Former Yushchenko Ally Calls President's Poisoning Claims A Myth

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has made it clear that he holds Davyd Zhvania, the sponsor of the populist People’s Self-Defense bloc (NS), responsible for his mysterious poisoning at the height of the presidential election race in 2004 — Zhvania denies this.

Davyd Zhvania
Zhvania also insists that Yushchenko’s was a case of ordinary food poisoning, and that his poisoning with dioxin was nothing more than a myth created in order to help Yushchenko win the election.

The next presidential race, expected in 2009, is probably at stake now. Yushchenko’s team suspects NS and personally Zhvania — a businessman of Georgian descent, Yushchenko’s former close ally, and the godfather of his son—of supporting Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s presidential ambitions.

NS is part of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine People’s Self-Defense bloc (NUNS), but the presidential secretariat suspects that it is loyal to Tymoshenko, who may run for president against Yushchenko.

Zhvania’s claims that Yushchenko’s dioxin poisoning was a fabrication cast a shadow over Yushchenko’s integrity, potentially spoiling his chances of re-election.

Zhvania’s troubles began this past May, when the Prosecutor-General’s Office (PGO) opened a criminal case suspecting that he illegally obtained Ukrainian citizenship.

In return, Zhvania claimed that Yushchenko’s wife had illegally kept her U.S. citizenship, and that the criminal case against him was in revenge for his disobeying Yushchenko’s orders regarding the recent mayoral election in Kyiv.

Yushchenko’s team denied Zhvania’s allegations.

Speaking in an interview on May 30, Zhvania sensationally claimed that Yushchenko was not poisoned with dioxin in 2004. He said Yushchenko suffered from an attack of pancreatitis caused by ordinary food poisoning, and that his face was subsequently disfigured not by dioxin but by an inflammation not related to the poisoning.

Yushchenko’s team, he said, decided to sell it to the public as deliberate poisoning.

Asked why he did not reveal this earlier, Zhvania said that he did not want the spirit of the pro-Yushchenko Orange Revolution in November-December 2004 to be curbed.

Zhvania said that the tests which showed the presence of dioxin in Yushchenko’s body were fake. An international group of doctors who treated Yushchenko after 2004 denied this allegation. They said that 90 percent of the dioxin has been removed from his body since then.

Zhvania also denied the widespread belief that Yushchenko was poisoned at a dinner with the then head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ihor Smeshko, and his deputy Volodymyr Satsyuk on September 5, 2004.

“It was a beautiful myth for a post-Soviet country. Look how it sounds: former KGB people wanted to kill a democratic president,” Zhvania told the Ukrainian edition of a popular Russian daily. Zhvania did not deny that he organized that dinner as the then deputy head of Yushchenko’s election HQ. He said that Yushchenko’s security as a presidential candidate was discussed there.

Yushchenko, speaking in an interview with an Austrian daily, insisted that he was poisoned at the dinner. He said that three individuals were involved who later fled to Russia and obtained Russian citizenship.

The PGO indirectly confirmed that Satsyuk was one of the three, reporting shortly after Yushchenko’s interview that Russia refused to extradite him. However, officially Ukraine wants Satsyuk extradited on charges unrelated to the poisoning.

Zhvania was for the first time openly accused of involvement in Yushchenko’s poisoning on July 23, when Yushchenko’s legal advisor Ihor Pukshyn claimed that “Zhvania, directly or indirectly, ‘helped’ Yushchenko eat poison”.

Speaking at a press conference the following day, Yushchenko, asked whether Zhvania had been involved in his poisoning, said “I think yes” and added, “to put it mildly”. Yushchenko later explained why he suspected Zhvania, saying that Zhvania insisted on the meeting with the SBU heads in September 2004, which Yushchenko had not planned to attend, and that Zhvania was the only member of his staff who was against flying him to Austria for treatment.

Yushchenko was flown to a private clinic in Austria several days after the dinner, when his condition worsened.

Zhvania threatened to sue both Pukshyn and Yushchenko for the accusations against him. He also threatened Yushchenko with impeachment.

Zhvania may find supporters for an impeachment motion outside his NS. Pukshyn accused Tymoshenko of supporting Zhvania and using his allegations in her rivalry with Yushchenko.

“As she has never concealed her presidential ambitions, it is very convenient for her to cast a shadow over Yushchenko,” he said. Viktor Baloha, the chief of Yushchenko’s secretariat, also issued a statement accusing Tymoshenko of supporting Zhvania.

He claimed that she was conspiring against Yushchenko in order to split NUNS and forge a new coalition in parliament with his rivals.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Slavic Rivals Embroiled In Church Rift

MOSCOW, Russia -- For many Russians, it is bad enough that the president of Ukraine is pushing to join NATO and to eject the Russian Navy from its Black Sea port. But over the weekend, the confrontation over Ukraine's attempts to shrug off Russian influence reached an even more painful emotional pitch - with a new tug of war over history, identity and power.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the titular head of Orthdox Christianity, and President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine attend a ceremony at Kiev's airport on Friday. Yushchenko is seeking Ukrainian independence from the Russian church.
President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine chose the 1,020th anniversary of the advent of Christianity in the Slavic kingdom that predated both Ukraine and Russia - a date that each country claims as a founding event of its nationhood - to issue a public plea for Ukraine's Orthodox Christians to gain independence from the Russian Orthodox Church.

With Orthodox church notables from around the world looking on, Yushchenko asked Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the titular spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians, to bless the creation of an independent Ukrainian church - "a blessing," he said, "for a dream, for the truth, for a hope, for our state, for Ukraine."

The Ukrainian president - who claims that Russian agents tried to murder him with poison that left him with a pockmarked face - snubbed the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Alexei II, giving him a businesslike handshake after warmly kissing Bartholomew on both cheeks.

During three days of solemn religious ceremonies, rock concerts and political brinksmanship in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, the power struggle was not resolved. Both sides declared victory as Bartholomew stopped short of supporting or rejecting the independence movement, saying only that divisions in the Ukrainian church would have "problematic consequences for Ukraine's future."

But there was insulted pride and inflamed nationalism on both sides, and it was clear that it would be hard to resolve the dispute without causing a schism in the church, heating up ethnic tensions in Ukraine and deepening the division between Russia and the former Soviet republic.

The possibility of a split in the church revealed that behind the geopolitical bluster that the two countries have directed at each other since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 lies an identity crisis and a deep sense of loss.

Many Ukrainians believe the Russian empire and later the Soviet Union robbed them of the chance to develop a national identity, while many Russians feel that Ukraine is now claiming for itself both land and history that belong to them as well.

For Svetlana Dyomena, a nurse who prayed Monday at Yelokhovsky Cathedral in Moscow, the idea of an independent Ukrainian church immediately reminded her of her objections to an independent Ukraine.

"How can Ukraine not be part of Russia?" she said after lighting a candle at the turquoise, golden-domed church, which was the Russian capital's main practicing Orthodox cathedral under Soviet rule. "We have a common faith, a common history."

Dyomena said it was less painful to see countries like Georgia seek to escape Moscow's sphere of influence.

"Georgians - well, they were always from the Caucasus," she said, referring to the restive mountainous region that has fought wars against Russian rulers for centuries. But Ukraine and Russia, she said, have "one language, one religion, even one cuisine."

Ukrainians disagree. Russian was the language of government and education in Ukraine under the Soviet and Russian empires, and Ukrainians struggled to maintain their language. They view the absorption of the Ukrainian state and church into Russia's institutions under Peter the Great as an annexation that was not reversed until 1991.

"How can you live like neighbors when your neighbor says the house you live in is not your own house, but our common house?" asked Bishop Yevstraty, the spokesman for one of two Ukrainian breakaway churches, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kiev Patriarchate, which the Moscow Patriarchate has declared heretical.

Establishing an independent church is essential for Ukraine to consolidate its national identity and statehood, and it will probably happen eventually, said Alexei Malashenko, an expert on religion and society at the Moscow Carnegie Center.

"But for Russia it is also a tragedy," he said. "I don't know how they are going to agree."

When Ukraine left the Soviet Union in 1991, the new nation took with it much that was dear to Russian hearts.

The Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, won by Catherine the Great from the Turks for the Russian empire, was a vacation getaway for generations of Russian nobles and, later, Soviet laborers. Its port, in Sevastopol, is the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Odessa, an important shipping hub now part of Ukraine, is also the source of cultural touchstones from its bawdy jokes to the famous shot of the baby carriage rolling down the steps in the classic Eisenstein film, Battleship Potemkin

Even historical tragedies are subject to the tug of war: There is a Ukrainian movement to convince the world that the famines that killed millions of Soviets during forced collectivization was a genocide aimed at ethnic Ukrainians - while many Russians object that their ancestors, too, starved after being stripped of their private land.

But the biggest prize is the inheritance of Kievan Rus, the kingdom that Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in the 10th century. Some historians consider the kingdom to be the predecessor of the three east Slavic nations existing today - Russia, Ukraine and Belarus - as well as a cultural high point in the medieval history of Europe as a whole.

Speaking in Kiev, the Russian patriarch called it "the mother of Russian cities, a city from where Holy Orthodoxy began to spread through our land."

Moscow church officials, who are close to the Kremlin, linked church unity to political efforts to maintain close ties among Slavic countries.

At a rock concert organized by the Moscow patriarchate, the popular rock band DDT performed alongside Metropolitan Kirill, a Moscow church spokesman who declared in a kind of ecclesiastical rap: "Russia, Ukraine, Belarus - That is Holy Rus!"

There is also division within Ukraine itself over the issue.

The idea of church independence is less popular in Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking, pro-Russian industrialized south and east than in the Ukrainian-speaking, Western-leaning part of the country west of the Dniepr River.

Alexei II canceled a planned trip to Donetsk, a pro-Russian city, citing health reasons, but was widely seen to be either trying to avoid stirring up conflict by rallying his supporters, or to be leaving early because the Ukrainian president did not show him enough respect.

At Yelokhovsky Sobor, another worshipper, Aleftina Prosvirnikova, 65, declared that all the problems had started in Western Ukraine.

"The south and east - that's the normal, Russian Ukraine," she said.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Is Ukraine On The Brink Of An Energy Crisis?

KIEV, Ukraine -- Come January 2009 Ukraine will, in all likelihood, begin paying Russia’s Gazprom in the range of $400 per 1,000 cubic meters for natural gas or $22 billion per year. Presently the country pays $179 per 1,000 cubic meters, or $9.9 billion per year.


Will it be able to survive the new price?

For years Ukraine has been hard pressed to pay its debts to Gazprom and has regularly been indebted to Gazprom to the tune of about $1 billion per year.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller stated that by July 2008 Ukraine had hoarded 1 billion cubic meters of gas—destined for sale to European customers—into its underground gas storage facilities, withholding it from RosUkrEnergo, the Swiss-based intermediary company that sells Central Asian gas to a number of European companies.

Miller explained that this was a maneuver by Naftogaz Ukraine, the Ukrainian state-owned oil and gas monopoly, to stock up on cheaper gas in order to reduce costly imports in 2009.

All indications point to the fact that Ukraine is decidedly unprepared for such a dramatic increase in energy costs and few believe it will be able to convince Central Asian leaders to lessen the blow by reducing the price at which they sell their gas to Gazprom or to make the increase incremental over a span of five years.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian prime minister, held out hope by saying that during her meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in June 2008, Putin promised to distribute the price increase over a five-year span.

Earlier, however, Putin told the Ukrainian leadership that Russian “subsidies” for their energy imports had come to an end.

Both sides in the ongoing negotiations have been careful thus far in their comments and have avoided confrontational remarks—the sole exception being Ukrainian Economics Minister Bohdan Danylyshyn, who stated that if the price of gas were to jump to $400, Ukraine should block Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization.

Gazprom could, conceivably, agree to an incremental price increase for Ukraine over a span of five years, thus allowing the country to radically improve its highly energy-wasteful economy and reduce yearly gas imports from the current 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) to 40 bcm or less and to develop alternative energy sources. In the end, however, Ukraine will need to pay the accumulated debt.

The worst case scenario would be for Gazprom to refuse to grant the Ukrainians debt postponement and demand cash up front for gas deliveries.

This could be a death blow to Ukrainian industry and agriculture which are highly reliant on gas for manufacturing and fertilizer production.

Such a price increase could have unpredictable consequences for Ukrainian politics. Many industrialists might blame President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko for not preparing the country for such a predictable escalation of energy costs and might not support them in the 2009 presidential election.

Voters in Eastern Ukraine could lose some of their pro-Russian enthusiasm if higher gas prices lead to wide-scale unemployment in their region. Some would place the blame on Russia for “squeezing” Ukraine—and them—into an economic crisis.

Others however might argue that if Ukraine were part of Russia, they would pay low Russian domestic prices for gas and thus avoid a crisis.

The opposition pro-Russian Party of the Regions has maintained a silence about the price increase knowing that it shares full responsibility with the ruling coalition for Ukraine’s inability to cope with rising energy costs.

Nonetheless, if the increase is not modified, Viktor Yanukovych, the leader of the Party of the Regions, will in all probability benefit most and be elected president.

Gazprom and the Kremlin might be tempted to play the “gas card” in order to see Yanukovych elected and to gain control—if not direct ownership—of the Ukrainian trunk gas pipeline, a long-time objective of Russian policy meant to give Gazprom the ultimate say over the largest supply route of Russian gas to Europe.

With a possible debt of over $10 billion by late 2009, the new Ukrainian government might be forced to sell the pipeline to Gazprom—as well as a substantial part of its industrial base, maintain the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol and renounce its intention to join NATO.

Source: Eurasian Daily Monitor

Moscow, Kiev Both Claim Victory In Ukraine Church Dispute

KIEV, Ukraine -- Moscow and Kiev both are claiming victory in a dispute creating an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church — which Russia fiercely opposes — after a weekend visit by the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians.

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko (R) and Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew attend a ceremony in central Kiev. Ukraine's president on Saturday asked the head of Orthodox Christianity to bless the creation of a Ukrainian Church independent of Russia, raising the stakes in a simmering spat with Moscow.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is hoping to win recognition of the local church's independence from Moscow as part of his drive to shed centuries-long Russian influence.

The Russian Orthodox Church resists losing control over this predominantly Orthodox country of 46 million.

Yushchenko said on his Web site that the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox believers has voiced support for the creation of a local church, independent of the powerful Russian Orthodox Church.

"I am glad that the Patriarch is backing the aspiration of the Ukrainian people to have its own national local church," Yushchenko said in a statement. "Such aspirations are in line to all the principles of a national, state and of course church life."

Yushchenko made the statement Sunday at the end of a three-day visit by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, who came to Kiev to attend massive celebrations marking the 1020 anniversary of Ukraine's and Russia's conversion to Christianity.

But Mikhail Prokopenko, a spokesman for the Moscow-based Russian church, disputed Yushchenko's claim.

He told The Associated Press on Monday that a meeting between Russian Patriarch Alexy II and Bartholomew confirmed that Constantinople recognizes Moscow's supremacy over the Ukrainian church.

Prokopenko also said that Bartholomew also will not recognize a breakaway church in Ukraine that has proclaimed its independence and whose leader has been excommunicated by Alexy.

Bartholomew's office declined immediate comment.

Experts say the Ukrainian church likely will get independence eventually, like churches in other countries will sizable Orthodox populations.

But an abrupt decision on this could lead to a deep split between Constantinople and the Russian church, the biggest Orthodox church in the world, which claims 95 million believers out of the world's 250 million Orthodox.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Alexy Leads Kiev Anniversary Service

MOSCOW, Russia -- Police blocked hundreds of Orthodox believers from attending a service led by Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II at a monument to St. Vladimir on the banks of the Dnepr River in Kiev on Sunday.

