky, said they would appeal the arrests Monday.

Pogonchenkov said his client had no relation whatsoever to Arbat Prestige.

The two suspects "are not business partners, just good acquaintances," Pogonchenkov said.

The arrest of Mogilevich comes as newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is stepping up calls for Gazprom and Ukraine to cut out RosUkrEnergo from its role as middleman in Russian gas exports.

The SBU in 2005 investigated the trader over possible ties to Mogilevich. The probe was dropped, however, following a change of leadership at the SBU.

Tymoshenko is scheduled to visit Moscow next month for talks with Russian officials, and is expected to push for the contract with RosUkrEnergo to be canceled, a December pricing agreement to be ditched and transit fees for Russian gas to be raised.

In Davos last week, however, President Viktor Yushchenko opposed calls for higher tariffs.

The Ukrainian investigation into RosUkrEnergo, during Tymoshenko's previous term as prime minister, was closed after she was fired by Yushchenko in September 2005.

The head of the SBU under Tymoshenko, Oleksandr Turchynov, later claimed in an interview that the order to close the investigation had come directly from Yushchenko.

No one at Tymoshenko's press office answered calls Sunday.

In January 2006, RosUkrEnergo, jointly owned by Gazprom and billionaire Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash, emerged as the major beneficiary of the bitter gas-price dispute between Russia and Ukraine, winning control over the flow of Russian and cheaper Central Asian gas to Ukraine.

Robert Shetler-Jones, chief executive of Firtash's holding company, Group DF, on Friday denied any business links between Mogilevich and companies connected to RosUkrEnergo.

Since RosUkrEnergo was handed the export monopoly in 2006, Tymoshenko has repeatedly vowed to end RosUkrEnergo's role in the Russian-Ukrainian gas trade, which she has dubbed "criminal," and pledged to start buying gas directly from Gazprom.

In October, Dmitry Medvedev, first deputy prime minister and Gazprom chairman, seemed to back the demands, when he said Gazprom could move to "give up" the opaque intermediary structures involved in gas exports to Ukraine.

On Friday, state energy firm Naftogaz Ukrainy abruptly pulled out of talks with RosUkrEnergo and Gazprom over gas prices and debt, a RosUkrEnergo spokesman said, Bloomberg reported.

Zeev Gordon, an Israeli lawyer who has represented Mogilevich in the past, said by telephone Sunday from Tel Aviv that Mogilevich had always denied any links to RosUkrEnergo and Firtash.

Gordon confirmed that he had personally worked previously for Firtash in 2003, when he acted as a trustee for several months to help him set up RosUkrEnergo's predecessor as middleman in Russian-Ukrainian gas supplies, Eural Trans Gas, in Hungary.

Gordon insisted that this coincidence in no way meant that there were any ties between Mogilevich and Firtash.

Firtash's representative, Shetler-Jones, also denied reports in the Russian and Ukrainian media that identified Firtash as a major stakeholder in Arbat Prestige.

"Neither Group DF nor Mr. Dmitry Firtash personally has any interest in or affiliation with Arbat Prestige. Dmitry Firtash also does not directly or indirectly own shares in this company," Shetler-Jones said in a statement.

Dobrovinsky, the lawyer for Arbat Prestige owner Nekrasov, also denied that Firtash had any stake in the cosmetics firm.

The U.S. indictment against Mogilevich dates back to a 2003 case in Philadelphia in which he and two associates were accused of manipulating stock of the Pennsylvania-based company YBM Magnex.

The FBI notice on Mogilevich says he set up a "complex network of corporations" to "create the illusion that YBM was engaged in a profitable international business, primarily the industrial magnet market."

He and the two other suspects were charged with 45 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, according to the FBI web site, which states that Mogilevich "should be considered armed and dangerous."

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said the United States was "not involved in the recent investigations and arrests in Russia." The two countries do not have an extradition treaty.

The embassy spokeswoman referred all questions to the U.S. Justice Department, which did not return calls for comment Friday.

Pogonchenkov, Mogilevich's lawyer, said Friday that Mogilevich changed his name to Sergei Shnaider after getting married.

Malygina, the Moscow City Court spokeswoman, said the suspect was born in 1946 and officially worked as a consultant in a company called Evergate Ltd. Mogilevich and Nekrasov have been placed under arrest for two months, Malygina said.

Mogilevich has used 17 different names and holds passports from several countries, Itar-Tass reported, citing a law enforcement source.

Pogonchenkov said his client had only a Russian passport. "He does not have any other citizenships," Pogonchenkov said.

Mogilevich has been based in Moscow for seven or eight years and has not left the country for the past few years "for obvious reasons," said Gordon, the Israeli lawyer.

Mogilevich's former wife, Olga Shnaider, a 33-year-old lawyer linked in the Russian media to Arbat Prestige, was also questioned by investigators Friday, Interfax reported, citing law enforcement sources.

But Yevgeny Shedlov, a lawyer for Shnaider, said Sunday that investigators had denied that they had detained her and that her whereabouts were a mystery. Shnaider had not been in contact with her relatives or lawyers since Friday evening, Shedlov said.

"We have not heard anything from her," he said.

Asked whether Shnaider worked with Arbat Prestige, Shedlov said that as a lawyer she had the right to choose her clients. "Lawyers can work with whomever they want, including Arbat Prestige. It doesn't mean that they necessarily commit crimes," he said.

Source: The Moscow Times

Ukrainian President Asks Prosecutors To Investigate Fatal Railway Accident

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko has demanded that the Prosecutor-General's Office investigate the tragedy in Rivne Region, in which six young people were fatally injured by a passing passenger train.

Viktor Yushchenko tells Prosecutor-General's Office to investigate train tragedy that caused the death of six youth.
"I request that you urgently take exhaustive measures to investigate the circumstances of this tragic incident and to hold those responsible liable," its says in a letter addressed to Prosecutor-General Oleksandr Medvedko, the president's press service reported on Sunday.

Yushchenko instructed the head of Rivne regional state administration, Viktor Matchuk, "to take urgent organizational measures for providing all-round aid to the families of the victims".

As reported, six people were fatally injured on Saturday night by the passing Kiev-Ivano-Frankivsk passenger train No 43. The young people aged 17-20 were returning home to the village of Zdovbytsa along the railway line from a club in the neighbouring village.

At 10:23 GMT on 27 January, Interfax-Ukraine quoted the state railway administration Ukrzaliznytsya as saying the railway was not responsible for the incident.

"When he noticed people on the tracks, the driver of train No 43 sounded a warning signal and applied the brakes. But in line with the timetable, the train was travelling at 90 kilometres (56 miles) an hour and the braking distance was about 900 metres (2,950 feet), so it was not possible to avoid hitting the people," it said in a statement.

Source: BBC Monitoring

Suspected Crime Boss Mogilevich Arrested With Arbat Prestige Owner

MOSCOW, Russia -- Police have arrested Semyon Mogilevich, a suspected organized crime boss wanted by the FBI, officials and his lawyer said Friday.


The Ukrainian-born Mogilevich, who has changed his name to Sergei Schneider, was detained late Wednesday together with Arbat Prestige owner Vladimir Nekrasov in central Moscow, Mogilevich's lawyer, Alexander Pogonchenkov, said Friday.

The Ostankinsky District Court placed the two men under arrest on suspicion of large-scale tax fraud late Thursday, Moscow City Court spokeswoman Marina Malygina said.

Mogilevich is wanted by the FBI in connection with a 2003 indictment in Philadelphia in which he and two associates were accused of manipulating stock of the Pennsylvania-based company YBM Magnex.

The FBI notice on Mogilevich says he set up a "complex network of corporations" to "create the illusion that YBM was engaged in a profitable international business, primarily the industrial magnet market."

He and the two other suspects were charged with 45 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, according to the FBI web site, which states that Mogilevich "should be considered armed and dangerous."

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said the United States was "not involved in the recent investigations and arrests in Russia."

The two countries do not have an extradition treaty.

The embassy spokeswoman referred all questions to the U.S. Department of Justice, which did not return calls for comment Friday.

Around 50 police commandos rounded up Mogilevich and Nekrasov as they were leaving the parking lot of the World Trade Center at around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Pogonchenkov said.

State-run television Friday showed footage of Mogilevich as police held him and some bodyguards up against a car. It also showed footage of the seldom-photographed Mogilevich in custody wearing jeans, a leather jacket and a cap.

Both Pogonchenkov and Nekrasov's lawyer, Alexander Dobrovinsky, said they would appeal the arrests Monday.

Pogonchenkov said his client had no relation whatsoever to Arbat Prestige."
The two suspects "are not business partners, just good acquaintances," Pogonchenkov said.

Mogilevich changed his name to Sergei Schneider after getting married, Pogonchenkov said. Malygina, the Moscow City Court spokeswoman, said the suspect was born in 1946 and officially worked as a consultant in a company called Evergate LTD. Both he had Nekrasov have been placed under arrest for two months, Malygina said.

Citing a law enforcement source, Itar-Tass reported Mogilevich has used 17 different names and holds passports from several countries. Pogonchenkov said his client had only a Russian passport. "He does not have any other citizenships," Pogonchenkov said.

Mogilevich has been based in Moscow for seven or eight years and has not left the country for the past few years "for obvious reasons," Zeev Gordon, an Israeli lawyer who has represented Mogilevich in the past, said by telephone from Tel Aviv.

Source: Moscow Times

Russia Reiterates Concern Over Ukraine's Bid For NATO Membership

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia is concerned over Ukraine's bid to join NATO which may seriously harm the former Soviet republic's relations with Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
"The desire to accelerate (Ukraine's) accession to this military-political bloc, expressed by the Ukrainian leadership, will entail serious consequences for the development of Russian-Ukrainian relations and will harm European security in general," the ministry said.

The statement was issued one day after Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin held talks with Ukrainian Ambassador to Russia Oleh Dyomin on prospects of Russian-Ukrainian relations in light of Ukraine's future entry into NATO.

Last week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko formally requested NATO to admit Ukraine to its Membership Action Plan, which is a necessary step on the path to eventual full membership the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko stated earlier that Ukraine would make its decision on whether to accept NATO's future membership offer after holding a national referendum on the issue.

A recent poll carried out by Ukraine's Democratic Initiatives foundation showed that over 50 percent of Ukrainians would vote against joining NATO.

In the survey, 51.9 percent of respondents said they viewed NATO as an "aggressive imperialist bloc that would draw Ukraine into military conflicts."

Source: Xinhua

Ukraine Opposition Prevents Assembly Meeting Over NATO

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian opposition members prevented parliament from meeting yesterday, blocking access to the chamber with chairs to protest steps by the pro-Western government to join NATO.

Members of the pro-Russia Regions Party block the parliament tribune in Kiev. Ukrainian opposition members prevented parliament from meeting on Friday, blocking access to the chamber with chairs to protest steps by the pro-Western government to join NATO. The banner, in Russian, reads: NATO will not pass.
The ex-Soviet state’s leaders, linked to the 2004 “Orange Revolution” aimed at moving Ukraine closer to the West, last week asked NATO to grant Ukraine a “Membership Action Plan”, the first stage of a long-term process of seeking membership.

President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko say membership depends on approval in a referendum, but polls show most Ukrainians are opposed to joining NATO.

Up to two dozen opposition members from the Regions Party of ex-prime minister Viktor Yanukovich and their communist allies gathered around the speaker’s seat and placed chairs at entrances to prevent access to the chamber.

They also placed posters, in Russian, on walls reading “No To NATO!” “NATO-Never!” or “NATO away from the Black Sea.”

Yushchenko made NATO and European Union membership a priority after coming to power in the aftermath of mass “Orange” protests in 2004.

Ukraine is divided over the issue, which has also prompted warnings from Moscow that joining NATO would have serious implications for relations between the two ex-Soviet neighbours.

Outside parliament, hundreds of protesters held noisy rallies in support and against the moves to join NATO.

Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk said deputies were working in committees to restart parliamentary debates, including when and how to hold a referendum. “For now, there are no grounds for holding a referendum.”

Preventing parliament from meeting has been used as a tactic by both sides in a variety of debates that roughly bisect Ukraine into a nationalist western half that looks westward and a Russian-speaking eastern half that feels closer to Moscow.

Similar tactics, also linked to the NATO debate, prevented a sitting last week.

Russia has denounced proposals to extend NATO membership to Ukraine and ex-Soviet Georgia, saying that it would have to take “relevant measures”.

Yushchenko said on Thursday that his administration would take no steps to anger Moscow.

NATO ambassadors are to study Ukraine’s request before a summit in Romania in April.

But NATO officials, uneasy after three years of political instability in Ukraine, have suggested the summit might not approve the Action Plan at that meeting.

Source: Gulf Times

Probe: Negligence In Ukraine Mine Blast

KIEV, Ukraine -- Negligence by coal mine managers eager to ratchet up output led to a methane blast that killed 101 workers in Ukraine's deadliest mining disaster since the Soviet breakup, the head of an investigative commission told The Associated Press Friday.

Rescue workers at Zasyadko coalmine.
The explosion ripped through the massive Zasyadko mine in the eastern city of Donetsk on Nov. 18. In addition to the colossal toll of the blast and its immediate aftermath, five cleanup workers were killed and dozens were injured in two explosions at the mine over the following two weeks.

First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchinov, who heads the government commission investigating the tragedy, said the push by mine managers for greater output led them to ignore safety rules.

"The main problem was that the mine's work load was colossal," Turchinov told the AP in an interview. "The volumes of production were such that it was very difficult to observe all the safety norms. As result we had this horrifying death toll."

Turchinov said the methane blast occurred at a depth of some 4,000 feet and was probably caused by a spark from faulty electronic equipment.

Experts say Ukraine's mines are dangerous largely because they are so deep. Further west in Europe, most coal beds are around 1,800 feet.

Methane is a natural byproduct of mining, and its concentration increases with depth. More than 75 percent of Ukraine's some 200 coal mines are classified as dangerous due to high methane concentrations.

Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, more than 4,800 miners in Ukraine have been killed.

Experts say the sector badly needs reform to battle widespread corruption and inefficiency, which leads to frequent accidents. Eugene Cherviachenko, a mining analyst with the investment bank Concorde Capital, said increasing oversight of the sector and privatizing dozens of mines that are still state-owned would help tackle the problem.

"I think privatization is a solution," Cherviachenko said. "Private owners are more efficient in this case and will at least finance modernization programs."

Despite the dangers, there is growing appetite for Ukraine's rich coal reserves, particularly amid rising natural gas prices.

Turchinov said the government will now drastically increase oversight of mines, especially of Zasyadko, but that Ukraine cannot afford to give up coal production.

"Unfortunately, because of the conditions our state is in, in terms of energy security of the country, today we have no alternative to coal," Turchinov said.

Source: AP

WTO Takes In Ukraine As New Partner

DAVOS, Switzerland -- The World Trade Organization agreed Friday to accept Ukraine as a member, giving President Viktor Yushchenko a new sales pitch as he sought out more foreign investment while at the World Economic Forum.

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko attends a session of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.
Membership will open new market opportunities for Ukraine's industrial exports, and comes amid growing worries about the world that the current economic uncertainty could lead to increased protectionism.

WTO membership will require the former Soviet republic to continue economic reforms aimed at bringing Ukraine closer to the European Union, which it has aims of ultimately joining. Yushchenko also has hopes of steering the country into the European Union and NATO.

Yushchenko said joining the trade body might help improve Ukraine's troubled trade relations with Russia, which also aspires to WTO membership but still has numerous issues to resolve.

"I think we will soon begin consultations with the goal of optimizing our relations in the context of the rules, traditions and position of the WTO," he said.

Yushchenko, who travels to Moscow on Feb. 12 for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said it was important for Russia to join the Geneva-based group that sets the rules for global trade.

"This will harmonize our relations," he told international investors during a lunchtime speech.

In making the case for investing in Ukraine, he cited its 7.3 percent growth last year and commitment to democracy, which he called the key to economic and political stability.

The WTO's 151-member general council will formally invite Ukraine to join Feb. 5, after which the country would have to sign a membership treaty. It would officially become the body's 152nd member a month later.

By joining first, Ukraine effectively will get a veto over Russian membership since all WTO decisions are made by consensus. But, as Yushchenko's remarks indicated, Ukraine may have an interest in seeing Russia bound by the same trade rules.

Russia, the only major economy still outside the WTO, has been trying to enter since 1993.

Source: AP

There's Something Rotten In Ukraine's Prosecutor-General's Office

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Orange Revolution gave Ukraine a new, pro-Western president - if not always an Orange prime minister.

President Victor Yushchenko (L) and Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko
But the Prosecutor-General's Office, which decides who gets put in jail, has remained steadily in the hands of Yanukovych's Blue, Donetsk clan since the days of President Leonid Kuchma.

Why this is so remains a matter of speculation.

If anyone knows the answer, however, it surely must be Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who rose to power during the heady days of late 2004 on a bandwagon of promises to clean the criminals out of power. It's the president who appoints the prosecutor-general in Ukraine.

In his campaign for the presidency, Yushchenko was opposed by outgoing President Kuchma and Kuchma’s chosen successor, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. The prosecutor-general at the time was a man called Genadiy Vasylyev from Donetsk.

Vasylyev arrived in Kyiv together with clan leader Yanukovych in 2003, signaling to Ukrainians and the world that the corruption-ridden regime of Kuchma was passing the baton eastward - to the country's Russian-speaking industrial barons.

Vasylyev's predecessor, Svyatoslav Piskun, was a creation of Kuchma, but the fact that he later ended up aligning himself with Yanukovych's Regions party points to a remarkably closed circle of men in charge of prosecution.

Ukraine's current prosecutor-general, Oleksandr Medvedko, is also from Donetsk. He first came to power in 2005, when Yushchenko & Co. was in control of the presidency as well as the government.

Yushchenko didn't just win the 2004 presidential race on promises to fight corruption, as many a politician in sundry democratic countries has done. He, together with Orange icon Yulia Tymoshenko and other members of the opposition, had ridden a wave of national indignation toward Kuchma and his cronies, which was set off by the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze.

Gonzadze's headless body was found in a wood outside Kyiv back in the fall of 2000. One of a string of 'unsolved' murders of journalists who dared to criticize the authorities in Kyiv, it soon led to national protests that helped make Kuchma into an international pariah.

Kuchma himself was implicated in the murders in a series of tapes released by the opposition.

Criticism of the way the murder investigations were conducted ended the career of Kuchma's long-standing, Sovietesque chief prosecutor Mikhaylo Potebenko, who was replaced by the equally ineffectual Piskun in 2002.

To this day, the Gongadze murder and other high-profile grisly crimes remain unsolved by an unbroken chain of prosecutor-generals loyal to Kuchma and/or Donetsk.

Yushchenko's rallying call during the Orange Revolution was: Put the bandits in jail. Instead, he kept Piskun in office for another year.

The order of Yushchenko's prosecutor-general's goes like this: Piskun, Mevedko, again Piskun and now Medvedko once more.

Observers have speculated that Yushchenko prevented any meaningful change in the Prosecutor-General's Office as a condition to receiving the presidency, thus guaranteeing the old guard that they wouldn't be prosecuted.

Others have suggested that Yushchenko has his own skeletons in the closet to hide.

Whatever his reasons, the fact remains that the Orange president has prevented a cleanup of the nation's top law-enforcement body, thereby making a mockery of justice.

Some of the prosecutor swapping under Yushchenko can be attributed to the president's struggle to restrain the power grab by Yanukovych, who returned as premier following the 2006 parliamentary election.

But even this upset in Orange rule is largely the fault of Yushchenko, who mistrusts the political ambitions of his Orange Revolution ally Yulia Tymoshenko.

It is Tymoshenko, returned as prime minister after early elections held last fall, who has finally raised the issue of ending the Donetsk clan's control over criminal prosecution in Ukraine.

Tymoshenko, who clearly has an eye on the presidency in 2009, publicly challenged Mr. Yushchenko to fire Medvedko.

Besides her unwavering stance against corruption in all spheres of government, Tymoshenko has personally been the victim of unbridled law enforcement. In 2001, after attempting to clean up the country's shady energy business, Kuchma had her jailed for a short time.

The fiery female politician has more than once bumped heads with Piskun, who holds the record for comebacks as top prosecutor.

And Tymoshenko isn't alone among Ukrainian politicians in her criticism of the Prosecutor-General's Office.

The Orange parties' other anti-corruption crusader, Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko, who is also a recent returnee to his job, says he keeps sending prosecutors cases but nothing is done with them.

In Ukraine, anyone unfortunate enough to get picked up by the police could be subject to torture or, more likely, a lengthy if not terminal stay in a remand center without trial.

But the so-called elite can easily avoid punishment due to their lawmaker immunity or ability to bribe judges.

In a travesty of justice, many check into hospitals, where they are protected under Ukrainian law, only to check out on the sly and flee the country with suitcases full of illegally earned cash.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has continually reiterated that Ukraine must reform its constitution, judiciary and criminal code.

Even more than Tymoshenko, President Yushchenko has been a staunch advocate of further integration with Europe through reforms.

Yet it's the president, or more recently his dwindling number of supporters in parliament, who are resisting Tymoshenko's latest assault on the Donetsk prosecutors.

Oles Dony, a lawmaker who openly opposed Tymoshenko's confirmation as premier even though the pro-presidential party he belongs to campaigned under a united Orange banner, announced on January 24 that the Orange majority in parliament was still divided on whether to vote Medvedko out of office.

Yushchenko himself is trying to find a legal loophole to avoid yet another embarrassment before his shrinking voter base.

"For now, the issue (of firing Medvedko) is a matter of procedure. You know that the president nominates and appoints the prosecutor, but the Ukrainian parliament decides dismissals," the president said.

This may be true, but Yushchenko has not even nominated a new top prosecutor, and everything about the way the president has acted on this issue over the past three years shows that he has no intention of breaking the Donetsk clan's hold over the Prosecutor-Generals' Office.

As for Medvedko, like many of his well-connected colleagues before him, he has checked into a hospital just to be on the safe side.

Maybe he suddenly fell ill? But something is definitely rotten in Ukraine's Prosecutor-General's Office, all the same.

Source: Eurasian Home

Russian Parliament Annuls Deal With Ukraine On Using Radars

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's lower house of parliament on Friday voted to stop using Soviet-built military radars in Ukraine because of Kiev's bid to join NATO.

Russian State Duma
At the same time, lawmakers extended another deal which calls on Ukraine to help maintain Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles - a move reflecting strong military industrial ties between the two ex-Soviet neighbors.

The State Duma voted 388-58 with one abstension to scrap the 1997 agreement with Ukraine which allowed Russia to use data from the radars located near the western town of Mukachevo and the port of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.

The huge facilities were part of a Soviet system of early warning radars intended to spot missile launches.

Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov said the Ukrainian leadership's push for NATO membership had prompted the military to reconsider the agreement. "This is our response to the Ukrainian government's to quickly join NATO," he said.

Source: Jerusalem Post

Kiev’s Time Has Come, Says Yushchenko

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Ukraine’s Orange Revolution is Victor Yushchenko’s proudest accomplishment. But the turbulent weeks that saw him emerge as president exacted a physical toll – a near fatal poisoning that left him scarred.

Viktor A. Yushchenko, President of Ukraine, gestures during a panel meeting on human rights the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland.
Three years later Mr Yushchenko is back. He says that Ukraine is back too, and ready to become a democratic member of a democratic Europe.

That was Mr Yushchenko’s ambition when he first came into office and, as the world briefly marvelled at the protesters in snowy Kiev, it seemed astonishing but just about credible.

These expectations were thwarted in the subsequent three years as Ukraine descended into bitter political squabbling, culminating in a pre-term parliamentary vote last year.

After weeks of jockeying, the election finally delivered a government led by Yulia Tymoshenko, the president’s sometime ally and sometime rival, as prime minister. Now, Mr Yushchenko says, Ukraine is again on course.