Russian Patriarch Alexy II, in Kiev.
The service was a part of the celebrations of the 1,020th anniversary of the conversion of Kievan Rus to Christianity by Vladimir.

Ukrainian law enforcement officers told RIA-Novosti on Sunday that the believers were cordoned off to avoid a stampede, but the news agency reported that there appeared to have been enough free space near the monument.

The celebration again stressed growing tensions with Ukraine, which declared a pro-Western course after the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who has called for the establishment of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, did not come to meet Alexy as he arrived at Borispol Airport on Saturday.

Yushchenko appealed on Saturday to the leader of the world's Orthodox believers, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople (now Istanbul), to allow the creation of a Ukrainian church, a move Bartholomew suggested that he was ready to consider.

On Sunday, Alexy warned that the move was an attempt to drive a wedge between the Orthodox believers in Russia and Ukraine.

"By raising doubts about what has been undisputable for centuries, we endanger our common future," he said, Interfax reported.

He added that the "unity of Russian Orthodox Christianity does not interfere with the full-fledged lives of sovereign states that are heirs of Kievan Rus."

An independent Orthodox church was formed in Ukraine after the 1991 collapse of Soviet rule, but it remains unrecognized by any other Orthodox church. The Ukrainian branch within the Russian Orthodox Church remains its sole representative.

On Sunday, Alexy said the Russian Orthodox Church "had created all conditions" necessary for its Ukrainian branch to minister to local believers.

The tension surrounding church divisions has unfolded against the backdrop of disputes between Moscow and Kiev over gas prices, Ukraine's drive to join NATO and steps to remove Russia's Black Sea Fleet from Crimea by 2017.

Yushchenko has long called a single, independent and fully recognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church vital to forming the country's national identity.

"I believe any sort of division among Ukrainian believers will be short-lived. I believe we will achieve our dream," Yushchenko told tens of thousands of clerics, parishioners and officials in the rain outside Kiev's 11th-century St. Sofia Cathedral on Saturday.

In his remarks, Bartholomew referred to the historical difficulties of Orthodoxy in Ukraine, including the "annexation" of both the Ukrainian Church and state by Russia under Peter the Great in the late 17th century.

On Sunday, Russian television showed dozens of people shouting "Alexy is our patriarch" in Kiev.

Alexy only agreed to attend after securing an agreement that the independent, Kiev-based church would not take part in the ceremonies.

Source: The Moscow Times

"The Red Prince": The Amazing Life Of The Self-Appointed King Of Ukraine

SEATTLE, Washington -- Vasyl Vyshyvani Square lies in a quiet section of the Ukrainian city of Lviv, popular with schoolchildren who clamber about on its unadorned stone plinth.


The plinth was intended as the base for a monument, never completed, to the square's namesake, a man of numerous identities, titles and nationalities and the subject of Timothy Snyder's new book.

Vasyl Vyshyvani was born Archduke Wilhelm von Habsburg in 1895, a member of the House of Habsburg that had ruled Central Europe for centuries.

Raised in a world of enormous wealth and power, he and his family lost everything with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire following World War I.

For the rest of his remarkable, peripatetic life, Wilhelm repeatedly reinvented himself to fit his fluctuating circumstances — soldier, spy, leftist aristocrat, international playboy, cross-dressing gay lover, arms dealer.

Yet it was his dream of becoming king of an independent Ukraine as Vasyl Vyshyvani that defined Wilhelm's life, and ultimately sealed his fate.

Deeply researched and beautifully written, "The Red Prince" captures in shimmering colors the death of old Europe and the continent's descent into barbarism.

It abounds with a cast of unforgettable characters, from bloodthirsty nationalist strongmen and shady conspirators to alluring demimondaines and debauched nobles.

Snyder, an award-winning historian at Yale University, has written a compelling biography as well as a vivid depiction of an era and offers insightful observations on the mutability of personal and national identity.

Wilhelm ultimately lost his bid for Ukraine's throne.

Arrested by Stalin's henchmen in Vienna in 1947 and returned in chains to Kiev, he was convicted of aspiring to be king of Ukraine.

Wilhelm died in prison the following year, his only monument an unmarked grave.

Source: The Seattle Times

Orthodox Commemmoration Reopens Ukraine-Russia Row

KIEV, Ukraine -- Top clerics from Orthodox countries converged on Ukraine on Friday for three days of festivities, deepening a longstanding dispute with Russia over the ex-Soviet state's right to its own independent church.

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko (R) and Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew inspect the guard of honour on arrival at Kiev's airport, July 25, 2008.
The celebrations to mark the 1,020th anniversary of the embrace of Orthodox Christianity in the region are certain to be overshadowed by the dispute between Kyiv and Moscow which has long extended beyond religion into politics.

After mainly Orthodox Ukraine won independence from Soviet rule in 1991, a separate church was formed.

But it remains unrecognized by the worldwide Orthodox Church, which sees the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox church as its only representative in the country.

Authorities in Ukraine, site of the Kyivan Rus state that preceded parts of modern-day Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, are hosting the event. Russian Patriarch Alexiy II is attending after securing an agreement that the independent Kyiv-based church will stay away.

But its clerics still lobby for change.

"Ukraine has the right to its own church. Unfortunately, Moscow is denying this right in the same way it opposes the very notion of Ukraine as an independent state," Bishop Yevstratiy, a spokesman for the independent church, told Reuters.

"What is going on in Ukrainian Orthodoxy has nothing to do with violating church law. It is caused by Moscow fighting for power in Ukraine - economic, political and spiritual power."

Statistics show the churches have roughly the same number of parishioners. Property disputes between the two sides in the 1990s sparked street scuffles, often between elderly believers.

Pro-Western Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, an ardent Orthodox believer, sees creation of an independent church as part of Ukraine's task of building a national identify.

The president has tried to boost the event's profile by focusing on the visit by Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew, worldwide leader of more than 225 million believers in the Orthodox church - formed after the 1054 schism with Rome.

Bartholomew was met by Yushchenko and given top honours at Kyiv airport on Friday, a military honour guard, goose-stepping soldiers and the playing of Ukraine's national anthem. Posters of the president alongside Bartholomew dotted Kyiv streets.

Tens of thousands of guests will hold a Saturday prayer meeting near the 11th century St Sofia Cathedral and a Sunday service by the Dnipro River.

Russia is locked in disputes with Ukraine's pro-Western leaders on natural gas prices, their drive to join NATO and their calls for Russia to pull its Black Sea Fleet out of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula by 2017.

In an indicator of tensions, Ukraine's ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry and told the festivities were staged "with a lack of respect for the Russian Orthodox church and the feelings of millions of believers."

A ministry statement also complained about the decision by Ukrainian authorities to deny entry on Friday to a nationalist member of parliament and "endless talk" it said was disrupting negotiations over the future of the Black Sea fleet.

Proponents of the independent church have considered placing it under the jurisdiction of Constantinople - as an Orthodox church in Estonia did in the 1990s - to win recognition later.

The Moscow church says this will only lead to trouble.

"This is a revolutionary process and it won't work in the church," said Archimandrite Kiril, a spokesman for the Russian church. "We have started the process of rapprochement . . . Now the intervention of political authorities could bring us back to the early 1990s with violence and conflicts."

Source: Leader-Post

Ukraine Bars Entry To Russian Nationalist Lawmaker For Undermining National Independence

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine barred entry to a Russian nationalist lawmaker over his remarks and actions that the government says undermine the country's independence, officials said Friday.

Konstantin Zatulin
The move is the latest step in an escalating dispute between Moscow and Kiev over Ukraine's efforts to join NATO and integrate with the West and the future presence of a Russian naval fleet in a Ukrainian port.

Konstantin Zatulin was denied entry to Ukraine for one year on Thursday, said Serhiy Astakhov, a spokesman for the State Border service.

Zatulin flew to the city of Simferopol on the Crimean Peninsula as Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is renting a naval base in Ukraine's port of Sevastopol, was preparing to celebrate Russia's Navy Day. He was denied entry and had to spend the night at the airport.

Zatulin says he came to Ukraine to attend a tennis tournament. But Ukraine's national security service believes he was planning to sabotage celebrations of the 1,020th anniversary of Ukraine's and Russia's conversion to Christianity, the Interfax news agency reported, citing a source at the agency. The agency declined immediate comment

Ukrainian authorities are hoping to use the celebrations to push for recognition of the local Orthodox church as independent from the powerful Moscow patriarchate.

Zatulin had been declared persona non grata in Ukraine in the past over his participation in anti-NATO protests in the Crimea. Earlier this year Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov was also barred from Ukraine for suggesting that Sevastopol belongs to Russia.

The Crimean peninsula was for centuries part of the Russian empire and then of Soviet Russia. In 1954, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev awarded it to Soviet Ukraine, where he lived and ruled for many years.

After the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Crimea became part of an independent Ukraine, causing a lot of discontent in Russia and among local residents, many of whom are ethnic Russians.

The lease agreement for the Russian fleet expires in 2017 and Ukrainian leaders have indicated they want the Russian ships out after that. Moscow, however, has been pushing to prolong the agreement and offered to pay more.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Ukraine Euro Move Is A Sign, Not Policy Shift

MOSCOW, Russia -- Unprecedented moves by Ukraine's central bank to bid for euros this week should signal that the dollar's importance for the country is waning and that a multi-currency basket could be on the horizon.


But analysts said any decision to change the bank's policy of pegging the hryvnia to the dollar will not come swiftly -- fraught as it will be with political wrangling, instability and a changing economic landscape.

The bank on Tuesday for the first time bid openly for the euro at 7.3739 hryvnias and on Thursday bid again at 7.3195.

The bank's transactions are normally private, between individual banks.

"I see in this a step towards a more complex formula for establishing the exchange rate. This is a movement towards a basket," the central bank's top adviser Valery Lytvytsky told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

Lytvytsky did not specify which currencies could be in a basket, but said there could be more than two and that a change could come about as early as this year. Russia already has a basket of 0.55 dollars and 0.45 euros for its rouble.

"The basket need not necessarily be made up of just two currencies," Lytvytsky said. "In my opinion, this can and should be done at some point this year, although we would have to see what the situation looks like in autumn."

Ukraine's central bank has already shifted away from a strict three-year policy of pegging the hryvnia to the dollar at 5.00-5.06 and intervening on the market appropriately.

It was absent from the market around February-March when the hryvnia crept up against the dollar, fuelling speculation that it could revalue its official rate. It did just that in May.

But the revaluation to 4.85 hryvnias to the dollar from 5.05 did not go smoothly -- the bank's council vetoed it only to have that decision overturned by the executive board, headed by veteran Chairman Volodymyr Stelmakh.

Many believe the differences within the central bank reflect the tug-of-war between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, allies during the 2004 Western-orientated "Orange Revolution".

While the two battled over privatisation, energy policy and benefits, inflation soared and has stayed around 30 percent annually, forcing the bank to loosen its rigid policy.

TAKE INFLATION SERIOUSLY

Yet even then Yushchenko appeared to back the bank's council by saying that revaluation would hurt exporters, while Tymoshenko left the topic alone, citing the bank's independence.

Such wrangling prompts little hope for a decisive move soon: the bank's adviser speaks of no formal links to the dollar, while the council has just set an official rate of 4.85 hryvnias to the dollar, plus or minus four percent.

"The situation in Ukraine is quite dangerous ... Authorities should take inflation seriously. It's very hard to call whether this will be done or not, given the track record of successful talks," said Katya Malofeeva, analyst at Renaissance Capital.

"The sooner the central bank very clearly states what its policy targets are and what instruments it will use and the government supports that, the better."

Analysts say there are strong reasons to give more weight to the hryvnia's value against the euro.

"When it comes to the Ukrainian trade basket, the euro is quite important ... If Ukraine moves toward a euro-dollar basket that would quite accurately reflect a trade basket," said Martin Blum, head of emerging markets macro and strategy at Unicredit.

But other factors may weigh against such a move.

"A lot of the key commodities are still transacted in dollars -- oil, gas, metals," said Ivailo Vesselinov, analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort. "That is still an important anchor and something the authorities recognise."

Ukraine's economy is driven by exports, in particular steel -- a commodity that has enjoyed soaring prices in the past year.

The hryvnia is also expected to weaken towards the end of the year due to a wider balance of payments as prices for gas imports have risen steeply since 2005 and may double next year.

"In addition, if you believe that the euro/dollar (exchange rate) is about to turn around, then pegging to a potentially depreciating currency will also have its implications," Vesselinov said.

"(A move is) much more a factor for 2009 and beyond. Of course, the increase in the focus on the euro is an ongoing trend that has already begun. You'll see more of this in coming months, such as the bank regularly quoting euro rates."

Malofeeva was also pessimistic.

"Ukraine's own situation with a widening current account deficit and at least some portion of debt traded by speculators, definitely does not bode well for a stable or an appreciation of the currency vis a vis the dollar or anything really," she said.

Source: Guardian UK

Yushchenko: My Friend Poisoned Me

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko has named the person he believes poisoned him - saying it was a close friend and godfather to one of his children.

Viktor Yushchenko speaking at a news conference in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
Mr Yushchenko fell ill during the closely fought 2004 election when he narrowly beat pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych.

His face was severely disfigured although his skin has made significant improvements since.

At a news conference Mr Yushchenko named David Zhvania, a member of a pro-presidential parliamentary faction, as having been involved.

The announcement represents a sharp departure from the president's previous policy of refusing to identify those he believes to have been responsible.

Mr Yushchenko fell gravely ill after attending a dinner with Mr Zhvania which was hosted by two top security officials. Doctors later diagnosed his illness as severe dioxin poisoning.

The pro-Western president has consistently said he knew who was responsible for the poisoning but did not want to name them while an investigation continued.

But Mr Zhvania has angered Mr Yushchenko by claiming earlier this summer that the president suffered only from food poisoning and that his staff invented a politically motivated attack to boost his popularity during the Orange Revolution that accompanied the 2004 presidential campaign.

Asked at a news conference whether he thought Mr Zhvania took part in the poisoning, Mr Yushchenko answered: "I think yes, to put it mildly."

Prosecutors said this week that they had failed to find any suspects. But after being questioned by prosecutors earlier this week, Mr Yushchenko hinted the investigation would produce some "very unpleasant" surprises.

The president has accused Moscow of stalling the investigation by refusing to extradite key figures in the case and provide Russian-made dioxin for testing.

Yushchenko came to power in Orange Revolution

Many people in Ukraine point the finger at Russia, because Mr Yushchenko was running against a Kremlin-backed candidate and because Russia is one of the few countries that produces the dioxin of the formula found in his body.

Mr Zhvania fell out with Mr Yushchenko shortly after he became president following a wave of mass protests in 2004 which came amid allegations that the pro-Russian Mr Yanukovych had rigged the elections.

The dispute has led Mr Yushchenko's office to seek to strip Mr Zhvania, an ethnic Georgian, of his Ukrainian citizenship.

Mr Zhvania's party said in a statement that the actions were illegal and that he is suing Ukrainian authorities in the European Court of Human Rights.

Source: Sky News

Ukrainian Prosecutors: No Suspects In 4-Year Probe Into President's Dioxin Poisoning

KIEV, Ukraine -- After investigating for nearly four years, Ukrainian prosecutors acknowledged Wednesday they don't have a single suspect in President Viktor Yushchenko's dioxin poisoning.

Political cartoon explaining Yushchenko's poisoning.
The announcement comes a day after Yushchenko was questioned by prosecutors a second time and hinted the investigation would produce "very unpleasant" surprises.

Yuriy Boichenko, spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office, told The Associated Press that investigators have so far failed to identify any suspects — comments that raise questions about the effectiveness of the probe.

Yushchenko, then an opposition presidential candidate, fell gravely ill during the 2004 election campaign and was later diagnosed with massive dioxin poisoning, which left his face disfigured.

The president claims he knows who masterminded the crime but refuses to name names. He accuses Russia of refusing to extradite key figures in the case or provide Russian-made dioxin samples for tests

Many here point the finger at Russia, because Yushchenko was running against a Kremlin-backed candidate and because Russia is one of the few countries that produces the dioxin of the formula found in Yushchenko's body.

Source: International Herald Tribune

German Chancellor Backs EU 'Associate' Status For Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed an agreement to bring Ukraine closer to the European Union, and renewed her pledge that the former Soviet republic will some day join NATO.

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko (R) shakes hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel as he welcomes her in Kiev July 21, 2008.
Ms. Merkel spoke Monday in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, alongside Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Both leaders praised the so-called "association agreement" on EU-Ukrainian ties.

But the German leader again said it will not guarantee Ukraine full EU membership.

Chancellor Merkel also said Germany and other NATO countries will work with the Kyiv government on a plan to guide the country toward membership in the military alliance.

Earlier this year, NATO denied Kyiv access to a membership action plan, seen as a roadmap to eventually joining the alliance.

Russia has threatened unspecified retaliation against any additional NATO presence on its borders.

Moscow specifically warned it would be forced to take military and other measures if the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia join the Western military alliance.

Western leaders have also noted strong NATO opposition in eastern Ukraine, where much of the country's Russian-speaking population backs Moscow in opposing closer ties with the West.

Source: Voice of America

Germany Lined Up By UEFA To Replace Ukraine As Euro 2012 Co-Host

LONDON, England -- Germany is being lined up to replace Ukraine as co-hosts for Euro 2012 amid fears inside UEFA that the East European country will not be ready to stage the event.

President of the Ukrainian Football Federation, Grigory Surkis
Inspectors from the European game's governing body, who visited the country two weeks ago, are putting together a report on the state of preparations which will go before their executive committee in September.

But UEFA are already making contingency plans to move the tournament from Ukraine because of concerns over the political situation, delays to stadium construction and worries over transport infrastructure.

It is understood that in the last week officials from UEFA have spoken to the German FA about playing a minor co-hosting role with Poland, whose preparations impressed inspectors. Berlin and Leipzig are possible venues.

UEFA sources admit the political situation in Ukraine, where presidential elections are due next year, have impacted on preparations which are behind schedule.

The situation is complicated by the involvement of controversial oligarchs in the Ukrainian Football Federation's (UFF) organising committee.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that the president of the UFF, Grigory Surkis, was banned from visiting the United States in 2004 because of corruption allegations.

He was denied entry under a United States presidential order that authorises immigration officials to withhold visas from foreigners suspected of "corruption...that has or had serious effects on US national interests", according to the American Embassy in Kiev.

Surkis was both a business and political associate of Viktor Medvedchuk, then head of the presidential administration.

Surkis was also a deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party, headed by Medvechuk.

The pair have been business partners since the early 1990s and founded the company that owns Dynamo Kiev.

An equally influential figure is the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, a vice-president of the UFF who has partly financed one of the main arenas for Euro 2012, the Dnipropetrovsk Stadium.

Opposition groups regard Kolomisky as the most powerful and controversial oligarch in Ukraine and say he is protected at the highest level.

Privately UEFA admit the involvement of these individuals is a concern.

Source: Telegraph UK

Moscow Mayor Calls Ukraine 'Undemocratic'

MOSCOW, Russia -- Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who has been banned from entering Ukraine, said on Saturday that the recent detention of a Russian journalist in the country shows it is 'undemocratic'.

Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov
A journalist for the Russian channel TVTs, who had filmed a report about Ukrainian authorities' plans to separate the national Orthodox Church from the Moscow Patriarchate, was stopped at Kiev's Borispol airport late on Thursday and held overnight.

"This shocking incident makes Ukraine look not like a country seeking to position itself as a showcase for promoting democracy from West to East, but like a nation frightened by the truth coming from Russia, and restricting the press, which is absolutely impossible in a democratic state," Luzhkov told reporters.

The outspoken mayor, 71, has made a series of anti-Ukraine statements since being blacklisted by Kiev in May for suggesting Ukraine's Black Sea city of Sevastopol should be handed over to Russia.

Earlier this month he said the treaty on friendship and cooperation between Russia and Ukraine should not be extended when it expires this year.

The detention of the Russian TV reporter, who had five video tapes confiscated, also met with strong criticism from Russia's Foreign Ministry.

Luzhkov said that Ukraine is wrong to link TVTs's coverage with the Moscow authorities.

"This is a Moscow government channel, but it is absolutely free," he said.

Luzhkov has courted controversy in Russia and abroad in the past, over the banning of what he calls "satanic" gay parades in the capital, and over accusations of using his power to secure lucrative construction contracts for his wife Yelena Baturina's company, and to influence Moscow court rulings.

Earlier this week British media reported that Luzhkov's wife, Russia's richest woman, had bought the second largest private house in London after Buckingham Palace for $100 million.

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukraine Targeted By Russian Hackers

KIEV, Ukraine -- Following on from last year’s massive cyber attack on Estonia’s computer systems when Russian hackers, purportedly funded by the FSB (the modern equivalent of the KGB), brought the country’s computer systems to its knees in response to the removal of Soviet statues and war memorials.

A Russian hacker's calling card.
It looks as if those same hackers with the same funding are about to launch a bigger attack covering all the Baltic countries, and this time it will extend to Ukraine.

Once again, appeals in Russian Internet forums calling for all Russian hackers to unite and launch a large-scale attack on the computer networks of government institutions in Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are on the increase, and now Ukraine is being included as a necessary target.

Those making the appeals, which many speculate are coming from the FSB again, state that Russian hackers are dissatisfied with “the way Russian-speakers are treated in Baltic countries,” and with the ban on the use of Soviet symbols.

Ukraine, however, is being targeted for slightly different reasons, and the appeals on Internet forums are citing the country as a target due to its NATO aspirations.

“All the hackers of the country have decided to unite to counter the impudent actions of western superpowers. We are fed up with NATO’s encroachment on our motherland, we have had enough of Ukrainian politicians who have forgotten their nation and only think about their own interests, and we are fed up with the Estonian governmental institutions which blatantly re-write history and support fascism,” says the appeal appearing on Internet forums throughout Russia.

It is thought that the hackers intend replacing the original content on the websites they hack into with red stars and photos of Soviet soldiers, so let’s hope everyone’s keeping their systems backed up.

Source: Computer Crime Research Center

Ukraine-NATO War Games Concern Russia

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia on Friday said it was concerned by joint NATO-Ukraine naval exercises in the Black Sea, saying the leaders of the ex-Soviet state were trying to force their people into NATO membership against their wishes.

A British auxiliary navy ship sails in front of a sculpture in the port of Odessa. US troops are holding military exercises near the Russian border in ex-Soviet Ukraine and were poised to launch them in Georgia, amid tense relations between Moscow and Washington, officials said.
Russia, sensitive to NATO expansion towards it borders, has warned of serious consequences if Ukraine and fellow ex-Soviet state Georgia join the military alliance.

The 11th Seabreeze naval exercises got under way this week. Sixteen countries are taking part in the 12-day exercise during which service personnel take part in a mock peacekeeping operation and mass evacuation of non-combatants.

Russia said the exercises included intelligence work, searches for enemy submarines and test firing of munitions.

"The character of the exercises, the attempts to present them in an anti-Russian tone, and also the participation of non-regional powers cannot but create questions and a certain concern," Russia's foreign ministry said. "Why was the Black Sea chosen to work out the dubious aims of these exercises?"

Ukraine has been engaged in cooperation with NATO since the mid-1990s. Pro-Western leaders, brought to power by 2004 "Orange Revolution" protests against election fraud have made NATO and European Union membership the cornerstone of foreign policy.

A NATO summit in April turned down Ukraine's bid to secure a "membership action plan" -- a fast track to eventual membership -- but assured Kiev it would one day join the alliance.

Public opinion remains opposed to joining NATO. Surveys show no more than 30 percent of respondents back membership and Russia objects to any notion of Ukrainian NATO membership on grounds that it would undermine its security interests.

About 150 demonstrators staged a protest this week against the exercises, much smaller than in recent years.

"Mass protests against the exercises reflects the mood of public opinion in Ukraine in relation to the current Ukrainian administration's path towards forcing entry into the alliance," Russia's foreign ministry said.

Source: Daily Times

Ukraine Ruling Coalition Heading Toward Collapse

KIEV, Ukraine -- The hero and heroine of the Orange Revolution are once again on the brink of divorce. And it's ordinary Ukrainians who are paying the price.

Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko during the 'Orange Revolution'.
In the seven months since President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko reunited in a coalition government with vows to carry out crucial reforms, they have spent more time sniping at each other than governing.

Experts say the question isn't if, but rather when the coalition will collapse.

Meanwhile, Ukrainians are having to tighten their belts to cope with 30 percent inflation — the highest in Europe. Economic progress has been hampered by rampant corruption and the lack of judicial, land and other reforms.

"It's hard to imagine how could it be worse. They simply haven't done anything. It's been a political crisis," said political analyst Ivan Lozowy.

The country's top two officials were allies when they led the 2004 pro-democracy protests that shook this former Soviet republic loose from the grip of Russian influence and launched often chaotic democracy for its 46 million people.

While they share a common vision of a more Western-leaning Ukraine, the bookish, careful Yushchenko and the glamorous, impetuous Tymoshenko are seen as likely opponents in the 2010 presidential election and they have sought to undermine each other at every turn.

The sense of disappointment over broken promises of prosperity and quick European Union integration has devastated Yushchenko's popularity — his support ratings in polls have sunk below 10 percent. Tymoshenko has dropped from 30 percent to 20 percent.

Their rivalry has severely strained the governing coalition. Last month, two lawmakers quit the alliance, threatening its ability to hold on to the narrowest-possible majority in parliament.

Most experts believe Yushchenko and Tymoshenko will replace the defectors and restore the minimum of 226 lawmakers needed to keep the coalition in power. But the experts still don't expect the government to last beyond the fall.

Analysts predict Yushchenko may call yet another early parliamentary election — the third in less than three years — or someone will form a new coalition, this time involving the opposition.

Tymoshenko, 47, has seen nearly every initiative of her government either challenged or blocked by the president's office.

Most notably, her attempts to privatize key enterprises and raise money for the budget have been stalled by presidential decrees.

Her program to compensate millions of Ukrainians for savings lost amid the Soviet collapse also has been put on hold.

The rivalry reached its peak in May when Tymoshenko's faction in parliament blocked the rostrum and prevented Yushchenko, 54, from delivering his state-of-the-nation speech.

An embarrassed president was forced to post his speech online.

"Both sides have used the budget dispute as a tactic in their longer-term fight for political supremacy," said Geoffrey Smith, strategist at the Renaissance Capital investment bank in Kiev.

There have been some achievements.

Experts praise Tymoshenko for cleaning up the shady natural gas trade with Russia and removing intermediaries that were widely seen as mechanisms to siphon large sums money into private pockets.

Yushchenko, meanwhile, is noted for his push to get NATO membership for Ukraine and bring it closer to the European community. Despite his failings, many credit him for his role in bringing freedom of speech, holding free elections and allowing civil society to gain strength.

Source: AP

Moscow Refuses To Send Yushchenko Poisoning Suspect To Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russia has refused to extradite a former Ukrainian security service deputy head suspected of involvement in the poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, Ukraine's top prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Viktor Yushchenko before (L) and after alleged poisoning.
The Prosecutor General's Office said that since Moscow considers Wolodymyr Satsiuk, or Vladimir Satsyuk, to be a Russian citizen, he cannot be extradited.

Satsiuk is also facing abuse of office and forgery charges in Ukraine, which requested his extradition in April 2008.

Ukraine has been negotiating with Russia over the extradition of three people who it says may have been involved in the Yushchenko poisoning, but the Russian Prosecutor General's Office said it had received no other extradition requests.

Yushchenko became seriously ill in early September 2004, the day after attending a reception and dinner with Ukrainian security services leaders.

He suffered from a series of symptoms, including back pain, acute pancreatitis and nerve paralysis on the left side of his face. After the illness, his face became heavily disfigured - grossly jaundiced, bloated and pockmarked.

Many have linked Yushchenko's poisoning to a group of senior Ukrainian officials, including the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ihor Smeshko, and his deputy, Satsiuk.

All of them are believed to have fled to Russia and received Russian citizenship.

Source: RIA Novosti

IMF Urges Ukraine To Control Inflation

KIEV, Ukraine -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged Ukraine to take immediate measures to control inflation, as sustained high inflation would greatly harm the country's economy.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn
At a press conference in Ukraine's Black Sea resort of Yalta on Tuesday, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn expressed the organization's anxiety over Ukraine's unsustainable high inflation rate.

He also called on other European countries to prevent or solve similar problems.

"Even if you live with it (high inflation rate) for a very short term, it takes a very long time afterwards to sort out the consequences," Strauss-Kahn said at another press conference Friday.

Ukraine's Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the first half of 2008 rose 15.5 percent year-on-year.

Although the government this week set its year-end inflation target to 15.9 percent for 2008 against last year's 16.6 percent, experts estimate that Ukraine's inflation rate this year may exceed 20 percent.

Source: Xinhua

Next Stop Beijing

TERNI, Italy -- The seventeen year old Margaryta Pesotska from Ukraine is one of the surprise young European qualifiers for the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing. One month from now she will stand on her own as the lone table tennis athlete from Ukraine at the biggest stage of them all.

Ukraine's Margaryta Pesotska
This night in Terni, Italy a different but in many ways as rewarding task had to be solved – To lead the Ukraine Junior Girls Team to their first European junior team title ever.

Hard working

Pesotska is a hard working, safe playing and very competitive young girl. Carefully paced with relatively few international events under her belt she always seems to come well prepared for the European Junior Championships.

Assistance at the right moments

In Terni, Italy she more or less single handed brought the gold medal to Ukraine by going undefeated through the team events inspiring her team mates to come along with a victory when needed.

In the team final against Germany – Pesotska got the necessary assistance from her lesser known team mate Irina Motsyk ranked as low as fifty-one on the latest ETTU ranking list, who in the crucial third single defeated Sabine Winter three games to one.

Dramatic ending

That was enough this time. But not without considerable drama. In the fifth and deciding match the Ukraine nr one stared defeat in the eyes more than once, falling behind early in the match against the German defensive player Rosalie Stahr.

Pesotska fought back but was in trouble also down 5-7 in the fifth game before squeezing the luck for an 11-9 victory and a championship for her country.

Qualified for the ITTF World Junior Champiuonships Junior Girls team event are along side the two finalists also Hungary and France

No luck for Germany

It was an evening in Italy without the best of luck for the hard working German Junior National team girls’ selection.

They finally had to settle for two silver medals after loosing both the girls’ finals by the narrowest of margins.

Romania won the Cadet Girls title three games to two despite brilliant play by the German number one Petrissa Solja who more or less squashed anything her opponents could come up with throughout the team event, not loosing more than one single game in any of her many appearances.

Source: ITTF News

Saving The Ukrainian President's Face

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has lost a lot since the heady days of his country’s Orange Revolution – executive power (due to constitutional changes), voter support (due to endless infighting) and international prestige (for lack of reform).

David Zhvaniya
More recently, his reputation as a martyr for democracy has also come under threat.

This last laurel was conferred upon Mr. Yushchenko when his face was disfigured by dioxin poisoning during his campaign for the presidency in 2004.