“The Ukrainian authorities for the first time are in a situation where the president, the prime minister and the speaker of the parliament are all openly proposing a pro-west path and Euro-Atlantic co-ordination,” Mr Yushchenko says in an interview with the Financial Times. “I believe that today the government is united.”

The president is using this consensus to push on several fronts. He has called on western countries to support Kiev’s bid to join Nato’s membership action plan, a step towards accession, and hopes Ukraine will be admitted to the World Trade Organisation next month.

After that, Mr Yushchenko wants to speed discussions with the EU about entering its associated free trade zone.

He does not disguise his ambition of eventual EU membership. In time, he believes, “Europe will find itself asking: why isn’t Ukraine a member?”

Kiev’s trump card is its democracy, which Mr Yushchenko believes has been bolstered rather than undermined by the recent domestic conflicts. “Over the past 2½ years we have demonstrated to the whole world that we are able to resolve any internal disputes, even those with polar political views, in a democratic way.”

Other communist, or post-communist, countries such as China and Russia have been promoting the view that, in states with weak social and market infrastructure, authoritarianism can be a surer – and more prosperous – path to development than democracy. But Mr Yushchenko is unconvinced. “Democracy works, it is worth it,” he says, citing Ukraine’s 7.3 per cent growth last year.

“You couldn’t put Ukrainian society back into bondage ... this is a society which has enlightened itself.”

For a US administration that has made democracy-building a centrepiece of its foreign policy – without much success – these are welcome declarations. Indeed, after Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, met Mr Yushchenko earlier this week in Davos, US officials took care to say she had supported Kiev’s Nato ambitions.

But other countries may not be so delighted by Ukraine’s renewed claims.

Russia’s petro-fuelled economic rise, and the political aggression that has come with it, may have made backing Ukraine seem riskier. And while the EU’s eastern enlargement has brought an economic boost, it has also provoked populist concerns about a flood of migrants.

Russia is the most ambivalent of all. The political muddle that followed Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was a gift for Moscow’s leaders, worried about a copy-cat revolt at home.

As Moscow flexes its geopolitical muscle, it has also spoken out against Ukrainian moves towards Nato, accusing Kiev of seeing links “as an alternative to good-neighbourly ties with Russia”.

Mr Yushchenko says that is not so and believes he can persuade the Russians to see things his way.

“A good-neighbourly dialogue will, step by step, establish the understanding which is necessary for Russia, in particular the Russian foreign ministry, to accept this step.”

He is a believer in the power of time. Time, he says, has helped Ukraine to jettison the Soviet past and become more democratic and united.

Time, he thinks, will also help Russia to accept Kiev’s new geopolitical stance, just as it has come to accept Nato membership of the eastern European states that were once part of the Warsaw pact.

But changes over time do not always run in a single direction – and at the moment Russia seems keener on turning back the clock.

Source: The Financial Times

It's Time For Ukraine To Get Started

WASHINGTON, DC -- At NATO headquarters last Friday, the Ukrainian foreign minister presented a request from his government for a membership action plan for Ukraine, which Kiev hopes will be approved when the alliance's 26 leaders meet in Bucharest in April.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko presented a request from his government for a NATO membership action plan.
NATO should say yes.

The goal of NATO enlargement since the mid-1990s has been to achieve a broader, more secure Europe. This has driven alliance decisions to take in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in 1999, and seven additional Baltic and Central European states in 2004.

Those decisions have produced a more stable and integrated Europe, and underpin the dramatic democratic and economic transformations made by the new member states.

The "open door" policy adopted by NATO in 1997 allows that any European country that meets alliance standards and can contribute to Euro-Atlantic security can be considered for membership.

A membership action plan - or MAP - offers no guarantee of membership, but it would provide a guide for Ukraine's further integration in Europe and internal reform efforts.

A MAP is not a request for membership; Ukrainian leaders have said their electorate will have a chance to express its view on NATO membership in a referendum before Kiev formally decides to make such a request.

Granting Ukraine a MAP at the Bucharest summit meeting would be fully consistent with alliance policy. It would enhance European security and stability.

It would encourage the large and growing number of Ukrainians who want greater integration with Europe. Moreover, none of the arguments against the measure stand up to scrutiny.

Some might assert that Kiev is not ready to prepare for NATO membership. Not true. Ukraine has made as much progress on democratic, economic and military reform as Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Albania when they received MAPs in 1999.

Moreover, in late 2005, in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution, many in NATO considered a MAP for Ukraine a strong possibility ahead of an Alliance summit meeting in November 2006. But the Ukrainian prime minister at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, derailed that prospect.

Today, however, a unified Ukrainian executive branch, backed by a majority coalition in Parliament, desires a MAP. And, over the past two years, Ukraine has further burnished its democratic credentials, deepening military reform and conducting two free parliamentary elections and a peaceful changeover of power.

Others might argue that Ukraine's population does not support NATO membership. Perhaps. While polls show that only about one-third of Ukrainians currently favor membership, popular support for joining NATO in countries such as Slovakia and Slovenia was likewise weak in 1999.

Those two countries, use their MAPs to broaden popular support. Ukraine's leaders have indicated that they will do the same.

Skeptics might assert that Ukraine would bring little to the alliance other than an additional security burden. Wrong. Kiev has demonstrated that it has serious military capabilities and the political will to use them.

In recent years, the Ukrainian military has provided the alliance with strategic airlifts; participated, often side-by-side with NATO troops, in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and elsewhere; and made a significant contribution to coalition ground forces in Iraq during 2004-05.

Ukraine would be a net contributor to Euro-Atlantic security.

Finally, some might fear that preparing Ukraine for NATO membership would provoke new difficulties with Russia. Let's be clear. The Kremlin would not welcome the move, now or at any time in the foreseeable future.

But there is nothing to suggest that holding off would prompt Moscow to take more accommodating positions on other issues, such as Kosovo.

Indeed, allowing the Russia factor to block a MAP would only reward Russia's petulant behavior. In the past year Moscow has suspended the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, threatened to recognize the breakaway states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and blustered about targeting nuclear missiles on Central Europe.

NATO poses no threat to Russia. Unfortunately, the Russian foreign policy elite choose to regard it as an adversary. While NATO should engage Moscow by offering new, cooperative programs, it is up to the Russians themselves to decide not to portray NATO as a threat.

NATO leaders should thus welcome Ukraine's request and give a positive answer in Bucharest. Anything less would be a reversal of 10 years of alliance policy, would discourage those in Kiev who want to modernize Ukraine, and would waste an opportunity to advance the process of shaping a broader, more secure Europe.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Ukraine Court Prohibits Construction Of Shopping Mall Near Euro 2012 Stadium

KIEV, Ukraine -- A court has prohibited the construction of a shopping centre which had delayed the upgrading of the stadium where the 2012 European Championship final is scheduled to be held.


The modernization of the Olympic Stadium has been delayed due to a nearby shopping centre being built. UEFA had warned that the centre could make the stadium unsuitable by blocking some exit routes and compromising security.

Ukraine is co-hosting Euro 2012 with neighbouring Poland, and both countries face the challenge of building stadiums and upgrading dilapidated infrastructure.

Kyiv's economic court ruled Monday that construction of the mall must be stopped and the two floors that have already been built torn down, according to a statement from the Prosecutor General's Office.

The government says it is looking for ways to compensate the mall's investors.

UEFA last year awarded the prestigious event to the former eastern bloc for the first time since Yugoslavia hosted it in 1976.

Source: The Canadian Press

NATO MAP Will Improve Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- The joint letter written to NATO by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, Parliamentary Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko marked a significant stage in the ongoing process of Ukraine’s integration into Euro-Atlantic structures.


A positive response to Ukraine joining the Membership Action Plan (MAP) will not only enhance Ukraine’s prestige on the world arena and raise the fighting efficiency of its armed forces, but also irreversibly inject systemic reforms in the country directed at building an effective democratic state, further judicial and economic reforms, create a competitive economy, bolster the rule of law, ensure human rights protection and form an open society.

Foremost, the MAP is not for NATO, it is for Ukraine. Hence it contains a list of reforms which our citizens need.

In Ukraine’s desired course of development, politicians and statesmen alike follow the example of Western democracies and embrace European values and achievements.

When we speak of a developed economy, we name Germany and Holland as models; when discussing higher education, we look to Great Britain and the US. Analyzing the tourist industry, we use Spain and Italy as standards. But when these countries formed a security alliance, they immediately were branded an “aggressive enemy bloc” by certain reactionaries.

Obviously this is not the case since NATO membership, and cooperation with it, allows a country to mold itself in its own image and, most importantly, to develop internally.

Thus not only does the MAP cover defense and military issues, but in a broader spectrum it embraces political and economic issues, the effective allocation of state budget resources, as well as social and legal issues, environmental protection, and the issue of security in the broadest sense.

The issue of security does not exclusively mean the absence of military action. It also extends to personal security: housing, job security, ecology, and finally, an overall secure living environment.

In addition, cooperation with NATO brings Ukraine and the Ukrainian state closer to European poli-economic structures – first and foremost the EU.

At first glance, NATO and the EU are two different organizations and membership to one does not necessitate joining the other. This is our viewpoint. The countries who ascended into the EU in the most recent expansion round were already members of NATO. The reason being, in the European political consciousness, the EU and NATO are pillars on which the entire European design rests. And if the letter that the president, premier, and speaker wrote expresses that the state sees itself as part of the Euro-Atlantic security space, then it is clear Ukrainians also wish to see and realize it as part of the European political and economic expanse.

At the same time, it is necessary to implement a systemic and consistent plan in Ukraine to meet the standards and benchmarks we are setting before us. In fact, irrespective of whether we have a MAP, we should change as a country for the better. This involves strengthening democratic institutions, and the welfare and security of the Ukrainian nation. This is the main goal. And the presence of corresponding agreements, letters, and documents do not substitute our steadfast work and activity. Although a MAP in Ukraine will certainly shake up and discipline government officials, and Yushchenko understands this.

Concerning Ukraine’s international position, it is first worth mentioning that Ukraine participates in practically every international peacekeeping mission under the auspices of the UN, NATO, and OSCE. At times, these are whole sub-units and technical groups. At other times, individual officers serve at international posts.

Today, close to 1,000 Ukrainian military personnel are serving in international peacekeeping missions. Ukraine’s peacekeepers once numbered 3,000 and Ukraine is a top 10 world peacekeeping contributor. But is there a proportionately equal political and economic return for this important international contribution for Ukraine?

Aside from simply participating in activities, the opportunity to take part in forming solutions, decision-making and influencing them to secure the ideal international and economic effect for the state is optimal. The right to influence decision-making is common in full-fledged member organizations, which applies to the Alliance itself. Ukraine’s NATO membership gives it the possibility to influence decisions allowing it to defend its views and national interests.

Evidently, the countries that don’t want these opportunities to exist are those that have a “casual” attitude towards Ukraine’s potential NATO membership.

Commentary emanating from the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information and Print on Ukraine’s rapprochement to NATO clearly is unfavorable. The Russian foreign ministry said Ukraine has the right to determine NATO membership, but simultaneously declared that membership could complicate relations between the two countries. Incidentally on Jan. 25, 2008, 11 NATO countries and Russia will conduct joint training exercises in Germany on the use of an anti-rocket defense system. Indeed, this is happening under the aegis of the Russia-NATO Council’s (RNC) special working group on issues of anti-rocket defense systems.

Moreover, Ukraine can only dream of reaching the same level of cooperation with NATO as Russia has. It seems they are exclusive friends without us, and this suits Moscow. Let’s be friends together with our participation.

It is quite clear to me that Russia has the desire to have all of Kyiv’s relations with Brussels resolved in Moscow. Yet we live in the XXI century, the world is open and more just today. European countries and structures respect Ukraine’s right to its own position, own policy, own national interests … and for the right to exist.

Equally important is for the Ukrainian government to work for the Ukrainian people, not for anyone else’s. It should understand the responsibility it has before Ukrainian citizens, their welfare, and the formation of national security for the state.

Source: Kyiv Post

Rice Lends Support To Ukraine NATO Bid: US Spokesman

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed US support Wednesday for Ukraine's accession to NATO on Wednesday during talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Viktor Yushchenko (R) and Condoleezza Rice
Rice and Yushchenko met for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"The secretary reiterated the US view that NATO should leave the door open to those European democratic states who meet membership requirements," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Last week, Ukraine asked to join the alliance's Membership Action Plan -- a precursor to full membership -- at the next NATO summit, taking place in Bucharest on April 2-4.

Russia has warned that Ukraine's NATO ambitions would "seriously" complicate relations between the two countries.

Source: AFP

Ukrainian President Yushchenko To Take Part In The World Economic Forum Forum In Davos

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is departing on Wednesday for Davos (Switzerland) on a three-day working visit to take part in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, the president’s press service reported.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko
Yushchenko will take part in two session of the WEF that will focus on “Pipeline Politics” and “Human Rights on the Global Agenda.”

The Ukrainian president is expected to hold a number of bilateral meetings during the visit. Among issues that Yushchenko intends to touch upon during a conversation with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the “road map” of bilateral relations, calendar of the two states’ contacts for 2008 and Ukraine’s joining the NATO membership action plan.

The Ukrainian leader plans to discuss with Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev energy issues, in particular, the Energy Forum that is to be held in Kiev in May 2008.

Yushchenko is also expected to meet President of Nigeria Umaru Yar'Adua and President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai and Malaysian Prime Minister Ahmad Badawi.

During the talks the sides will discuss issues of bilateral relations and economic and trade cooperation.

The Ukrainian president also plans to hold meetings with the leaders of international organisations, in particular, President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Jean Lemierre, Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Pascal Lamy, NYSE Chief Executive Officer Duncan Niederauer.

The Ukrainian president also plans a meeting with leader of the British Conservative Party David Cameron.

Besides, Viktor Yushchenko will take part in a special section – Ukrainian Lunch in Davos.

The participation of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko in the Davos forum is attracting special attention this year.

This attention is caused not only because the country has been experiencing serious political disturbances in recent years, but also by the fact that the forum is held simultaneously with the World Trade Organisation’s expected decision on Ukraine’s admission to the WTO. The WTO is to make the decision on January 25.

Source: ITAR-TASS

Russia Again Warns Ukraine On NATO Plans

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russia is again warning Ukraine that any move to join NATO will "seriously" complicate bilateral ties and force Moscow to take "appropriate action."

Russian President Vladimir Putin called NATO's expansion to Russia's borders harmful.
The warning was released Tuesday in a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

Last week, Western-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko formally asked the military alliance for advice and support that could lead to Kiev's eventual membership.

Ukrainian access to NATO's Membership Action Plan does not guarantee Kiev NATO membership, and Ukrainian officials have in the past pledged to hold a voter referendum before moving to join the alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, last year, called NATO's expansion to Russia's borders harmful, and said it does not foster an atmosphere of trust.

He also noted that NATO was founded to counter the Soviet Union, which no longer exists.

NATO's last expansion in 2004 included Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, bringing the military alliance to Russia's western border.

Source: Voice of America

Yushchenko Strives To Dominate Tymoshenko Government

KIEV, Ukraine -- The political honeymoon between Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko appears to be over.

Yushchenko (L) and Tymoshenko - is the honeymoon over?
Yushchenko has thwarted Tymoshenko’s planned visit to Moscow, torpedoed planned appointments to her government, disagreed with her privatization plan, and come up with a package of bills aimed at diminishing the role of the prime minister and the Cabinet.

Yushchenko was weakened by the constitutional reform of December 2004, which made the prime minister and parliament considerably stronger vis-à-vis the president than under his predecessor, Leonid Kuchma.

Reversing the changes is out of the question, as Yushchenko has never had the required two-thirds majority in parliament. However, Yushchenko has never concealed that he would like to make the presidency stronger, if not by reversing the amendments then by other means, such as exercising control over the prime minister or adopting laws diminishing the Cabinet’s powers.

Yushchenko’s tug-of-war with Tymoshenko’s predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, ended with the September 2007 snap parliamentary election. Yushchenko had been unable to boost his powers at the expense of the prime minister because Yanukovych held the majority in parliament.

Now the situation is different, as Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc (NUNS) is part of the parliamentary majority, so Yushchenko can directly influence decision-making in parliament.

He has come up with a package of bills aimed at boosting his authority. One of the bills is meant to amend the law on the Cabinet of Ministers that was passed in January 2007 and further diluted presidential powers.

If parliament passes the amendments, the president will be authorized to disagree with the parliamentary majority’s choice for prime minister; parliament will not be allowed to dismiss the ministers of foreign affairs and defense – the only two Cabinet ministers whom the president appoints; the Cabinet will have to obey decisions made by the National Security and Defense Council – a body chaired by the president; and regional governors – who are appointed by the president – will have the right to veto the Cabinet’s appointments to the regional offices of Cabinet ministries.

Yushchenko wants the Interior Troops, which have so far been subordinated to the interior minister, to be renamed “National Guard” and be subordinated to the president. He also believes that the president, rather than the Cabinet, should appoint the chief of the special communications and information protection service.

He has made it clear that NUNS will not back several key appointments to the cabinet, which Tymoshenko wanted to make on January 18, until the bills aimed at increasing presidential power are passed. Segodnya and Ukrayinska pravda reported that Yushchenko also rejected Tymoshenko’s choice for chairman of the Anti-Monopoly Committee, Davyd Zhvania.

According to the newspapers, Yushchenko believes that although he formally represents NUNS, Zhvania is in fact in Tymoshenko’s team.

Yushchenko has taken additional steps to clip Tymoshenko’s wings. After returning to the post of prime minister this past December, Tymoshenko declared her intentions to remove the RosUkrEnergo intermediary company from the natural gas trade between Ukraine and Russia and to charge more for Russian gas transit to Europe.

Tymoshenko insisted that Ukraine would benefit from buying gas directly from Gazprom rather than RosUkrEnergo and from simultaneously raising transit fees for Russian gas.

Yushchenko disagreed, arguing that Ukraine buys gas at a lower price than its neighbors under the current scheme, and that charging more for gas transit would complicate relations with Gazprom.

Tymoshenko planned to go to Moscow to discuss gas issues with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and Gazprom on January 23. Yushchenko’s secretariat, however, said that it would be better for Tymoshenko to go to Moscow together with Yushchenko on February 12, when the Yushchenko-Putin commission gathers.

Interviewed on TV on January 20, Yushchenko warned the Tymoshenko cabinet against revising the existing scheme of gas trade and gas transit fees.

Most recently, Yushchenko asked Tymoshenko to drop her privatization plan for 2008. Meeting Tymoshenko on January 21, Yushchenko said that the plan had been prepared too hastily, and that a law to make privatization more transparent should be passed first.

Tymoshenko planned to use privatization proceedings to compensate Ukrainians for the savings lost in the defunct Soviet savings bank (see EDM, January 15). A successful compensation campaign should boost Tymoshenko’s popularity among the poor, improving her chances to win the next presidential election.

Speaking in her native Dnipropetrovsk on January 14, Tymoshenko made a statement that was widely interpreted as a warning to Yushchenko.

She said that she is happy to carry on as prime minister, but she may consider running for president “if the Cabinet is limited by certain restrictions, if they start putting forward certain conditions.”

Yushchenko on several earlier occasions denied the rumors saying that he had agreed to Tymoshenko’s premiership in return for her promise to not run against him in the next presidential election.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Ukraine President Orders Probe Into Allies` Fight

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yushchenko on Monday ordered prosecutors to investigate a fight between Ukraine's interior minister and the mayor of Kiev that sparked a furore about post-Soviet business and political ethics.

Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko
Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko and Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, broadly allies of Yushchenko, accused each other of corruption at a session of the National Security and Defence Council devoted to land use.

Officials present said that during a confrontation after the meeting Lutsenko, a leading figure in the 2004 "Orange Revolution" that catapulted the president to power, struck Chernovetsky in the face at least once.

In an unusual move, Yushchenko's chief of staff Viktor Baloha told reporters that the general prosecutor's office "must produce complete and objective conclusions with no political bias" in his report into the clash.

"Both men enjoy the trust of hundreds of thousands of people who put them in power for reasons other than their ability as boxers," he said of last Friday's incident.

The fight prompted politicians to call for the sacking of both men, while psychologists say the confrontation sent precisely the wrong signals to a public already highly distrustful of public figures.

Corruption allegations remain a top issue in most ex-Soviet states and have played a key role in recent Ukrainian politics.

The president's first government, elected after he won power following mass protests against election fraud, collapsed after it split into two camps, each accusing the other of corruption.

Lutsenko was interior minister in that government.

In last year's snap parliamentary election, he led a group closely linked to the president and was given his job back when liberal Yulia Tymoshenko became prime minister a second time last month.

Lutsenko has long called for a new election to replace mayor Chernovetsky, known for outlandish statements and his links to a religious group that draws large crowds to its rallies.

Source: Javno

Ukraine's President Wants Faster Preparations For 2012 European Championship

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko wants to accelerate preparations for the 2012 European Championship.

President Viktor Yushchenko
"January is the last month of planning," Yushchenko said Monday at a Co-ordination Council session on tournament preparations. "From February on, we begin to act."

Ukraine is co-hosting Euro 2012 with neighbouring Poland and both countries face the challenge of building stadiums and upgrading dilapidated infrastructure.

Yushchenko's call comes amid growing uncertainty about Kyiv's Olympic Stadium, where the final will be held.

Modernization of the stadium has been delayed by construction of a nearby shopping centre. UEFA has warned the centre could make the stadium unsuitable by blocking some exit routes from the stadium and compromising security.

UEFA last year awarded the prestigious event to the former eastern bloc for the first time since Yugoslavia hosted it in 1976.

Source: AP

Tymoshenko And Yushchenko Clash Over Battling Corruption

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has made combating corruption and strengthening the rule of law central elements in her government’s policy. She is apparently starting at the highest levels of the government.

Leonid Chernovetsky (L) and Yuriy Lutsenko.
The issue of the lack of action against corruption led to a physical showdown on January 18 in the presidential secretariat. Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko struck Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky over his alleged involvement in corrupt land schemes.

Lutsenko said afterward, “I have no regrets for this incident and believe that it was a manly hit that should be undertaken by everybody who wants to live in an honest state.”

On December 7, 2007, Lutsenko and Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT) deputy Svyatoslav Oliynyk introduced a parliamentary resolution to remove General Prosecutor Oleksandr Medvedko. The Rada was set to debate the resolution on January 18, but that was postponed when Medvedko conveniently checked into a clinic earlier in the week.

While Tymoshenko has backed the call for Medvedko’s replacement, President Viktor Yushchenko has passed responsibility for the decision to parliament. According to the constitution, the president puts forward a candidate for general prosecutor while parliament has the right to demand a performance report and to follow this with a vote of no confidence.

The draft motion collected 180 signatures out of the 227 members of the pro-democratic orange coalition, consisting of BYuT and Our Ukraine-Peoples' Self Defense (NUNS). While all BYuT deputies signed the resolution, NUNS – specifically its pro-grand coalition wing, loyal to the president – is divided.

Medvedko’s job is politically linked to that of Raisa Bohatyryova, the former Party of Regions parliamentary faction leader appointed secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on December 24. Both Medvedko and Bohatyryova are from Donetsk, the Party of Region’s stronghold. Stepan Havrysh, legal adviser to the 2004 Yanukovych election campaign, was also appointed deputy head of the NSDC on January 18.

Having the trio in high posts reassures the Party of Regions that they have protection from the Tymoshenko government. Their appointments also conclude the deal cut between Yushchenko and the Party of Regions to end the spring 2007 political crisis. The grand coalition between Yushchenko and the Party of Regions that existed in early 2007 has de facto been recreated outside parliament.