Now, facing re-election in a year’s time, Yushchenko is being accused of inventing his poisoning – one of the seminal events in Ukraine’s democracy movement, which galvanized public opinion at home and abroad in support of the Orange leader’s promises of reform.

And the person most responsible for smearing Yushchenko’s victim status is not a member of the old guard of former President Leonid Kuchma, or a representative of one of the presidential hopefuls currently challenging Yushchenko’s re-election bid.

It is a lawmaker in the faction that the president himself endorsed in the last parliamentary elections, a politician who stood beside Yushchenko during his long and trying march to power the first time around.

David Zhvaniya, who can be seen in summer-vacation photos with the Yushchenko family, is now one of their greatest detractors.

Mr. Zhvaniya, who was with Yushchenko on the night he is thought to have been poisoned, recently told the BBC that Yushchenko had merely suffered from food poisoning.

“It was common food poisoning. The diagnosis was made the first day. These kinds of poisonings happen a lot, to every third person in the world,” Zhvaniya said.

“It was a stomach infection. On the day that he went to the doctor, they all came to this same conclusion. I was there. Then they decided that he should fly to Austria [for medical care]. I was opposed ... because the proposed clinic had nothing to do with stomach infections. It was a cardiologic center,” he said.

In a different interview, with a Ukrainian publication, Zhvaniya sowed doubt on the president’s belief that he was poisoned during a dinner meeting with the head of the country’s security service (SBU) at the time, Ihor Smeshko.

Zhvaniya, who by his own admission organized the September-5 meeting between Smeshko and Yushchenko at another SBU official’s dacha, told journalists that Yushchenko had partaken in an earlier meal just before the Smeshko visit, and before that had stopped off at the home of a completely unknown tinkerer where the president downed no small quantity of moonshine.

Zhvaniya further claimed that all subsequent tests showing that Yushchchenko had been poisoned by dioxide were falsified and that the Orange campaign team had thought up the poisoning version for political gain.

However, Yushchenko was not only positively tested for dioxide poisoning in Austria, but his blood sample was tested by three different laboratories in Belgium, Germany and the UK, all of which came to the same conclusion.

Yushchenko’s attorney, Mykola Poludenny, said in a recent media interview that despite being stalled in their efforts by the Prosecutor General’s Office at the time, officials involved in the testing took every precaution to guarantee that the results were not compromised at any stage of the process.

Western specialists were not only able to determine that Yushchenko had been poisoned by dioxide, but also when the poisoning happened – on September 5.

In the wake of Zhvaniya’s comments, his own faction, Our Ukraine-People's Self Defense, accused the lawmaker of "exceeding the limits of decency."

“In and of itself, the attempt to sow doubt on the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, which shocked the world, and pretend that the crime never happened, shows that Mr. Zhvaniya, in his public rhetoric, has sunk to the level of the worst kind under Kuchma,” reads a statement released by the faction.

The Prosecutor-General’s Office, which is still ‘investigating’ the poisoning after nearly four years, accused Zhvaniya of contradicting his own earlier testimony.

The PGO’s press service released a statement last month in which it said, “The poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko has been irrefutably proven by investigators and court medical experts; therefore, David Zhvaniya’s statements cannot be true; they contradict his early affirmations and are compromising the objective investigation of this crime.”

The PGO further accused Zhvaniya of using his lawmaker immunity to ignore prosecutors’ requests that he show up for further questioning.

In short, despite the public attention that he has been able to command, Mr. Zhvaniya’s credibility is highly suspect.

But, unfortunately, so is virtualy every other political figure's credibility in Ukraine.

For example, how do people like Zhvaniya get on the lists of parties endorsed by the president? For that matter, how does the president manage to make so many ‘friends’ into enemies?

Secondly, if the PGO is so certain that Yushchenko was poisoned, why have they been unable to charge anyone for almost four years? It’s the president who appoints the prosecutor-general, including the one who hampered his case back in 2005 and his sucessors who have continued to hold up numerous other high-profile crimes.

Since at least last year, the president himself has claimed to know who poisoned him but declined to enlighten the rest of us.

“The investigation is in its final stage,” the president told journalists in Dnipropetrovsk last September.

More recently, in an interview with an Austrian newspaper, Mr. Yushchenko said that three individual had masterminded his poisoning and were hiding in Russia, where they had been given citizenship, while Ukraine continues to request their extradition.

In addition, Russia is one of three countries which make the dioxin found in Yushchenko’s blood. But unlike the other two countries, the UK and the US, Russia has yet to provide convincing evidence that the poison did not come from there.

Yushchenko has said that he personally asked Putin to check into the matter but to no avail.

The Ukrainian president also said the investigation cannot go forward without the testimony of the three fugitives.

Although Zhvaniya’s attempts to dismiss the plainly visible scars on Yushchenko’s face are ludicrous if not profane, it is equally far fetched to believe that the investigation is being held up by Russia alone.

According to a recent poll, only 36 percent of Ukrainians believe Yushchenko was purposely poisoned.

If Yushchenko wants people to again believe that he really was poisoned for his dedication to democracy, he can start by naming the people who poisoned him.

It may not get him re-elected or even return him the hero status that he enjoyed immediately after the Orange Revolution, but it could save his face.

Source: Eurasian Home

Ukraine's Move To West Stalls Amid Political Row

KIEV, Ukraine -- In December 2004, pensioner Vladyslav Leontovych joined hundreds of thousands of fellow Ukrainians in Kiev's central square to help overturn a rigged presidential election and usher in the Orange Revolution.

Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko are at war with each other -- once again.
“There was this fantastic national uprising, we had such unity,” says Leontovych, 85, as he hands out “Ukraine in NATO” flyers near the 61-meter (200-foot) Independence Monument. These days, he says, “People are playing politics instead of working.”

Almost four years after teaming up to push Ukraine toward European Union and NATO membership, President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko are at war with each other -- once again.

Their clash this time brought Parliament to a standstill, prompting the opposition to seek a vote of no confidence that failed on Friday. It also spurred inflation and public spending, delayed state asset sales and stalled the NATO bid.

“Ukraine's political elite have put off serious reforms to concentrate on personal power struggles,” says Geoffrey Smith, chief analyst at Moscow-based Renaissance Capital brokerage's Kiev office. “This is a dangerous mindset.”

The 29.3 percent June inflation rate is Europe's highest, while the economy's 6 percent annual growth rate in the first quarter is the slowest in two years.

Timoshenko's government has failed to sell companies including VAT UkrTelecom and ammonia producer Odeskyi Pryportovyi Zavod, worth at least 8.92 billion hryvnia ($1.81 billion) to bidders such as HSBC Holdings Plc. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

Democratic rule?

Hopes were high when Yushchenko and Timoshenko emerged from the revolution at the beginning of 2005 as heads of state and government.

They were supposed to edge Ukraine further away from Russia's sphere, raise living standards and strengthen democratic rule in the nation of 46 million people.

Then Yushchenko fired Timoshenko in September 2005 after she frightened investors by threatening to retake control of former state-owned companies.

The blonde-braided Timoshenko, now 47, joined forces with Viktor Yanukovych, who lost the presidency to Yushchenko in the December 2004 elections, and helped bring down Yushchenko's government in 2006.

Yushchenko brought her back to the premiership in December 2007 after parliamentary elections, as the better alternative to Yanukovych.

The latest breakdown occurred after two lawmakers quit Timoshenko's coalition on June 6 over complaints about how the government was being run. That ended her majority, leaving the coalition with 225 seats in the 450-member Parliament.

Timoshenko's allies physically blocked the assembly's chamber on June 19, a day after the president reversed her cabinet's decision to withdraw a license for Houston-based Vanco Energy Co. to explore for natural gas and oil in the Black Sea. They blocked it again on July 8 and 9.

The opposition failed on Friday to oust Timoshenko after Parliament re-opened, securing only 174 of the 226 votes needed to pass a vote of no confidence. The move failed largely because 194 lawmakers -- almost half the assembly -- were absent.

To Olexander Lytvynenko, a researcher at the Ukrainian Centre for Economic & Political Studies in Kiev, Timoshenko's motivation is power, which has bounced between the heads of state and government through various constitutional changes.

“Her target was and remains to grab as much power in the country as she can, no matter what post she has,” Lytvynenko says. “If the premier has more power, then she wants to be premier. If it's the president, then she wants to be president. Yushchenko is trying to constrain her.”

Spending spree

Timoshenko's cabinet raised spending 49 percent in the first five months of this year compared with the same period a year ago, especially on social programs.

Yushchenko, 54, called the budget “careless work” and said on July 9 that he would veto amendments to increase spending.

Yushchenko countered on Thursday by submitting his own budget revision, focusing on boosting investment and state asset sales to increase revenue, his press office said in an e-mailed statement. The office didn't immediately provide details of the document.

The popularity of Yushchenko, former head of the central bank, was at 5.8 percent in a June 6-16 survey by the Kiev-based International Institute of Sociology. Timoshenko garnered 18 percent.

Lytvynenko says Yushchenko's decline can be traced to diminished prospects that Ukraine will join the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Ireland's rejection of the EU treaty put enlargement on hold and NATO leaders in April denied Ukraine special pre-membership status because of political instability.

“He didn't fulfill his promises,” says Lytvynenko. “Yushchenko was the person who had the highest support in 2005 and he lost everything.”

`Strong supporter'

Oleksandr Shlapak, first deputy head of Yushchenko's presidential office, blamed Timoshenko for the split in a June 26 interview in Kiev, though he said the president would still govern with her.

“There are serious differences,” Shlapak said. “The president is a strong supporter of western values. The premier, in my mind, has another view.”

Timoshenko laid the blame on Yushchenko.

“I want to ask the president to stop ruining the government,” she told the Cabinet on May 28, according to a transcript. The conflict “has reached its zenith.” She also criticized Yushchenko's state asset sale plans as nontransparent without saying how.

Yanukovych, 58, has a support rating of 24.2 percent, according to the same poll. He favors closer ties with Russia, which Yushchenko and Timoshenko oppose.

London-based HSBC, Europe's largest bank by market value, has seen its bid for Odeskyi Pryportovyi Zavod delayed three times.

Plans for The Hague-based Shell, Europe's largest oil producer, to invest in Black Sea oil have not been approved.

“The government is ruining the economy, everything. I want Yanukovych,” says Alla Dmitriyeva, a 53-year-old businesswoman, between sips of espresso in a downtown cafe. “Our government is a nut house.”

Source: Turkish Daily News

US-Ukraine Military Exercises Get Under Way In Black Sea

KIEV, Ukraine -- U.S.-Ukrainian military exercises began on the Black Sea on Monday amid anti-NATO protests that demonstrated the deep hostility among some in this former Soviet republic toward the Western military bloc.

Members of Ukraine's Progressive Socialist Party confront the police as they take part in a rally against the Sea Breeze-2008 NATO military exercises in the Black Sea port of Odessa July 14, 2008.Naval and air forces from 15 countries are taking part in the military exercises in Ukraine on Monday.
The two-week Sea Breeze exercises also involve 15 other countries, including NATO members.

The purpose is to practice for multinational peacekeeping operations.

Ukrainian leaders who favor joining NATO also hope the drills will help bring their country closer NATO and Western military standards.

The exercises will involve warships, planes, helicopters, armored vehicles and various kinds of troops.

Anti-NATO protesters have set up camps in the area along the Black Sea coast and are planning rallies.

Potential NATO membership is a highly divisive issue in Ukraine, a France-sized nation of 46 million that lies between Russia and NATO member nations in Europe.

Pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko and other leaders asked NATO in January to grant the nation a roadmap to joining the alliance, leading to weeks of protests in parliament and noisy rallies on the streets.

NATO declined to grant the request - in part due to concerns about Russia, which vocally opposes membership for Ukraine - but assured the nation it would eventually open its doors.

According to a June poll conducted by the respected Razumkov Center, 60 percent of Ukrainians opposed joining NATO, up from 53 percent in February.

The number of those in favor stayed the same: 21 percent.

The rest of the respondents were either undecided or uninterested.

The survey of 2,001 people across Ukraine had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

Sociologists say negative attitudes toward NATO have grown this year, sparked by government efforts to join the bloc and the ensuing protests, but they also attribute the hostility to poor information on the alliance among many Ukrainians.

The Sea Breeze drills have been taking place annually since 1997.

In 2006, protests forced U.S. Marine reservists who came to prepare for the exercises to leave without carrying out their mission.

The maneuvers were later canceled due to the redeployment of a U.S. naval vessel to assist in the evacuation of Americans from Lebanon

Source: AP

Klitschko Knocks Out Thompson To Keep Boxing World Titles

HAMBURG, Germany -- Ukraine's Vladimir Klitschko knocked out America's Tony Thompson in the 11th round to retain his WBO and IBF world heavyweight titles.

Vladimir Klitschko (R) of the Ukraine exchanges punches with Tony Thompson of the US during their WBO heavyweight title fight July 12 in Hamburg, Germany. Klitschko knocked out Thompson in the 11th round to retain his WBO and IBF world heavyweight titles.
Klitschko, who has held the IBF belt since April 2006, was fighting for the first time Saturday since taking the WBO crown off Russia's Ruslan Ibragimov in February in New York.

The 32-year-old took control of Saturday's fight from the fourth round before going on to inflict Thompson's second defeat in 33 fights.

Klitschko now has a record of 51 wins and three defeats.

Saturday's fight was his first in his adopted home city of Hamburg in eight years.

He and boxing brother Vitali moved here in 1996 following his Olympic Games victory.

"It was a tough fight and Thompson put on a great defensive effort," said Klitschko.

"It is not so easy to defend all the titles and it has been a while since I last had a black eye so today I really look like a boxer. I did not expect the victory to come that hard.

"You could see that he really wanted to win. He is a strong fighter. It was a lot of fun to fight against him."

Klitschko's next fight is expected to be in November against Russia's Alexander Povetkin, the number one IBF challenger, he will be aware that British cruiserweight king David Haye is moving up to heavyweight and watched the fight.

Haye says he is desperate to fight Klitschko after seeing plenty of weaknesses in his fight against Thompson.

"If he fights me in the same way he fought that guy he will be knocked out in three rounds," said Haye.

"He has got the perfect style for me. I don't want him to have any more fights before me as I don't want someone else to do what I will do against him."

Source: AFP

U.N. Denies Ukraine's Genocide Claim

NEW YORK, NY -- The United Nations General Assembly has decided not to put genocide claims by Ukraine onto its current session agenda, Russian officials said Saturday.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin lobbied the General Assembly against opening discussions on Ukraine's claim that the catastrophic 1932-33 famine, which historians blame on Josef Stalin's failed efforts at collectivization, amounted to genocide.

The U.N.'s Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe went so far as to adopt a resolution condemning the famine, but fell short of recognizing it as an act of genocide, Churkin said.

"We believe it would be a disservice to the memories of hundreds of thousands of people who died of hunger in other countries and regions of the former Soviet Union to raise this issue at the U.N., in relation to only one of the regions that suffered," he told the Russian news service RIA Novosti.

Churkin said it wasn't only Ukraine that starved in what he called "a tragic page in the shared history of the peoples of the Soviet Union," but also Belarus, the Volga area, the Black Sea area, the Don area and the North Caucasus

Source: UPI

Ukraine PM Accuses President Of Sabotaging Budget

KIEV, Ukraine -- Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, once allied with Ukraine's president in "Orange Revolution" protests against election fraud, accused him on Saturday of torpedoing a budget intended to improve living standards.

Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko
Tymoshenko, prime minister for a second time, survived a confidence vote in parliament on Friday launched by the opposition on grounds that she had wrecked the economy.

But she later failed to win approval for amendments to the 2008 budget calling for increased revenues and a slightly reduced deficit.

Tymoshenko told a news conference she was dismayed that President Viktor Yushchenko had submitted his own amendments and that members of the presidential Our Ukraine party had given no support to changes already before the house.

"Everything was destroyed yesterday, toppled for no good reason. Let me tell you who did this. The budget was not adopted primarily because of the president's position," she said. "Who benefited from this? The country lost and so did the people."

Parliament voted to submit the government's and president's amendments to a committee for further consideration and closed for its summer recess.

The president proposes applying additional revenue from economic growth and improved tax and customs duty collection to investment projects. Tymoshenko wants some of it directed towards social needs and local authorities.

Yushchenko appointed her prime minister immediately after being swept to power in the 2004 "orange" protests, but fired her within seven months.

She took office again when "orange" parties scored a narrow victory in a snap election last year, but has been at odds with Yushchenko over a variety of issues as politicians have their sights firmly on a presidential election due by early 2010.

Both the opposition and the president accuse Tymoshenko of failing to contain Ukraine's highest inflation in a decade -- cumulative price rises over the first half of 2008 stand at 15.5 percent, with year-on-year inflation of 31 percent last month.

The government adjusted the 2008 inflation forecast to 15.9 percent from the original figure of 9.6 percent.

Tymoshenko says price rises are already coming down and predicts the figure will be negative this month with a bumper grain crop expected.

The growth forecast was unchanged at 6.8 percent and the deficit put at 18.7 billion hryvnia against 18.8 billion previously.

Tymoshenko said she had little hope deputies would interrupt their summer holiday and believed the changes would ultimately be approved when parliament resumed in September.

"It is sad that because of illusory political ambitions linked to the presidential campaign everything in the country is collapsing," she said.

Source: Guardian UK

Sarkozy Supports Partnership Deal Between EU And Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- French president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the European Union's presidency, on Friday backed a new partnership agreement between Ukraine and the EU.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy (L) with former British prime minister Tony Blair (R).
"France will urge its partners in European Union and European Commission to push for a new agreement between the EU and Ukraine to achieve the most ambitious result possible," Sarkozy said in a written message to delegates of the Yalta European Strategy summit in southern Ukraine.

The summit is also being attended by former British prime minister Tony Blair. Sarkozy had been due to attend but cancelled due to other commitments.

Sarkozy also said he hoped that the European Union and Kiev "will be in a position to conclude an historic political agreement at the Evian summit on Sept. 9," which could be signed in early 2009.

The current partnership agreement in place since 1994 is considered out of date.

Membership of the European Union as well as NATO is one of the priorities of pro-western Ukranian president Viktor Yushchenko.

The EU has included Ukraine in its policy of good neighbourly relations, but has refused to specify whether it could eventually join the 27-member bloc.

Source: AFP

Ukraine's Tymoshenko Survives No-Confidence Vote

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko survived a no-confidence vote called by the opposition in protest at her pro-Western government's handling of high inflation and other economic ills.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko accepts the congratulations of Parliament of winning a No-Confidence vote on July 11, 2008.
The motion, launched by opposition leader and former prime minister Viktor Yanukovich, received 174 votes, far short of the 226 needed to pass in the 450-member chamber.

Tymoshenko urged Ukraine's fractious parliament to back her government's reforms, including liberalising the economy and taming an inflation which hit a record year-on-year level of 31 percent last month.

"No government can function if it is on the brink of dismissal. If it has no majority, a new coalition must be formed and new leaders found for the country," she told the chamber.

Tymoshenko was allied to President Viktor Yushchenko in the 2004 "Orange Revolution" which swept him to power and was immediately appointed prime minister only to be sacked seven months later.

She became premier again last December after "orange" parties narrowly won a parliamentary election called when Yushchenko dissolved parliament.

Since returning to power, she has been repeatedly at odds with Yushchenko over a variety of issues, including inflation.

Ukraine's parliament has been largely unable to work since the beginning of the year because of repeated actions blocking debate—both by "orange" groups and their opponents

Source: Epoch Times

Wizz Air Ukraine Takes Off

KIEV, Ukraine -- Wizz Air Ukraine had launched its first service from Kiev Borispol Airport to Simferopol at 6am yesterday, July 11th, in line with the earlier announced plan. The brand new Airbus A320 aircraft left fully loaded with 180 passengers on board.

Wizz Air Ukraine schedule for summer 2008.
The first ever Ukrainian low fare flight was inaugurated by Minister Vinsky, who greeted the passengers and cut the ribbon to commemorate the occasion.

Coinciding with the inauguration of Wizz Air Ukraine the airline also confirmed that it would start expanding its Ukrainian domestic route network with new flights from Kiev to Kharkiv and Zaporyzhzhia starting from 15 September, both initially flown three times a week.

"Being air born today as planned is a breakthrough accomplishment and we are thankful for all parties involved, in particular for the Ukrainian authorities and our business partners supporting the initiative.

The full flight this morning and the close to 30,000 tickets sold in advance just demonstrates how well the Ukrainian public has responded to the low fares and new services of Wizz Air Ukraine.

Our low fare – low cost business model on the backbone of a brand new Airbus A320 operation is spot on the demand of the Ukrainian travelling public for affordable, safe and comfortable travel.

We are committed to further extending our route network to fly an ever increasing number of domestic and international destinations in the very near future." said Natasa Kazmer, Director General of Wizz Air Ukraine.

Source: Boarding.no

Comrade Lenin: Alive and Well

MOSCOW, Russia -- The New Russia may have finally embraced free-market capitalism, but Vladimir Lenin, founder of Soviet communism and one of the great murderers of the twentieth century, still casts a long shadow across the Russian landscape.

Architect of the 'Evil Empire', Vladimir Lenin.
Indeed, when I journeyed to Russia with my family last summer to research my forthcoming novel, Moscow Rules, it seemed Lenin was our constant companion. His statue still looms over the gates of the city that once bore his name, with its arm heroically extended as if poor Vladimir were forever trying to hail a cab.

Streets still bear his name, as do squares, schools, parks, and sports clubs. And he still snoozes peacefully in his little rose-colored mausoleum at the edge of Red Square, a waxen figure in a bottle, well-dressed and neatly groomed.

One cannot enter a tourist bazaar without stumbling across all manner of Lenin paraphernalia, including ubiquitous metallic busts of the great man that peer inscrutably from dusty shelves. Sometimes, the head of his accomplice and successor, Joseph Stalin, stands next to him.

In one market on the outskirts of Moscow, I saw a fine little statuette of Lenin seated in a chair, clearly thinking deep thoughts. I wondered what weighty matter was he pondering at the moment the artist conceived this iconic image.

The annihilation of a village that would not bend to his will? The murder of a rival? Or perhaps he was thinking about killing a few meddlesome shopkeepers who didn’t quite see the wisdom in submitting themselves to “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Imagine if the scene were Berlin instead of Moscow. Imagine if, near Brandenburg Gate, there stood a hundred-foot-tall statue of Adolph Hitler with his arm raised in a Nazi salute. Imagine if one could buy a bronze-plated bust of Hitler in a flea market in the Tiergarten.

Imagine if one could window shop in the Hilter-Strasse or take lunch at an outdoor café in the Hitler-Platz. Or if one could view Hitler’s body—or his ashes, perhaps—in a sacred tomb at the edge of the Alexanderplatz. Editorial pages, interest groups, and political leaders throughout the civilized world would surely howl with indignation and anger. And rightly so.

Fortunately, the idea of a giant Hitler statue standing in the heart of Berlin is laughable. So why is this not the case in modern Russia? Why are there no howls of righteous indignation from Western shapers of opinion over the display and sale of symbols of a murderous, totalitarian system?

And why don’t the leaders of the New Russia remove the statues of Lenin, change the names of the streets and squares that still bear his name, and give his poor old carcass a proper burial?

The silence in many quarters of the West is, sadly, easy to understand. During the Cold War, many of the opinion leaders in Western Europe—the academics, the essayists and novelists, the campaigners for peace and human rights—were too often willing to overlook the Soviet Union’s inexhaustible list of crimes against humanity because they were adherents of Marxist-Leninist bilge themselves.

Lenin was to be forgiven his sins because, in their eyes, his cause was just. As for Stalin, yes, he was a monster, but he was also a hero, the man who single-handedly fought Nazi Germany to a stalemate until the American and British could join the fight.

Many conveniently overlook the fact that, by agreeing to the infamous Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler in 1939, Stalin was the one who made the Second World War possible in the first place.

The answer to the second part of the question is, in my opinion, far more perilous for Russia’s newly free neighbors and the West. Vladimir Putin, the man now running Russia, is a child of the system Lenin and Stalin created.

A former KGB officer and Party member, he surely studied their writings, as a seminarian studies the sacred texts. Moreover, an estimated seventy-five percent of the senior members of his regime also came from the KGB and its successor services.

Putin and his cabal surely cannot permit a full and honest exploration of the crimes of the Soviet state, because to do so would discredit the system and the organization—i.e., the KGB—that produced them.

Edward Lucas, a reporter for the Economist, argues in a persuasive new book, The New Cold War, that Putin and his cronies are engaged in a carefully orchestrated effort to “sanitize” the more repulsive elements of Soviet history while honoring its achievements, which is to say, its military might and its empire.

In 2005, Putin made his feelings abundantly clear when, in his state of the nation speech, he referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” And he even managed to say it with a straight face.

Let us return to Germany for a moment. Let us imagine that Chancellor Angela Merkel was a former officer of the SS rather than a former professor of physical chemistry. And let us imagine she went before her parliament and people and proclaimed the collapse of Nazi-occupied Europe the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.

Such a remark would have produced a furious response from the German press, the German political opposition, and the German people. Germany’s neighbors would have twitched with anxiety. Ambassadors would have been recalled. Editorial writers would have wondered whether the Nazi beast was reawakening.

And imagine, too, that the SS and the Gestapo, under new, benign-sounding names, were still responsible for internal German security.

And that they still worked from their old headquarters buildings. That scenario, as preposterous as it sounds, is exactly the situation in Russia today. The FSB, Russia’s Federal Security Service, occupies the KGB’s old headquarters building in Lubyanka Square.

Many Russians don’t even bother to call the FSB by its new name. They still refer to it as the KGB.

While researching Moscow Rules, my family and I were invited to visit FSB headquarters. A former KGB colonel with an amiable face and glittering eyes gave us a private tour of the building.

It ended in a small, private KGB museum, where we spent several hours, carefully reviewing the organization’s remarkable history. It was a surprisingly honest place, though distinctly lacking in any evidence that the Soviet Union had ever tried to spy on the United States.

A particularly telling moment occurred when we paused to examine a photo album of all the KGB’s leaders. There was Vladimir Putin, proudly displayed with all the great murderers and oppressors of the past.

Our guide flipped through the pages, giving us highly abbreviated biographies of each chief. “He was shot,” he said of one. “He was shot,” he said of the next. “He was shot, too.” Flipping to the next page, he paused and smiled. “Ah, this one was different,” he said. “He was poisoned.”

The overall message of the museum was unmistakable: the course of Soviet history would have proceeded much differently if the KGB had been running the regime instead of serving has its guardian. Now, nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the KGB has finally gotten its wish.

Putin and his cabal want their empire back, and they want to be a great power again. And they are using Russia’s newfound oil wealth to achieve those goals. As for taking an honest look into the Russian past, there isn’t time for that.

Nor is there any appetite. Lenin once said: “There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience.” Vladimir Putin would surely agree. Perhaps that is why Lenin the murderer still stands at the gates of the city that once bore his name.

And why Lenin the murderer still sleeps peacefully in Red Square.

Source: Townhall

'Alarming Rise' In Ukraine Racism

LONDON, United Kingdom -- There has been an "alarming rise" in the number of racially motivated attacks in Ukraine, according to a new Amnesty International study.

Amnesty International UK says hate crimes are on a rise in Ukraine.
The group says more than 60 people were targeted in racial attacks last year. Four people have died this year alone.

The government, it says, fails to recognise the gravity of the problem, frequently registering the attacks only as acts of "hooliganism".

No comment from Ukrainian officials was immediately available.

Amnesty UK campaign director Tim Hancock said in a statement that: "Foreigners and ethnic minorities now live in a climate of fear.

"Ukraine's police, prosecutors and politicians need to urgently confront the scourge of racism, not sidestep it by calling hate crimes acts of 'hooliganism'."

Hooliganism, the groups says, is easier to prove in court and carries a lighter sentence.

Amnesty says that while the government recognises individual incidents, it does not accept that racism is growing in the country.

Ultra-right groups in the country, such as the Ukrainian National Labour Party, are often blamed for the rising levels of violence.

Its leader Evhen Herasymenko told the Associated Press that attacking foreign migrants was "like the immune system - the reaction of a healthy body to the infection that got into it".

According to the International Organization for Migration, there are some 500 skinheads in Kiev alone, while there are a further 1,000 members of hate groups throughout Ukraine.

Source: BBC News

Work On Ukraine Crisis Stadium Stalls - Euro 2012 Threatened

KIEV, Ukraine -- Things are back to normal this week at Ukraine's 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium, with its badly-needed overhaul at a full stop, and political bigwigs once again accusing each other of ruining the former Soviet republic's chances of hosting the Euro 2012 football championship.

Kiev's Olympic Stadium as it looked in 1980 during the Summer Olympics.
Only four crew without tools, supervisors, or anything in particular to do, could be seen on Wednesday moving about a partially-rubbled downtown Kiev shopping centre which, Ukrainian football officials and UEFA executives agree, must be torn down so that the adjacent Olympic Stadium can be upgraded to modern safety standards.

Ukraine and Poland were named co-hosts for the prestigious competition in April 2007, but during a visit to Kiev last week UEFA boss Michel Platini made no bones about Ukraine's chances of getting sacked from the job "because if there are no stadiums there can be no games."

Olympic Stadium is the scheduled site of the final game.

During Platini's meetings with Ukrainian footballing officials and even President Viktor Yushchenko and Premier Yulia Tymoshenko, wrecking-ball cranes were busily bashing the Troitsky shopping centre into smaller bits.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko alike promised that the offending structure, located only a few dozen metres from Olympic Stadium, would be torn down to make the venue safe to evacuate per UEFA standards.

"We will do the possible and the impossible to host Euro 2012," Tymoshenko said. "We are dead serious about meeting our commitments."

But less than a week after Platini left, the assault by man and machines on the Troitsky shopping centre's reinforced concrete and girders ground to a sudden halt.

Earth moving equipment was parked, the dozens of site construction workers went home, and all the arcane domestic problems the Ukrainians had told the UEFA boss were all ironed out, resurfaced quite as nasty as before.

Tymoshenko, a populist politician with her eye on the presidency in the 2009 elections, unloaded a double-barreled blast of rhetoric, accusing Kiev mayor Leonid Chernovetsky of ordering the construction crews home so as to harm her reputation, while simultaneously assuring Channel 5 television viewers that "We will tear down the building, and Olympic Stadium will be ready for Euro 2012."

"The structure (the half-built Troitsky shopping centre) was put up illegally because Mayor (Leonid) Chernvetsky issued the construction permit on a corrupt basis," claimed Tymoshenko, a former natural gas magnate now popular for her campaign against government officials on the take, and over-rich tycoons.

But Mayor Chernovetsky, recently re-elected to office on a "modern and professional government" ticket, fired back within hours.

The Eugene Construction Company was, per the terms of a deal hammered out between Tymoshenko and Chernovetsky prior to Platini's arrival, due compensation from Tymoshenko's government - to wit some long-tern rental of some 8,000 hectares of prime land on Kiev's outskirts in exchange for abandoning the Troitsky shopping centre project.

"Ms. Tymoshenko has failed to sign the order transfering the land (to the Eugene Company)," Chernovetsky allleged. "It is she who has caused the work (tearing the shopping centre down) to be stopped."