Medvedko became general prosecutor in November 2005 and has remained in that position except for a brief period in April 2007. That month he was replaced by Sviatoslav Piskun, who had served as general prosecutor from December 2004 through October 2005, as well as earlier under President Leonid Kuchma in July 2002-October 2003.

Herein lies the dilemma. Yushchenko claims to support a break with the Kuchma era and a battle against corruption, but his choice of general prosecutors has been inconsistent with this statement. Maintaining Piskun in place for the first ten months of his presidency reassured the Kuchma-era elites of their immunity from prosecution, which had been negotiated during the Orange Revolution’s roundtables in late 2004.

The anti-Medvedko resolution is highly critical of his record as general prosecutor. It calls for a vote of no confidence because of Medvedko’s failure to resolve any of Ukraine’s sensational crimes, such as the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, Yushchenko’s poisoning during the 2004 presidential election, and high-level involvement in election fraud that same year.

Under Yushchenko, no general prosecutor has done much to advance the rule of law or to combat high-level corruption and abuse of office among Ukraine’s elites. As Zerkalo nedeli (December 15-21, 2007) wrote, “Fortunately, groundless political repressions are no longer an element of public policy. Unfortunately, deserved punishments are not, either.”

Other parties have poor records as well. Two senior Socialists, (former interior and transport ministers Vasyl Tsushko and Mykola Rudkovsky), from the previous government of Party of Regions prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, are under investigation, but, based on past experience, they are unlikely to be prosecuted.

As a recent Atlantic Council of the United States report pointed out, the Party of Regions has never expressed much interest in battling corruption. Ukrainians give very low marks to the second Yanukovych government (2006-2007) for failing to battle corruption.

Although most political parties claim they are in favor of combating corruption, especially at election time, Ukrainians remain skeptical. The 2007 Transparency International survey found that the majority of Ukrainians believe that the judiciary is the most corrupt institution in Ukraine, followed by political parties, parliament, and the Interior Ministry.

When asked if there would be a breakthrough in overcoming corruption over the next three years, 44% of Ukrainians said “No,” while 38% said corruption would increase. Only 18% of Ukrainians believed that corruption would decline by the end of Yushchenko’s first term in office in 2010.

Some 70% of Ukrainians do not believe that the authorities are effective in their struggle against corruption. Another 22% saw no results from the campaign, while only 8% believed any campaign was effective.

Ukrainians are particularly disappointed with the president who, they believe, has continued Kuchma’s virtual campaign against corruption. The Atlantic Council wrote, “While there are many reasons for the persistence of corruption in Ukraine, polling suggests that public disappointment is particularly strong in the case of President Yushchenko, as many voters believe he is one of the few top politicians who is not tainted by corruption. Yet, Ukrainians believe he has done too little to fight it.” Only 21% of Ukrainians believe the president has shown the political will to combat corruption.

NUNS deputy and deputy head of the parliamentary Committee on Law Enforcement Volodymyr Stretovych said, “He [Yushchenko] has outlined a campaign against corruption that he repeated many times. But without cardinal cadre changes in the procuracy, nothing will change. In the current situation the procuracy is corrupt from bottom to top, from the raion to the general prosecutor.”

The Tymoshenko government is committed to battling corruption and reforming law enforcement, including in the procuracy. Tymoshenko has stated that she will not run in the 2009 presidential elections if her government’s reforms and campaign against corruption are successful; she believes they were blocked by the president in 2005 during her first government.

Yushchenko is caught between having to choose to protect the Party of Regions and further inaction against elite abuse of office or supporting the Tymoshenko government. The two are in direct contradiction.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Iran, Ukraine Discuss Aircraft Production

KIEV, Ukraine -- Senior Iranian and Ukrainian officials are mulling over different ways to promote Tehran and Kiev's cooperation in aircraft production.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
In a meeting on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and top Ukrainian officials discussed plans to promote collaboration in different fields including energy, economic, aircraft production, and transportation.

The Ukrainian officials, for their part, said that cementing ties with Tehran was one of Kiev's high priorities.

The two sides concluded that launching joint economic commissions would serve as a starting point for the two countries to boost relations.

Source: Press TV

Ukraine Clears Final Hurdle To WTO

MOSCOW, Russia -- The European Union said Thursday that it had cleared the final hurdles in talks about Ukraine's accession to the World Trade Organization after Kiev agreed to a deal on the duties it applies to exports.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson
Ukraine is the biggest country besides Russia and Iran outside the 151-member WTO, which oversees global trade.

At a meeting in London late Wednesday, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Hryhoriy Nemyrya "sealed the final terms of the agreement" clearing the way for Ukraine's entry into the WTO, Mandelson said in a statement.

The EU was the last trade partner to have reservations about Ukraine's WTO membership.

"Today's agreement clears the way for Ukraine fully to join the world trading system," Mandelson said. "This is the first step toward greater Ukrainian integration with the global and the European economy."

He said the EU would soon begin negotiations for "a comprehensive free trade agreement with Ukraine."

Chile's WTO ambassador, Mario Matus, who chairs the working party on Ukraine's accession, said earlier this month that he hoped to have a meeting of WTO members in the second half of January to finalize the accession package, provided the export duty issue was resolved.

Source: Moscow Times

Britain Is Target In Ukraine’s People Smuggling Bonanza

LONDON, UK -- Chewing slices of pork fat at his house less than two miles from the border with Slovakia, a Ukrainian people smuggler broke into a grin studded with gold teeth as he predicted a sharp increase in trade this year.

Ukrainian border patrol
On December 21 border controls in much of eastern Europe were abolished as nine new European Union members implemented the Schengen agreement, which allows people to move between most EU countries without a passport check.

From Poland in the north through Slovakia and Hungary to Bulgaria in the south, the porous 1,800-mile Ukrainian border is now the EU’s final barrier against illegal immigrants.

For the smuggler, who claims to have helped hundreds of illegal immigrants into Slovakia, the end of passport controls on EU borders heralds a bonanza.

Migrants typically pay £5,000 ($10,000) to £10,000 ($20,000) to be guided across to the EU. In future, they will do so knowing they can reach France without an official check. Britain, which has not signed the Schengen agreement, represents a challenge but many of those arriving in northern France find a way to cross the Channel.

“More will try to cross from here in Ukraine,” the smuggler said. “First we’ve got a good track record as about 70% don’t get caught, and second because they will be able to travel across the EU without having to show their passports. I expect business to boom.”

Many of those entering the eastern EU countries are thought to be heading for Britain. Although the UK and Ireland have kept border controls, well-guarded frontier posts in Germany and Austria, where many illegals used to be stopped, have closed down. German police say the number of illegal immigrants found in random checks has more than doubled in three weeks.

The people smuggler, who spoke on condition that his identity was withheld, claimed to be part of an international criminal network that routinely pays off guards on Ukraine’s borders.

“Senior border guard officers are bribed,” he said. “I’m given a so-called ‘window’ - a time and a place when a particular stretch of the border won’t be patrolled, say 400 yards for a few hours. With that kind of deal, crossing with a group of illegals is easy.

“Not all border guards are corrupt, of course, but we have no problem finding enough who are willing to turn a blind eye.”

His claims raise fears that no matter how much security is reinforced with extra equipment and personnel, a surge of illegal immigrants will always be able to breach EU borders unless endemic corruption is curbed.

Last year Ukrainian border guards detained some 3,000 illegal immigrants from as far afield as China, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Somalia. Ukrainian anti-trafficking police estimate that only 20% of those trying to cross are caught. Detainees are held in a refugee camp in Mukhachevo, a small town 500 miles southwest of Kiev, the capital. Last week the camp held 400 migrants.

“I know some people in Birmingham and I’ve been told it’s easier to get to Britain now the Schengen rules have changed,” said Ahmed, a young Pakistani, who was caught trying to cross into Hungary and is now held at the camp. “They can send me back but I'll try again.”

Most immigrants caught by border guards make another attempt, despite having to pay a relative fortune to the smugglers.

The smuggler interviewed last week said that each migrant pays the total sum for the trip, up to £10,000 ($20,000), to a middleman. The money is then split several ways in the course of the journey between smugglers, border guards, drivers and minders.

“There are many wheels to grease,” the smuggler said. “Getting an illegal from his home village somewhere in southeast Asia all the way to Europe is complex. There’s a huge organisation behind it all, which on the Ukrainian leg alone involves dozens of people.”

More than half the illegal immigrants who cross into the EU via Ukraine go first to Moscow, often on official visas. They are crammed into safe houses, in some cases for months, before being driven into Ukraine, hidden in lorries in groups of up to 150 people. From Kiev, or the port city of Odessa, they are taken to border villages.

Impoverished and only a short walk from the border, the remote hamlets are said by police to be teeming with smugglers who conceal migrants in cellars and abandoned farmhouses before leading them across the border through thick woods and over steep hills. The smugglers use boys as guides because they cannot be prosecuted if caught. They take groups of up to 15 migrants.

“People in villages along the border have been into smuggling illegal immigrants across the border for years. It’s their main income,” said a senior Ukrainian police officer.

According to the smuggler, he is paid £500 ($1,000) per illegal immigrant, of which he keeps £100 ($200). The rest goes to his accomplices on both sides of the border. He claimed that in spring and summer, when most migrants are smuggled, he could easily earn £1,500 ($3,000) a month - more than 15 times the local monthly salary.

It can be a deadly crossing. Last September a Chechen woman tried to enter Europe with her four young children from hills on the Ukrainian side of the border, just a few miles from the smuggler’s village.

Walking alone she lost her bearings in heavy rain and falling temperatures. Panicked, she left behind her three daughters, aged between 6 and 13, to search for help. Polish border guards found her and her two-year-old son wandering aimlessly. But by the time they reached the girls, all had died from hypothermia.

Migrants are also at the mercy of criminal gangs who pose as smugglers. Recently 12 Chinese workers were held hostage by their minders. They were handcuffed in a cellar on Ukraine’s border with Slovakia and beaten and starved for several days.

Their captors forced them to phone home to ask relatives to wire more money. They escaped and police are investigating.

“No matter how much they tighten controls, we’ll always find a way across,” said the smuggler. “As far as I’m concerned, the expansion of Schengen is a blessing.”

Source: Times Online

Yanukovich Says Parliament Will Be Blocked Until NATO Letter Scandal Resolved

KIEV, Ukraine -- Opposition Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovich said the Verkhovna Rada’s work might continue to be blocked until the scandal that erupted after the parliament speaker had signed an appeal for Ukraine’s accession to the NATO membership action plan was resolved.

Russia's best ally in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich
“Negotiations will have to be held on this issue,” Yanukovich said on Saturday.

He condemned the fact that the top three persons in the country – the president, the prime minister, and the parliament speaker – had asked the NATO Secretary-General to admit Ukraine to the membership action plan “stealthily from society, the state and people”.

Yanukovich believes that “such decisions should be made openly and discussed nationwide”.

He noted that the general public had learned about the letter from U.S. Senator Richard Lugar. “Now state officials of such level must come out and explain to the people why they did it,” Yanukovich said.

On Friday, MPs from the Party of Regions and the Communist Party blocked the Verkhovna Rada’s work for a week and demanded that parliament speaker Arseny Yatsenyuk withdraw his signature from the appeal to the NATO Secretary-General.

In the letter, the president, the prime minister, and the parliament speaker asked the NATO leadership to include Ukraine in the membership action plan at the Alliance’s summit in April 2008 in Bucharest.

The opposition was outraged by the fact that the parliament speaker had signed the letter without consulting the lawmakers.

The scandal has been further fanned up by the fact that the appeal to the NATO Secretary-General was first mentioned by U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, after which the presidential secretariat had to announce the document.

Many political scientists and opposition politicians believe that “the appeal was prepared in Washington, not in Kiev”.

The Ukrainian foreign minister has already brought the letter to Brussels.

Source: ITAR-TASS

Is Anelka Planning To Replace Shevcheko?

LONDON, United Kingdom -- Ukraine striker Andriy Shevchenko has said he will not be forced out of Chelsea's attacking line-up by the arrival of Frenchman Nicolas Anelka.

Andriy Shevchenko (L) and Nicolas Anelka
Anelka, who joined last week from Bolton Wanderers in a £15 million ($30 million) deal, is looking forward to forging a partnership with Ivorian Didier Drogba at the Premier League club.

However, Saturday's Daily Express newspaper quoted Shevchenko, who is currently sidelined by an ankle injury, as saying he would fight to keep his place.

"I am not worried about other players coming to the club," said the 2004 European player of the year, who joined Chelsea from AC Milan for £30 million ($60 million) in 2006.

"I believe in my ability. I know that if I'm in good form I can be as good as any of the players here. I believe I can keep a place in this team.

"Before this injury I was feeling good," the 31-year-old added.

"I was in good form and I was scoring goals. I want to carry on that form when I come back.

"New players only make the squad here stronger and that is good for the club... a club like Chelsea is always going to bring good players in. That is what you expect. It means everybody has to fight that bit harder to get into the team. I am the same."

Source: IOL

Parliament Speaker:Ukraine's Entry To NATO's Action Plan Not Imply Automatic Membership

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's entry to NATO's membership action plan does not imply that the country will automatically become a member of the alliance, parliamentary chairman Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Friday.

Parliamen Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk
He pointed out there are some countries that have implemented NATO's membership action plan but have not become members of the alliance.

Yatsenynk said the stay of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine could be a factor determining Ukraine's future possible membership of the alliance.

"Ukraine's entry into the NATO will be linked to the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol (the port city in southern Ukraine). Thus, the controversial issue of Ukraine's future NATO membership should emerge until 2017, when the Russian fleet is supposed to leave the territory of Ukraine," Yatsenyuk said at a news conference.

According to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko traveled to Brussels on Friday and handed NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer a formal letter, signed by President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Parliamentary Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

The letter asks that Ukraine's bid to join NATO's membership action plan be considered at the alliance's summit in Bucharest, capital of Romania, in April this year.

NATO membership is a highly controversial issue in Ukraine.

Lawmakers from the Ukrainian Communist Party and the Party of Regions blocked the parliament's work on Friday, protesting the authorities' latest efforts to join NATO's membership action plan and demanding that Yatsenyuk recall his signature on the letter.

Source: Xinhua

Bird Flu Breaks Out In Southern Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- A new outbreak of bird flu has struck southern Ukraine this week, the country's Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement Friday.

H5N1 virus
The outbreak was detected in the village of Rifne on the Crimean peninsula, the same region that was struck in late 2005.

A total of 153 birds died suddenly during Jan. 15-17 at a private farm where more than 25,000 poultry birds were kept, the statement said.

DNA of the H5N1 virus was found by tests conducted late Thursday, the ministry said.

"The village has been sealed off, and guards have been posted at entry points and a quarantine is in place. All the birds are being incinerated," the ministry said.

Source: Xinhua News

Soccer-Ukraine Seeks Court Order To Resolve Euro Stadium Dispute

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's prosecutor general is seeking a court order to tear down a semi-built shopping centre next to the capital's Olympic stadium, which is due to host the Euro 2012 final, his office said on Thursday.

Olympic Plaza scale model
European soccer's governing body UEFA says the shopping centre makes it unsafe to use all 80,000 seats at the stadium because it blocks some exits. A decree from President Viktor Yushchenko has already demanded a halt to construction.

"Given that the construction breaks the law and building regulations, is dangerous for spectators, threatens the Olympic Stadium's operations and makes it impossible to host the Euro 2012 final, the general prosecutor has undertaken to oblige the (company building it) to dismantle it," a statement said.

UEFA President Michel Platini has already said the 2012 European Championship final cannot be held at the Kiev stadium unless the construction issue is resolved.

Capacity at the stadium, used by the national team and Dynamo Kiev for big matches such as the Champions League, has already been halved after UEFA's verdict on safety.

Poland and Ukraine, both ex-communist states, were chosen last year to co-host Euro 2012 and face a huge task to prepare top-level stadiums, build hotels and modernise infrastructure.

Source: Guardian

Ukraine PM Tymoshenko To Visit Brussels For First EU Mtgs

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's new Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko will visit Brussels at the end of the month for her first meetings with European Union leaders, the Ukrainian government said Thursday.

Yulia Tymoshenko will visit Brussels at month's end
Tymoshenko will meet Jan. 28-29 European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana and External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, her government said.

Meetings with E.U. Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs are also planned, the government press office said.

Tymoshenko, who was appointed prime minister one month ago, will make her first foreign visit on Sunday to Georgia for the investiture of pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili, who was reelected at the start of January.

Sandwiched between Poland and Russia, Ukraine is a key transit route for Russian natural gas to the E.U. and has had strained relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin since Tymoshenko and pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko led the 2004 "Orange Revolution".

In an interview published the day after she was confirmed as prime minister, Tymoshenko pledged "stable and harmonious" ties with Moscow despite naming a government that favors North Atlantic Treaty Organization and E.U. membership.

Source: AFP

US Senator Urges Broad Public Discussion Of NATO Membership In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- A senior US senator on Wednesday urged Ukraine to hold a broad public discussion on joining NATO - an issue that sharply divides this former Soviet republic where many are suspicious of the West.

US Senator Richard Lugar
Western-leaning President Viktor Yushchenko is pushing for membership of the military alliance, but opinion polls show more than half of Ukrainians are opposed to the idea. The government says a decision on whether to join NATO will be made based on a nationwide referendum.

"The United States certainly supports that vital discussion in this country," Senator Richard Lugar told The Associated Press in an interview.

Yushchenko stepped up his efforts Tuesday by formally requesting NATO's Membership Action Plan, a key step on the road to joining the alliance. He expressed hope that a decision on the plan could be reached at a NATO summit in April in Bucharest, Romania.

Ukraine's NATO bid also faces strong opposition from Russia, which has been angered by NATO's eastward expansion and deployments close to its borders.

Lugar, the leading Republican on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acknowledged that the discussion wouldn't be easy. "Other countries may want to enter into an international debate, they may have comments also," he said.

Lugar, who has devoted much of his career to nuclear safety and energy security, also urged Ukraine, which depends on Russia for most of its energy supplies, to develop its own oil and gas fields and consider alternative energy sources such as wind power.

"Very clearly there are resources in this country - oil and natural gas. This is going to require cooperation with international companies, with international investment," Lugar told the AP. "I am most hopeful that there will be a timetable that will be moved up to think through what resources there are available here."

Lugar expressed hope that relations with Washington would further strengthen after the government of pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko took office in December after months of political deadlock.

"Relations are excellent and my guess is that they will grow even stronger," Lugar said.

Yushchenko on Tuesday invited President George W. Bush to visit Ukraine in April. The US Embassy in Kyiv said such a visit was possible.

Source: Kyiv Post

Surviving Russia’s Drift To Fascism

MOSCOW, Russia -- Back in 1993-1994, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s sudden rise to prominence and the resonance that his openly chauvinistic and revanchist views found among elements of the Russian public gave rise to talk of a “Weimar Russia.”

Russia's Vladimir Putin
Zhirinovsky quickly self-destructed, and the Weimar Russia image soon faded. Unfortunately, it may be time to speak of a far more worrisome phenomenon — a post-Weimar, or even fascist Russia.

Contemporary Russia is remarkably similar to post-World War I Germany. Both countries emerged from imperial collapse and regime change and experienced massive economic hardship and political chaos. Their populations felt humiliated and their imperial identities were battered, and they responded by blaming their enemies, former colonies, disloyal minorities — and democracy. Both countries turned to nationalist, chauvinist, revanchist and neo-imperialist rhetoric, and embraced charismatic leaders promising to reestablish national glory, rebuild state power, and command international respect. Both rulers promptly abandoned democracy — to the applause of the majority of their populations.

These similarities suggest that it may be time to abandon such terms as managed or sovereign or hybrid democracy for today’s Russia. Even the term “authoritarian” may not be fully adequate. There are good reasons to think that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is acquiring all the characteristics of a fascist state.

Fascist states are non-democratic and hyper-nationalist and they glory in their greatness, but the most striking thing about them is their leader and his relationship with the population. The “supreme leaders” of fascist states always exude vigor and, by playing on popular fears, manage to implicate the population in its own repression. Fascist leaders claim to be youthful, manly, and active, and they form mass movements based on the young. And fascist leaders are wildly popular, successfully presenting themselves as embodiments of a nation’s best qualities.

Putin’s Russia shares most of these features. As the recent parliamentary elections showed, its democratic institutions have become pliant tools of the Kremlin. The siloviki dominate all ruling elites, Putin is the undisputed “national leader,” the Nashi youth movement has taken off, the Russian state is the object of official glorification. Hyper-nationalism, mistrust of foreigners and glorification of Russia’s Stalinist past have become official.

Like Mussolini, Putin favors stylish black clothing that connotes toughness and likes being photographed with weapons.

Although Putin’s Russia possesses many of the defining characteristics of fascism, they have not yet congealed into a consolidated political system. Russia today resembles Germany in 1933 or Italy in the mid-1920s. Russia could follow in their footsteps, or it could falter and find its way back to some form of democracy. Everything depends on whether Putin stays or really goes in the spring of 2008. If he stays, Russia will have taken another step toward full-fledged fascism. If he goes, Russian democracy will have gotten a slight reprieve.

Although fascism makes Russia look strong, it is also the source of several weaknesses. All fascist states scare their neighbors by their proclivity to engage in chest-beating. The tougher Russia gets, the tougher it sounds, and the more it gets involved in playing the great power that it no longer is—the greater the gap between its aspirations and capabilities and the greater the likelihood of overreach and foreign-policy disaster. The resulting militarism, fear of encirclement and tensions will, in the medium- to long-term, deplete and distort the economy, waste scarce resources and ultimately undermine the state.

Leadership cults only work as long as the founding leaders are still vigorous. When supreme leaders falter — as they inevitably do — or leave the scene, successor elites engage in cutthroat competition to assume the mantle of authority. As they weaken the regime’s foundations and expose the system as brittle, the state’s image as a Leviathan worthy of official and popular veneration crumbles. The next two years will be especially difficult for Russia, as it copes with a genuinely post-Putin political system or with a seemingly post-Putin system still run by Putin.

Humiliation is a weak foundation on which to build state and leader legitimacy. Although Russians currently want the reassuring guidance of a “vozhd” (chief), sooner or later they will cease feeling humiliated. When that happens, as it surely will (once their prosperity and exposure to the world and its blandishment increases), they will eventually abandon humiliation for more satisfactory forms of self-identification.

There’s little for the European Union or the United States to do about Russia’s alarming drift toward fascism. Regime change from outside doesn’t work, and even if it did, neither the EU nor the US has the resources or will to attempt it. And embargoes, boycotts, and other punitive measures are likely only to strengthen Russia’s fascist tendencies.

The West should learn from its response to Hitler. The democracies of interwar Europe may not have been able to prevent his rise, but they could have prevented Germany’s expansion into the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Today’s democracies — and above all Germany and France — must finally realize that Russia is not democratic.

The West must also appreciate that a fully fascist Russia is an immediate threat to its neighbors — the non-Russian states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Russia’s neighbors — and Ukraine and Belarus in particular — must therefore become at least as important to the foreign-affairs and business establishments of Europe and the US as Russia. is.

If Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia’s other non-Russian neighbors remain prosperous, stable, and sovereign, Russia’s fascist tendencies will play themselves out within Russia — possibly leading to the country’s implosion. Russians, who deserve better, will be the losers, but at least they’ll be the only losers.

Source: Kyiv Post

Euro-2012 Preparation Kicks Off

KIEV, Ukraine -- Nearly nine months following the announcement of Ukraine and Poland’s successful bid for the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, Ukraine has begun to allocate budget revenues to develop the country’s infrastructure.

Close presidential ally Yevhen Chervonenko, a retired car racer and long- time government official, was appointed head of a state agency responsible for preparing Ukraine for the Euro-2012 championship.
The coalition government led by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko allocated Hr 1.0 billion ($199.6 million) in the 2008 budget for the construction and redevelopment of Ukraine’s six strategic airports, and Hr 5.9 billion ($1.2 billion) for the development and maintenance of Ukraine’s roadways.

Although a significant investment on the government’s behalf, the budget funds will account for only a small part of the total cost of preparing and hosting the Euro-2012 tournament, said Idar Gazizullin, senior economist at the International Centre for Policy Studies (ICPS), a Kyiv-based think-tank.

Foreign investment will cover most of the cost needed to transform Ukraine into a suitable host for what is considered the world’s second largest football tournament behind the World Cup.

In the coming months, Ukraine’s task is to prove to the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that the football governing body was correct in awarding the tournament to the joint Ukraine-Poland bid.

Lucrative government tenders for infrastructure development are expected in the next few months, says Oleksandr Klymchuk of Concorde Capital, a Kyiv-based investment bank.

Renovation and reconstruction of Ukraine’s transportation network, including the road system and airports, is a top priority, observers said.

Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport needs expansion to four terminals by 2012, according to a Concorde Capital report on Euro-2012 preparations. It is envisioned that new terminals will be built by private investment infused by the Ukrainian Aerosvit airline, and by the state-controlled airport itself.

Another priority is the construction of new terminals and renovation of airports in the six Euro-2012 cities of Lviv, Kyiv, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk.

An option available to the Ukrainian government is to privatize the airports, experts said. Following in the footsteps of former Soviet bloc states in Eastern Europe, Georgia successfully revamped its Tbilisi and Batumi international airports with fresh capital infused through privatization.

The privatization of Ukrainian airports is viable for Ukraine, said Klymchuk, who prepared the report.

“Several municipal councils have expressed interest in the privatization option,” he said.

Recently, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko called for legislation encouraging private capital in airport infrastructure development, said Vitaliy Vavryshchuk, an analyst at Kyiv-based Dragon Capital.

The government is likely to allow the privatization of passenger servicing infrastructure installations such as terminals, he said.

However, it is unlikely to allow the privatization of airport runways because that may complicate further development of nearby infrastructure, Vavryshchuk said.

Ukraine’s Parliament is prepared to approve every law required to prepare for Euro-2012, he said. Among its main priorities will be to set interim tasks and specific deadlines for the responsible ministries, and to enforce their implementation.

Close presidential ally Yevhen Chervonenko will lead the government agency preparing for Euro-2012.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Tries Again With Telecom Privatisation

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's government on Wednesday decided to sell 67 percent of Ukrtelekom, a minister said, the latest move in 10 years of attempts to privatise a major stake in the dominant fixed-lined telecoms operator.


Transport and communications minister Yosip Vinsky, who said last month there was no need for a sell-off yet, told reporters the sale would take place at an open auction.

It is not unusual for sell-offs to be announced, scrapped or contested in court in the former Soviet state where the post-communist privatisation process has been opaque at best.

The list of firms for sale also included the Odessa Pre-port Plant, a major chemicals producer which was also put up for sale last year, and six small regional energy firms.

"They (the government) have decided on a list of privatisations, including Ukrtelekom -- 67 percent," Vinsky said after a regular cabinet meeting.

Last year, the previous government tried to sell five parcels of one percent stakes in Ukrtelekom on the domestic market to test the water for a 38-percent stake sale abroad but was stymied by legal action.

Between 2000 and 2001, the government sold 7.14 percent of Ukrtelekom to the firm's workers and foreign investors. Some of that stake is now traded on Ukraine's illiquid stock exchange.

Ukrtelekom, which became the sixth firm to enter Ukraine's mobile telephone market in November, estimated its 2007 revenues at 7.765 billion hryvnias ($1.55 billion) from fixed-line services, below the 7.879 billion hryvnias it earned in 2006.

The auction of the Odessa Pre-port Plant, expected to fetch more than its $500 million price tag, was halted by President Viktor Yushchenko shortly after it was announced because he said it would hand the buyer an unfair advantage in chemical exports.

Because of delays in both the Ukrtelekom and Odessa sales, the government of former Viktor Yanukovich undershot its 2007 target for privatisation revenues, earning just $475 million from an anticipated $2.1 billion.

The new government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said on Wednesday it was convinced it would more than achieve its target of $1.6 billion this year.

"The government will sell (the assets) via open auctions ... in order to receive the maximum amount of revenues. This year we will receive significantly higher revenues than is envisaged in the (2008) budget," Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk said.

Source: Guardian UK

Ukraine Seeking To Speed NATO Accession

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine on Tuesday sought to dramatically accelerate its accession to NATO by formally asking the alliance for permission to join the Membership Action Plan, the last program preceding accession, in April.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Parliamentary Speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk signed the formal request in a letter submitted to NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

“We hope the progress achieved by Ukraine within the Intensive Dialog for the Membership will soon be recognized by the alliance,” the letter, posted on the president’s website, said. “Now, Ukraine is interested in joining the Membership Action Plan.”

NATO and Ukraine are due to hold a summit in April in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, and this is where Kiev hopes to join the MAP. Although there are no deadlines, a country usually joins NATO between one and two years after joining the MAP.

“We count on the fact that the level of our country’s readiness for the new commitments will become the ground for a positive response during the next summit in April,” the letter said.

Ukraine’s joining of NATO is vehemently opposed by Russia, which views former Soviet countries as area of its own national interests. But NATO has successfully expanding to the East and already includes three former Soviet republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Russia has repeatedly threatened to launch economic sanctions against Ukraine, including severing military and defense cooperation, in the event that Ukraine joins NATO.

Ukraine’s stated readiness to join the MAP within the next three months underscores a major breakthrough on the way of the country’s accession to the alliance.

The same request was expected to be submitted by Ukraine in September 2006, but heavy opposition to the plan from then-Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian figure, had put the issue on hold.

A foreign policy clash between Yushchenko and Yanukovych grew into a serious constitutional crisis in May 2007, forcing the president to dismiss Parliament. Pro-Western parties jointly outperformed their pro-Russian rivals at the snap election in September 2007, eventually leading to a change of the government.

Admission to NATO requires countries to meet such criteria as having a stable, democratic political system, a working market economy, democratic control of their armed forces and neighborly relations.

“Completely sharing European democratic values the country sees itself as a part of the Euro-Atlantic security space and is ready together with NATO and its partners to counteract joint security threats,” the letter said.

Ukraine has been actively cooperating with NATO since its independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, but the country has been making slow progress in actually joining the alliance due to domestic politics and heavy opposition from Russia.

Source: Ukrainian Journal

New Ukrainian Prime Minister Launches State Audits, Savings Payouts

KIEV, Ukraine -- Having barely formed her Cabinet of Ministers, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko got down to business. She resumed several campaigns that she had launched when she was prime minister in 2005 but were dismissed by her successors as too “populist.”

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
In addition to starting to reshape the energy market, she also began to compensate Ukrainians for savings lost amid the 1991 Soviet Union dissolution.

“I want us to start getting used to politicians fulfilling obligations taken during elections,” Tymoshenko told ICTV. She promised a lot in the run-up to the September 2007 election which swept her back to the prime minister’s chair.

If she fails to deliver on her promises – such as fighting corruption, removing intermediaries from the gas trade with Russia, increasing wages and pensions, and reimbursing Soviet-era savings – the presidential election campaign of 2009 will be lost for her before it starts.

Meeting the new head of the Naftohaz Ukrainy national oil and gas company, Oleh Dubyna, on January 2, Tymoshenko pledged to save Naftohaz from bankruptcy. She appointed her long-time right-hand man, First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchynov, to chair a commission to check Naftohaz’s activities in 2006-2007.

Naftohaz operated at a loss during the period. It accumulated a multi-billion dollar debt and failed to come up with a timely financial report for 2006, so it is teetering on the brink of default. Tymoshenko said that the Ukrainian state would guarantee Naftohaz’s debts, after which Fitch upgraded Naftohaz’s senior unsecured rating from “B+” to “BB–.”

By checking Naftohaz, Tymoshenko will not only improve the company’s performance, but the move also shows that Naftohaz’s interests, as well as national interests, were damaged by her predecessors’ reliance on one intermediary in gas trade with Russia.

Tymoshenko insists that RosUkrEnergo, a Swiss-registered joint-venture between Gazprom and Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash, should cease to be the monopoly supplier of natural gas to Ukraine. However, her opponents warn that changing the existing scheme may result in higher gas prices for Ukraine.

On January 8, Tymoshenko ordered a comprehensive audit of the coal industry. “I want miners, their families, and the whole society to learn about every instance of abuse in the coal sector,” she said. Ukraine’s coal mines have been among the main sources of wealth for Tymoshenko’s arch-rivals from the Party of Regions (PRU), whose stronghold is Donbas, Ukraine’s main mining region.

On January 9, Tymoshenko announced that the “Contraband, Stop!” campaign would be re-launched. In 2005 Tymoshenko had lowered import duties on goods like fruit and mobile phones, simultaneously purging the ranks of the customs service. Among other things, the campaign targeted smuggling across the border with Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region. “Contraband, Stop!” was shelved under Tymoshenko’s successors.

The re-privatization campaign may also be re-launched. It scared many potential investors and was arguably one of the main reasons behind Tymoshenko’s dismissal by President Viktor Yushchenko in September 2005.

On January 10, the Supreme Court threw out an appeal against an earlier court ruling that invalidated the privatization of the Luhansk locomotive plant in 2007. Both Tymoshenko and Yushchenko believe that the
plant’s sale to a Russian company was not transparent.

On January 12, Tymoshenko said that Nikopol Ferroalloys Plant (NFZ) should be re-nationalized. NFZ was sold in 2003 to Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of the then-President Leonid Kuchma. Tymoshenko pledged to return NFZ to the state in 2005, but although courts invalidated the deal in 2005-2006, court rulings have been ignored.

On January 9, Tymoshenko also launched an ambitious campaign to repay lost Soviet-era savings. Neither of the former Soviet republics has managed to reimburse them. This is a serious test for Tymoshenko’s ability to muster popular support. Her presidential election chances will depend to a great extent on the success of this particular campaign, as millions of unfortunate depositors are involved.

The campaign’s beginning has not been very successful, which may undermine popular trust in Tymoshenko. First, the state budget provides for only a fraction of the sum that is to be repaid. The rest should come from privatization proceedings in 2008-2009, whose volume is hard to predict.

Second, Tymoshenko equated the Ukrainian hryvnya to the Soviet ruble, which was considerably stronger, so depositors will receive much less than actually was lost. Third, only 1,000 hryvnyas ($200) will be compensated in cash per depositor, irrespective of the actual size of the deposit. Fourth, the campaign has been poorly organized.

The elderly have to spend hours in lines, and they are poorly informed about the procedures. One old man died of a heart attack outside a bank in Zaporizhya, and one elderly lady had her leg broken in a stampede at a bank in Cherkasy.

Tymoshenko’s rivals seized the opportunity to expose the campaign’s weaknesses. The PRU press service accused Tymoshenko of “seeking publicity at any cost.” “People are being fooled, receiving just 1,000 hryvnyas for the lost deposits,” the Party of Free Democrats said in a statement.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Airspan Announces 5 GHz WiMAX Deployments In Ukraine

PALM BEACH, FL -- Airspan Networks Inc., a leading worldwide provider of WiMAX broadband wireless access networks, announced today that its MicroMAX products in the 5 GHz frequency band have been successfully deployed in the Ukraine.


Ten national and regional carriers have won frequency licenses in the 5 GHz band during the recent competitive tenders carried out by the Ukraine National Committee of Telecommunications Regulations and are now beginning to deploy WiMAX networks.

Airspan is currently supplying five of these carriers with its WiMAX solutions and they are offering commercial services in Odessa, Lviv, Zaporojie, and Donetsk.

WiMAX networks in 5 GHz are also planned in other large Ukrainian cities.

Airspan is working with its partner, Unidata, one of Ukraine's leading network integrators and distributors of broadband wireless access equipment.

MicroMAX offers carriers operating in 5 GHz a standards-based alternative to competitors' proprietary equipment for this spectrum band.

Combining high data rates and QoS features of WiMAX with unique interference mitigating technologies, MicroMAX in 5 GHz offers carriers a roadmap for technology advancement from Airspan, the leading provider of frequency bands for WiMAX.

This frequency band is used in many worldwide markets as a regulated band.

"Airspan is the clear leader in supplying WiMAX solutions in the 5 GHz frequency band and is now supplying to 50% of the license holders in Ukraine. We see a proliferation of the 5 GHz technology in this fast growing market as it is well suited to offer our customers high quality data, VoIP, interactive Video over IP and IPTV services with high reliability," commented Anders Rendahl, Airspan's Senior Vice President of Sales and General Manager of EMEA.

"Our technology is also gaining rapid adoption in the unlicensed 5 GHz applications around the world."

MicroMAX is a family of highly integrated micro-cell base stations with all-in-one outdoor packaging of RF and base-band components.

Performance optimized variants for high density roof-top deployments and cost optimized variants for low density/rural deployments are available.

Source: CNN Money

Leonid Kuchma: I Am Concerned By The Uncertain Prospects For The Country's Development

MOSCOW, Russia -- In January it will be three years since the inauguration of the current Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, who succeeded Leonid Kuchma. In an interview with RIA Novosti, Leonid Kuchma shared his vision of Ukraine today and in the near future.

Ex-President Leonid Kuchma

You said in your time that you would like to see how Ukraine would live without Kuchma. Ukraine has changed dramatically over the past three years. In fact in political terms it is another country. What do you think about Ukraine without Kuchma?

"Ukraine without Kuchma" has entered its fourth year, but neither the president nor any of the governments have bothered to fulfill their constitutional duty and publicly present the goals and prospects of the state policy.

So, my answer to your question will take it from here: like all my fellow citizens I am worried most of all about the uncertain prospects for the country's development, the lack of even a hint at a consistent policy, or any logic in reforms.

The people, like myself, find this uncertainty more depressing than anything else. Which way are we moving? Are we reverting to socialism or do we continue building a market economy?

But if you ask me what I think about Ukraine without Kuchma, actually things might have been worse. Of course, the sharp rise in gas prices came as a heavy blow. But the economy did not collapse. That is the main thing. The political and business leaders have realized that they have to rely only on themselves.

They started introducing energy saving technologies and have already made some progress along that way. If somebody thinks that looking at "Ukraine without Kuchma" I gloat over its shortcomings, they are mistaken. I am so glad to see anything positive that the negatives sometimes simply recede into the background.

Did President Yushchenko act legitimately in dissolving the Ukrainian parliament and calling a snap parliamentary election in 2007? What would you have done in the face of the situation that prevailed at the Supreme Rada in the early 2007?

Opinions may vary about the events of the past years. But there is no getting away from the fact that the events in the late 2004 and early 2005, like the early parliamentary elections last year, have happened and one has to reckon with it. But President Yushchenko's decision to dissolve the Supreme Rada was not legitimate in terms of the Constitution as I understand it.

You carried out a political reform in Ukraine in your time. Which of your ideas and proposals remain relevant today?

An authoritarian form of government by a tsar who is "the father of all Ukrainians" is impossible in Ukraine. We have a different mentality than people in Russia. So the parliamentary-presidential system is a political power structure that best suits our country.

The reform came as a result of a prolonged and very complicated political process. I played a major role, but I cannot claim all the credit for carrying out the reform. I am not saying it to appear modest, but to clarify the gist of the matter.

I would like to remind you of the 2000 referendum, whose results I never had a chance to put into practice. Under the Constitution it was the Supreme Rada and not the people who had the final say, and the Rada had not endorsed the results of the referendum. The referendum could be regarded as a forerunner of reforms.

It demonstrated that the president had the right, under certain circumstances, to dissolve parliament. Take the issue of a two-chamber parliament. I think life has brought it home to every sober-minded politician that Kuchma was right on that issue. In due course the Ukrainian parliament is sure to have two chambers.

The fact that the reform, even in a truncated form, had been implemented in 2004 is a big plus. Of course, I could not foresee all the clashes connected with the proportional system of elections. I mean two things: first, the readiness of political parties and, second, the mechanisms of implementing the multi-party principles.

It is our duty to perfect the electoral system mechanisms. But we are moving little by little towards the European parliamentary practice, and I believe the coalition government is a big plus, especially in the Ukrainian context. Otherwise what would have been the point of introducing a system of party elections?

President Yushchenko seeks to introduce amendments to the country's Constitution that would give him back more powers as president. To what extent will these changes help to improve the political climate in the country?

I don't know what the changes will be and I don't want to engage in guesswork. I don't think that giving the president extra powers would be good for our country. And not all the leading political forces would accept that. In any case it is important that these changes do not go beyond the parliamentary-presidential form of power. And secondly, they must be constitutionally legitimate and must have the parliament's approval.

In general, tweaking the rules can go on endlessly. The main thing is to fulfill what is written down, not to depart from the Constitution, the laws and procedures, whether you like them or not. An awareness and admission of that simple truth would do more than anything else to improve the political climate in the country.

I hope it will happen. We have a very strong opposition, which is recognized and reckoned with by the authorities. And those in power in turn recognize that they may become the opposition at any moment. It is an important guarantee that everything will happen in a more or less normal way in the future.

How accurately does the present composition of the parliament reflect the political map of Ukraine?

The reflection is always relative. The only thing I object to is a one-party parliament system which is taking root in some CIS countries. And I would rather see the threshold of the percentage of votes required to get seats in parliament decreased than increased, as some politicians in Ukraine propose. Such a parliament by definition would lack the main feature of parliamentarism.

Russian-Ukrainian relations are practically at a dead end. What are the reasons for the cooling of relations between the leaders of what are in fact two fraternal countries?

A cooling of relations cannot contribute to the development of any country, especially Ukraine. But I wouldn't describe the situation as a dead end. The relations between Ukraine and Russia are not confined to the relations between their leaders. Last year alone trade between our countries rose by more than 30% (there is no accurate data available).

Perhaps that indicator reflects the absence of meetings that you mention. Of course, I am exaggerating, I am in favor of regular meetings between our heads of state, especially if they bring results. I have always followed that principle.

But life is always more diverse than our established ideas. The main principle in the development of economic ties is to set no obstacles. I think the same principle is important in the humanitarian sphere. As for politics, it is a servant of economic, humanitarian and social relations.

Let us proceed on that basis. And I must stress that no official is able to change the fraternal relations between our peoples. One can make them more dynamic or slow them down for a while but one cannot "cancel" them. Lack of regular meetings between the presidents does not add luster to the names of Victor Yushchenko or Vladimir Putin. The Russian president should be more active in this area if only out of respect for the multimillion diaspora.

To what extent would Ukrainian membership of the European Union and NATO meet the country's interests? And how will the Russian leadership react to these plans?

In principle I am in favor of that move. I presented a detailed document, the Ukrainian "European Choice" strategy, to the parliament back in 2002. My position on the issue is as follows: before we join Europe we must tackle three basic tasks at home. First, become a viable state, second, have a competitive economy and, third, become a nation with an established national identity.

You understand that these are global long-term tasks. Such integration presupposes an active policy not only towards the West but also towards the East and an all-round deepening of cooperation with Russia. By the way, this point was repeatedly made by the leaders of the EU, European countries and the United States. The EU is not interested in having a Ukraine that is separated from Russia by a "Chinese wall". As I see it, over the past years we have not drawn closer but have become more distant from the European Union.

If you look at economic relations, statistics speak for themselves: the EU share in the Ukrainian foreign trade has dropped in the last three years. So, I have been and remain a supporter of large-scale cooperation with Russia within the common economic space. And the sooner we realize it the better for Ukraine. Otherwise we will remain an industrial-agrarian backwater.

As regards NATO, my position is also known and it has not changed. I am in favor of more active cooperation with the Alliance. By the way, that is what Russia is doing on a broader scale. As for membership, the decision must be taken by the entire nation in a referendum.

I personally would vote against it. I think the best status for Ukraine today would be that of a neutral state. In saying so I am following the principle that puts internal policy above external policy.

How justified is the demand of the Party of Regions that Russian be introduced as the second official language in Ukraine?

To begin with, this is not a political demand, but a promise to seek the introduction of a second official language. That was one of the many serious political mistakes of the Party of Regions, which I think deprived it of the electoral support in the Western parts of Ukraine. And anyway, they knew full well that parliament would not back this position and that a constitutional majority would be required.

That said, the Party of Regions should have tabled such a draft law as soon as it won seats in parliament because it was one of its electoral pledges. But I do not approve of politicians, on the right or on the left, using the language problem as a political football. It is a sensitive issue in all countries. And we are no exception. It is my deep conviction that the Constitution offers a good framework for the solution of all the existing language problems, including the problem of the Russian language in Ukraine, which admittedly is becoming more acute.

The Russian language should not be regarded as a foreign language in Ukraine. The Constitution says that the state guarantees the free development, use and protection of the Russian language. And indeed Ukraine has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. So, it has to comply with it.

Source: RIA Novosti

Businesses Embrace Charity Despite Tax Hurdles

KIEV, Ukraine -- The philanthropic practices of Ukraine’s most generous donors are receiving more attention as NGOs and businesses work together to promote the practice of corporate philanthropy within the nation’s business community.


Novynar, the Ukrainian-language sister publication of the Kyiv Post, named the top-15 Ukrainian philanthropists of 2007 in its first ever Philanthropist ratings published on Dec. 17.

Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law to former president Leonid Kuchma, was rated as the most generous philanthropist of the year, giving a total of Hr 103.5 million ($20.7 million) to culture and health services charities.

The list of the top 15 philanthropists included well-known business and entertainment figures, as well as politicians, who gave money for a range of charitable causes, including education, assistance to children, cultural preservation, health services and AIDS prevention.

Others ranked in the top five included Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov (2), who gave Hr 78.8 million ($15.76 million) in 2007, industrialist Serhiy Taruta (3) with Hr 30 million ($6 million), lawmaker and businessman Oleksandr Feldman (4), with Hr 11 million ($2.2 million) and Kuchma’s daughter Olena Franchuk (5), with Hr 7.9 million ($1.58 million). Franchuk is married to Pinchuk.

The rating is irrespective of political ratings, business conflicts, and moral aspects, or the source of the funds, according to authors Tetyana Kharchenko and Yaroslava Naumova.

“We only offer names and amounts – it is up to the reader to decide who the top philanthropists truly are,” both said in a statement.

On Dec. 13, a group of NGOs held Ukraine’s very first “Philanthropist of the Year” awards.

The selection committee recognized the top nationwide philanthropists in five categories: international company, Ukrainian company, financial institution, charitable foundation and institution. The awards were presented by Dytyachyi Svit, the Ukraine 3000 charitable foundation, the Ukrainian Forum of Grant Makers and the Center of Philanthropy.

More than 20 companies were nominated for awards. Avon Cosmetics Ukraine won the award in the category of International Company. Home appliance supermarket chain Foxtrot won in the category of Ukrainian company of the year, and for financial institution, the award was given to the Poltava Kredyt credit union.

A growing trend

Corporate philanthropy is becoming “widespread” in Ukraine, according to Barbara Felitti, country director of the Ukrainian Citizens Action Network (UCAN), a program funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) which supports advocacy initiatives by citizens that address issues important to Ukrainians.

UCAN works primarily with civil society organizations and one of its core activities is to make philanthropy more effective and transparent in Ukraine.

“When I first got here, people said ‘Oh, there’s not a lot of corporate philanthropy going on in Ukraine. Then as people started to do research … they found out that there is a lot of charitable giving, it was just done quietly,” Felitti said.

Felitti said it’s hard to know all of the reasons for this. It could partially be due to the Ukrainian cultural tradition of “Metsenat,” translated as philanthropist in English.

“It was always seen that companies had a responsibility to give back to the community,” said Felitti.

Ukrainians prefer more traditional ways and areas – work with orphans, cultural heritage, education, health, Felitti added.