President Yushchenko weighed in later in the day on the Kiev Mayor's side, telling reporters he had ordered Tymoshenko to sign over the land.

Yushchenko's declaration was however somewhat empty, observers said, given that Tymoshenko routinely ignores Presidential instructions, according to her because she knows better, and according to her opponents because she wants Yushchenko's job.

The driving force behind the Troitsky dispute, Ukrainian political observers have long agreed, is the almost astronomical value of land, and profits to be had in real estate in the Ukrainian capital, where apartment prices these days rival Paris and sometimes even London, and where national political issues more often than not come down to which commercial clan will gain or lose from the decision.

Hryhory Surkis, one of Ukraine's richest men and as head of the Federation of Football of Ukraine (FFU) the instigator of Ukraine's successful Euro 2012 bid, expressed dismay at news that work had stopped at the Troitsky shopping centre.

"If work on tearing down Troitsky is truly stopped, it would be a step towards the final downfall of all our hopes," Surkis said, according to a statement posted on the FFU web site.

A worrying Ukrainian political reality wallpapered over by the Ukrainian government during Platini's visit, but long part of the swirling political reality accepted by the country's observers, is that Surkis' political opponents in the past have included Tymoshenko, Yushchenko, Chernovetsky, and Vadim Novinsky, owner of the Eugene Construction Company.

"No one has told us when we start work again," a construction worker told a reporter.

Source: DPA

Rus Festivities Likely To Spark New Fight With Moscow

KIEV, Ukraine -- Worn out by the relentless war of words between Ukraine and Russia, both still squaring off over the future of the Black Sea Fleet, Crimea, language, natural gas and NATO, among other things?

Archbishop of Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
Expect more of the same during Kyiv’s big plans this summer to commemorate the 1020th anniversary of when the ancient Kyivan Rus empire adopted Christianity. In this standoff, both sides will clash on several fronts, starting with religion and history.

The festivities, championed by President Viktor Yushchenko, kick off on July 10. Conferences, visits by esteemed guests and prayer services are scheduled through July. The president said the celebrations could help spur unity between various Orthodox Churches in Ukraine, one of which is loyal to the Moscow Patriarch and another headquartered in Kyiv, where the Kyivan Rus church was founded.

Yushchenko has invited a long list of dignitaries including the Archbishop of Constantinople, whose predecessor issued a Patriarchy to Kyiv 1020 years ago. The festivities will include a prayer service at Sofiyivska Cathedral in the center of Kyiv, including a speech by the Archbishop of Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

Yushchenko also hopes the anniversary will reaffirm his country’s claim to a 1,128-year-old history. Like many Ukrainians, Yushchenko sees Ukraine as the direct ancestor of Kyivan Rus, an empire founded by Viking princes who conquered Slavic tribes in the region.

But in doing so, critics say he has laid the ground work for yet another confrontation with Moscow, which along with Belarus, also traces its roots, and Christianization, to Kyiv Rus.

Rus row

Earlier this year, the Institute of Strategic Studies within the presidential administration issued a report, explaining its dissatisfaction with Soviet­designed myths that Russia was the main ancestor of Kyivan Rus, leaving Ukraine with the label of “Little Russia.”

The institute argued that, compared to Russia, Ukraine had stronger claims to Rus, based on geography and ethnic makeup. Some Ukrainian historians have claimed Russia hijacked the Orthodox Patriarchy nearly a century after Mongol invaders sacked Kyiv in the 13th century.

The history is complicated, and any move by Kyiv to stress a stronger connection to the ancient empire is certain to trigger resentment from Russia.

After wavering, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexei II, decided to attend celebrations, but remains upset that the Ukrainian side unilaterally invited Constantinople’s Patriarch, officials in Moscow said.

“From the Ukrainian side it was impolite to invite Alexei II on the same date as the Archbishop of Constantinople,” said Vladimir Kornilov, head of the CIS Institute in Ukraine, a pro­Kremlin think tank.

Confrontations on this issue could spread, further complicating bilateral relations between Kyiv and Moscow.

“Ukrainians are not the only ones who inherited Kyivan Rus traditions. In historical books you will find no Kyivan Rus, just Rus." he said. "Russia wants to pursue a strategic partnership with Ukraine, but it also conveys that strategic partnership and Euro­Atlantic integration are incompatible. The same thing applies to the way this celebration is being handled,” Kornilov added.

Many Ukrainian historians disagree with such interpretations expressed by Kornilov. Yet the issue is divisive among Ukrainians too. Large shares of the population are members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church subservient to Alexei II; others back the Kyiv Patriarch, while others are members of yet other churches.

Many of them have opposed Yushchenko’s attempts to reinstate a unified, independent and dominating Ukrainian Orthodoxy church.

Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Sergiy Lavrov, said Moscow does not support Ukrainian efforts to create a separate Orthodox church and has called for the Ukrainian and Russian Patriarchies to be joined.

Oleksandr Paliy, a political analyst and historian at the Institute of External Policy within the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, praised plans to hype up the Kyivan Rus anniversary celebrations.

Paliy, an advocate of Ukraine’s claim to Rus, hopes the issue doesn’t polarize relations with what he described as an overly aggressive Moscow, but expressed hope such a spar will be avoided.

“I see no conflict over the celebration of the christening in Ukraine, though Russians have always worried over Ukraine having its own history, which is longer than theirs. Having a grudge against Bartholomew’s invitations, they are more than illogical because Christianity came to Ukraine directly from Constantinople, not from Moscow,” Paliy said.

“The dynamics of relations between Ukraine and Russia are not optimistic to say the least. It is equally obvious that the initiative to mar relations and sharpen rhetoric comes from the Russian side,” Paliy added, pointing to Moscow’s inability to accept Kyiv’s view of history, and foreign policy goals of joining NATO, the European Union and closely integrating with other Western institutions.

Oles Buzyna, a Ukrainian journalist and author of the “Secret Story of Ukraine­Rus,” a book which aimed to debunk many myths about Ukrainian history, accused Yushchenko of being an anti-­Russian president and exploiting the Rus anniversary. It should be held in a way to encourage friendly relations among Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians, he said.

Source: Kyiv Post

Taiwan Firm Sues Ukraine Over Euro 2012 Stadium

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A Taiwan firm said Thursday that it has sued the Ukrainian government for breaking an agreement for the firm to renovate a Kiev stadium for the Euro 2012 football championship.


Archasia Design Group (ADG) filed the suit with the Kiev Circuit Administrative Court against the Ukrainian sports ministry for making false charges against the company in order to break the agreement, ADG Manager Lai Shih-hao said.

The court is gathering evidence and is expected to hold a hearing in August.

"Although we have filed the suit, before the court has made a ruling, we will continue with our design work for the stadium because we know that holding the Euro 2012 football championship is important for Ukraine," Lai said in a phone interview.

Lai stressed that ADG, as a trans-national company, was not interested in politics or lawsuits.

"We were forced to take legal action because the Ukrainian sports ministry drummed up charges against us so that it could withdraw its decision to award the contract to us," he said.

In April, ADG beat 18 contestants to win the bid to renovate the Olympisky Stadium in Kiev for the Euro 2012, which will be co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland.

The 84,000-seat stadium, built in the 1920s, will host three group matches, one quarterfinal and the final.

The refurbishing budget is about 200 million euros (314 million dollars).

ADG said it beat other contestants because it seeks to preserve the original style of the stadium.

However, ADG claimed Ukraine kept delaying signing the contract with ADG, questioned its ability and required ADG to provide proof that it was a legal firm in Taiwan for political reasons.

On June 19, Ukraine's sports ministry ordered ADG to provide Ukraine - before the afternoon of June 20 - legal verification of all of ADG's documents related to the contract. If the deadline was not met, Ukraine would annul the contract with ADG.

ADG called the request unlawful and unreasonable as it takes many days to complete the verification due to the two countries' lack of diplomatic ties.

ADG suggested letting its HK or Shanghai branches sign the contact but the ministry refused, saying it would deal only with the Taiwan ADG.

Source: Bangkok Post

Ukraine Looking For Tips On Hosting Euro 2012

VIENNA, Austria -- Ukraine hopes it can learn something from Euro 2008 co-host Austria as it struggles to prepare for the 2012 European Championship.

Ukraine hopes to learn from Austria's Euro 2008 experience.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was making a one-day visit to Vienna on Tuesday to see if his country could benefit from Austria's recent experience hosting the tournament with Switzerland.

Ukraine and Poland are co-hosting Euro 2012. UEFA has expressed concerns that both nations' preparations are seriously behind schedule, fueling speculation of plans for a backup host.

Both face the challenge of building stadiums and upgrading dilapidated infrastructure, such as roads, airports and hotels.

"The Ukrainian side is interested in learning Austria's positive experience in holding the recent European football championship," Yushchenko's office said.

The president also planned to meet with Austrian President Heinz Fischer, Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer and Senate President Barbara Prammer.

Source: FOX Sports

Ukraine Embassy Worker Arrested For Radioactive Materials Smuggling

KIEV, Ukraine -- A worker at Ukraine's embassy in Germany was arrested on charges of attempted smuggling of radioactive materials, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday.


The man and the security manager of a local bank were detained near the central Ukrainian city Cherkassy with radioactive metals in their possession worth 4.9 million dollars, police said.

According to people reports, the two suspects had been transporting uranium and cesium in an automobile.

The confiscated radioactive elements were believed to have been removed from a special holding facility in the Ukrainian capital Kiev for sale to an organized crime group, according to the report.

The police did not make clear where the pair intended to transfer the materials.

As a result of the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a massive nuclear arsenal and substantial reserves of radioactive materials including weapons-grade materials.

Kiev formally rejected the use or storage of nuclear weapons in 1994, but since then much the country's atomic arms research and development infrastructure has remained operational, though nearly always underfunded and poorly-secured.

Ukraine's present government has argued its controls over nuclear materials meet international standards.

International safety monitors however have questioned the claims citing poor Ukrainian accounting for nuclear materials, and corruption among government employees.

Source: DPA

Unproductive Rada Set To Adjourn; Gridlock To Resume In Autumn

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s deeply-divided parliament is likely to set off on their summer holidays in two weeks…without doing much of anything before then.

Parliament Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
The roster of Ukraine’s disappointed includes businesses counting on the Verkhovna Rada to simplify and lower taxes, pensioners hoping for a boost in their paltry payments and others simply wanting to witness effective government for a change.

Polls show Ukrainian voters are deeply turned off by their lawmakers.

Lawmakers, in turn, fear the wrath of their constituents and are afraid of facing them again anytime soon at the voting booth, political analysts say.

So what’s ahead?

The likely prognosis: a round of stultifying negotiations among the fractious elite, followed by an even bigger political standoff in the autumn.

Crippled by June’s defection of two lawmakers, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s government has been unable to muster a 226-vote majority.

So, instead of adopting laws that might actually help people’s lives, the country has witnessed the usual juvenile antics among the three main warring factions: blockades of each other’s attempts to speak at the rostrum and rhetorical firebombs.

All appears to be part of the non-stop jockeying for the 2010 presidential election, expected to feature an all-too-familiar cast: Tymoshenko, President Viktor Yushchenko and Orange Revolution villain and ex-Premier Viktor Yanukovych.

Even politicians are turned off by themselves.

“I have an impression from time to time that I work at the farm, because the piggishness in this room sometimes has no limits,” Rada Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in June.

His comments came during a month in which parliament met many times for a matter of minutes before adjourning for consultations among the feuding elite.

Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst, predicted the stalemate will deepen after the brief summer hiatus.

“I don’t think there will be significant changes in the character of parliament’s work,” said Fesenko, director of the Penta Center for Applied Political Research. “Neither the coalition nor the opposition will have enough of an advantage to achieve their aims or pass any decisions. Most likely we will see the conflict put off for the autumn.”

Amending the constitution is an initiative that is likely to remain stalled since no consensus has been reached on how to divide up authority.

And while the Yanukovych-led opposition could team with presidential allies to sink Tymoshenko with a no-confidence vote, a Yushchenko-Yanukovych union to form a new government still seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, an ousted Tymoshenko could score big political points as acting premier – until a new one is named – by portraying herself as the victim of the Viktors.

And while Tymoshenko’s bloc has found some common ground in negotiations with Yanukovych’s Party of Regions on adopting a new constitution, both sides are still far from consensus.

The premier, moreover, could face voter backlash if she unites with the Orange Revolution villain.

So the talking will go on.

“There may be negotiations, but who will make the step is a complicated question,” said Oleksandr Lytvynenko, a leading political expert at the Kyiv-based think tank Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Studies.

Faced with the prospects of long-term gridlock, political forces could opt once again for pre-term election – ahead of the next scheduled 2012 parliamentary election — as a way out of the crisis.

A snap vote could elect a few smaller parties, but seems unlikely to substantially change the distribution of power. “Strategically this election will not solve anything, bringing almost the same configuration we have now,” Lytvynenko said.

According to two recent polls, a seven-year growth spurt in support for Tymoshenko has waned during her six-month repeat tenure as premier.

Still, her bloc ranks right up there with Yanukovych’s party – with support of about 20 percent of voters. The president’s party remains below 10 percent. The unpopularity of the three major factions leaves the Communists and the block of ex-speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn vying for the role of kingmaker.

One recent poll found that 36 percent of respondents say they are likely to vote against all candidates, compared to 26 percent in January.

“It is clear there is a certain margin of voter fatigue, and while our politicians are used to disregarding people’s opinion, I don’t think they would like to do it this time,” Lytvynenko said, meaning that lawmakers risk backlash if early parliamentary elections are called ahead of 2012.

The upshot is that people waiting for change can expect more delay. Andriy Beyzyk, director of Lviv-based Western Ukrainian Management Consulting, said he was counting on parliament to improve the business climate.

“The entire package of economic bills that would improve the investment climate in Ukraine is crucial,” Beyzyk said. “Moreover, there are problems with laws being enforced.”

Source: Kyiv Post

Russia's Putin Warns Ukraine Over NATO Bid, Threatens To Terminate Lucrative Deals

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned Ukraine over its NATO bid and threatened to terminate lucrative deals with Ukrainian arms and space facilities if the ex-Soviet neighbor joins the alliance.

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
Ukraine has a massive arms and electronics industry inherited from the Soviet era that relies on contracts with Russia's military and space agencies. The industry remains state-owned and poorly adjusted to business-oriented relations with the West.

Putin said Saturday in televised remarks that Ukraine would have to invest heavily into retrofitting its arms industry for production of weapons according to the Western alliance's standards.

Moscow vehemently opposes efforts by Ukraine as well as Georgia to gain NATO membership, saying that would jeopardize Russia's security.

Putin issued the warning on joining NATO after holding talks in Moscow with his Ukrainian counterpart, Yulia Tymoshenko.

The two also discussed the status of Russia's Black Sea fleet currently stationed in Ukraine's Crimean port of Sevastopol – an issue that has become a sore point in the countries' already strained relations.

Tymoshenko said Ukraine would "accurately" fulfill its obligations under a lease agreement that allows the Russian navy to remain in Sevastopol through 2017 for an annual $93 million.

The two prime ministers also appeared to have settled price disputes over natural gas supplies, as Putin said Ukraine has paid its debt for Russian gas – a positive sign for European customers worried after a 2006 price dispute led to supply disruptions.

Putin said, however, that next year Russia's state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom would more than double its gas price from $179 to $400 per 1,000 cubic meters, following a hike in prices for gas from Central Asian republics.

Ukraine mostly buys Central Asian gas, which is delivered through Gazprom-controlled pipelines crossing Russia.

Source: Kyiv Post

Platini Gives Ukraine Three Months On Euro 2012 Plans

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine has three months to prove its preparations for hosting the 2012 European Championship with Poland are on track, UEFA president Michel Platini said, adding he felt confident of their success.