Ukrainian companies can receive a tax credit in the following year if they donate between 2 to 5 percent of their profits from the previous year to charity. However, if their donations equal less than 2 percent of profit, they don’t receive that tax credit, creating a disincentive to companies to accurately report their giving practices, Felitti said.

“The minimum needs to be removed,” she added.

Last year, approximately Hr 2 billion ($400 million) was donated from reported corporate income of Hr 75 billion ($15 billion) for a combined average of 2.6%.

Additionally, businesses who establish their own corporate funds need to start giving more transparently, according to Felitti.

Businesses need to start approaching their giving in the same way as business – as “investments,” Felitti said.

Many of the large Ukraine corporate holdings give through their own charitable funds, such as System Capital Management’s (Akhmetov’s industrial holdings) Development of Ukraine Fund, or Viktor Pinchuk’s Foundation, which gives out arts, culture and education grants.

Source: Kyiv Post

Report: U.S. Money Helps Recruit Weapons Scientists In Russia, Ukraine

SAN FRANCISCO, USA -- If you're worried about nuclear terrorism, it makes sense, at face value, to support nonproliferation programs, particularly those that target the former Soviet Union. The problem, however, is that money can't always buy you security.


Nothing illustrates this dilemma better than a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO says that no only does the Department of Energy overstate success in one of its key nonproliferation programs, but perhaps even more troubling, U.S. funding, intended to ensure that Soviet-era weapons scientists don't end up working for rogue states, is actually being used to recruit young scientists to work at weapons facilities.

Instead of supporting Soviet-era WMD scientists as a way of minimizing proliferation risks, officials at 10 nuclear and biological institutes in Russia and Ukraine told us that IPP program funds help them attract, recruit, and retain younger scientists and contribute to the continued operation of their facilities.

This is contrary to the original intent of the program, which was to reduce the proliferation risk posed by Soviet-era weapons scientists.

For example, about 972 of the scientists paid for work on these 97 projects were born in 1970 or later, making them too young to have contributed to Soviet-era WMD efforts.

Second, although DOE asserts that through April 2007, the IPP program had helped create 2,790 long-term, private sector jobs in Russia and other countries, we were unable to substantiate the existence of many of these jobs in our review of 48 of the 50 projects DOE considers to be commercial successes.

There's another issue here, of course. Russia, right now, is flush with money from oil and natural gas exports, raising the issue of why, over 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow can't find the money to support and secure its own WMD infrastructure.

Source: Wired

Dixie Lee Prepares To Serve The Real Chicken Kiev

DALLAS, USA -- Dixie Lee International Industries, Inc., parent company of the 40-year-old "Dixie Lee" brand name, with more than 80 franchised Chicken & Seafood restaurants open, announces the opening of the latest franchised restaurant in Kiev, Ukraine.


Dave Silvester, Executive Vice President of Dixie Lee Chicken & Seafood, is preparing to take his Grand Opening team to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, for the opening of the latest international Dixie Lee franchise, scheduled to open January 15th.

"We're very excited about this restaurant. We've been in the chicken business for 40 years, and we'll be finally serving the real Chicken Kiev -- in Kiev," he said.

"We have a great Master Franchise owner there, Dr. Charles U. Iroanya, and we've been planning this for some time, as part of our international expansion. Kiev is the largest city in Ukraine, with over two and a half million people. Our location is close to the city center and next to one of their largest sports stadiums, the Olimpiysky National Sports Complex," said Silvester.

Kiev will house the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship. Three group matches, a quarter final and the final are scheduled to be played at the Olimpiyskyi stadium.

"It took almost a full year to design and acquire permits for this ambitious upscale restaurant for our location. In fact, we're already in negotiations for the second location, and there are three more planned to open in the next three years," Mr. Silvester added. "We're confident Kiev will love our chicken. As we expand in the country, we may have to create another entrée called Chicken Ukraine, too."

Source: Dixie Lee Industries

EBRD Invested Nearly $1 Bln In Ukraine In ‘07

KIEV, Ukraine -- The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) closed out 2007 with $935 million in projects throughout the year.

EBRD headquarters in London
Landmark deals included a $100 million loan to Galnaftohaz to expand the OKKO gasoline station network, a $100 million deal to assist IKEA’s entry into the country’s booming consumer market and a $100 million loan to Kyiv public transportation entities.

Overall, ERBD’s investment in Ukraine declined slightly, about 10% over the previous year. Bank spokesman, Anton Usov, said the decline was “due to the fact that 2006 was such a remarkable year in which we exceeded our business plan; not to any slowdown in bank operations.”

The EBRD is set to begin 2008 with a flurry of project signings, valued at $450 million during the first quarter alone.

Highlights include a $220 million loan to the Rivne-Kyiv high power-line and a $139 million loan to assist the O’Key hypermarket chain open three outlets.

An EBRD spokesman stated that Ukraine has made “remarkable progress on the path toward establishing an enduring European-style representative democracy, yet significant hurdles remain”.

Specifically, Anton Usov said, “Ukraine needs to strengthen the court system, increase transparency, rationalize land use law and, perhaps most important, a period of political sustained stability.”

As a tribute to Ukraine’s impressive economic growth and political transformation the EBRD will hold its annual shareholders’ meeting in Kyiv on 18-19 May 2008.

The EBRD is the largest private foreign investor in Ukraine. Since 1993, the EBRD has invested $4.5 Billion in over 150 projects throughout the country.

Source: Kyiv Post

Russia Says Cannot Make Dioxin Used In Yushchenko Poisoning

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russian prosecutors claim dioxin of the quality found in the Ukrainian president's blood is not produced in Russia, Ukrainian news agency UNIAN said on Saturday.

Yushchenko before and after dioxin poisoning.
The agency cited Ukraine's Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko as saying that this was a response by the Russian Prosecutor General's Office to a request by Ukraine as part of a probe into the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko during his 2004 election campaign.

"In the answer we have received, the Russian side claims dioxin of the quality specified in our letter is not produced there," Medvedko told a news conference.

He added referring to the letter that dioxin of that kind had been produced in Russia some time earlier but had never been exported.

Medvedko said his office had sent another letter to Russia with a request for details.

Yushchenko fell ill shortly after a dinner September 5, 2004 with the then security service head Ihor Smeshko, and his deputy, Volodymyr Satsiuk, whom he invited to discuss the election campaign.

On September 6, Ukrainian doctors diagnosed food poisoning, and on September 10, as he failed to improve, Yushchenko was taken to the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna, which he left later in the month for the election campaign.

Medical experts involved, including from the U.S., Austria and Great Britain, were divided over the cause of the illness, but in late 2004 the Rudolfinerhaus clinic finally confirmed that he had indeed been poisoned with dioxin.

In September 2007, Yushchenko said in an interview with Britain's The Times that Russia thwarted the probe into his poisoning by refusing to offer samples of dioxin produced in the country.

On September 13, Russia agreed to assist the probe and invited Ukrainian experts.

Source: RIA Novosti

Strategy And Tactics Of Euro-Atlantic Integration

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s path to Trans-Atlantic and European integration has not been as rapid as envisaged following the Orange Revolution. After the Sept. 2007 parliamentary elections an orange coalition was established with a government headed by Yulia Tymoshenko.

Ukraine should strive for both EU and NATO memberships.
If an orange coalition and orange president can maintain political unity for the short term (until the 2009 presidential elections) and medium term (until the next parliamentary elections in 2012) the next five years could constitute an important breakthrough in Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy, including its integration into the full range of Trans-Atlantic and European structures.

Ukraine’s Relations with NATO

In April 2008 at NATO’s Bucharest summit, three Western Balkan states – Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia – will be invited to join NATO. All three have had Membership Action Plans (MAPs) since 1999-2002. The only remaining former Yugoslav state still seeking NATO membership is possibly Montenegro which may receive an invitation to join a MAP at the 2008 summit. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia are disinterested in NATO membership.

In NATO’s decade-long enlargement process its major test will be to enlarge the organization into the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Although four countries belong to the GUAM regional organization (comprised of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) only two of them – Georgia and Ukraine – seek to join NATO. Until the autumn 2007 political crisis in Georgia it was assumed that the country was on target to receive a MAP at the 2008 NATO summit.

Georgia and Ukraine had always been treated as one group by the US and NATO for NATO membership prospects. But, three factors have worked towards the group dividing and Georgia had moved ahead of Ukraine. Firstly, support for NATO membership in Georgia is 61 percent (according to a January referendum) and has broad political support within the ruling authorities and the opposition. In Ukraine’s parliament only the two orange forces support NATO membership (although the Tymoshenko government may not support a presidential request to seek a MAP in Bucharest). Another three political forces are either against (Communists) or ambivalent (Lytvyn bloc and the Party of Regions). Secondly, Ukraine has devoted the majority of its energy since the Orange Revolution to defusing domestic crises, implementing constitutional reforms and holding two elections, leading to the failure to grasp an opportunity to enter MAP at the Nov. 2006 Riga summit. Thirdly, Georgia’s security situation vis-a-vis Russia is more precarious than that of Ukraine.

Georgia’s autumn 2007 crisis may be bad for Georgia, as it may postpone its entrance into a MAP, but this could prove to be fortuitous for Ukraine. Georgia’s failure to enter a MAP in 2008 will give Ukraine a second chance to re-join the NATO membership queue together with Georgia (rather than alone). Both countries could strive for a MAP in 2009-2010, after the Ukrainian presidential elections (assuming an orange candidate won), followed by NATO membership in 2010-2012 before, or after, the next parliamentary elections.

Ukraine’s advantage over Georgia is that it has fulfilled yearly Action Plans with NATO since 2003. Introduced at the 2002 Prague NATO summit these Action Plans are unique to Ukraine. As the Action Plans cover military, security and political-economic issues, a Ukraine-NATO Action Plan could, without too much effort, be converted into a Ukraine-NATO Membership Action Plan. The first Viktor Yanukovych government implemented the first two Action Plans in 2003-2004.

The addition of the word “Membership” to “Action Plan” would be significant in showing that Ukraine was moving towards membership. Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer said, “We told Ukrainian officials in early 2003 that the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan agreed at the November 2002 Prague summit was 90-95 percent of a MAP. The main difference was in the title.”

The length of time that countries experience in MAPs is different for each state and dependent on the range of reforms that need to be undertaken. If Ukraine were to join a MAP in 2009-2010 (together with Georgia) this would mean that it had already fulfilled seven yearly Action Plans prior to this. Ukraine’s length of time spent in a MAP could be therefore short as the majority of the required reforms would have already been undertaken in Action Plans since 2003.

A referendum on NATO membership is only undertaken on one occasion and usually on the eve of achieving membership. Only 51 percent is required to endorse the referendum. Until the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and anti-American campaigns launched by the authorities in the 2002 and 2004 elections, support for NATO membership was backed by one third of Ukrainians, with one third against and another third undecided. If this balance of public opinion was to be again reached (for example, following the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq under a new US President in 2009) then a 50 percent plus majority could be obtained. A vigorous information campaign would need to be undertaken from now and throughout the MAP.

Ukraine’s Relations with the EU

Ukraine’s relations with the EU are very different to those of NATO. Whereas NATO has always held an open door to Ukraine’s potential membership the EU has undertaken double standards and lack of strategic vision. Nevertheless, NATO membership has traditionally been a stepping stone to EU membership for all post-communist states. Ukraine cannot follow the path of EU neutral members Ireland, Austria, Sweden and Finland who do not desire NATO membership.

The countries of the CIS were never slated for EU membership after the collapse of communism and membership was only offered to central-eastern European countries and the Baltic states. Within this group of countries, the slower reformers did not perform much better than Ukraine. Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria had similar difficulties in their post-communist transitions of slow reform, entrenched post-communist elites, corruption and weak democratic reformers. The advantage these three countries had was that the EU offered them membership which encouraged reform.

All central-eastern European countries and the Baltic States had to prove their commitment to fulfilling the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria adopted by the EU. By 1999-2000, when the EU began membership talks, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria had not made sufficient progress in reform to warrant such a step. Nevertheless, the EU went ahead and gave membership to Slovakia in 2004 and Romania and Bulgaria in 2007.

A second case of double standards was the offer made in 1999-2000 to the Western Balkan states of Stabilization and Accession Agreements (SAA) that held out the prospect of future membership. None of these countries had proven their commitment to reform in the 1990s and the SAA’s were a purely political and geopolitical strategy by the EU to prevent a return to ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Macedonia was offered candidate status by the EU in 2001 as an inducement to end its civil war.

Today, Ukraine is as advanced in its reforms as these slow reformers in central-eastern Europe and the western Balkans but it continues to be denied membership prospects by the EU. Ukraine has either been denied membership by the EU because it was seen as outside “Europe” (by being in the Eurasian CIS and closely linked to Russia), a view commonly held in Western Europe in the 1990s, or because it had peacefully resolved its ethnic problems and did not experience a civil war (unlike the former Yugoslavia). Ukraine was in effect being ‘punished’ for joining the CIS in 1991 (unlike the three Baltic States) and not having had a civil war (unlike the Western Balkans).

Ukraine was therefore offered in Feb. 2005 the rather demeaning membership of the European Neighborhood Plan (ENP) with a three year Action Plan. Ukraine would have received the ENP Action Plan regardless of whether Viktor Yanukovych or Yushchenko had won the 2004 elections. The EU largely ignored the Orange Revolution.

The geographic distribution of ENP members reflects the fact that that the EU’s policy towards Ukraine is ill thought out. ENP members include non-European states in Northern Africa and the Middle East as well as three European countries: Ukraine, Moldova and – since 2007 – Belarus. The ENP does not include the Western Balkans (with Stabilization and Accession Agreements) or Turkey (a candidate member since 2005) while Russia has excluded itself preferring to conduct a bilateral relationship with the EU. Turkey began membership negotiations in 2005 despite strong opposition to its membership in Western Europe; France and Austria will hold referendums on future EU members. In France support for Ukraine’s membership of the EU is far higher than for Turkey and President Nicolas Sarkozy has a good relationship with Premier Tymoshenko.

In 2008 Ukraine will enter the WTO and the ten year Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) will have reached its finale. What should Ukraine seek to replace the PCA?

The EU has offered to negotiate a Free Trade Area with Ukraine following its entrance into the WTO. Beyond this, Ukraine should no longer participate in the ENP, an organization where the bulk of its members are not within geographic Europe. Ukraine’s continued membership in the ENP should be premised on a status different to ENP members who are not in Europe and therefore have no legal right under the 1957 Rome Treaty to join the EU.

Such an ENP status, which has been termed “privileged partnership”, should offer Ukraine the prospect of membership. The European Parliament has issued 4 resolutions in support of Ukrainian membership since the Orange Revolution. It is time for the EU to stop adopting double standards to Ukraine and give it the same prospects for membership offered to slow reformers in central-eastern Europe, such as Romania, the Western Balkans and Turkey.

Towards a European Strategy

Ukraine has a strong possibility of completing its integration into Trans-Atlantic and European structures within the next decade. In the short term the following steps need to be taken:

1. Coordinate a MAP and NATO membership with Georgia bilaterally and through GUAM and the US.

2. Ukraine should have a large delegation of policy advisers, government and presidential officials, parliamentary deputies, journalists and NGO leaders at the April 2008 NATO Bucharest summit. There should not be a repeat of the Nov. 2006 Riga NATO summit attended by only three Ukrainians (including only one official).

3. The Ukraine-NATO Committee NGO, to be officially launched by ourselves in Jan. 2008 with members drawn from Ukraine, Europe and North America, is open to membership by all NGO’s and individuals who support Ukraine’s Trans-Atlantic aspirations. The Ukraine-NATO Committee will lobby for Ukraine’s NATO membership and coordinate the work of a disparate group of NGO’s, practitioners and journalists who support its aims and objectives.

4. Ukraine’s presidential, government and parliamentary elites have the opportunity to establish a cross-party and cross-regional consensus in support of a Ukrainian position towards the EU. Both the orange coalition and parliamentary opposition would be able to agree on a common negotiating position towards the EU that is commensurate with Ukraine’s strategic importance and its progress in democratic and economic reforms. Since 2005, Ukraine is the only CIS country defined as ‘Free’ by the New York-based think tank Freedom House. Ukraine has every right to be treated in the same manner as Romania, Bulgaria, the Western Balkans and Turkey and Ukraine should not join any ENP or Privileged Partnership if there is no prospect of future membership of the EU. Ukraine has every right to demand to be treated in the same manner as the Western Balkan states whose Stabilization and Accession Agreements hold out future membership prospects. Failure to do so would constitute punishment for Ukraine having resolved its regional and ethnic conflicts in a peaceful manner.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Wants Talks On Russian Naval Base Withdrawal - FM

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's foreign minister said on Saturday that the government wants to start talks to prepare the withdrawal of a Russia naval base from Ukraine.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko
Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement in 1997 stipulating that the Black Sea Fleet's main base in Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula, be leased to Russia for 20 years, with the possibility of extending the term.

But Kiev has been pushing for the withdrawal of the base by 2017, in compliance with a previous bilateral agreement.

In his interview with Ukrainian weekly Zerkalo Nedeli, Volodymyr Ohryzko said all proposals by Ukraine to start discussions on the withdrawal had been rejected by Russia as premature.

"But I believe we will be able to take some practical steps to boost the process after the next round," he said referring to a regular session of a joint subcommittee on the Black Sea base, which is to be held in Moscow on January 24.

The minister said talks were needed to outline a proper withdrawal procedure which would prevent Russia from "leaving barracks and buildings unfit for further use."

Ohryzko has repeatedly pressed for inventory procedures to be conducted at the base saying some rented facilities are used illegally as they were not included in bilateral agreements.

Russian officials said the country would make no concessions over rent or the withdrawal of the fleet from Ukraine.

The annual rent of about $100 million is deducted from Ukraine's debt for Russian energy supplies, but Ukraine wants to increase the rent.

In addition to the main base, the Black Sea Fleet maintains two airfields and a ship re-supply facility on the Crimean Peninsula.

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukraine Begins Compensation Payments For Savings Lost During Soviet Breakup

KIEV, Ukraine -- Thousands of Ukrainians streamed to state bank offices Friday to get full or partial compensation for savings lost amid the 1991 Soviet breakup -- a promise of newly appointed Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko that some analysts caution could hurt the economy.

A Ukrainian woman, one of the depositors of the Soviet-era Sberbank, holds her bank book featuring the state emblem of the Soviet Union on the cover, as she fills in documents to receive future compensation payment for her savings lost in the 1991 Soviet collapse, in a bank in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
The payments, which are to be made by the state bank Oshchadbank, were, however, slow to come. Dozens of anxious people waited in lines in at least three of the bank's offices in the capital, Kiev, on Friday morning and were told by bank officials there was no money to pay them.

Tymoshenko pledged to pay out 6 billion hryvna ($1.2 billion) of the estimated 130 billion hryvna ($26 billion) debt to citizens this year. A precise figure of how much debt has been accumulated can be calculated only after Ukrainians claim their money.

The collapse of the Soviet Union plunged its 15 republics into a deep economic crisis and millions of citizens across the former U.S.S.R effectively lost their savings when their respective state banks froze their accounts and stopped giving out cash.

Tymoshenko made compensating the lost savings a central theme of her campaign for parliamentary elections last year, which swept her to the premiership.

Ukrainians will get up to 1,000 hryvna ($200) in cash for their Soviet-time savings. One Soviet ruble will be equivalent to 1.05 hryvna. Those who held over 1,000 hryvna in their accounts will be able to receive the rest of their money later in non-cash payments, such as vouchers that would offset utility bills, the government says.

Some experts applauded the decision, saying it will restore peoples' trust in the government and benefit the needy, especially pensioners and low-paid government workers.

Oleksandr Klymchuk, an analyst with Concorde Capital Investment bank, said the payments were positive.

"I think that 6 billion in compensation is not a burden for Ukraine's economy, it could bear even more," he said.

But Anton Struchenevsky, an economic analyst at Troika Dialogue investment bank, dismissed the measure as a populist move that would strain the state budget. "Such methods can destabilize the economy and lead to hyperinflation," he said.

The 2008 budget forecasts annual inflation of 9.6 percent, but experts say it could spike to over 15 percent.

Lidiya Polishchuk, an 81-year-old retired train operator, said she was desperate to receive the money. "I need to buy shoes, I need an overcoat," she said.

Source: AP

A Hand Full Of Gas

KIEV, Ukraine -- It’s a new year, and Ukraine has a new government headed by a fiery reformer with a penchant for making high-stake gambles. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is known as the gas queen – more for how she earned her money back in the 1990’s than for how she has tried to clean up her country’s gas sector in more recent years.

Fiery reformer Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
But clean it up she has tried, against highly formidable of opponents at home and abroad.

Ukraine has the most energy intensive economy in the world. Its choice of fuel is natural gas, three fourths of which it gets via Russia.

Ukraine is also responsible for transiting the lion’s share of gas that Europe buys from Russia and Central Asia. Thus, gas for Ukraine, as well as its neighbors, is a serious geopolitical and economic issue.

On the one end of the pipeline is Russian gas giant Gazprom, which holds a firm grip on the Eurasian gas tap. Gazprom represents the new power of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is trying to reassert its international influence following the humiliation of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

In between Russia and the West is Ukraine, a former Russian colony still trying to consolidate its independence.

Ukraine produces only about a quarter of its gas needs, but it controls most of the gas pipelines that connect Russia to the EU. If Ukrainian authorities were united in their efforts to improve the standing of their country and its citizens, rather than enrich themselves through various corrupt schemes, the country could use the cards it’s been dealt.

First, Ukrainian industry has to continue its recent efforts at energy efficiency. Ever since the days of the Soviet Union, the country’s gas guzzling steel mills and chemical plants have turned a profit due to energy subsidies determined in Moscow.

The wake-up call came when Gazprom unexpectedly doubled the price of gas bought at the Ukrainian border in January 2006 to $95 per thousand cubic meters. The Europeans, who had their supplies temporarily disrupted over the 2006 Christmas holidays, began to openly accuse Moscow of using its energy supplies to bully its neighbors.

As the price was raised further to $130 then $180 per thousand cubic meters, Ukrainian industrialists started introducing new energy-saving technology, financed by Western investors eager to offer their services.

A side benefit of this has been greater transparency in Ukrainian industry overall, as oligarchs began to open their books to public scrutiny.

Another card that Ukraine has at its disposal is further development of its own resources. It’s only a matter of time before Moscow raises the prices of its energy exports again. Yet, the government in Kyiv has been less than welcoming to Western investors offering to find new sources of gas and oil in Ukraine.

American Vanco finally clinched a production sharing agreement to explore the Black Sea shelf, and international heavyweights like Shell have made inroads towards development of the Ukrainian mainland, but the country’s path to energy independence is a mine field of opaque and discriminatory regulations and laws favoring insiders.

London-based Independent Cardinal Resources was forced off the market last year due to a rule that forced it to sell its gas at below-market prices.

In the mean time, Gazprom has extended its control over distribution and sales in Ukraine through a chain of curious middleman companies.

Starting in January 2006, RosUkrEnergo, which is half owned by Gazprom and half-owned by two otherwise unknown Ukrainian businessmen, became the monopoly importer of largely Central Asian gas to Ukraine.

RosUkrEnergo neither produces nor transports the gas it sells. Yet Gazprom reported that RosUkrEnergo made profits of $70 million in the first quarter of last year alone.

In addition, another company called UkrGazEnergo was set up to sell gas to Ukrainian consumers. It is half owned by RosUkrEnergo and half by Ukraine’s state oil and gas company Naftogaz.

UkrGazEnergo not only represented another unnecessary link in the chain of gas sales between Ukraine and its eastern suppliers, but the company was soon given the control over sales of gas to commercial Ukrainian customers, leaving Naftogas to collect money from deadbeat state enterprises and households.

The net result of all this has been that Naftogaz is now on the verge of bankruptcy. Prime Minister Tymoshenko pledged to keep Naftogaz afloat.

After replacing RosUkrEnergo-connected Yury Boyko as energy minister, the fiery reformer promised Western lenders to Naftogaz that their investments were safe.

At the same time Tymoshenko assured Europeans that their gas supplies wouldn’t be compromised.

“We won’t allow any wavering. We will do everything for stability to be felt in Europe and Ukraine,” she said last week in Kyiv.

Facing an increasingly imperialistic Kremlin and an opposition at home that has shown itself capable of every dirty trick in the book, Tymoshenko needs all the support from the West that she can get.

With presidential elections just around the corner, she is determined to consolidate her position as the champion of the people and enemy of corruption.

This gives Tymoshenko yet another possible enemy – President Viktor Yushchenko, who together with Tymoshenko promised Ukrainians honest government European democracy during the country’s 2004 Orange Revolution.

Unlike Yushchenko, however, Tymoshenko has backed up her words with action, promising to investigate corruption in the gas industry as soon as she took office.

Her right hand man in this endeavor, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksander Turchynov, once accused Yushchenko of ordering him to stop an investigation into RosUkrEnergo, which Tymoshenko has openly accused of corruption.

Tymoshenko has been accused by her opponents of populism and may have a few gas-related skeletons in her own closet, but she is also the only Ukrainian politician willing to challenge the present system of corruption and kickbacks which threatens Ukraine’s energy security and, indeed, its sovereignty.

Despite all denials from Moscow, there can be no doubts about its use of energy exports to control former Soviet republics and more greatly influence Europe. The Kremlin’s own rhetoric is the most damning evidence of all.

Not only does the price Gazprom charges for its gas vary from country to country with little economic justification, the energy giant has made every effort to make its customers dependent on it.

In order to keep Ukraine from buying gas directly from Central Asia, Gazprom has succeeded in buying up it all up in advance. Of the 55 billion cubic meters that Ukraine gets through Russia, seven billion comes from Uzbekistan, six from Kazakhstan and 42 from Turkmenistan.

Russia only supplies the pipes.

This brings up the third card that Ukraine has its disposal – its gas pipelines. If Russia can keep raising the price that Ukraine pays for Central Asian gas, Ukraine can raise the price it charges for the use of its pipelines.

Instead, Ukrainian negotiators have given Gazprom favorable transit terms, even as Moscow tightens the grip around Ukraine’s energy lifeline.

In addition, some Ukrainian officials such as outgoing energy minister Mr. Boyko have suggested giving Russia more control over Ukraine’s gas lines – the strongest card in Ukraine’s deck.

Thankfully, Tymoshenko’s initiative to legislatively prevent such an outcome was supported largely by Ukraine’s parliament, including the lawmakers from factions opposed to Tymoshenko.

But the card game is still in progress, and the stakes are higher than ever. Instead of keeping her hand close, Tymoshenko has taken on the role of dealer, with all other players out to break her bank.

Since that bank represents Ukraine’s energy security and its viability as an independent nation, the main thing for now is that the gas queen stays in the game.

Source: Eurasian Home

New Ukraine Anti-Corruption Premier Targets Euro 2012 Preparations

KIEV, Ukraine -- Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's new anti-corruption Prime Minister, on Friday ordered her government to overhaul its preparation plan as co-host for the Euro 2012 football tournament.

PM Yulia Tymoshenko at a cabinet meeting.
Ukraine and Poland won joint rights to hold the event in March, but since then the Ukrainian government has struggled even to begin an estimated 42 billion dollars in preparations needed if the former Soviet republic is to manage its side of the event.

A Tymoshenko-led coalition took over Ukraine's government in December on promises to reduce graft and inefficiency in state institutions.

The new pro-democracy government will complete a review of steps taken so far to ready the country for Euro 2012, and the parliamentary majority she leads will make a new plan national law, Tymoshenko promised.

"We already running a year and a half in our preparation efforts," she Tymoshenko. "We will reverse these trends."

A football-mad country whose national team made the final eight in the 2006 World Cup, Ukraine lacks substantial infrastructure needed to host any major international sporting event.

Ukrainian roads and service quality are far below international standards. Stadiums - all but one dating back to the Soviet era - are dilapidated, and the country needs to build dozens of hotels to handle an expected one million visitors.

Overhaul of the country's largest stadium - Olympeysky Stadium in the capital Kiev - has been stalled for months because of a shopping centre under construction next door which, if completed, would make the stadium impossible to evacuate safely.

Tymoshenko at a cabinet meeting instructed Ukraine's top law enforcer Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko to intervene in the legal wrangle, pitting two Kiev business clans in a dispute over land ownership around the stadium.

Kiev developers alone will build 33 hotels to prepare for the tournmanent, with the first coming on line in 2008, and the last in 2011, Tymoshenko told reporters.

It is a construction challenge of the first order in Kiev's overheated real estate market where some half-dozen firms monopolize major construction, and the few hotels lucky enough to operate charge as much as 200 dollars a night for an unpretentious single room.

The new hotels will cost some 500 million dollars, to be raised among private and international investors, Tymoshenko said.

Source: DPA

Mykhaylychenko Takes Ukraine Reins

KIEV, Ukraine -- Oleksiy Mykhaylychenko has been appointed coach of Ukraine, replacing his former team-mate Oleh Blokhin on a contract until after the 2010 FIFA World Cup with the option of another two years.

Oleksiy Mykhaylychenko (C) is the new Ukraine coach.
Promotion

Mykhaylychenko steps up from his role as the country's Under-21 coach following Blokhin's decision to resign last month. The 44-year-old was a success in his previous position, steering a talented crop of players to the final of the 2006 UEFA European U21 Championship in Portugal.

He will work again with the likes of Artem Milevskiy, Dmytro Chygrynskiy and Andriy Pyatov in World Cup qualifying.

'Flattered'

"I was very flattered to get such an offer," Mykhaylychenko said. "I accept it together with the responsibility that comes with being Ukraine coach. Our ultimate task is to qualify for the World Cup and we will do our best to achieve that as well as preparing for the UEFA EURO 2012™ finals that Ukraine will host with Poland."

Blokhin ended his four-year reign in December, having led Ukraine to the quarter-finals of the 2006 World Cup, on their first appearance at a major tournament, before failing to reach UEFA EURO 2008™.

Impressive CV

Having enjoyed a fine playing career with FC Dynamo Kyiv, UC Sampdoria and Rangers FC, Mykhaylychenko began coaching under Dynamo great Valeriy Lobanovskiy in 1997, remaining his assistant for five years.

He took temporary charge following the master's death before assuming full control going into the 2002/03 campaign.

Mykhaylychenko guided Dynamo to two league titles and the 2003 Ukrainian Cup but was sacked in August 2004. As a player, he also won the 1988 Olympic football gold with the USSR, having earlier played in the EURO '88 final.

Ukraine meet Croatia, England, Belarus, Andorra and Kazakhstan in 2010 qualifying Group 6. The fixture schedule will be decided at a meeting in Zagreb on Monday.

Source: UEFA

$1.5 Million To Promote Ukraine’s Winter Tourism

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Culture and Tourism Ministry has embarked on an ambitious international advertising campaign to promote winter tourism in the country.

The government has embarked on an ambitious campaign to depict Ukraine as an ideal destination for winter tourists.
The campaign, called “Ukraine invites,” features ads on popular European television channels such as Euronews and National Geographic. Advertising on billboards in major European cities will be part of the effort intended to beef up tourism.

Tourism experts say the campaign will be the first of its kind by Ukraine, which trails far behind other countries in promoting tourism and cashing in on vacationers.

Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Mykhailo Kulynyak said the campaign includes 15 and 30 second advertisement videos called, “Ukraine: For those in love with the snow.”

The cities covered by the outdoor billboards include Prague, Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Budapest, Warsaw and others. Ads will also be placed in the German, French and Italian versions of Reader’s Digest magazine.

Advertising videos will also run on television monitors at Kyiv’s airport, central railway station and metro transportation system. The campaign is expected to last through the winter season.

One of the key attractions advertised will be skiing in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains, which are located at the border with the European Union.

“With perfect geographical, climate and cultural conditions for tourism, Ukraine’s tourist sector has the potential to be one of the most profitable segments of the domestic economy,” Kulynak said.

“But more attention and financing is needed for promotion. This is precisely what we are trying to do,” he said, adding that some $1.5 million will come from state coffers.

The campaign is expected to boost the annual inflow of tourists by 20-30 percent in 2008, Kulynyak said.

In the first nine months of 2007, nearly 18 million foreign tourists visited Ukraine, according to a State Border Service report.

That represents a 24 percent increase compared to the same period in 2006. Some 30 per cent of foreign tourists came from EU countries.

Source: Kyiv Post

Gov Begins Payback Of Lost Savings

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian depositors of the former USSR’s Savings Bank will be able to receive up to Hr 1,000 ($200) in compensation through the state-owned Oschadbank beginning Jan.11, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said during a Cabinet of Ministers meeting on Jan. 9.


Earlier this month Oshchadbank announced it will compile a registry of depositors who lost their savings and opened a telephone hotline to field questions.

Compensating former Sberbank depositors who lost all their savings after the USSR collapsed was a central issue in the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc’s election campaign and one that has received much attention since Tymoshenko’s return to government.

The total volume owed to Ukrainian depositors is estimated at over Hr 120 billion ($24 billion). Political opponents and some analysts criticized Tymoshenko’s plans to pay back the lost savings as “populist” and dangerous for Ukraine’s economy.

Tymoshenko, however, promised to resign if the government does not repay the lost savings in two years. Her government plans to reimburse Hr 6 billion ($1.2 billion) through direct payments this year.

An additional Hr 2 billion ($400 million) will be virtually compensated as reciprocal payment for housing and communal utility debts.

According to the procedure, depositors will receive up to Hr 1,000 ($200) three days after inclusion into Oschadbank’s registry.

Along with monies already earmarked for compensation in the state budget, the government plans to raise additional funds through privatization.

Vasyl Yurchyshyn, director of economic programs at the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies, a Kyiv-based think tank, noted that privatization has not been successful in the past three years and relying on the sale of state assets to raise extra funds is problematic.

Nevertheless, the government’s compensation mechanisms seem to be quite sensible, despite presenting certain risks, Yurchyshyn said.

“Compensations are accompanied with increased pensions and social transfers, and it may lead to higher cumulative effect, which in turn may cause inflation and result in higher prices,” said Yurchyshyn.

He added the government should pay more attention to non-cash mechanisms of reimbursement, like state bonds and securities and should closely monitor the compensation process.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yulia Tackles Tough Issues Early

KIEV, Ukraine -- Within weeks of returning as Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko demonstrated her commitment to wide-ranging reforms and government re-prioritizing.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is intent on making good on the 36 campaign promises she made during last year’s elections.
Most significantly, she has fulfilled promises to trim lawmaker perks, doubled government financing for Ukraine’s cultural and arts institutions and promised an overhaul of the corruption-plagued energy sector.

“I counted how many promises we fulfilled from our ‘Ukrainian Breakthrough’ program through the formulated budget – 36,” Tymoshenko told a Dec. 27 live national television program.

“I think we will move forward in such a way because we simply have the inspiration,” she added.

The Tymoshenko government’s first success was passing a revised 2008 budget the night of Dec. 28, well ahead of the New Year’s Eve deadline.

The coalition mustered the votes of all its 227 deputies and eight Communists, who were threatened with expulsion by their party leaders after they voted with the Democratic Forces coalition.

The opposition Party of Regions of Ukraine (PRU), led by former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, criticized the coalition of absentee voting and claimed only 197 deputies from the hairline majority were present for the vote.

Budget revenues totaled $42.6 billion, expenses amounted to $46 billion, leaving a deficit of $3.4 billion, about 2.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The budget’s revisions, and Tymoshenko’s emphasis on certain priorities, revealed her seriousness in fulfilling not only the goals and campaign promises of her eponymous bloc, but also those of coalition partner, the pro-presidential Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense political bloc.

Eliminating prosecutorial immunity for parliamentarians was that bloc’s biggest promise which has yet to be fulfilled.

But in the same spirit, the budget did reduce perks for parliamentary deputies, cutting deputy pensions by half, eliminating free transportation and lodging in some exclusive health resorts and eliminating subsidies and compensation for Kyiv apartments.

Under her leadership, the government increased revenues by $11.5 billion from the 2007 budget, “because we know where all the shadow money is turning,” Tymoshenko said.

“All we needed was one or two days to close off what we know and we obtained $11.5 billion for the state budget,” she said.

“We allocated this money for roads, preparing for Euro 2012 [football championship], investment support for education and doubled costs for science and culture,” she added.

In fact, Tymoshenko announced during the Dec. 27 broadcast that her government uncovered the fate of the $4.8 billion earned from the public auction of flagship steel mill Kryvorizhstal, which was privatized in Ukraine’s most transparent showcase tender to world leader Mittal Steel back in 2005.

“It was practically arranged along certain niches within Treasury accounts,” she said.

“Large sums were preserved actually. A portion went to covering budget deficits of prior years, partiall to cover deficits in the pension fund, and we found what was left and set it aside for returning lost savings, Hr 6 billion ($1.2 billion),” she added

This, the second Tymoshenko government in less than three years, reversed its predecessor’s policy of starving Ukraine’s cultural and artistic spheres, doubling government funding.

An additional $200 million was earmarked for Ukraine’s hemorrhaging scientific institutions.

The government also increased revenue by $1.7 billon more than the Yanukovych government planned for the 2008 budget, largely due to the 2007 inflation estimate being revised from 14.5 to 16 percent.

Pensions, salaries and higher education stipends were all boosted, and the Tymoshenko Bloc even adopted a Yanukovych-government campaign promise to pay $10,000 to parents of a third newborn child ($2,455 for the first child, $5,000 for the second).

However, the budget projected 2008 inflation to remain at 16 percent, a rate considered unacceptably high for European countries.

The Tymoshenko Bloc’s 2007 parliamentary campaign was known for its ambitious campaign promises among other things, labeled by opponents as populist.

Indeed some were unrealistic, such as returning $120 billion in bank deposits lost during the 1991-1995 hyperinflation as well as ending mandatory military service by January.

However the government did earmark $4 billion for those Ukrainians seeking to regain their lost bank deposits, or $200 per person, six times more than had been aside during all the budgets of Ukrainian independence combined, Tymoshenko said.

“I was told thousands of times that executing this program is absolutely impossible,” Tymoshenko said in a nationally-televised address.

“They said this process of returning savings has to be extended over 50 years and reduce the sum payment by five times. This isn’t our approach and I assure you today that this program is possible to execute, and we’ll execute it,” she added.

In fact on Jan. 8, Oschadbank, the Ukrainian successor to the Soviet state savings bank, announced it has launched a telephone hotline for those wanting to receive their share.

Coalition leaders acknowledged the budget wasn’t perfect, the opposition had its own gripes, and Parliamentary Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, an ally of President Viktor Yushchenko, vowed a revised budget would be approved in March.

Energizing reforms planned

Ukraine’s energy woes typically surface around New Year’s Day, and this time around the center of turmoil was Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas and oil company.

Tymoshenko declared on Jan. 2 the Yanukovych government left Naftogaz, once the country’s largest and most profitable company, on the verge of bankruptcy. Losses doubled gains in 2007 and without an approved natural gas budget for 2008, she added.

Tymoshenko accused the Yanukovych of intentionally driving Naftogaz towards bankruptcy with the intention of playing into Kremlin energy interests by allowing the Ukrainian government to lose control of its strategic energy sector. Naftogaz, which controls Ukraine’s vast gas and oil pipeline network, is also the leading gas and oil producer and supplier through subsidiaries.

The company is viewed as having a major role in defending national energy interests and balancing out Russian groups on the market.

Tymoshenko pledged to restore the company to financial health with its new director at the helm, Oleh Dubyna, as well as an investigation committee.

“I was completely shocked by the information given by the new director of Naftogaz,” Tymoshenko said, adding that Ukraine’s vast “gas storage tanks have practically no resources. What is stored belongs to dubious commercial structures.”

Ukraine’s underground gas storage facilities play a key role in supplying gas on the domestic market and to European consumers during peak winter periods.

Ever since it emerged in 2004, Swiss-registered natural gas intermediary RosUkrEnergo, whose role has been dubbed as corrupt by Tymoshenko in sucking billions out of the Ukraine-Russia and Central Asian gas trade, has been Tymoshenko’s favorite punching bag.

RosUkrEnergo is the most corrupt business structure created in the post-Soviet sphere during the last decade, Tymoshenko told the Dec. 27 live program.

US officials have backed Tymoshenko’s concern over the alleged murky role of RosUkrEnergo, half owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom with the rest belonging to camera shy Ukrainian businessmen.

“This is a super metastasis that needs to be removed,” she said.

“They knew that when I arrive, I will do a lot to quickly eliminate this disease. And literally several weeks before our new government was voted in, they signed all agreements through RosUkrEnergo to supply gas with boosted prices,” she added.

The prime minister said she will examine ways to eliminate RosUkrEnergo without destabilizing the Ukrainian economy or shaking up sensitive energy relations with Moscow, the main supplier of blue fuel to Ukraine.

“I’ve already sent (Ukrainian RosUkrEnergo co-owner Dmytro) Firtash a basket of sleeping pills because he isn’t sleeping. I can tell you that with surety,” Tymoshenko declared, referring to one of the company’s known partners who has become a billionaire as a result. Firtash owns a 45 percent interest in RosUkrEnergo. His partner, Ivan Fursin, a close friend of former Yanukovych chief of staff Serhiy Levochkin, owns a 5 percent stake.

“I think he won’t be sleeping calmly because RosUkrEnergo won’t be operating on the Ukrainian market with its affiliate enterprises. Ukraine will have direct contact with Russia without intermediaries, and possibly other nations supplying gas,” she added.

Source: Kyiv Post

New High For Underage Drinking And Smoking

KIEV, Ukraine -- Widespread underage smoking and drinking is on the rise as exposure to vices occurs at increasingly younger ages, according to a recent study released by the Ukrainian Institute of Social Research (UISR) conducted for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) collaborative cross-national study of 41 nations.

A World Health Organization-commissioned study has found that Ukraine is a world leader when it comes to underage tobacco and alcohol consumption.
Unlike in 2002, when the WHO’s previous Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) was conducted, Ukrainian girls aged 11 years reported drinking hard alcohol for the first time and 15 year olds reported drinking spirits 1.5 times more frequently. As for boys, 13 year olds drank spirits 1.7 times more than in 2002 while 15 year olds were found to imbibe hard alcohol 8 per cent more.

Although the 41-nation HBSC report hasn’t been published yet, UISR’s Olga Balakireva, the Principal Investigator for HBSC in Ukraine, released a fact sheet of its 2006 findings.

The purpose of this study is to “provide evidence needed for effective policies and programs to create better opportunities for young people’s health.”

Statistics regarding underage smoking also gave reason for concern since the rates rise with age: the number of smokers for both sexes increased by 7 percent among 6th graders, 15 percent among 8th graders, 26 percent among 10th graders, 50 and 33 percent among college and university level students respectively.

“This could have drastic consequences not only for the government, as healthcare costs will significantly rise, but also for the population as a whole,” said Dr. Serhiy Potashev, Assistant of the Department of Cardiology and Functional Diagnoses at the National Medical Academy. He added, “For men, we’ll see increased cases of cardiovascular disease such as hypertension and cancer cases; for women, reproductive problems and the prevalence of cancer in gynecological areas.”

The nationwide study was conducted in April and May, 2006 with a sample size of 6,535 respondents in the sixth, eighth, tenth grades, first-year college and first-year university students regarding drug, tobacco, and alcohol use.

By the time a student entered university, only 13 percent said they had never consumed alcohol, 25 percent never smoked a cigarette and 80 percent never used any type of drug.

“As younger age groups start using alcohol and smoking cigarettes, we’ll see negative health trends develop at earlier ages,” said Potashev.

Ukraine has the second highest smoking rate (occasional and daily smokers) in Europe at 41 percent behind Greece (45 percent) according to a 2005 study of people 15 years and older conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. Sixty-seven percent of men smoke while 20 percent of women puff cigarettes, according to the study. Ukraine has, however, made declarations to ban tobacco and alcohol advertisements and ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2006 along with nearly 160 countries which requires Ukraine “to undertake a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship within five years.”

In September 2007, President Viktor Yushchenko spearheaded a forum titled, “A Healthy Nation” where he called on the nation to develop effective mechanisms and policies to combat tuberculosis, and alcohol and tobacco use among children. Moreover, Member of Parliament Valeriy Pysarenko of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc drafted a bill that would ban tobacco advertisements in print which is awaiting review by a parliamentary committee. “We had this bill ready in parliament’s previous convocation but the tobacco lobbyists set up roadblocks every step up of the way,” said Pysarenko. “These large companies put heavy pressure on individual deputies, working groups and engage the press to portray bans on advertising as bad for business,” Pysarenko lamented.

Health experts agree that a government effort is needed to reverse trends in underage drinking and smoking. Hanna Hopko, advocacy coordinator in Ukraine for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a partner of the Bloomberg Initiative to reduce tobacco use, said “banning outdoor, print and other kinds of advertising is a necessity since its been proven that smoking rates decrease at least 6 percent when such measures are taken.” Indeed, according to Ukrainian Media Monitoring, outdoor tobacco ads placed third in terms of spending at $8.13 million cumulatively, trailing only cell phone operators and retail businesses. Hopko noted that a government program which “informs schoolchildren of the negative effects of smoking, implements prevention programs at schools and promotes healthy lifestyles” will have a very limited effect without certain additional steps, such as banning smoking in public areas and workplaces, carrying out educational media campaigns on the health costs associated with smoking and introducing steeper tobacco taxes.

According to Hopko, tobacco companies are taxed too lightly for their products in Ukraine. “Tax revenues from the sale of cigarettes dropped from 3.9 percent to 1.5 percent of total budget revenues between 1999-2006 and the government’s 2.5 percent excise tax hike on cigarettes and 12.6 percent increase per liter of spirits in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, will actually result in cheaper tobacco and alcohol products for consumers – an ineffective pricing policy,” the advocate said.

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, tobacco consumption is increasing around the world annually as developing countries are picking up the slack of declining smoking rates in developed countries. For example, in 2006, Philip Morris/Altria collected more than $48.3 billion in net revenues from international tobacco sales, compared to $18.5 billion from US tobacco sales.

The “tobacco epidemic” is fueled by ‘Big Tobacco’ profits. The three largest tobacco companies making cigarettes in Ukraine (Phillip Morris/Altria, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International) have combined annual incomes of several billion dollars and have expanded production in Ukraine. According to the Ukrtiutiun association of tobacco plants, Ukrainian cigarette makers increased production by 18 percent from January to November in 2007 year-on-year.

Regarding alcohol, Potashev said, “advertisements, especially those on TV that push ‘light’ alcoholic drinks like Shake, are misleading since they not only target younger demographics but also give the impression that lower alcohol content is less harmful. The opposite is true because alcohol is alcohol and still harms the liver, more so for the artificial ingredients contained in the mixed drinks.”

Anatoliy Viyevskiy, the director of the Ukrainian Drug and Alcohol Monitoring Center and a leading expert within the Health Ministry said the government has realized the importance of formulating an effective alcohol policy and stressed that “it should be orientated towards alcohol consumption in general and its consequences in particular and should emphasize prevention programs among children, parents and teachers in schools.”

The HBSC report on Ukraine also said that consumption of light mixed cocktail drinks hasten the pace at which youth become dependent on alcohol as well as “the decay of a person’s physical, mental, and spiritual health.”

The forty-one nation HBSC report is due in spring 2008.

Source: Kyiv Post

Senior Ukrainian Prosecutor Poisoned By Mercury Vapor

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian prosecutors have opened a criminal case into the poisoning of a deputy prosecutor general with mercury vapor, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Holomsha
Mykola Holomsha, 45, has undergone intensive therapy since the poisoning, and is now back at work, continuing to head investigations into the murder of Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze and the alleged poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004.

Gongadze, who had been investigating government corruption, was kidnapped on September 16, 2000, and his decapitated body was later found in a ditch near Kiev, Ukraine's capital.

The circumstances of his death sparked protests against the government of then-president Leonid Kuchma.

During the 2004 presidential election, Viktor Yushchenko was reported by some doctors to have suffered from dioxin poisoning.

Three months ago, Holomsha began suffering from bad headaches and a metallic taste in his mouth.

An examination of his office revealed a mercury vapor concentration level four times above the norm. Medical tests later confirmed that Holomsha had been poisoned.

Prolonged exposure to mercury vapor affects the nervous system, causing headaches, fever, depression, loss of memory, and can lead to eventual respiratory failure and death.

In December last year, Ukrainian media reported that Holomsha had been nominated by Yushchenko as Prosecutor General. Holomsha denied this.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Holomsha was fired by the then prosecutor general, Gennady Vasilyev, on the grounds of "political motivation and the inappropriate organization of a criminal investigation."

Holomsha was reinstated by a Kiev court as deputy prosecutor general a month later.

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukrainian President Calls For Cancellation Of Parliament Winter Vacation To Open Session Early

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has written to parliamentary chairman Arseniy Yatsenyuk asking for the parliament to cancel its winter vacation in order to open the next session at an early date, the presidential press service said.

President Viktor Yushchenko
Yushchenko proposed to open the next session of the legislature on Jan. 22, not in February.

Yushchenko said the vacation of the newly formed parliament was inappropriate, as the country is facing pressing challenges that require urgent answers.

"In the current conditions, the authorities cannot afford even the shortest time-out," he said in the letter.

"The parliamentary coalition and the government have taken on serious commitments. Consequently, any pause in their realization could cause unfavorable circumstances and undermine the trust of the people," he said.

"The New Year and Christmas holidays were enough for the deputies to relax," Yushchenko added.

Yushchenko called on all political forces in parliament to be responsible to respond to his call.

In accordance with the timetable of the parliament's work, the chamber is scheduled to close the first session on Jan. 18 and open the second session in early February after a two-week winter vacation.

Source: Xinhua

Tymoshenko Appointment Won't Alter Russia-Ukraine Interdependencies

KIEV, Ukraine -- In her first major comments on relations with Russia, Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's new Prime Minister, last month insisted that she had no intentions of worsening relations with Russia: "I will strive to establish a relationship of equal partnership," she said.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
Although Ukraine held its most recent round of legislative elections on Sept. 30, 2007, it was only on Dec. 18, that the so-called "Orange bloc" parties aligned with President Viktor Yushchenko consolidated their narrow victory by securing the appointment of Tymoshenko, currently the country's most influential and popular politician, as prime minister. Yushchenko had actually appointed Tymoshenko as prime minister of the first post-Orange Revolution government in February 2005, only to dismiss her in September following months of debilitating infighting among coalition members over economic reform and other issues.

The protracted infighting that delayed formation of the new government, as well as its slim two-vote majority, casts doubt on the new governing coalition's durability. The intense maneuvering among faction leaders makes clear they are already seeking to position themselves for the 2009 presidential elections, in which Tymoshenko and Yushchenko could both run as competing reform candidates against former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, whose party again received the single largest number of vote and legislative seats in the national elections.

Foreign policy issues did not play a major role in the 2007 elections, which largely focused on the popularity, integrity, and effectiveness of the country's leading politicians. Tymoshenko, Yanukovich, and Yushchenko all stressed their desire to enjoy good relations with both Russia and the West. They also all endorsed Ukraine's entry into the World Trade Organization and, less realistically for the time being, the European Union. Russian leaders, recognizing that Moscow's heavy-handed intervention in the controversial 2004 presidential elections probably backfired by alienating Ukrainian nationalists and embarrassing Russia when its preferred candidate lost, took care to limit their visible involvement in the 2007 ballot.

On Oct.18, President Vladimir Putin pledged to work with "whatever government emerges in Ukraine, regardless of what political platform it bases its work," because "objective reality will encourage our partners to develop cooperation with Russia." In a subsequent interview with Time magazine, published in the same issue that named him "Person of the Year," the Russian President blamed the United States for exacerbating Ukraine's internal divisions, thereby creating a very dangerous situation: "Everything that's been done there is unconstitutional, which has created distrust among various political groups and citizens, thus undermining Ukraine's sovereignty, territorial integrity and economy. That's what the United States has done and is doing in Ukraine and in Georgia. What we say is, leave them alone, without choosing sides." While urging Americans to distance themselves from Ukraine, he also implied that Moscow had certain exclusive interests to defend in the country because "Ukraine is very close to us and because almost half of the population have either friends or relatives in Russia. There are 17 million ethnic Russians there, officially. Almost 100 percent of the people consider Russian as their mother tongue."

Despite Putin's remarks, Tymoshenko's appointment could presage a serious downturn in Russian-Ukrainian relations. In April 2007, Tymoshenko aroused Russian ire by authoring an essay entitled "Containing Russia" in the influential American journal Foreign Affairs. Besides warning of Russian ambitions to achieve regional hegemony, the essay calls on Ukraine to craft initiatives with Western countries aimed at reducing their dependence on Russian energy supplies and to counter other threatening Russian foreign polices. Russian officials responded in kind. For instance, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Tymoshenko of seeking to become the chief ideologue of a new Cold War: "Obviously, it is some kind of an anti-Russian manifesto, an attempt to draw new dividing lines in Europe and bring the world back to the atmosphere of the Cold War."

Upon assuming office on Dec. 18, 2007, Tymoshenko reiterated her intentions to pursue closer ties with the West. She explicitly affirmed her objective to "uphold the ideals of the 2004 Revolution which pledged to move Ukraine closer to the West and eventually seek membership of the European Union and NATO." Polls of Ukrainians indicate a general lack of enthusiasm for NATO membership, with opposition greatest among the Russian-speaking majorities in eastern and southern Ukraine. The Russian national security establishment has made clear it opposes Ukraine's becoming yet another NATO member on Russia's borders.

Most NATO leaders have signaled they do not envisage Ukraine's joining the alliance anytime soon given the country's limited progress in defense and security sector reform as well as the widespread opposition within Ukraine and its neighbors to its accession. Alliance leaders are content to develop relations further on the basis of the July 1997 NATO-Ukraine Charter on a Distinctive Partnership, which established several subjects for broad if not deep consultation and cooperation -- further defined in the November 2002 NATO-Ukraine Action Plan -- as well as a special NATO-Ukraine Commission to institutionalize the relationship without formal membership. Recent activities have included helping eliminate Ukraine's large stock of surplus conventional weapons and providing language, civics, and other courses to Ukrainian military officers.

It is unclear how serious Tymoshenko and other NATO-leaning Ukrainians are about joining the alliance soon given Ukraine's reliance on Russian energy supplies. Moscow has made clear it can exploit this dependence to punish Ukraine for adopting policies opposed by the Kremlin. The state-controlled natural gas monopoly OAO Gazprom warned immediately after the September 2007 ballot that it might curtail shipments to its Ukrainian customers unless they repay a claimed $1.3 billion debt. Some observers interpreted the move as a preemptive Kremlin warning to the victorious Orange parties not to neglect Russian interests. Gazprom had made evident the credibility of its threats when it cut off deliveries entirely for a few days in January 2006 after Ukraine objected to paying higher prices for its gas purchases.

Yet, Ukraine enjoys some reverse leverage since the two countries remain interdependent in the energy realm. The main Soviet-era pipelines connecting Russian and Central Asian energy supplies to Western Europe pass through Ukraine, resulting in some 80 percent of Russian gas supplies flowing through Ukraine en route to European customers. When Gazprom suspended deliveries in 2006, illicit Ukrainian diversions from the pipeline led to noticeable decreases in the gas supplies reaching many central European countries. Reflecting Ukraine's position, Tymoshenko gave mixed signals during the election campaign. On the one hand, she pledged to "do all it takes to cooperate with Russia in order to have no gas cuts." On the other hand, she said Ukraine should review existing gas deals with Russia and said that the controversial firm RosUkrEnergo, 50 percent of which is owned by Gazprom, should lose its monopoly status as Ukraine's sole energy supplier.

Although the two countries agreed in 1997 on how to divide the Soviet-era Black Sea Fleet, the Ukrainian government has been trying to increase Russia's rent for continued use of the former Soviet military facilities in and around Sevastopol, which house approximately 14,000 Russian Navy personnel. Moscow annually writes off $97.75 million of Ukraine's state debt to Russia in compensation for the base. Ukrainian authorities have refused Moscow's request to increase the number of Russian diesel submarines based in the Crimea from two to at least a dozen. The two countries also dispute ownership of several offshore lighthouses.

The Ukrainian government has insisted it will not renew the lease when it expires in 2017, leading many to speculate that Russian representatives are seeking to promote leaders in Kiev or the Crimea who will work to amend this provision. In 2003, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated construction of a new base for the Black Sea Fleet at the Russian port of Novorossiisk, which is scheduled for completion in 2012.

Ukrainian nationalists, viewing the Russian military presence on the peninsula as an encroachment on sovereign Ukrainian territory, complain about Russian interference in local affairs. Crimean nationalists, believing that Ukrainian leaders pay insufficient heed to the distinct needs of their population, lobby Moscow to allow the primarily ethnic Russian territory of two million people to rejoin Russia. In the summer of 2006, local protests against the docking of a U.S. Navy ship in the Crimean port of Feodosiya disrupted that year's U.S.-Ukrainian Sea Breeze exercise, an annual event since 1997. The Crimean parliament subsequently voted to declare the peninsula a "NATO-free territory."

Delineating the Russian-Ukrainian maritime border is another issue in which both countries share cooperative and competing interests. Russian and Ukrainian experts continue to discuss the boundaries and permissible uses of the Black Sea, the Azov Sea, and the Kerch Strait. These disputes have not, however, prevented both countries from making progress in negotiations, through the Russian-Ukrainian Interstate Commission and other mechanisms, on how to manage the fishing, shipping, ecological, and other issues affecting their common maritime zones. Tymoshenko and her team have not given any indication of seeking to suspend these talks.

Source: World Politics Review

Ukraine's Olga Picked As New Bond Girl

LOS ANGELES, USA -- In the secretive world of movie spy James Bond, the "Bond girl" for the new installment in the movie series had been top secret, but on Monday Bond's backers said Ukrainian bombshell Olga Kurylenko is the actress.

Ukrainian bombshell Olga Kurylenko
Columbia Pictures, the film studio behind the popular movies about the British secret agent, said the 28 year-old Kurylenko has been cast in one of the most coveted roles in the movies -- 007's sidekick for the still untitled Bond flick.

The film, which is the 22nd in the series that dates back to 1962's "Dr. No," is due in theaters in November and stars Daniel Craig as the dashing British spy who regularly saves the world from a destructive evil villain.

Early reports had actress Gemma Arterton as the new Bond girl, but even though Arterton has a role in the new film it is not as large as Kurylenko's, said a source close to the film.

The Ukrainian actress joins a long list of leading ladies to be cast alongside the super spy including Ursula Andress in "Dr No," Halle Berry, Kim Basinger and most recently Eva Green in "Casino Royale," which grossed nearly $600 million in worldwide ticket sales.

In the past, being a "Bond girl" has given actresses massive exposure and launched lucrative careers.

A former model, Kurylenko was most recently seen alongside Timothy Olyphant in last November's "Hitman."

British actor Craig made his first appearance as the secret agent in "Casino Royale" and returns for this newest movie directed by Marc Foster, better known for his widely acclaimed dramas like "Finding Neverland" and "The Kite Runner."

Also returning from "Royale" are Judi Dench as Bond's boss M, Jeffery Wright as CIA agent Felix Leiter and Mathieu Amarilic, currently playing French film "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," as the new Bond villain.

Columbia Pictures is a unit of Sony Corp.

Source: AAP

Ukraine PM Congratulates Georgia Leader On Election Win

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has telephoned Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili with congratulations on his election win, the Ukrainian cabinet's press service said Monday.

Georgian President-elect Mikhail Saakashvili and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
"We in Ukraine know perfectly well how it is important for all of the responsible politicians to respect the democratic choice of their people," Tymoshenko was quoted as telling Saakashvili.

She voiced confidence that Saakashvili's victory would see Georgia pursue economic and social reforms based on European standards, and extended Ukraine's continued support to Georgia, the press service said in a statement.

Saakashvili - who according to official results won with 51.85% of the vote - responded by inviting Tymoshenko to his inauguration in Tbilisi on Jan. 20.

Source: AFP

Ukrainian President Urges Revival Of Christian Values

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko called on Ukrainians to revive Christian values.

President Viktor Yushchenko (L) and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
“Let Christmas bells – messengers of the birth of Christ and the Savior – bring to your homes peace and warmth,” he said in his address to the Ukrainian people on the Christmas Eve.

“I believe that the revival of Christian values and deep national traditions will enrich the Ukrainian nation,” he said.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said in her address that this holiday symbolises the revival and hope.

“This very hope for a better future has saved the Ukrainian people for hundreds of years and helped us get up off our knees. And we also need this very hope now, when our authorities have finally become democratic and consolidated,” she said.

“God gives us the chance to become highly moral and independent European nation,” Tymoshenko said.

The oppositional leader and head of the Party of Regions, Viktor Yanukovich, said “let the birth of Christ renovate our belief and give us new strengths to overcome all trials and decently go down the path of life.”

Source: ITAR-TASS

Ukraine: Ruslana's 'Moon Of Dreams'

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ruslana , the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2004 , has recorded another new song ,with T-Pain, this time. The title of the song is 'Moon of Dreams'.



After recording the voice of a character of the famous PC game , Grand Theft Auto , and composing the song The Girl That Rules which features Missy Elliott, Ruslana makes another step forward to further her international career, the collaboration with T-Pain , an American hip-hop, R&B Singer-songwriter and producer who has been noted for using vocoder in his singing.

Ruslana will present her new live show in the capital of Azerbaijan , Baku , in February. The new project has very few elements of Ukrainian folk, but touches on electronica, folk and ballad. Ruslana's new album tells a story, each track following the order of the chapters of the book Wild Energy.

Above you can watch the video clip (click twice) of the cover version of the song 'New Energy Generation' from the upcoming album.

Source: esctoday

Happy 3rd Birthday Kiev Ukraine News Blog

KIEV, Ukraine -- Three years ago today, we introduced the English language Kiev Ukraine News Blog. The Blog had its beginning during the “Orange Revolution” on the day Ukraine’s Supreme Court ruled against Yanukovich’s appeal to invalidate the December 26, 2004 election, which Yushchenko won.


Since Christmas Day, January 7, 2005, we posted 3,430 news articles and the news Blog has been viewed by over 1.69 million visitors from around the globe.

This Blog was created as a public service by the Ukraine Plus Group, a Kiev-based American company involved in marketing, city portal development, job boards, real estate, property management and along with its sister company, IT Outsourcing.

Source: Staff

Ukraine's Inflation Accelerates To 16.6% In December

KIEV, Ukraine -- A report issued by Ukraine's state statistics committee showed that the country's annual inflation rate accelerated to 16.6 percent in December, the fastest since 2000, on rising prices of food and fuel, Bloomberg reported.


According to the report, Ukraine's inflation rate surged from 15.2 percent in November, which was the highest in Europe for that month, as food costs increased 23.7 percent in December from a year earlier.

Consumer prices rose 2.1 percent from the previous month.

Consumer prices rose after neighboring Russia doubled the cost of natural gas sold to Ukraine in 2006 and raised it another 37 percent last year.

Ukraine relies on imports, mostly from Russia, for about 70 percent of its energy.

Source: MENA Fn

Ukraine Minister: Business Interests Lay Behind Vanessa Shipwreck

SOFIA, Bulgaria -- Ukraine's transport and communications minister, Yosip Vinsky blamed owners of the shipwrecked Bulgarian cargo vessel Vanessa for the tragedy in the Azov Sea.


According to Vinsky, who is also a head of the Ukrainian commission dealing with the incident, business interests lay behind the shipwreck, as the vessel refused help twice in the beginning of the deadly storm on Thursday.

The owner of the ship probably decided to save money and ordered the crew to refuse the rescue operation, Vinsky said as cited by Itar Tass.

The minister also said that the crew were informed of the coming bad weather but despite the warning, the ship sailed off the Berdyansk port attempting to reach the Kerch Strait before the storm.

Vanessa, loaded with scrap metal, sank just about 22 nautical miles from the Gulf of Kerch.

Board Marine Burgas Company, which operates the ship called the accusations "ridiculous" and pointed out that they did not have any information about a coming storm.

The company manager, Doichin Doichinov told reporters that he does not have a right to make decisions on behalf of the captain.

There are also no recorded messages from the navigation centre to the captain that called for return of the ship.

Captain Miroslav Kostadinov gave the SOS signal over the incident shortly after 2 a.m. calling for helicopters due to the seriousness of the situation.

Ukrainian rescuers continue to search for survivors as only mechanic Nikolay Dimitrov of the 11 crewmembers was saved on Thursday and two dead bodies were identified later.

Source: Sofia News Agency

Cheating The Latest Fashion In Ukraine?

MOSCOW, Russia -- More than a third of Ukrainians, which makes nearly 15 million people, consider adultery acceptable according to the latest opinion poll. Meanwhile, two thirds approve of sex before marriage. Conservative relationships seem to be no longer in fashion in Ukraine.


Power and wealth are said to be great aphrodisiacs but Egor has neither.

Egor is married, has a child, and women, he claims, fall head over heels for him. He can’t resist and goes astray.

”It’s two different lives. I am not two-faced but I can let other girls into my life but never into my family's life. That’s sacred. Maybe my philosophy is difficult to understand but it’s in my nature. When I lack something in my family, I go looking for it somewhere else but then I always come back,” Egor says.

Egor suspects that his wife knows of his cheating and apparently accepts him for who he is.

He seems to be happy in his marriage and madly in love with his spouse, but what about her?

Psychologists see nothing wrong with their union. Moreover, they advise all couples to ignore small flings on the side for the sake of keeping the family unit together.

Psychologists say men cheat to run away from their responsibilities at home, while women do so because they miss romance. Both are looking for pleasure because there is a shortage of it these days.

However, there’s nothing wrong with it, psychologists believe, as long as they keep it to themselves.

Yulianna objects to the psychologists’ theory. She says that men cannot lie. Her husband cheated on her with another woman more than once, which eventually led to their separation.

Ukraine’s Orthodox Church blames modern culture for adultery. They can usually be seen trying to talk people out of concerts by artists who may be sexually provocative.

So how can one resist all this? Drinks, music, inviting looks from girls and boys. For some of us, cheating may be showing disrespect to your partner but for others, it’s a temptation that can get the better of anyone.

Source: Russia Today

Tymoshenko: Ukrainian Inflation Hit Seven-Year Record

KIEV, Ukraine -- Inflation in the former Soviet republic Ukraine has hit a seven-year high, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said at a Friday cabinet meeting.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko blames the previous government for cost increases.
Strong GDP growth combined with record fuel prices and a weakening dollar made for average price rises of 17 per cent in 2007 she said, according to a Channel 5 television report.

Tymoshenko, elected prime minister by a narrow parliamentary majority late last month, blamed the previous government for cost increases, which were seen across the board but particularly at the retail level.

The government needs "to take immediate measures" to halt skyrocketing retail costs to protect consumers, and to fight inflation using all conventional means, Tymoshenko said.

"We will use only (economic) techniques within the guidelines of the World Trade Organization (WTO)," she said.

A populist politician elected on a commitment to eradicate corruption from Ukrainian government, Tymoshenko during term as Prime Minister in 2005 attempted to freeze meat and petrol prices as a vote-getting measure.

International finance organizations critcised her for attempting to manipulate the country's economy, a charge that helped prevent Ukraine's entrance into the WTO despite years of trying.

Ukraine saw hyperinflation exceeding 1,400 per cent during the first half of the 1990s, by many standards the worst inflation in history.

The National Bank of Ukraine in recent years has conducted a tight fiscal policy, tying the national currency to the dollar.

Inflation fell to 23 per cent in 2000, and stabilised at 10 per cent or below since then.

Source: DPA

Ukraine Irks Russia With Push To Mark Stalin Famine As Genocide

KIEV, Ukraine -- Maksym Kravets remembers watching hunger kill his father, then his mother. Kravets, who was 14 when famine struck Ukraine in 1932, says he survived by eating a dog. About a third of the 1,000 people in his village, Lozova, perished as Soviet leader Josef Stalin cut off food supplies to force peasants onto collective farms.

Maksym Kravets, wearing medals for his service in the Soviet army in World War II, poses for a photo while his wife Stanislava sits in the background in their home in Kamyanets-Podilskiy, Ukraine, on Dec. 8, 2007.
``A special group of people was in the village taking away all the food we had,'' says Kravets, now 89, sitting in his kitchen in Kamyanets-Podilsky, 300 kilometers (186 miles) from where he almost starved to death. ``There were cases when people ate their dead children and parents.''

The yearlong famine, which killed at least 7 million people, is now the focus of books, exhibitions and documentaries marking the 75th anniversary. Ukraine's government is asking the United Nations to recognize the disaster as an act of genocide, worsening already frosty relations with Russia, which says the famine resulted from drought.

Russian nationalists vandalized an exhibit at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in November. While the Russian government didn't condone the attack, it called Ukraine's depiction of the famine a ``one-sided falsification of history.''

``It's completely impossible to treat it as genocide,'' says Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin. ``What happened there happened not only in Ukraine but in many parts of the former Soviet Union.''

State of Denial

Ukraine's famine was kept out of official history until 1991, when the country of 47 million won independence. It is recognized as genocide by countries including the U.S.

``Russian society is, broadly speaking, still in a state of denial about the crimes of the communist past,'' says Robin Shepherd, a senior research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London. Putin and his government see the drive to label the famine genocide as ``an insult to Russian pride.''

Ukraine didn't do much to put the famine on the historical map until the pro-European Union President Viktor Yushchenko took power in the 2004 Orange Revolution. Ukraine commemorated the victims for the first time two years ago.

Yushchenko now plans to make it an offence to deny the famine was an act of genocide. Violators would be subject to as much as two years in jail and a fine of 5,100 hryvnia ($1,020). The move would mirror Germany, where it's a crime to deny the Holocaust.

Political Battle

Communist Party leader Petro Simonenko says Yuschenko is ``stirring up hatred'' as Ukrainian and ethnic Russian politicians battle for control of the government.

Putin openly supported the pro-Russian candidate in the 2004 presidential election before the result was overturned as rigged by a Ukrainian court. Russia is opposed to the policies of the Orange coalition now in government, which is seeking closer ties to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the EU.

The anniversary events started Nov. 24, when thousands of people gathered in Kiev and on the main squares of other cities.

``The main killer was the totalitarian communist regime,'' Yushchenko told the crowd in the capital. ``Fear is at the root of today's political and social problems.''

In 1929, Stalin decreed that all agricultural workers had to join collective farms, bringing with them their livestock and tools. They were to plant and harvest together, so that the state could ship food to industrial areas. Some farmers resisted leaving their land, and many were sent to labor camps. Those who remained risked death from starvation.

Grain Seized

Across the Soviet Union, more than 10 million people died from hunger during the collectivization drive, according to research by historian Robert Conquest. The majority of the deaths were in Ukraine, the second most populous republic in the Soviet Union and the largest grain producer after Russia.

Stalin wrote in August 1932 to one of his politburo members expressing concern that Ukraine wasn't complying and must be forced into submission. ``If we don't fix the situation in Ukraine immediately, we may lose Ukraine,'' he wrote. The letter was published by Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta in 2000.

While the harvest was poor because of drought, as much as half of the grain was shipped out, says Vasyl Marochko, head of the Center for Ukrainian Genocide Studies in Kiev.

``The 1932 harvest was swept away completely,'' says Halyna Mendzyak, who was 9 and lived in Mynkivtsi, western Ukraine. ``When they put it in rail wagons, an orchestra was playing with slogans like `Let's give all grain to our state!'''

Kravets says peasants in his area refused five orders to collectivize their farms in the years before the famine began. His parents finally went to work on a state farm in 1932, leaving him alone in their house.

When two aunts came to his parents' home to check for survivors, they found only his emaciated body. Kravets recalls hearing them say he wouldn't last the night before they walked away, leaving the door ajar.

``A dog then entered and started to lick me, so I got up very slowly, tied him to a bed with a towel and then took an axe and killed him,'' he says. ``I still can't understand where I got the energy. I was eating that dog for several days.''

Source: Bloomberg

Ukraine's State-Run Energy Firm Near Bankruptcy: Prime Minister

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's state energy company Naftogaz is on the verge of bankruptcy and a special commission will be formed to try to save the group, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said Wednesday, Interfax news agency reported.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
"The company is on the verge of bankruptcy," Tymoshenko was quoted as saying at a meeting with the company's new chairman, Oleg Dubina, who estimated the company's losses for 2007 at 5.0 billion hryvnia (1.0 billion dollars.)

"It is difficult to imagine that the country's key energy company has been brought to such a situation that it is necessary to form a government commission with emergency powers ... to try and put its finances in order," Tymoshenko was quoted as saying.

Tymoshenko, a western-leaning populist who replaced Russian-backed rival Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister in late December, has long criticised the management of the country's gas infrastructure.

A key export route for Russian gas to Europe, Ukraine is dependent on Moscow for its gas supply and Tymoshenko has accused her predecessors of agreeing to shadowy deals with Russian partners to appease the Kremlin.

Russia succeeded in forcing higher prices on Ukraine in 2005 after it cut off its supplies to the country.

The move caused disruption to gas supplies to western Europe.

In December, Ukraine agreed on another price rise for 2008, defusing a possible new dispute.

Russian giant Gazprom said Ukraine had agreed to pay 179.5 dollars (122 euros) per 1,000 cubic meters for gas deliveries following talks between Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and Ukrainian Energy Minister Yury Boiko.

The price in 2007 was 130 dollars.

Source: AFP

Kiev: Modernity And Greed Can Upset An Outpost Of The Empire

KIEV, Ukraine -- The USSR used to rule fourteen republics, divided into many non-Russian speaking peoples, always indignant that Mother Russia should turn out to be a brute with a huge moustache and a liking for killing – mass killing wherever feasible.

Kiev, Ukraine - Independence Square
Of these non-Russian nations, the biggest and most nationally conscious was Ukraine. In 1982 her population was already 70 million. Under both the tsars, and later the Politburo, Ukraine drew special attention, usually of the grisliest kind.

Even under modern conditions, with tsars long assassinated and Stalin and Lenin in their mausoleums, Ukraine is virtually divided into west and east.

The West stretches from Kiev westwards towards the Polish border. It used to form part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and was more ‘europeanized’.

In the East, where the countrymen have lived for centuries under the thumbs of Russian tsars, and if they are religious at all, it is Orthodox.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ‘end’ of communist rule (most of today’s politicians were members of the Party once) Ukraine has become free to hold democratic elections and become as rich as everybody else – not necessarily through honest toil.

Westerners have come from the USA, and from the rest of Europe, not to mention Japan and China and India, to join in the bean feast, and in many cases honest toil has not been their guiding inspiration either.

Make a very quick million bucks and get out is more like it.

In Ukraine, you could be a tall, spotty youth with a backpack and a Wisconsin accent who showed up in Kiev and lived under a bridge for a short while.

Then you cornered a positive source of income in an otherwise unused hole in the markets, and within ten years you find yourself spotless, dressed by Savile Row, with three dachas and this year’s Bentley Continental.

Your huge fortune might come from a media empire publishing neo-liberal economic news and forecasts. Your magazines and cheap pamphlets get their facts from The Economist and the Wall Street Journal.

You could have been Robert Fletcher, an American who became a ‘millionaire’s mentor’, instructing Ukrainians how to get rich quick for huge fees. He published a magazine too, called, with promising grammar – The Rich’s Club.

He went too far, tried to get out of the country on a false passport and got banged up.

In Kiev, the Catholic religion has been mostly replaced by ‘markets-and-mass-consumption’. As a result, what appeared to be growth and development has been enormous – and a catastophe.

Unlike the West, Ukraine has not enough watchdog financial journalists publishing advice in a daily column; there is hardly enough watchdog media; where are the American or British armies of eagle-eyed lawyers expert in dragging potential marketeers from court to court wrapped in a mile of red tape?

Ukraine’s elite are mostly coarse ex-peasants who were there first, with their armament factories, and their franchise to sell Kalashnikovs.

Kiev, that is ancient Kiev, is fast vanishing beneath a grotesque building boom, turning what Russians used to refer to as their ‘most pleasant big city’ into a brick and cement jungle of ill-designed skyscrapers and easily collapsable blocks of flats.

As the court system doesn’t work – never has – any young tycoon with good connections in the town hall can find himself a nice, large, unused car park and convert it into a low neighbourhood of little charm, with a, unattractive but money-spinning skycraper of a mere 26 storeys in the middle.

As the chief status symbol of the newly rich is a motorcar, hundreds of thousands of German, Japanese, Scandinavian and home grown cars now litter the streets and create traffic havoc.

The less intelligent, Slivovitz-fuelled citizens tend to drive down pavements in SUVs. Most citizens of Kiev carry a handy handkerchief fixed to their nose in downtown Kiev, where air pollution nearly rivals Peking’s.

This dark picture of what is happening in Ukraine is not relieved by the fact that city politics here is as corrupt as any other Eastern European state.

The get-rich-quick merchants are hand in glove with city hall, especially where building interests are involved. Kiev’s real estate is now as expensive as in Madrid, Rome or London.

One of the negative results of this is that small-time try-your-luckers cannot now exist – as they did at the beginning of the boom.

Prices are so high they cannot live here and look for the quick buck.

The chap who wants to open a small shop selling bric-a-brac and cheap jewellery can’t because he can’t afford the rent. In this way street life is dominated by huge cafeteria chains, fast-food outlets and clothing shops by the dozen.

As a leading journalist said recently, “the result is a streetscape of increasing mediocrity – at Paris prices”.

Older citizens tend to look on all this zing and muck with resignation. The average middle-aged Ukrainians spent all their lives - and their parents before them - in the Soviet queue for bread and never entered a car.

Younger Ukrainians are frustrated by the lack of superstructure, higher education, and opportunity. As one put it, “who wants to live in what is now a less than viable city, a laboratory for the imposition of the money culture?”

And yet, and yet, in the West, Ukraine is seen as a great success.

As the people struggle through another general election without actually killing each other, Westerners crow about capitalist wonders.

In Brussels the Euro-Deputies clap Ukrainians on the back and praise their ‘maturity’ and ‘evolving democracy’: anything to keep the capital flowing, in and out of the state.

How interesting it is that whenever a liberal or populist Ukrainian politician suggests re-nationalising industrial property robbed by oligarchs, Brussels and Washington shriek, “hands off!” as if an immediate regression to Stalinism has been proposed.

Younger Ukrainians are leaving the country by the thousands, fed up with the money culture, and bewildered because the values they might have been taught at school have disappeared.

They are surrounded by new crime and old bad air. Who can blame them?

Europe’s only problem is finding room for yet another dissatisfied immigrant from Eastern Europe.

In London you can now hardly find an Englishman. In Madrid and Barcelona it is almost better to know Bulgarian or Chechen than Spanish or Catalan.

Source: Tenerife News

Ukraine Ranked As Second Biggest Potato Eater In Europe

KIEV, Ukraine -- Any political party can envy the popularity rating of potato among Ukrainian residents. In the International Year of the Potato, declared by the United Nations in 2008, Ukraine has a record high potato crop, about 20 million tons.


“In Europe only Russia produces more potato than Ukraine, while as to the amount of its consumption per capita we are the second in the world after Belarus,” Ukrainian agricultural expert Andrei Yarmak said on Wednesday.

He said potato is a staple food in the diet of Ukrainian people. “We consume it more than bread,” he added.

Yearly, an average Ukrainian national consumes 150 kilograms (339 lbs) of potato.

According to the Kiev international sociology institute, about 70 percent of able-bodied population, including those living in cities, grow potatoes.

Ukrainians started eating potato back in the 17th century, while by the end of the 18th century it was grown in all Ukrainian regions.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s favourite recipe is as follows. Potatoes are incised and lardon is put inside. They are salted, peppered, rolled into foil and put into the oven. Baked potatoes are served with slices of Danube herring, which, for its part, is served with vegetable oil, onion and lemon slices.

Source: ITAR-TASS

Big Crowds, Big Names Tipped For Top Tennis Tournament

HOBART, Tasmania -- The organisers of next week's Hobart International Tennis Tournament say ticket sales are going very well.

Kateryna Bondarenko (L) and Alona Bondarenko.
Among the strong field are the Bondarenko sisters from Ukraine and West Australian wild card entrant Casey Dellacqua.

The tournament's director, Michael Roberts, says the event appeals to tennis fans and the general public.

"These are world class athletes and you know tennis is one of the most popular sports in the world," he said.

"So to have players that are in the top 100 of this sport, that's played throughout the world, it's really good to see.

"It's not too often that we get these sort of world champions come down to Hobart at an international event, especially women," Mr Roberts added.

Source: ABC News

Tensions Mount By The Shores Of The Black Sea

LONDON, UK -- If, in the coming year, you find yourself relaxing on the beach in the Bulgarian resort of Bourgas on Europe's little-noticed east coast, you may soon realize that you are in the centre of one of the world's most lavish and portentous conflicts, one that involves a dozen countries and the nuclear powers of the Cold War and is likely to produce explosions in 2008.


Look up the coast, just to the north, and you will see U.S. bombers and surveillance planes taking off in increasing numbers from Bulgarian and Romanian seaside bases as the U.S. and NATO militaries shift their major installations from Germany to locations along the formerly communist Black Sea coast.

In 2008, a year after the European Union added Bulgaria and Romania, two former Warsaw Pact nations, to its membership, NATO will make its most aggressive bids to win over the rest of the region. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's annual conference will be held near the sea in Romania, and the most explosive item on the agenda will be the proposed membership of Georgia – a Black Sea country that, if it joins, will expand the territory of this Cold War military alliance to the deep interior of the former Soviet Union.

Moscow is already reacting with anger to the expanding presence of NATO on these shores, which had previously been entirely within Russia's sphere of influence (only Turkey has traditionally been a NATO member). Half a dozen “frozen conflicts” in Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova appear ready to erupt into full-scale secession wars in the coming year; in every case, the militant movements appear to have Russian backing.

For the 100 million people who live around the shores of the Black Sea, 2008 may well feel like a return to the Cold War. This time, though, it's not clear which side any nation, any region or any people are on: Like South America or Southeast Asia during that previous Washington-Moscow standoff, the Black Sea region has become an endlessly contested ground, subject to shifting influences as money and weapons are dumped into unsuspecting populations.

In recent years, that conflict has played itself out most visibly in Ukraine, whose elections have been dramatic showdowns between Russian-supported forces and Western-backed democracy movements. This year ended with pro-Western Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who took office on Dec. 18, accusing Moscow of actively funding the opposition's parties.

The struggle between East and West is about to envelop the entire Black Sea region during the coming year, often with military implications.

The sparring is likely to begin as early as Saturday, when Georgia's five million citizens go to the polls in a presidential election and a referendum on the country's proposed NATO membership. The vote was called after weeks of violent mass demonstrations in November against pro-American president Mikheil Saakashvili. The demonstrations, which Mr. Saakashvili and a number of outside organizations say were backed by Russia, were met with brutal police repression. Georgia, like Ukraine, appears to be divided in half between voters who support the European Union and NATO and those who prefer a return to Moscow's influence.

But there are even deeper divisions in Georgia, and in a number of its Black Sea neighbours. Breakaway regions, which hope to form their own nations – usually because their people are more loyal to Russia – have seen low-level conflicts fraught with occasional bombings and acts of violence for years. In 2008, any one of them could become full-scale war.

Georgia's troubled regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have become increasingly violent in recent months, their independence movements staging bolder attacks against government facilities. Neighbouring Azerbaijan has had growing frictions in its region of Nagorno-Karabakh. And on the other side of the Black Sea, the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria, which is loyal to Russia, has seen increasing tensions.

These landlocked slivers of Black Sea real estate could well become conflict zones this year, for reasons rooted in another landlocked country that lies closer to the Adriatic Sea. In late January or early February, the Serbian province of Kosovo is likely to declare independence, an act that is backed by the European Union and the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that if Serbia, a Slavic-speaking country, loses its disputed Albanian-majority province to Western influences, it will have a hard time guaranteeing the integrity of Georgia and Moldova. Many observers see this as a thinly veiled threat: If Kosovo goes, then so goes Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. Some observers already say that arms are flowing into these breakaway regions.

“The chance of some kind of armed flare-up in at least one of those conflict zones in the coming year is disturbingly high,” says Thomas de Waal, an expert on the Caucasus at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. “The consequences could be catastrophic.”

Why are Brussels, Washington and Moscow devoting so much time, money and armaments to a stretch of shoreline that has previously languished in uneasy obscurity? Some of it has to do with geography: Georgia, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan sit near the border of Iran, and there is a strong desire to have a Western-loyal buffer of nations and defence installations surrounding this constant site of conflict.

Another reason might become visible if you sit long enough on the beach in Bourgas.

Further out to sea, you might spot Russian ships laying an enormous undersea pipeline, known as South Stream, that will carry billions of cubic metres of natural gas from Russia, across the 900-kilometre width of the Black Sea to Bulgaria, and on to energy-hungry Western Europe.

And just behind you, running up the Bulgarian shore, will be the tail end of South Stream's Western-funded competitor, known as Nabucco, which carries equally enormous amounts of gas from Iran and Central Asia through Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey before it supplies Europe. These pipelines, carrying Europe's Russian fuel supply and its hard-fought Iranian alternative, provide the economic backdrop for this set of emerging conflicts.

Europe is enormously reliant on Russian gas and oil to heat its homes – some countries, such as Germany and Italy, are so completely dependent that they would face an immediate crisis if the pipelines from Russia were curtailed. (This occurred briefly in 2006, during a dispute between Russia and Belarus over pipeline rights, and caused a sizable shock.) As a result, the supplies of petroleum and gas from the Adriatic Sea through Azerbaijan and from Iran are considered vital. (This is an important reason why the EU has been reluctant to participate fully in sanctions against Iran over alleged nuclear weapons activity.)

So much of this dispute – though not all of it, as some would suggest – is rooted in the West's need for energy security. If non-Russian sources of fuel are to be securely provided, then the loyalty of the countries to the east, south and west of the Black Sea is vital. From Moscow's perspective, if its continued dominance is to be maintained (and good prices upheld for its supplies), then pipelines will need to pass through the west, north and east of the Black Sea.

Some countries, notably Bulgaria and Romania, stand to benefit either way: Both Adriatic-Iranian oil pipelines and Russia's new pipes will enter Europe through their impoverished territory.

As you relax on the beige sands of Bourgas – an increasingly popular vacation getaway for both Central Europeans and for Russians – these rising tensions might be visible along the shoreline and across the water. But they're likely to seem especially bizarre when you return to your hotel, which is almost certain to have EU flags flying on its awning – and to be owned by Russian tycoons.

Source: Globe and Mail

Analysts: Tymoshenko Govt In For Hard Year

KIEV, Ukraine -- Two senior Ukrainian analysts have forecast a hard year for Ukraine's new government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and one of them has forecast her Cabinet will be out of office before the end of 2008.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
"The main reason why I'm speaking of it as a provisional government are sentiments that exist in the government itself today," Valery Chaly, deputy director of the Oleksandr Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies, told Interfax.

The director of the Sofia social studies center, Andriy Yermolayev, said: "Tymoshenko is entering 2008 as an obvious winner, she has very good starting positions and a well-built personal political team. The fact that the [liberal parliamentary] coalition is weak and the government is controversial will not stop her from building up her political resources and popularity. Possibly it will be her highest point. Whether it will be possible to rise higher than that is difficult to tell."

"It is doubtless that populist social decisions will strengthen her popularity, but the problem is that, to be popular, a political leader needs to be the leader of elite objectives and plans because it is on the elites and their plans that the stable functioning of the economy and political compromise depend on. Her language, her methods reflect the position of a leader of the masses, but this is not enough to govern a country. Who will be able to become an alternative to her, and whether any alternative is possible, is one of the riddles of 2008," Yermolayev said.

"There will be no new coalitions in 2008," he said.

"It is another story that the current coalition will most likely be a nominal entity rather than one doing any practical work," Yermolayev said.

Internal controversies will prevent the coalition from operating as a stable decision-making center, and the role of such a center will go over to the government, he argued.

Yermolayev also predicted that the opposition would become more powerful.

"The Regions [Party of Regions] may become the first disciplined opposition group that would not break control panels [at power plants] but will formulate serious economic and political alternatives to the government's policies. Voters are going to witness an interesting political war over methods, solutions, interpretations of events," he said

Source: Interfax

Russia: Cold War Lite

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- 2007 was the year Vladimir Putin implicitly compared the United States to the Third Reich. It was the year Moscow threatened to target its missiles at Europe and was accused of carrying out a cyber-attack on a NATO member. It was the year Russia pulled out of a key arms-control treaty and resumed strategic-bomber patrols.

Russian President Vladimir Putin
And it was the year that -- despite the occasional diplomatic language to the contrary -- the last remnants of the vaunted strategic partnership between Russia and the West appeared headed for the dustbin of history.

From Russia's recent withdrawal from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, to the standoff between Washington and Moscow over missile defense, to Western allegations that the Kremlin is bullying its neighbors, many analysts say 2007 marked a new low in Russia's post-Soviet relations with the West. And many experts expect things to get even worse.

"I think 2007 was the chilliest year in relations between Russia and the West since 1991. In fact, probably since the days of the late Soviet Union. Not only did it mark a new low, but the trajectory is very ominous," says Edward Lucas, deputy international editor of the British weekly "The Economist" and author of the forthcoming book, "The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West."

Lucas describes the emerging conflict between Russia and the West -- particularly the struggle for hearts, minds, and influence in former Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine -- as a "Cold War" -- albeit one fought with "soft power."

Other Kremlin-watchers, however, are reluctant to use such a historically loaded term, which conjures images of a global nuclear standoffs, duck-and-cover drills, and fallout shelters.

"I am still hesitant to use the term 'Cold War,'" says Steven Pifer, a Russia expert formerly with the U.S. State Department and ambassador to Ukraine who is now a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "To my mind, Cold War conjures up a competition that has a military-security component, a political component, an economic component, an ideological component. It is really across the board. And I don't think we're at that point."

The Bear Is Back

Cold War or not, Russia has certainly been attempting to lay the foundations for an alternative security architecture to compete with the West. In the past year, Moscow has tried to breathe life into security organizations bringing together ex-Soviet states like the Collective Security Cooperation Organization, and sought a closer military alliance with China via the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement.

What we are seeing, according to some analysts, is a return to some degree to the great-power politics and shifting alliances that marked earlier centuries.

"I think [today's situation] resembles the great-power politics that existed before the Cold War and mostly in the 19th century, when great powers had their interests and the conflict of convergence of those interests determined the workings of international politics," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of the influential Moscow-based journal "Russia In Global Affairs."

So what is at the heart of this clash? Part of it is simply that Russia, flush with energy wealth, has become much stronger and is eager to flex its newfound muscles. Part of it is a reaction to what the Kremlin and many Russians view as the humiliation the country endured in the 1990s -- when Moscow was dependent on Western loans and aid.

"After decades of slumbering underachievement, the Bear is back," wrote the U.S. newsweekly "Time" magazine in a profile naming Putin its "Person of the Year" for 2007.

But a big part is explained by a conscious decision on the part of the current Kremlin leadership that it was no longer interested in adhering to Western criteria of democracy, human rights, and international behavior.

"Russia decided that it didn't need integration [with the West] and that, most importantly, the West didn't want it," Lukyanov says. "This means that [Russia] need to strengthen our independent position. And everything that has happened since then is a continuation of that line."

Or, as "Time" put it, Putin "wants a seat at the table on big international issues but also demands "free rein inside Russia" and the right "to exert influence over Russia's former Soviet neighbors." Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Putin has abandoned the "calculation that Russia's future requires broad acceptance on the West's terms."

Long Downward Trend

The downward trend in Russia's relations with the West has been evident for several years. Moscow was angry about what it perceived as American and European meddling in Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution and Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution. Many in the Russian elite feared a similar democratic revolution in their country, leading to a rollback on democratic freedoms that caused relations with the West to deteriorate farther.

When Russia began using its oil and gas wealth to pressure Ukraine and other neighbors seeking to integrate with the West, it touched off a low-intensity struggle to control energy routes to Europe.

And the killings of two Kremlin critics at the end of 2006 -- the October assassination of journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow in and the poisoning death of former security official Aleksandr Litvinenko in London in November -- sent relations into a tailspin.

But Lukyanov says 2007 was indeed a turning point: "It was the first principled change that took place not only under Putin but in the whole period that an independent [post-Soviet] Russia has existed," he says.

The tone for 2007 was set in February when Putin, speaking at a security conference in Munich, accused the United States of seeking to impose its will on other states and establish a unipolar world.

A month later, Putin said Russia was considering suspending its participation in the 1990 CFE treaty -- a threat he followed through on signing a law doing so on November 30.

Also in March, Russia reacted furiously to Estonia's decision to move a Soviet-era monument to Red Army soldiers from central Tallinn. Western politicians say an ensuing cyber-attack on Estonian government websites and riots by ethnic Russians in the Estonian capital were orchestrated by the Kremlin.

In a May 9 speech, Putin -- in a barely veiled reference that elicited an angry U.S. reaction -- compared an unidentified global power that was striving to dominate the world to Nazi Germany.

Moscow and the United States were at odds all year over Washington's plans to deploy components of a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Putin threatened to target Russia's missiles at those two countries if the system was deployed.

The year was also marked by a series of conflicts between Russia and Georgia -- which is seeking to join NATO and the EU -- over the pro-Moscow separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Attention Deficit

Pifer says one underlying problem in Russia's relations with the West -- and particularly with the United States -- is that Moscow craves the attention it received as the centerpiece of international politics during the Cold War:

"The Russians like attention. But the problem that you have is that at the level of the president or the secretary of state or the national security adviser is that there are only so many hours in the day," Pifer says. "And when certainly the domestic requirements in Washington are driving you to remain so focused on Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran, there is only so much time you've got."

Nevertheless, as the "Time" selection of Putin as its Person of the Year suggests, Russia -- for better or worse -- has won some of the attention it craves. The question remains, what will they do with their newfound status in the coming years.

In an opinion essay published in the English-language daily "The Moscow Times" on December 19, Lukyanov offers a critique of Moscow's current posture and advise for the future. "The United States and its European allies could no longer afford to treat Russia with indifference. But after gaining the West's attention...Moscow found itself at a loss as to what it wanted to say. It lacked a well-defined and logical set of ideas and desires," Lukyanov writes.

"It is time to move away from the practice of denouncing various imperfections in the world order and toward making constructive, substantive suggestions. Strategic vision and solutions to problems are needed, not empty rhetoric," Lukyanov asserts. "Propagandistic retorts are not constructive."

Source: Radio Free Europe