UEFA president Michel Platini exchanging mementoes with Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukrainian Prime Minister.
Platini said last weekend that Poland and Ukraine risked losing the right to host the tournament if stadiums in their capitals were not ready. He said UEFA would make a decision on that at a meeting in Bordeaux in late September.

Arriving in Ukraine after a visit to Poland, Platini met with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and President Viktor Yushchenko - whose personal backing for the joint bid to host Euro 2012 helped convince UEFA officials.

"You have three months to work together to give Poland and Ukraine a way of hosting a fantastic Euro," Platini said at a meeting with Yushchenko. "I am confident. But I need just a little guarantee."

Platini warned Ukraine about slow preparations in January, saying that the next few months were crucial. On Thursday, the head of European soccer's ruling body said those comments were meant to "wake up" Ukraine.

"We had some questions to ask you because not everything was exactly clear concerning many things in Ukraine - the stadiums, the airports, etc," he said, addressing Yushchenko.

Both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko pledged to step up efforts.

"We will do everything, even the impossible, so that there will be a fantastic celebration for the entire world," Tymoshenko said at her meeting with Platini.

Ex-Communist Poland and former Soviet Ukraine face a colossal task in upgrading stadiums, building hotels and overhauling infrastructure including roads and airports if they want to stage their biggest event yet.

Both had immediate problems with stadiums in their capital cities which highlighted the problems the countries face.

In Warsaw, vendors who used the stadium as a bazaar protested at their eviction, while in Kiev wrangling over getting rid of a shopping centre adjacent to its stadium which blocked emergency exits continued for months.

After agreeing compensation to the centre's developer, demolition of the centre was begun just days ago. However, an architect is yet to be found for the stadium's renovation after the sports ministry ended talks with a Taiwan company

Source: Times of Malta

Merkel To Head To Ukraine For Political Talks

BERLIN, Germany -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to visit Ukraine on July 21 for political talks with Ukrainian leaders, her spokesperson Thomas Steg announced here Friday during a routine weekly press briefing.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The German leader will meet with Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, Prime Minister Julia Timochenko and opposition head Viktor Yanukovich.

Talks will focus on bilateral, European and international issues, Steg added.

Relations between Berlin and Kiev have soured as Germany had vetoed Ukrainian NATO membership plans.

The German government has remained deeply sceptical on NATO membership efforts by Georgia and Ukraine, pointing to major domestic problems in both countries.

An indispensable requirement for a NATO membership is a stable situation in the candidate states, German officials have argued.

Countries facing domestic political conflicts or crisis in the region cannot become members in NATO, they added.

Berlin has referred to the fact that Ukrainians are deeply split on membership in the western military alliance and European Union observers are still based in Georgia monitoring a fragile peace in that country.

Backed by the US, Georgia and Ukraine have boosted their efforts to become NATO membership candidates.

The issue has become subject of a heated debate in the western military pact as many NATO states fear to incur Russia's wrath.

Moscow has warned Georgia and Ukraine of joining NATO, branding it an "open provocation."

Source: IRNA

Nation’s Courts Are The Latest Political Battleground

KIEV, Ukraine -- A power tussle over Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt courts is shifting into high gear ahead of the 2010 presidential election.

Vasyl Onopenko, Ukraine’s chief justice
The prize for winning this struggle could be control of the nation’s judicial system at a very opportune time - just in case things go badly in the 2010 election or in any attempted rigging of that election.

It never hurts to have friends on the highest court, dispensing justice – as during the 2004 Orange Revolution when the Supreme Court overturned a rigged vote – or just dispensing favors.

The wrestling match was sparked in June when Ukraine’s top judge, an ally of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, warned that the nation’s judiciary system is under threat by a power­grabbing president and allied lawmakers.

Vasyl Onopenko, the top justice of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, is especially alarmed by proposals by lawmakers that would beef up President Viktor Yushchenko’s powers, allowing him to more easily to appoint and dismiss judges.

Onopenko also objects to a plan that would dilute the Supreme Court’s influence and establish four higher courts whose decisions, the chief justice claims, would be more susceptible to political influence.

The proposals from Yushchenko and his Verkhovna Rada allies are nothing more than unconstitutional power grabs, Onopenko said.

Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, the beneficiaries of the Orange Revolution that blocked ex­Premier Viktor Yanukovych from gaining power, are expected to clash in the 2010 vote.

Ironically, lawmakers backing the Orange Revolution’s hero, Yushchenko, and villain, Yanukovych, have been proposing and revising the draft legislation that has drawn the ire of Onopenko.

“Your decisions contradict the constitution and Ukraine’s legislation,” Onopenko wrote in a June 23 letter to Yushchenko. “Your staff’s cooperation with persons who direct efforts at destroying the national court system show that, in fact, you choose [to establish] unconstitutional control over judges and courts and [to engage in] illegal intervention into their activities.”

“If the new law is adopted, it will lead to court chaos, [establishing a] court jungle,” Onopenko told the Kyiv Post on June 27.

There’s another side to this story, of course.

Some lawmakers say the president needs greater powers to appoint and dismiss judges in order to rid the court system of notorious corruption and to give the posts to better­ skilled jurists.

They also say that the four higher courts – each focused on a special area of the law – will improve the efficiency of decision­making.

The new law will establish European standards, said the notorious Serhiy Kivalov. Kivalov is co­author of the bill and now heads parliament’s judiciary committee.

But he is better remembered for his role as chair of the Central Election Committee that certified Yanukovych as winner of the fraudulent 2004 presidential contest, the results of which were later overturned on the strength of massive street protests and a Supreme Court order to repeat the vote on Dec. 26, 2004, which was won by Yushchenko.

Ihor Pukshyn, Yushchenko’s deputy chief of staff, defended the bill late last month saying, “the Supreme Court that has monopolistic influence on the whole court system doesn’t act as an effective mechanism for making judicial decisions that restore the rights and freedoms of people and has influence on the state’s fate.”

Iryna Voytyuk, president of Ukraine’s Academy of Judges, which accredits and teaches judges, said the push to revamp the judicial system is being driven by political ambitions to control the courts ahead of the next presidential elections. They could be won in courts much like the 2004 contest was, she added.

The court battle is also a test of whether the judicial branch of government will fulfill the role envisioned for it under Ukraine’s Constitution – separate, equal and independent in relation to the president, parliament and premier.

And while political parties have in recent weeks spun their own public relations campaigns around the judicial bills, political analysts predict changes will not be adopted by parliament before it goes on summer vacation this month.

Political analyst Sergiy Taran said the country’s three main parties are unlikely to adopt any changes in coming months, out of fears that such a move could show their true political colors.

Should the presidential party vote in tandem with Yanukovych’s Regions Party, for instance, it would be tainted. And the same applies to any possible alliance between Tymoshenko’s bloc and Regions.

Devil in the details

The draft law proposes that members of Ukraine’s Supreme Judiciary Council nominate judicial candidates to be chosen by the president. The bill would cut the number of Supreme Court judges from 95 to 16 and would establish four new high courts — civil, criminal, economic and administrative – that could reverse decisions.

The changes are backed by Yanukovych’s party and some lawmakers from the pro­presidential Our Ukraine grouping, including Yuriy Karmazin, regarded as a judicial expert.

Yushchenko’s support set off a negative reaction among judges, who fear the changes will make the court system more complicated and more dependent on both politicians and tycoons.

Ihor Koliushko, director of the think tank Political and Legal Reforms Center, participated in drafting the bill back in 2006, when he worked as an aid in Yushchenko’s office.

He claims that the justice committee headed by Kivalov has sabotaged the bill by proposing changes that would strengthen presidential authority in the process of appointing judges.

“This would be very harmful, as representatives of the presidential office would be able to seriously influence the judicial system,” Koliushko said.

“Viktor Baloha (presidential chief of staff) and his deputies are trying to get influence over the courts,” added Taras Berezovets, a political consultant who has advised Tymoshenko’s party.

Koliushko disagrees with Onopenko on other areas of the proposed law. He said the number of Supreme Court judges needs to be reduced. He also supports specialization of the court by creation of four high court branches devoted to civil, criminal, administrative and economic cases.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Central Bank Shows Unity, Sets New FX Band

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Ukrainian central bank's council agreed on Friday to change the currency band to 4.656-5.044, from a previous 4.95-5.25, according to comments made by the council's head, Petro Poroshenko.

Ukraine's Central Bank
The announcement comes after weeks of apparent differences between the council, and the bank's executive board headed by Chairman Volodymyr Stelmakh, who has been pushing through currency policy changes since Spring.

"The official rate in the second half of the year is set at 4.85/dollar, with a possible deviation of plus or minus 4 percent," Poroshenko said after a meeting of the council.

Up until around March, the bank had kept to a strict three-year policy of keeping the hryvnia on the interbank market within a tight range of 5.00-5.06 to the dollar.

The official rate, also set three years ago, was 5.05.

But, battling with soaring inflation, it let the hryvnia strengthen, and revalued the official rate in May to 4.85.

The council, created years after the central bank was established to formulate a framework for policy, vetoed that decision, but was overruled by the executive board.

President Viktor Yushchenko also criticised the revaluation fearing it would hit exporters -- key drivers of Ukraine's growth.

Nevertheless, the bank has adjusted the official rate many times since May -- it is now at 4.8498/$ -- and has intervened less on the interbank market, letting the hryvnia strengthen to as much as 4.5 to the dollar.

Source: Guardian UK

Ukraine Commits Foul Ahead Of Hosting Euro 2012

KIEV, Ukraine -- In four years' time, Ukraine and Poland are scheduled to host one of the most prestigious sporting events in their history - the European Football Championship.

This is how the Olympic stadium in Kiev currently looks.
But there are doubts now about Kiev's ability to satisfy the competition's high standards. And political rows between Ukrainian authorities is not making it any easier.

The main venue for the Euro 2012 football championship in Kiev currently presents an upsetting picture - crumbling walls, contractors disputing a tender in court and the government dragging its feet over the whole project.

Michele Platini, the UEFA president, arrived in Kiev amid doubts that Eastern European neighbors, Ukraine and Poland, could host the tournament. The French have called for tough work in order to make a credible showing.

The Ukrainian government faces constant criticism for slow progress both from abroad and its own people. Bumpy roads, outdated airports and soviet built stadiums all fall far short of European standards.

The government has dismissed a Taiwanese firm hired to rebuild the main venue for a final match in Kiev and has not approved a new contractor yet.

A former secretary of the Ukrainian Football Federation Anatoly Popov is doubtful that the country can complete the project on time.

“They wasted a year. The sooner our government admits it the better. Nothing has been done so far. They won a tender thanks to colourful pictures instead of real roads, construction sites or stadiums. It’s like UEFA gave us an advance but we are failing to pay it back,” Anatoly Popov says.

Political squabbling between President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Timoshenko ahead of the 2010 presidential vote seems to be hampering preparations as well. But both are still trying to put a positive spin on things.

“Ukraine is honoured to host the championship. We are very grateful to you. Our Ukrainian team says that we will do everything, even the impossible if needed. It will be a feast of football for the whole world,” pledges Timoshenko.

Michelle Platini said they have no contingency plan if the co-hosts fail the project. But Italy, Scotland, Croatia and Hungary are breathing down Ukraine’s neck in case they stumble.

Source: Russia Today

Yushchenko’s Still Right For The Times

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s President, Viktor Yushchenko, seemingly does not take much interest in opinion polls, unlike his Western counterparts. Polls and ratings do not completely control the lives of Western leaders but they are nevertheless still seen as an important barometer of the health and vitality of a leader.

Viktor Yushchenko
More importantly, polls show a Western leader if he still has a public mandate to rule his people.

If President Yushchenko truly wished to build a European democratic country indeed, rather than only in word, he could not ignore his critically low public ratings. In a European or North American democracy, public ratings of under 10 percent, as in Viktor Yushchenko’s case, would be considered a national crisis.

In Ukraine such ratings continue to be ignored – as they were during Leonid Kuchma’s presidency.

In Britain, the collapse in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ratings have led to calls by even Labour Party supporters for him to be replaced because of the fear that his low popularity will lead to Labour losing the next elections.

Well-known Guardian commentator Jonathan Freedland wrote recently that "we got Brown wrong. He is simply not up to the job." Would Freedland believe that Yushchenko "was up to the job"?

Former French President Jacques Chirac and U.S. President George W. Bush, like Western leaders in general, become lame duck leaders after either many years in office (Chirac) or, as in Bush’s case, at the end of their second terms.

Yushchenko’s case is unique in three ways. Yushchenko has managed to become a lame duck president faster than Kuchma and yet acts as though he has the moral right to give orders to the Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Just to remind readers, the Tymoshenko bloc received more than twice as many votes in last year’s elections as the president’s Our Ukraine group.

Firstly, Yushchenko was elected with a huge revolutionary mandate. Not only did he win by an 8 percent margin, he also had a reserve of support among his opponents, as support for change was widespread, with more than 70 percent of Ukrainians backing this mood.

Yushchenko’s mandate for change was far higher than that for Nicolas Sarkozy in France, whose 53 percent victory was only 6 percent more than his Socialist rival’s 47 percent. Britain’s two crucial elections associated with change gave 7 percent victory to the Conservatives in 1979 (when Margaret Thatcher won) and a 12 percent victory to New Labour in 1997 (when Tony Blair won).

Bush was elected in the U.S. with even lower majorities of only 1 percent in 2000 and 3 percent in 2004. Compared to British, French and U.S. election results, Yushchenko therefore had a relatively large mandate for change that he never used.

Secondly, Yushchenko has below 10 percent ratings already in the middle of his first term. Such a collapse in support would trigger a national crisis in a Western democracy.

There would be mass resignations of his advisers and staff. In a Western democracy there would be a search for who was responsible for this collapse in support.

It would be incomprehensible for the head of the presidential staff to remain in place after he presided over such a critical collapse in the president’s support.

In a Western democracy, Viktor Baloha, Yushchenko’s chief of staff, would himself feel morally bound to resign.

Thirdly, it is rare for European and North American leaders to receive Ukrainian­style critical ratings of below 10 percent. When Chirac and Bush have less than 30 percent approval they are considered to be lame duck presidents.

How then, should a president be described with less than a third of Chirac’s and Bush’s popularity? What would French and American media outlets be arguing if Chirac and Bush’s ratings were not 25­30 percent, but only 7 percent. A rising tide of French parliamentarians and American congressmen would be demanding early elections.

More incredulously, no Western democracy would continue to act as though nothing unusual had happened if the president’s ratings had collapsed six fold in four years, as they have with Yushchenko.

To sidestep such an important factor would be to ignore a profound crisis in the country’s leadership.

Yushchenko’s lame duck status is not only inter­related to the country’s perennial domestic crises since September 2005 when he removed the Tymoshenko government.

The president’s lame duck status is also exercising a negative influence on Ukraine’s Euro­Atlantic integration.

Western leaders and organizations have consistently stated for the last three years that the policies undertaken by the president’s staff and the president himself have been counter­productive, as they have undermined Ukraine’s integration into the EU and NATO.

The West has supported unity of the former Orange Revolution allies in the interests of promoting policies in support of reform and reducing corruption.

Instead, the president’s policies have undermined Orange unity in September 2005 and following the 2006 and 2007 elections and these have contributed to reducing his support both inside and outside Ukraine.

Western governments and organizations have been slower than Ukrainians to transform Yushchenko into a lame duck president.

Nevertheless, the last seven months of presidential attempts to undermine the Tymoshenko government have transformed attitudes in Brussels, London and Washington from that of seeing Yushchenko as a hero of the Orange Revolution and the candidate of reform into the nemesis of conservative counter­revolution.

This was clearly stated during last week’s Brussels meeting of the center ­right European Peoples Party. At the meeting’s concluding press conference, EPP President Vilfred Martens said, “On behalf of the EPP I would like to state our solidarity with the course undertaken by the Tymoshenko government, its anti­corruption and privatization program. I would also like to support Tymoshenko as the leader of the democratic coalition. We remain perturbed that there are attacks on the government and at the same time attempts to block the course of reform.”

President Yushchenko made things worse by snubbing an EPP delegation that visited Kyiv prior to the Brussels meeting.

Yushchenko is fast losing support in Brussels, London and Washington for the very same reasons he is losing support among Ukrainians; namely, in response to his duplicity in claiming to support “his government” while doing everything in his power to undermine it.

Worse still, the president fails to understand that using foreign media interviews to attack “his government” is received in a negative manner: it is simply beyond the pale for Western leaders to engage in such practices while traveling abroad.

One could never imagine Prime Minister Blair attacking opposition leader David Cameron in an interview in Le Monde. Yushchenko has gone out of his way to attack Tymoshenko in recent Canadian, French and Spanish interviews, a course of action that rebounds negatively on him.

The lack of political crisis and scandal surrounding the president’s below­10 percent ratings suggest that Ukraine is still a young democracy.

The Orange Revolution brought Ukraine a step closer to democracy; for example, the country now has a free media. Yet, in Ukraine’s free media, corruption scandals can be widely publicized without any criminal and investigative follow up taking place.

Similarly, a president can become a lame duck without calls for the resignation of his senior staff and advisers and without public calls for pre­term presidential elections.

Yushchenko would show his true commitment to Euro­Atlantic integration by no longer continuing to act as though he had widespread public support and a public mandate to run roughshod over public opinion.

Source: Kyiv Post

Tymoshenko Defies Yushchenko On Oil And Gas Exploration

WASHINGTON, DC -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has ordered the government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to allow the U.S. company Vanco to proceed with its oil and gas exploration project in the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea.

PM Yulia Tymoshenko
Visiting U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez also warned that the continuing dispute over the project could damage Ukraine’s international reputation.

Tymoshenko, however, continues to insist that the decisions made by her predecessor, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, to issue a license to Vanco and conclude a production-sharing agreement (PSA) were illegal.

She has defied all Yushchenko’s orders.

The Texas-based Vanco Energy won an international tender in 2006 and was supposed to explore the 5-square-mile Prykerchenska field off the southeast coast of Crimea.

Vanco Prykerchenska, a subsidiary of Vanco, was deprived of the license on April 25, and the Tymoshenko government unilaterally withdrew from the respective PSA on May 21.

Tymoshenko said that the interests of Ukrainian energy companies and possibly of Russia’s Gazprom were behind the deal.

She also accused Yushchenko of lobbying for Vanco. Yushchenko and one of the Ukrainian companies concerned, Group DF of billionaire Dmytro Firtash, denied the accusations.

The Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council (SNBO) decided that Tymoshenko should return to square one.

Yushchenko upheld the SNBO’s decision on June 4 and ordered the government to restore Vanco’s license and start talks with Vanco to settle the dispute.

He also instructed the Security Service of Ukraine to determine what had prompted the cabinet to revoke the license. The U.S. government expressed its concern through Carlos Gutierrez, who visited Kyiv on June 5.

“Every time there is a contract, that is an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that contracts are respected,” said Gutierrez, commenting on the Vanco dispute.

Tymoshenko’s right-hand man, First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchynov, challenged Gutierrez on the same day, saying that the cabinet was right to revoke Vanco’s license.

Turchynov said that a special government commission he had chaired had confirmed that Vanco should be banished from the Black Sea. “In spite of the pressure exerted on the government,” he said, “the deposits of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov stay under state control.”

Turchynov also blamed “corrupt officials” for devising schemes “aimed at embezzling this country’s strategic resources”.

Because the government refused to restore the PSA, Yushchenko issued a decree on June 18 suspending the government’s May 21 decision to withdraw from the PSA with Vanco Prykerchenska.

Yushchenko warned that Vanco might sue the government in international courts to seek billions of dollars in damages and that other foreign companies might freeze their projects in the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea.

The government, however, is standing its ground. Its special commission on PSAs, chaired by Turchynov, defended the decision to withdraw from the PSA with Vanco, saying that it was in line with the law and “national interests”.

Environment Minister Heorhy Filipchuk announced on June 20 that a total of 156 licenses issued to explore Ukraine’s mineral resources should be revoked, as they either had been issued illegally or were not used efficiently.

He said that 73 of them had already been revoked, including the one issued to Vanco (Interfax-Ukraine, June 20). Also, 49 pro-government deputies of parliament officially asked the Constitutional Court to rule whether Yushchenko’s decrees favoring Vanco were in line with the constitution.

Asked to comment on the Vanco dispute at a briefing on June 25, Tymoshenko described the PSA with Vanco as “RosUkrEnergo number 2,” referring to the gas trader co-owned by Gazprom and Firtash that she has been struggling to remove from Ukraine since her appointment as prime minister in December 2007.

“All illegally issued licenses have been cancelled. Ukraine, on the basis of a unanimous decision made by the cabinet, has withdrawn from these, in my opinion, criminal and murky agreements," said Tymoshenko.

She also warned against “conspiracy aimed at destroying the government plan to put an end to the high-scale international scam involving the Black Sea shelf”.

Vanco Chairman Gene Van Dyke has said that the Prykerchenska field exploration could be delayed by some ten years if the dispute continued.

He said that only one company in the world, which works in partnership with Vanco, can supply the equipment necessary for drawing 3D maps of the field, without which proper exploration is impossible because of the great depths involved.

Vanco Prykerchenska confirmed its readiness to adhere fully to the PSA conditions. It said that it was ready to invest about $250 million in the project by 2010.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

UEFA Turns Attention To Euro 2012 Co-Hosts Poland, Ukraine Amid Worries Over Preparations

WARSAW, Poland -- With Euro 2008 come and gone, UEFA now turns its attention to Poland and Ukraine amid speculation that the Eastern European co-hosts could lose the 2012 tournament if construction delays worsen.

UEFA chief Michel Platini will arrive in Kiev on Thursday to asses Ukraine's readiness to host Euro 2012.
UEFA president Michel Platini is to lead an investigative mission to Warsaw today — and to Kiev tomorrow — to assess the progress Poland and Ukraine have made in their preparations to stage European soccer's showcase competition.

The 12-man delegation is slated to meet with presidents and top-ranking government and soccer officials from both countries on the two-day trip.

The visit comes at a key moment for the two countries as they seek to brush aside fears that they are unable to bridge glaring gaps in sports and public infrastructure, including stadiums, roads, airports and hotels.

In April last year, Poland and Ukraine were awarded the championships ahead of a bid from Italy and a joint candidacy from Croatia and Hungary.

The decision was met with jubilation in both countries and was seen as a chance to demonstrate that the two former Communist states have re-invented themselves as modern, efficient Western nations capable of hosting such a high-profile event.

But problems across the board in both countries have fueled speculation that UEFA holds plans for a backup host — possibly Italy, Germany, or Scotland.

However, Platini told reporters at the weekend in Vienna that "there is no backup plan" right now, but warned that UEFA could find a new host if a new national stadium planned for Warsaw and a redeveloped Stalinist-era Olympic stadium in Kiev are not ready in time.

"That would be the only decision to make us decide not to have the tournament in Poland and Ukraine," Platini said in Vienna, Austria. "If no stadiums, no tournament."

Polish and Ukrainian officials have scrambled to ease UEFA concerns and, while admitting the deadlines are tight, give assurances that everything will be ready on time.

"Poland is at a very good level in its preparations," said Marcin Herra, the president of Poland's organizing committee.

"Poland has the money for the necessary investments, it knows what it has to do, and it now has a very detailed plan," Herra said. "Everything is now going according to plan or is even a couple of weeks ahead of schedule."

Warsaw is to stage the opening match in a new 55,000 seat national stadium on the banks of the Vistula River. Workers have started tearing down the crumbling 10th-Anniversary Stadium that stands on the site, and preliminary construction on the new stadium is slated to begin in early 2009 and finish in 2011.

Two other Polish stadiums — in Wroclaw and Gdansk — must also be built from the ground up. Architects are finishing off the final designs on those arenas, Herra said, and construction crews should break ground on them in early 2009.

Meanwhile, expansion work to increase capacity of the Municipal Stadium in Poznan to 45,000 is well underway.

But the country still faces major problems with transportation infrastructure. Poland's crumbling roadways fall far short of the autobahns in Austria and Switzerland that allowed fans to zip from one host city to another, and Poland's government continues to drag its feet on upgrading existing roads and building badly needed new ones.

In Ukraine, the main hurdle in preparations remains the renovation of Kiev's 80,000-seat Olympic stadium, which was opened in the late 1940s and is to host the Euro 2012 final.

Last week, the Ukrainian government dismissed a Taiwanese firm, which had a won a tender to reconstruct the stadium, citing legal problems.

Authorities are now scrambling to find a replacement, but experts say a new company may not be able to complete the necessary stadium renovations in time.

That task is further complicated by a shopping center under construction nearby that was ordered to be torn down by June because it could impinge on access to the stadium. The center remains untouched.

Political squabbling between Ukraine's president and prime minister, who are seen as trying to undermine each other ahead of the 2010 presidential elections, has further hampered preparations.

Last week, the chairman of Ukraine's organizing committee, Evhen Chervonenko, accused the government of refusing necessary funding for the tournament and of failing to do everything possible to avoid the "major international embarrassment" that would ensue if Ukraine lost its right to be co-host.

Despite the setbacks, Chervonenko has sought to put a positive spin on things.

"We are in such a stage of preparations that there are no reasons to worry," Chervonenko told the Associated Press in an interview. "The Euro project is a project of the Ukrainian people and it will be completed."

Source: International Herald Tribune

Oligarchs Wield Power In Ukrainian Politics

WASHINGTON, DC -- The leading Ukrainian magazine Korrespondent published its annual list of wealthy Ukrainians. The most surprising new information was the estimate of Donetsk oligarch Renat Akhmetov’s wealth.

Renat Akhmetov, Ukraine's and Europes's richest man, is worth a cool $31.1 billion dollars.
Akhmetov, the head of Systems Capital Management, is worth $31.1 billion, making him the wealthiest person not only in the CIS but also in Europe.

This revelation comes on top of the highest real estate purchase ever recorded in Britain to Olena Franchuk, the wife of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk and daughter of former President Leonid Kuchma (London Evening Standard, February 26). The purchase was for 80 million pounds ($160 million).

London is fast becoming a refuge not only for Russian but also Ukrainian oligarchs. Russian political exiles, such as Boris Berezovskiy, flee to London while Ukrainian exiles (Ruslan Bodelan) flee to Russia. This is testimony to the different approaches to money laundering and due diligence undertaken by the United States and the EU.

In the U.S. former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko was convicted and jailed in 2004 for money laundering $120 million into the United States, $40 million less than Franchuk paid for her new London home.

Four years of political instability in Ukraine have not damaged the ability of Ukraine’s oligarchs to increase their capitalization during President Viktor Yushchenko’s administration.

Political instability has not affected the economy, which has continued robust growth; purchasing power is high and foreign direct investment is at record levels.

According to Korrespondent editor Vitaliy Sych, Akhmetov’s estimated wealth has doubled in the past year because of three factors. First, he has publicly revealed for the first time the full extent of his wealth.

Akhmetov’s land in Donetsk alone is valued at $1 billion. Second, Ukrainian oligarchs with metallurgical assets experienced fast growth due to high world demand. Third, Metinvest, a key Akhmetov company, merged with the Smart Group providing it with access to iron ore.

The total worth of the wealthiest 50 Ukrainians is $112.7 billion, as much as two annual Ukrainian state budgets. Ukrainian oligarchs can be found in most factions, including the Socialists, in the 2006-2007 parliament.

The greatest concentration of wealth lies within the Party of Regions. This in itself is ironic, because the Party of Regions, like the Unified Russia party, has attracted a large proportion of former communist voters.

Of the $112 billion total assets of Ukraine’s 50 wealthiest, $35.4 billion or a third of the total is held by members of the Party of Regions.

The Party of Regions is uncomfortable about explaining why there is such a large concentration of oligarchic capital within its ranks. Akhmetov’s wealth is $1.5 billion greater than that of Russia’s wealthiest oligarch, even though Ukraine’s population is a third of Russia’s and it does not possess the strategic raw materials, such as oil, gas, diamonds and gold, which are abundant in Russia.

Russia’s wealthiest 50 oligarchs only account for 35% of the country’s GDP, compared with 85% of Ukraine’s.

When asked about Akhmetov’s extraordinary wealth, Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych said, “If God gave certain individuals business talents, then what is most important is that this talent goes toward the greater good of the country and the people who live there.” Yanukovych believed that, “these people bring budgetary proceeds and promote the economic growth of the country”.

Akhmetov entered parliament in 2006 in the Party of Regions. In 2005 he fled to Monaco because of fear that the Tymoshenko government would bring criminal charges against him, but he returned after these were blocked by Yushchenko.

Other oligarchs either fulfilled their promises of separating business and politics by not standing for re-election to parliament (Pinchuk) or never running for parliament at all (Igor Kolomoysky).

Yanukovych believes that the large number of wealthy Ukrainians in the Party of Regions is not mere coincidence. “They entered the party out of their beliefs,” he said, a statement that is hard to accept since the party is ideologically amorphous.

Immunity from prosecution, defensive protection against Tymoshenko and access to government funds are three likelier explanations for their interest in entering parliament.

Akhmetov is in the Tymoshenko government’s line of fire. One major factor in the government’s cancellation of the October 2007 Vanco contract for Ukraine’s Black Sea shelf oil exploration was the presence of an Akhmetov company as one of its four partners.

The government also seeks to “re-privatize” Dniproenergo, which Akhmetov purchased at a knock down price in August 2007. (That would involve nationalizing the company back from Akhmetov and privatizing it again.)

Ukraine’s oligarchs were never united as a group. Following Yushchenko’s election, they openly supported the orange camp.

Pinchuk (Interpipe) and Kolomoysky (Pryvat) are Ukraine’s second and third wealthiest citizens but with far less wealth than Akhmetov, at $8.8 and $6.6 billion, respectively.

Both have continued to fund political projects externally: Pinchuk in Viche and Kolomoysky in Our Ukraine. Three Pryvat oligarchs in third, fourth and sixth places control $17.7 billion.

Other oligarchs also supported the orange camp. Petro Poroshenko ($1.12 billion [22nd place]) was an ally of Yushchenko from 2001 when Our Ukraine was formed, and his Channel 5 was one of only two television stations that gave coverage to the 2004 Yushchenko election campaign.

Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky ($750 million [28th place]) backed Yushchenko in 2004 and has remained an ally.

The former head of the 2004 Yanukovych campaign, Serhiy Tyhipko ($1.64 billion [17th place], who, like Pinchuk, left politics after the orange revolution, has returned as head of the Tymoshenko government’s Council on Investors.

Another Pinchuk protégé, Valeriy Khoroshkovskyi ($1.55 billion [18th place]), is head of the State Customs.

Meanwhile, Industrial Union of Donbas (ISD) oligarchs Serhiy Taruta and Vitaliy Haydiuk (worth $2.37 billion each [11th and 12th]) are aligned with the Tymoshenko government.

Konstantyn Zhevago ($5.2 billion [fifth]), the first and only Ukrainian businessman to float shares on the London Stock Exchange for his Ferrexpo company, is a Tymoshenko bloc parliamentary deputy.

The separation of business and politics remains a long way off in Ukraine, even though it was one of the main aims of the orange revolution.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor