Claims Of Secret Arms Sales Rattle Ukraine’s Leaders

KIEV, Ukraine -- With the Ukrainian government reeling from a financial crisis and internal power struggles, the country’s pro-Russian opposition has been leveling potentially damaging accusations of improper arms sales to Georgia during that country’s brief war with Russia.

President Viktor A. Yushchenko of Ukraine at a ceremony in Kiev this month remembering victims of famine in the 1930s.
And Russia’s leaders, furious with Ukraine’s president over his pro-Western leanings and vocal support of Georgia, have personally weighed in, making accusations of their own.

It may not matter that the opposition has provided no conclusive evidence of the claims, despite weeks of pronouncements that the evidence — once released — will be explosive. The claims alone, which have made headlines, have nonetheless helped to further undermine the government’s authority at a time of heightened political instability, while also roiling Ukraine’s already tense relationship with neighboring Russia.

At issue are accusations that the government of President Viktor A. Yushchenko, who supported Georgia during the crisis, covertly supplied it with weapons before and soon after the fighting broke out in August, and sold tanks and an antiaircraft system to the Georgians at reduced prices.

A parliamentary commission set up by Ukraine’s opposition parties has been investigating the claims, which also include allegations that the president decommissioned equipment sorely needed by Ukraine’s military and gave it to Georgia.

President Yushchenko has flatly denied any wrongdoing, describing the investigation as nothing more than a political show. He has indicated that Ukraine has every right to sell weapons to any country, including Georgia, that is not under international sanctions.

The opposition lawmakers say the point is not whether Ukraine had a right to sell weapons to Georgia. They say the government secretly sent the arms, bypassing disclosure rules in order to avoid antagonizing Russia. They also say that some of the proceeds of the sales have gone not to the Treasury, but to people in Mr. Yushchenko’s circle, even as Ukraine’s military is in dire need of funding.

“We are on the verge of a huge political scandal that could have immense political repercussions,” said Vitaly I. Konovalyuk, a member of Parliament who leads the commission. Mr. Konovalyuk is from the leading opposition party, the Party of Regions, which seeks warmer ties with the Kremlin.

The charges come at a time of a deep economic downturn and political discord in Ukraine, with a seemingly intractable power struggle between President Yushchenko and his main pro-Western rival, Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko. The Parliament has often been stalemated, and President Yushchenko’s popularity has plunged.

Russia’s senior officials have been fueling the dispute. Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, called the alleged weapons sales a “crime against the Russian and Ukrainian people” in a meeting with Ms. Tymoshenko in October.

The Kremlin has long opposed Mr. Yushchenko because of his pro-Western bent and was infuriated by his vocal backing of Georgia during the crisis. The leadership of both Ukraine and Georgia took power in the so-called color revolutions and both want to join NATO. Russia has vociferously opposed such a step.

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, last month accused countries that supplied Georgia with weapons of helping to provoke the August conflict. “Unfortunately, several countries close to us participated in this,” he said. “We will never forget this, and, for sure, we will consider this when formulating policy.”

Last week, Gazprom, the state-owned natural gas monopoly once headed by Mr. Medvedev, announced that it might double the price of gas for Ukraine if it failed to pay off $2.4 billion in debt by Jan. 1. Two years ago, in a similar dispute, Gazprom turned off the gas to Ukraine. (Gazprom has said it will try to refrain from doing so again this time.)

Ukraine was left with huge stockpiles of weapons and military equipment after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, and has relied on arms exports as a major source of income.

In 2007, Ukraine sold Georgia 74 T-72 tanks, some armored combat vehicles, a BUK M1 surface-to-air missile system, two 2S7 self-propelled artillery guns, among other weapons, according to the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms.

Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said in a statement that the country’s last shipment of military hardware arrived at the Georgian Black Sea port in Poti on Aug. 8, the day the war started, but that the cargo “did not include weaponry.” Rather, the statement said, “pyrotechnical equipment” for aircraft emergency and fire prevention systems were delivered.

Though Ukraine’s weapons export system has been criticized for lack of oversight, most analysts say controls over weapons sales have improved since the 1990s, when the country was a main source of weapons sent to conflict zones around the world.

President Yushchenko has said that Ukraine’s arms shipments did not violate any laws and has indicated that Ukraine will continue to sell weapons to Georgia. Ukraine also sells military hardware to Russia. “Ukraine conducts military-technical cooperation with countries that are not under international restrictions,” the president said this month. “We will trade with those whose relations with us correspond to our national interests.”

Though its inquiry began two months ago, the opposition’s parliamentary committee has not yet released a full report on its findings, despite regular statements in the Ukrainian news media from Mr. Konovalyuk about the explosiveness of the information.

Ms. Tymoshenko, who rarely hesitates to snipe at Mr. Yushchenko, has remained largely silent, and no representatives from her faction sit on Mr. Konovalyuk’s commission.

Source: The New York Times

Ukraine Libraries Cleared Of Soviet Books

KIEV, Ukraine -- Libraries throughout Ukraine are beginning to get rid of literary works written by Soviet authors as part of a government effort, an official says.

M. Bulgakov's 'The Master and Margarita'.
Luhansk City Council Deputy Arsen Klinchayev said books written by such noted Soviet authors as Mikhail Bulgakov and Vladimir Mayakovskiy had been removed from Ukrainian libraries, ForUm said Friday.

Minister of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine Vasyl Vovkun ordered to remove Soviet literature from all libraries as communist and chauvinistic works.

They started with Bulgakov and Mayakovskiy, Klinchayev said.

Bulgakov is known for such works as the novel, The Master and Margarita, while Mayakovskiy earned notoriety for his poems in the Russian Futurism genre.

Source: UPI

Ukraine's Stalled Revolution

WASHINGTON, DC -- The democratic "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine four years ago has turned rusty. The government is seized up over political infighting. The leader who inspired brightly dressed supporters in 2004 now has an approval rating of 5.4 percent as president. But a new development – economic crisis – may actually help unstick this large strategic country.

2004 Winter of discontent.
With reforms not made and promises not kept, the vast majority of Ukrainians say their country is headed in the wrong direction. An economic emergency can focus thinking and perhaps turn squabbling politicians into responsible adults who put Ukraine's potential ahead of their own.

And what potential Ukraine has. The size of France, this pivotal former Soviet republic could act as a stabilizing force in a new East-West divide – if it weren't so politically and culturally divided itself.

Blessed with a quarter of the earth's most fertile soil, Ukraine could hum as an agricultural powerhouse – if it worked out land rights. As a large market of 46 million people on the Black Sea, it could attract more foreign investment and trade – if rule of law ever took hold.

In part, Ukraine's leaders have had the luxury of putting personal politics first because a growing economy kept the pressure off. Not anymore. Lower global demand for steel (Ukraine's top export) pushed prices down and this fall caused a stunning 20 percent drop in production in just one month. The squeeze will tighten as Russia raises prices for its gas exports to Ukraine.

Like economies around the world, Ukraine enjoyed easy credit, turning Kiev into a glitzy metropolis where the living costs top that of any capital in Western Europe. But with credit dried up, the government has had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $16.5 billion megabailout.

A funny thing happened on the way to the bailout. President Viktor Yushchenko called off a snap parliamentary election because the financial crisis took precedence (besides, the oligarchs who fund campaigns have lost a fortune). And the parliament got busy and passed banking reform for the IMF rescue. This shows country can come first, but Ukraine is too weak to travel the road to democracy alone.

The European Union must keep encouraging reforms, as it is by negotiating an "association agreement" with Kiev, which wants full membership. Foreign investors should look to the long term, and not run. And the idea of a formal path to eventual membership for Ukraine in NATO (known as "MAP") should be dropped. It provokes Moscow, and NATO itself is divided over this.

So are Ukrainians, a quarter of whom speak Russian and feel kinship with Russia. For decades, NATO was a four-letter word described in crossword puzzles as an "aggressive military bloc." Only 15 percent of Ukrainians see NATO as a protection. Better simply to advance NATO-Ukrainian military cooperation, as the US proposed this week, and leave the door open for membership without getting entangled in official designations.

It's been 17 years since the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine became an independent country – but only four years since it committed itself to the democratic path. It's barely walking, and needs all the support it can get.

Source: Christian Science Monitor

Ukraine's Pro-Presidential Party Head Says PM 'Conspiring'

KIEV, Ukraine -- The head of a Ukrainian pro-presidential party said on Thursday he suspected the premier of conspiracy to set up a rival coalition after she called on the country's president to revive the democratic alliance.

Vyacheslav Kirilenko
The comment by Vyacheslav Kirilenko, who heads the People's Union Our Ukraine, a continuation of President Viktor Yushchenko's party, was made following Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's warning that her bloc reserved the right to hold talks with all parliamentary factions, including the opposition and communists, if the ruling coalition failed to resume its work later this week.

Tymoshenko said at a press conference on Wednesday, "I want to remind the president that we're serving the people, rather than our political ambitions," adding that it was the "last proposal" to Yushchenko.

"Tymoshenko's statements that she is ready to form a coalition with any parliamentary faction is proof of her intention to establish a coalition with Yanukovych [the leader of the Party of Regions] and the Communists," Kirilenko was quoted as saying.

He said that his pro-presidential party would not support Tymoshenko's "conspiracy" with the former premier Viktor Yanukovych.

"Yulia is not a member of Our Ukraine, so instead of instructing our party, she had better save the Ukrainian economy from the crisis, the scale of which Tymoshenko herself...is mostly to blame," Kirilenko said.

The premier and the Ukrainian president have been locked in a bitter power struggle which culminated in the collapse of the pro-Western ruling coalition in September, when Yushchenko dissolved parliament and threatened to call snap parliamentary elections.

The early elections were called off amid the global credit crunch, which has devastated Ukraine's economy forcing Kiev to turn to the IMF for an emergency $16.5 billion loan as prices for steel, the country's main export, plummeted and the national currency the hryvnia dropped to historic lows against the dollar.

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukrainian Currency Slumps, Cbank Hopes Not Much More

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's hryvnia currency slumped to a new historic low on Thursday, but a senior central bank official said it was close to a balanced level based on economic fundamentals.

Ukrainian hryvnia currency.
The weak currency, coupled with lower fuel and moderate gas prices, should help bring the current account into balance or a "minor" deficit and there was little chance of a sovereign or corporate default, Deputy Chairman Oleksander Savchenko said.

The hryvnia weakened to 7.25-7.5 to the dollar on the interbank market after the central bank failed to meet demand for the dollar at Wednesday's auctions and in low volumes of trade because of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, dealers said. "The rate we saw today, yesterday and the day before, is somewhat shocking but it is a proper assessment by business not only of the balance of payments but of our political crisis," Savchenko told a conference organised by Fitch ratings agency.

"I hope the rate will be no more than 7 hryvnias per dollar, or somewhere in the region of 7 hryvnias. We feel that we are near a balanced rate."

The hryvnia has been falling as the chief suppliers of the dollar to the market, foreign investors and Ukrainian exporters, have felt the impact of the global financial crisis. A fast accelerating current account gap has accentuated that weakness.

Ukraine has already received the first tranche of a $16.4 billion IMF loan, whose conditions were greater currency flexibility, fiscal prudence and bank recapitalisation.

The central bank has intervened almost every day since October, and carried out two dollar auctions in the past week, to stop the hryvnia's descent from spiralling out of control.

POLITICAL RISK

Only half of the demand for the dollar, or about $150 million, was met by the central bank on Wednesday, dealers said, indicating that it is putting a brake on spending its reserves.

"If the central bank continues to spend its reserves, it will simply postpone the process of correction," Savchenko said.

He also said companies and banks had $5 billion of foreign debt to pay off by the end of this year and $30 billion in 2009. With reserves at about $32.5 billion, "Ukraine has no risk of default", he said.

Dealers said they expected further weakening on Friday.

"Because (banks) couldn't buy dollars yesterday, today demand is higher and most likely tomorrow the dollar will go even higher," one dealer said.

The top economic aide to President Viktor Yushchenko, himself a former central bank head, said the bank should scrap its auctions as they only pushed the hryvnia lower by accepting the highest bids.

The criticism reflects the latest political chaos that has pitted Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko against the president.

The president called an early parliamentary election when a coalition in parliament collapsed, but has since postponed it. The lack of a majority leaves parliament unable to push through reforms needed for the IMF loan and to save the economy.

The IMF set fiscal and monetary targets that Ukraine must meet to receive quarterly tranches. Its Ukraine representative, Balazs Horvath, told the conference that political risk to achieving these goals was "considerable but not insurmountable". Fitch said a failure to implement the IMF programme could trigger a further downgrade after it cut Ukraine's rating to B+ in October.

"World Bank and IMF support for Ukraine are of course a positive factor," Fitch Director of Sovereigns, Andrew Colquhoun said. "But in our view there are execution risks to the policy package which lies behind the support and therefore the risks to Ukraine's outlook remain elevated."

Source: Guardian UK

Rice Concedes To European Demands On Georgia, Ukraine

WASHINGTON, DC -- US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded to European demands Wednesday by indicating she would not press for granting NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine at the alliance's ministerial meeting in Brussels next week.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
"Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for membership. That is very clear," Rice told a press conference.

"There does not need at this point in time to be any discussion" of the alliance membership action plan (MAP), she added.

The top US diplomat insisted the move did not signal a policy shift. "It really is just a question of how we would execute the Bucharest decision. It is not a change in policy," she said.

But this declaration represented a concession to European demands, as Washington had previously pushed for the two Eastern European nations to join the MAP, which provides de-facto membership to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Amid opposition from Russia, Germany and France, the United States has cooled its support for a formal path to help Georgia and Ukraine join NATO.

Paris and Berlin maintain that the August war between Georgia and Russia confirmed that allowing the two countries join NATO could exacerbate tensions in the Caucasus.

During an October 2 visit to St Petersburg, German chancellor Angela Merkel indicated it was too early for either Ukraine or Georgia to join the MAP.

With nine former Soviet bloc countries already NATO members, Russia fiercely opposes more Soviet-era Warsaw Pact neighbors like Georgia and the Ukraine even starting the process of joining the western military alliance.

On Tuesday, senior US diplomat Daniel Fried stressed that the controversy was over the MAP -- which is only a "way station" and "mechanism" to achieving full membership -- rather than over the long-term goal of having Georgia and Ukraine join.

"MAP is not the only way to get there," he said.

During an April summit meeting in Bucharest, the 26-member NATO postponed any decision on offering the two nations a MAP until the December foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.

"We believe that the NATO-Georgia Commission and the NATO-Ukraine Commission can be the bodies with which we intensify our dialogue and our activities with Georgia and NATO," Rice said.

She noted that Poland and the Czech Republic never went through the MAP process before joining NATO, and said that Britain had proposed using bilateral commissions instead of the MAP.

On Monday, the Ukrainian presidency admitted Kiev faces challenges in becoming an official NATO member candidate by the December ministerial meeting due to the country's political instability and lack of reform.

"This is a key moment for Europe," Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said last week, pressing European members of NATO to back his country's efforts to join the military alliance. "Attributing the status of candidate is not a technical question, it is a strategic choice."

NATO set up the MAP program in 1999 to support prospective members of the military alliance while they carry out the economic, legal, military and political reforms needed to join.

Source: AFP

'Prince Of Darkness' Returns

KIEV, Ukraine -- He was the “grey cardinal” of ex-President Leonid Kuchma’s court, dubbed Ukraine’s “prince of darkness” by his legions of critics. In many people’s eyes, he personified the cronyism and corruption that the Orange Revolution was directed against.

Viktor Medvedchuk
And now, on the fourth anniversary of the protests that overturned the rigged election results, Victor Medvedchuk is making his way back into Ukrainian politics.

After months of accusations from President Victor Yushchenko’s administration that Medvedchuk is advising Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Kuchma’s former chief of staff was reappointed to the Supreme Council of Justice, which oversees the nation’s judicial system. But in a reminder of the secrecy in which he used to operate, his work is shrouded in mystery.

“He has plans to return to public politics,” said Mykhailo Illarionov, head of Medvedchuk’s press service. “As head of the Independent Center of Legal Initiatives and Expertise, he advises a number of top politicians.”

Back to the future

Medvedchuk was the target of much of the opposition’s anger during the 2004 presidential elections. A leading oligarch, whose fortune Focus magazine this year placed at $460 million, he served as deputy speaker in parliament and is a former leader of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united). His reign as head of Kuchma’s administration from 2002 to 2004 saw increasingly authoritarian control from Bankova Street, which managed the media via Medvedchuk’s ownership or control of the three biggest television channels and temnyky, secret directives on how to spin the news.

Medvedchuk was allegedly the mastermind behind the failed attempt to fix the presidential election in favor of Victor Yanukovych, though no formal charges have ever been filed against him. After the election result was overturned, and Yushchenko became president, he faded away from frontline politics as his party lost deputies and support.

Vakhtang Kipiani, the journalist who exposed the temnyky system of media control, said Medvedchuk’s return means that Ukraine is undergoing a systemic crisis – not only in politics, but also in morality.

“Medvedchuk was one of the reasons people took to Maidan. He was the iron-fisted but effective architect of a system built on secrecy and prohibition. His return means that the current system still needs people like him,” Kipiani said, adding that Medvedchuk’s return to public politics will cause Ukrainians to grow even more cynical about the country’s government.

Prince of Darkness?

Medvedchuk’s name has cropped up increasingly this year in connection with Tymoshenko, who memorably asked him in 2002, “Why do you not love Ukraine?” and in 2004 accused him of “Stalinist repressions.” On March 27, the prime minister announced in televised comments that she was ready to shake hands with Medvedchuk if he could organize a natural gas agreement with Russia that was beneficial to Ukraine. Medvedchuk maintains very close relations with the Kremlin: His daughter’s godparents are Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana.

In an interview with Novynar magazine in April, Leonid Kravchuk, former president and leader of the SDPU(u), said the 2007 round of gas negotiations between Tymoshenko and Gazprom were aided by Medvedchuk.

The clearest sign yet that Medvedchuk is returning to a public role came on Nov. 5, when he was reinstated as a member of the High Council of Justice, after the Supreme Court rescinded his suspension.

The presidential administration accused the prime minster of secretly cooperating with Medvedchuk. “If working with Medvedchuk is so important to you, please take the decision to form a coalition with the Party of Regions and appoint Medvedchuk to any position. Just do it honestly, looking your voters in the eye,” Andriy Kyslynsky, deputy head of the president’s secretariat, told reporters on Nov. 6.

“Tymoshenko is helping to resurrect Medvedchuk,” said Dmytro Chobit, a former Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko deputy who has written books on Medvedchuk and Tymoshenko. He described how Medvedchuk had prepared a new constitution for Tymoshenko’s bloc – known by the BYuT acronym – and the Party of Regions that might have passed had Regions deputies not backed out in May.

For her part, Tymoshenko has carefully avoided comment on her relationship with Medvedchuk, pointing out that he has no official role. Her spokeswoman, Marina Soroka, told the Kyiv Post she does not know whether Medvedchuk is advising the prime minister.

In the shadows

It appears that Tymoshenko is not the only politician hoping to make use of the skills of Medvedchuk as a political fixer and legal expert, as well as his contacts at home and in Russia. “He meets politicians from all sides – including previous enemies,” said Taras Berezovets, director of the Kyiv-based Polittech political consulting firm. “He works with the Party of Regions, BYuT and Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense.”

In March, Nestor Shufrych, a close ally of Medvedchuk and his former deputy leader in the SDPU(u), now a deputy for the Party of Regions, claimed that Medvedchuk was working with the Party of Regions. Shufrych also said that Yushchenko had offered him the position of secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. At the time, both sides denied connections with Medvedchuk, saying that he was working with Tymoshenko.

But on Oct. 23, Party of Regions leader Yanukovych told reporters that his group was discussing mergers with a number of political parties, including the SDPU(u). Kommersant Ukraine reported that such a merger would guarantee former SDPU(u) leader Medvedchuk a spot on the upper part of the Regions’ election list, citing a source within the party. The source said the offer was on the condition that the SDPU(u) gave up its support of Tymoshenko.

Illarionov, the head of Medvedchuk’s press service, confirmed Medvedchuk’s involvement “as a lawyer and leading expert on state legal affairs” in preparing attempts led by Party of Regions deputies including Shufrych, to force a national referendum on NATO membership through the Constitutional Court. The idea of a referendum is Medvedchuk’s brainchild from 2005. The party then collected 4.5 million signatures for such a referendum that would also include questions whether Russian should be the second state language in Ukraine, and whether Ukraine should have a common economic space with Russia and Belarus. Local media reports that Medvedchuk’s Independent Center of Legal Initiatives and Expertise has recently filed several lawsuits against the compulsory dubbing of foreign films into Ukrainian, and the ban of some Russian TV channels from air that came into effect this month.

Having stepped down as leader of the SDPU(u) last year, it is unclear whether Medvedchuk is going to commit to a party, or continue his work behind the scenes. With most politicians denying connections with a man whose reputation took a beating in 2004, it remains as much a challenge as ever to find out what precise role he is playing and what his plans are. “He keeps a low profile,” said Berezovets, director of Polittech. “He prefers to do everything in the shadows.”

Illarionov said that Medvedchuk hadn’t spoken to the press for two years and would not comment for this article. Although he confirmed that Medvedchuk has contact with the Party of Regions and advises other politicians, he declined to “name names.” Igor Shurma, first deputy chairman of the SDPU(u) who was close to Medvedchuk, said he had no information about Medvedchuk’s future involvement in politics. “You will have to ask him about it,” he said. “All I will say is that it would be a good thing for the state.”

“As far as I know, Victor Vladimirovich [Medvedchuk] has political plans which do not presume membership in BYuT,” BYuT deputy and close Tymoshenko ally Andriy Portnov told Delo newspaper on Nov. 7. “Like it or not, there is no doubt that Medvedchuk’s role in the country’s development is considerable.”

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Promises To Pay Russia Part Of Gas Debt By December

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian officials on Tuesday promised their government would pay part of a massive debt to Russia for natural gas, reducing chances of a cut off to Europe.

Aleksei Miller
Aleksei Miller, chairman of Russia's natural gas monopolist Gazprom, agreed on repayment terms for the multi-billion dollar debt after talks with Oleh Dubina, chairman of Ukraine's natural gas company Ukrnafta.

Ukraine will pay Gazprom in full for natural gas burned in September, and partially for gas used in October, Russian and Ukrainian news media reported.

Gazprom claims Ukraine owes in total some 2.4 billion dollars. Ukrainian officials concede they owe money but argue the debt is less, some 1.4 billion dollars.

Miller over the weekend threatened another switch off of supplies if Ukraine did not settle its entire debt by the end of December, when the current gas supply contract becomes null and void.

The Russo-Ukrainian dispute over natural gas payments is nearly two decades old. Arguments over future pricing led to a full cut-off of Russian gas supplies to Ukraine for two days in early 2006, leaving Europe, which receives most of its Russian natural gas through Ukrainian pipelines, also without the fuel stream.

Ukraine's cash-strapped government is locked in a fierce internal struggle over responsibility for the gas debt, with President Viktor Yushchenko accusing Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of failing to pay Gazprom so as to finance social programmes, and Tymoshenko accusing Yushchenko of undermining her government's negotiations with Gazprom.

A bone of contention between the Ukrainians and the Russians is the price of natural gas for 2009, with the Russians arguing Kiev should pay around 300 dollars per thousand cubic metres of gas, and the Ukrainians maintaining contract terms allow Russia to charge no more than 180 dollars.

Russia and Ukraine will agree on debt and 2008 pricing terms by the end of the year, and supplies to Europe will continue uninterrupted, Tymoshenko said at a Kiev press conference.

Tymoshenko's government must "resolve the gas crisis immediately ... or the President will step in to do it himself," Yushchenko's office declared in a statement.

Source: DPA

NATO Eyes Face-Saver For Ukraine, Georgia

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- NATO is studying face-saving options for Ukraine and Georgia as prospects of the two ex-Soviet states securing membership plans dim ahead of Dec. 2-3 talks among alliance foreign ministers, diplomats said.


Washington has led a push for NATO to offer both countries a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a key step towards entry, at next week's meeting in Brussels.

Russia, a key energy supplier to Europe, is fiercely opposed to Ukraine or Georgia joining NATO. France and Germany blocked offers of MAPs to both at an alliance summit in April, which did however promise them eventual NATO membership and a review of their cases in December.

A five-day August war between Georgia and Russia, together with political instability in Ukraine, have since added to European doubts.

"The MAP is dead for Georgia," a senior European diplomat said in Washington.

"For the NATO ministerial, no one believes in it but we will try and find some kind of face-saving (solution)," the diplomat said. Options could include a new formula for ties that would stop short of a full MAP offer.

A MAP is a programme of advice and practical support covering political, economic, defence and security cooperation designed to help aspiring countries prepare for membership.

Some NATO states say offering a MAP is only a technical step and does not prejudge any final membership decision. Others say it is hard to refuse entry to a state once a MAP has been granted.

GAS WARNING

The diplomat said there was no appetite to anger the Russians further over the issue next month. A NATO diplomat said debate between the 26 NATO allies on the communique on Georgia and Ukraine could continue into the ministers' meeting.

European Union worries were underlined when Russian gas monopoly Gazprom warned at the weekend it would not continue deliveries to Ukraine until a new contract was signed, rekindling memories of 2006 when a pricing dispute led to a brief supply cut to Europe.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko urged NATO last week to put his country on a fast track to membership after Russia's new demands for payment of arrears for gas.

However his political adviser said it would not be a tragedy if NATO failed to offer Kiev a MAP next month, a remark that appeared to show Ukraine recognised its hopes were receding.

In recent weeks, U.S. officials have said they are looking at whether NATO could offer Georgia something short of a formal path to membership and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this month there was more than one way for aspiring countries to join the alliance. "Some have not gone through MAP at all," he said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack predicted there would be a "healthy discussion" in Brussels, and added: "Our policy is unchanged."

The NATO ministers will also review a decision to suspend high-level meetings of the main NATO-Russia dialogue forum, the NATO-Russia Council, taken after the Georgia conflict.

Despite differences over the extent to which Russia has complied with a ceasefire accord in Georgia, European nations -- most of them NATO members -- have agreed to relaunch talks on an EU-Russia political and economic pact on Dec. 2.

However U.S. officials have raised doubts about prospects of a fast return to normal ties between NATO and Russia.

Source: The Star Online

Gazprom Ready To Appeal To International Court Over Ukraine's Bad Debt

LIMA, Peru -- Gazprom has drafted an appeal to the international court over Ukraine's bad debt, Gazprom First Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said.

Gazprom boss Alexander Medvedev.
He said Gazprom had relevant mechanisms and documents for applying to the international court and "would certainly use them if Kyiv continued to refuse to pay the debt."

"Unfortunately, we have a not so good tradition of celebrating New Year at negotiations with Ukrainian colleagues. Still we hope for the best," Medvedev said.

Source: Interfax

Pope Speaks To Ukrainian Pilgrims Of 1930s Famine

VATICAN CITY, Italy -- Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday prayed that no political ideology would ever again cost people their freedom and dignity, as he recalled the millions who died from famine in Ukraine and other Soviet regions under dictator Josef Stalin.

Pope Benedict XVI delivers his message during the Angelus prayers, from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's square at the Vatican Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008.
The pontiff spoke in Ukrainian to pilgrims from that country in St. Peter's Square, and noted that this month marks the anniversary of Holodomor, or Death by Hunger, as the famine is known in Ukraine.

The 1932-33 famine was orchestrated by Soviet authorities to force peasants to give up their land and join collective farms. Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, suffered the most.

"While strongly hoping that no political regime can ever again, in the name of an ideology, deny the rights, the dignity and freedom of the human person, I assure my prayers for all the innocent victims of that huge tragedy," Benedict said in remarks from his studio window overlooking the square.

The issue of the famine is an irritant in already tense Russian-Ukrainian relations.

Ukrainian lawmakers, along with counterparts from the United States and other countries, have already called the famine an act of genocide against Ukrainians. But the Kremlin objects to the label, saying other ethnic groups also suffered.

Benedict said he prayed that "nations go forward on the paths of reconciliation and build the present and the future in reciprocal respect and in the sincere search for peace."

In the autumn of 1932, authorities confiscated grain, livestock and other food in villages across the Soviet Union after peasants failed to meet grain quotas that exceeded crop yields.

The Soviet Union exported the grain to build factories and arm its military. Residents were prohibited from leaving their homes — effectively condemning them to starvation.

The famine was a closely guarded secret in Soviet times, and some have accused authorities in Russia of being unwilling to confront Soviet crimes.

Source: AP

Ukraine Remembers Victims Of Famine 75 Years Later

KIEV, Ukraine -- Leaders from around the world Saturday marked the 75th anniversary of the famine that the ripped through Ukraine in the early 1930s, as Ukrainian leaders seek to bring more attention to the plight of the millions who died from hunger.

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko, centre and his children place candles during a commemoration service for Holodomor victims in a cathedral in Kiev Ukraine, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008. Ukraine is commemorating the start of the 1930s famine that was engineered by Soviet authorities and killed millions of people. President Viktor Yushchenko is trying to win international recognition of the 1932-33 tragedy as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation.
But conspicuously missing from the honoring of Holodomor , or "death by hunger," were leaders from Moscow, who have objected to recent calls for the deaths to be labeled as genocide. Emma Stickgold has this report for VOA in Moscow.

The anniversary of Holodomor is traditionally marked in late November, when the food shortages began resulting in the death of millions. It was orchestrated by dictator Josef Stalin to force peasants to give up their land and join collective farms. Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, suffered the most.

Only recently, at the encouragement of the Western-leaning Ukrainian politicians, have survivors' harrowing tales of cannibalism and other desperate attempts to stay alive come to light.

Ukrainians say collectivization carried out in their country was an attempt to break the back of Ukrainian nationhood, and stamp out opposition to Soviet rule.

At the opening of an 80-foot tall monument to mark the 75th anniversary, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko paid tribute to those who fell victim to the 1932 famine, which lasted until 1933.

"We bow our head in fraternal respect before all who suffered as we did from Stalin's regime - Russians, Belorusyns, Kazakhs, Crimean Tatars, Moldovans, Jews, and dozens and dozens of other nationalities," he said.

Moscow considers the intensified spotlight on the famine part of Ukraine's continued efforts to stick a wedge between Kyiv and Moscow. But Ukrainian officials say that Moscow is not being accused of engineering the famine.

Kostyantyn Hryshchenko, Ukrainian Ambassador to Russia, speaking Saturday evening at the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Moscow, said that Ukrainians want to reflect on the past together to building a more just and more modern world together.

"We do not consider that Russia and the Russian people - who themselves suffered huge losses; were also victims of Stalinist terror; and lost millions of individuals then - are in anyway to blame for this tragedy," he said.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev turned down an invitation to attend the Kyiv ceremonies, instead sending a letter that was posted on the Kremlin's Web site. He said that the events of the early 1930s, "are being used to achieve immediate short-term political goals," adding that, "In this regard, the thesis on the centrally planned genocidal famine of Ukrainians,' is being gravely manipulated." Still, he said, "The most difficult pages of our common history undoubtedly need to be fully explained."

Source: Voice Of America

Russia Threatens To Cut Off Gas To Ukraine

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's Gazprom will cut off gas deliveries to Ukraine on January 1 unless a new contract is signed, a company spokesman said on Saturday, making a threat that could affect deliveries to Europe.


"We would like to avoid such a scenario, we would like to agree on everything before New Year's, but as you understand, we cannot deliver gas without a contract," spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told Vesti-24 television.

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are being held up by a large debt, he said. The comments came two days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev demanded Kiev repay 2.4 billion dollars (1.9 billion euros) of debt to Gazprom.

Ukrainian state gas company Naftogaz has disputed the size of its bill to the Russian state-controlled gas giant.

Despite efforts by Gazprom to help Naftogaz obtain financing, "there has been no movement in this direction. This explains the toughness with which our intentions have been presented," said Kupriyanov.

An earlier dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas prices led to a brief interruption of gas supplies in several European countries in January 2006. Most of the European Union's gas imports from Russia go through Ukraine.

Kupriyanov said the "full and unconditional liquidation of outstanding debts by Ukraine" was required under an agreement signed last month by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko.

"However, this has not happened so far," he added.

Kupriyanov also reiterated comments by Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller that the price Ukraine pays for gas could increase to 400 dollars per 1,000 cubic metres from the current level of 179.5 dollars.

The spokesman hinted the price hike could happen in January: "This price was not stated just for its own sake. If we move to market relations not in 2011, but now, then precisely this price will be faced by Ukraine on January 1."

Under the agreement reached in October between Putin and Tymoshenko, the countries are to move to market prices for gas by 2011. Currently, Ukraine pays much less for Russian gas than EU countries.

Neither Gazprom nor Naftogaz could be reached for immediate comment Saturday.

Moscow's latest gas dispute with Kiev comes amid the global financial crisis, which has affected both countries but hit especially hard in Ukraine.

Earlier this month Ukraine became the first country to receive emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund to help overcome the crisis, with a loan package worth 16.4 billion dollars (12.8 billion euros).

Following Medvedev's demand on Thursday, Naftogaz responded by saying it had no debt to Gazprom and that it owed around 1.26 billion dollars but only to gas trader RosUkrEnergo, an intermediary for Russia-Ukraine gas exchanges.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko ordered his government to settle its debt to Russia, accusing Tymoshenko -- the president's political archrival -- of making no effort to pay up.

The government's mistakes could lead to "the colonisation of Ukraine," the president warned in a statement.

Source: AFP

Ukraine To Honour Welsh Reporter

LONDON, England -- A Welsh journalist who exposed Stalin's starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s is to be honoured with a posthumous award from its government.

Mr Gareth Jones's career was cut short by his murder by bandits in 1935.
Gareth Jones, who was born in Barry, south Wales exposed the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine caused by the Soviet leader's infamous five-year plans.

Millions of Ukrainians starved to death but news of the tragedy was suppressed.

Mr Jones was one of the few to write about it and he will now be honoured in a ceremony in Westminster on Saturday.

During his journalistic career, which was cut short by his murder by bandits in Inner Mongolia in 1935 when he was 29-years-old, Mr Jones was regarded as one of the most talented newspaper reporters of his generation.

He wrote for The Western Mail, The Times and The Manchester Guardian among others, and during the 1930s travelled through Russia and Ukraine.

On his travels through the land where his mother had once lived, he was shocked to discover the famine conditions he encountered.

Enforced Starvation

An estimated 7-10 million people, including a third of Ukraine's children, died between 1932 and 1933, an event Ukrainians call the Holodomor.

At the time the Soviet authorities - and many western journalists - denied the nation's enforced starvation was occurring and Ukrainians themselves only become fully aware of the events since the fall of communism.

However, Mr Jones announced that millions were starving in Ukraine as a result of Stalin's policies at a press conference in Berlin on 29 March, 1933.

Several foreign correspondents rushed to rubbish the story with 1932 Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty of the New York Times dismissing his eye-witness account as "a big scare story".

Fellow reporter Malcolm Muggeridge was the other reporter to expose the famine and both are now revered in Ukraine and both will be posthumously honoured at the ceremony in Westminster Central Hall.

The awards are due to bestowed upon the duo by the Ambassador of Ukraine, Dr Ihor Kharchenko, on behalf of the President of Ukraine in reward for their exceptional services to the country and its people.

Mr Jones's niece Dr Siriol Colley has written a book about his life, A Manchukuo Incident, and said: "The Ukrainian people have taken him to their hearts - they call him the unsung hero."

Fedir Kurlak, chief executive of the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, said: "I'm sure Gareth would have known if he had been caught reporting on the famine that he would have faced certain death.

"As far as the Ukrainian community is concerned, anyone who has heard of Gareth's exploits will quite simply take his hat off to him, and regard him as an exemplary journalist."

Mr Jones graduated from Aberystwyth University in 1926 and from 1930 acted as a foreign affairs advisor to the then former prime minister David Lloyd George.

This led to a career as a journalist and as well as visiting the Soviet Union, he reported on President Roosevelt in the United States, on Mussolini's rise in Italy and the troubles in Ireland.

He was also in Leipzig the day Adolf Hitler was made Germany's Chancellor in 1933, and later flew with the dictator to a rally in Frankfurt and interviewed Hitler's head of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

Source: BBC News

Scientist May Be Next Talent To Leave Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- “He should work for NASA or something,” said Charlie Babbitt about his brother Raymond in the Oscar-winning film “Rain Man.”

Ukrainian scientist and neurosurgeon Andriy Slusarchuk prepares a patient for surgery. Slusarchuk’s unconventional brilliance has him thinking of offers abroad.
In the course of the film Raymond wins a fortune in Las Vegas by counting cards in black jack and learns a phone book by heart. He cannot, however, deduct 50 cents from a dollar and is completely helpless in his daily life. His condition is known as autistic savant, with a superb recall but little understanding.

The Rain Man’s character was inspired by Kim Peek, now 58, an American man who can recite 12,000 books from his memory but cannot button up a shirt on his own.

People like Peek are exceptionally rare in the world. As one part of their brain works miracles, another one is in deep sleep. Yet there is an exception to the rule here in Ukraine.

Ukrainian scientist Andriy Slusarchuk, 35, is one of those rare geniuses who could work for NASA if he wanted. He has no trouble with his shirts, either.

He is a practicing neurosurgeon, psychiatrist, university professor and hypnotist. After becoming an orphan at the age of six, he finished school at the age of 9. Three years later he entered an institute in Moscow for a medical degree and then a post-graduate degree in neurosurgery. Then he moved to St. Petersburg to do a degree in psychology. By 27, Slusarchuk finished his medical Ph.D.

He knows 15,000 books by heart, reciting text accurately from any random page. He is a record holder in Ukraine’s Guinness Book of Records for reproducing the value of Pi to its one-millionth decimal place. It is more than the current world record of 42,195 places set by Japanese Hiroyuki Goto.

Even more impressively, he says others can learn his technique. “Imagine a doctor who keeps a whole library in his head,” said Slusarchyk. “Remember the nuclear blast in Chernobyl when an operator failed to remember instructions well and on time.” The scientist claims that he knows how to stretch people’s memories to save lives in extreme situations.

But he complains that regardless of his talents, he is ostracized from Ukraine’s scientific community. “They all look at me as if I am a clown. They clap their hands and that’s it,” he said despondently. “I get hundreds of calls from people daily who need my help. It’s hell because I have no conditions to help them.”

He said a Canadian scientific society invited him to Toronto to study in his own institute with as many students as he was ready to take on. The society discovered him through his published works and performances at international conferences. Canadians gave Slusarchuk the best deal among similar offers from the United States and Europe. His lawyers are currently studying the contract and he already has a residency permit, he said.

If Slusarchuk picks Canada over Ukraine, he will join an army of physicists, geneticists and engineers, among other top-flight talent, who started emigrating at the start of the 1990s. These are just the kind of people who build affluent societies. More than 300,000 scientists worked for the National Academy of Science before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Within a decade, their number shrank roughtly to 100,000. At the same time, official statistics registered only some 50 doctors of science who were leaving Ukraine annually. Some analysts say the official numbers underestimate the harsher reality and that Ukraine lost a third of its scientific work force.

Slusarchuk is a professor at the Kyiv Medical Academy, where practicing doctors come for short post-graduate courses. He rarely shows up there because he mostly lives in Lviv, where he also works at two medical schools and receives patients. When he is in Kyiv, people eagerly queue in the hall to see him and seek his knowledge in cases when others give up.

Maria Lysyuk from Khmelnytsky in Western Ukraine said her son was in a coma for two weeks after a car accident. “Doctors said something like most of his brain was dead and that we could only pray,” she recalled. “But after professor Slusarchuk saw him, Sasha (Lysyuk’s son) started recovering on the fourth day.”

Instead of silence prescribed by other doctors in the clinic, Slusarchuk asked to play the young man’s favorite music and talk to him. Slusarchuk used alternative treatment methods that astounded fellow neurosurgeons in the clinic and that they later noted down for future use, said Lysyuk.

Slusarchuk is confident he can revolutionize science through his study of the brain – a revolution that he says is badly needed because the existing medical paradigm is out of date. “I have discovered new ways of working with depression, psychological traumas and dependency,” he says.

Slusarchuk teaches some of these skills to his followers in Lviv. He has students whose memories work like a Google search tool, recovering masses of information in seconds.

But even these impressive results are not enough to achieve their author’s recognition in Ukraine and overcome jealousy and bureaucracy. Slusarchuk wants to have his own research institute. “I am a step away from the Nobel Prize if Ukraine wanted it,” he said. Instead, he said, he gets doubts, dogma and unreasonable demands from the medical establishment.

Mykola Polischuk, chief neurosurgeon at the Kyiv Medical Academy, said that Slusarchuk has to start lecturing at the academy to prove his uniqueness and earn the ability to do independent research. “I want to see him do it because I am interested in his theories,” Polischuk said. Slusarchuk said that he has no time to lecture.

“I need a clinic where I can see my patients. Instead, I live in a dorm, get Hr 270 in wages and wake up thinking that my own country doesn’t need me.”

Ex-health minister Polischuk says Slusarchuk only has himself to blame. “I am not an oligarch who can give a lot of money and say do whatever you want. I told him – write a precise plan and we’ll see what we can do.”

Slusarchuk explained that authorities had previously offered him only a fraction of what he thinks is appropriate for his research. “They want to take my knowledge for $1,000 a month when abroad it will cost millions,” he exclaimed.

As the Kyiv Post was going into print, Slusarchuk said he was invited to see President Victor Yuschenko, a sign that Ukrainian authorities may have developed a sudden interest in his work. Rostyslav Valihnovsky from the president’s office said they were trying to convince Slusarchuk to stay, offering to take charge of Feofania, an elite hospital outside Kyiv. Slusarchuk has not made up his mind yet.

If he rejects the offer, the term “brain drain” would probably never be more appropriate than in his case.

Sluarchuk said he hasn't made up his mind about the Canadian offer. He said his first preference is to have his abilities recognized by his own people.

Source: Kyiv Post

Tymoshenko Denies Ukraine Owes Russia $2.4 Billion For Natural Gas

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has denied that Ukraine owes Russia $2.4 billion for gas supplies. Tymoshenko issued the denial while addressing journalists in Stockholm, Sweden.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
According to Tymoshenko, the amount of debt stated by Russia is not the amount owed by Ukraine but the amount that the RosUkrEnergo intermediary company owes to the Gazprom company (Russia).

"It is not the debt of Ukraine but the debt of this company that is not very transparent," Tymoshenko said.

Tymoshenko expressed the hope that there will be no intermediaries in Ukrainian-Russian gas relations from January 1, 2009, and that the Naftohaz Ukrainy national joint-stock company and Gazprom will cooperate directly.

Commenting on President Viktor Yuschenko's instruction that the Cabinet of Ministers resolve the issue of Naftohaz Ukrainy's debt to RosUkrEnergo by November 27, Tymoshenko expressed doubt that Yuschenko was aware of the situation.

"It is necessary to first tackle corruption in the gas sector and not shift everything to the government," Tymoshenko said.

Commenting on Russia's statement regarding the possibility of setting a price of USD 400 per 1,000 cubic meters to Ukraine in 2009, Tymoshenko said it was necessary to be patient and wait for Ukraine and Russia to sign an agreement on the terms of supply of natural gas to Ukraine in 2009.

Tymoshenko expressed the hope that such an agreement would be signed within the next few weeks and that such issues as gas debt would no longer arise after the signing of the agreement.

Tymoshenko noted that the governments of Ukraine and Russia have reached agreement that the gas price for Ukraine will be raised to the market level over a period of three years.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Tymoshenko traveled to Sweden on Thursday for a two-day official visit.

Yuschenko has demanded that the Cabinet of Ministers resolve the issue of Naftohaz Ukrainy's debt to RosUkrEnergo by November 27.

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev has said that transition to direct gas supplies from Russia to Ukraine would be impossible if Ukraine fails to pay the gas debt of $2.4 billion.

RosUkrEnergo announced on November 20 that Naftohaz Ukrainy owed it $2.4 billion for gas supplies.

Naftohaz Ukrainy earlier announced that it owed RosUkrEnergo $1.26-1.27 billion for gas supplies.

Naftohaz Ukrainy and Gazprom are presently holding negotiations on supply if natural gas to Ukraine in 2009 and subsequent years.

Source: Kyiv Post

Medvedev Wants Ukraine To Pay Gas Debts

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia turned up the pressure on Ukraine on Thursday as Dmitry Medvedev, president, ordered Gazprom to enforce payment on $2.4bn in gas debts even as Kiev struggles to weather the global financial crisis and a political crisis at home.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
“We need to fully clarify our position on Ukraine’s debt and recover it either on a voluntary or compulsory basis,” Mr Medvedev told Alexei Miller, the Gazprom chief executive, in comments broadcast on Russian television.

Mr Miller later told journalists Gazprom would charge Ukraine more than $400 per thousand cubic metres for gas supplies next year, more than double the $179.5 Kiev currently pays. Analysts had expected that earlier calls for $400 would be lowered because of a more than three-fold tumble in global oil prices, which gas prices are tied to, since early summer.

Analysts warned Ukraine could find it impossible to pay down the debt as its economy is struggling to survive the global financial crisis and is locked in yet another political crisis. Kiev has received the first tranche of a $4.5bn IMF loan to help shore up its embattled economy.

The comments, Mr Medvedev’s strongest warning yet, raised fears of new cut-offs like the ones that led to reductions in gas supplies to Europe in 2006. But a Gazprom representative said “no-one is going to cut off anything. We need to figure out how to collect the money and work out the contract for next year.”

Analysts warned that a new standoff with Russia over gas debts could help tip the balance in upcoming parliamentary elections in December, which Ukraine’s pro-western president, Viktor Yushchenko, called following another conflict with his prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. Ms Tymoshenko has been courting Russia in recent months.

“This could well be a critical issue in the election where Tymoshenko could point to better ties with Russia,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Uralsib investment bank in Moscow.

“Gas relations between Ukraine and Russia are hostage to the political situation in Ukraine,” said Valery Nesterov, energy analyst at Troika Dialog investment bank in Moscow.

Source: Financial Times

Orange Blues

KIEV, Ukraine -- It’s been four years since the Orange Revolution, and where are its heroes now? Its leaders are gridlocked in petty fights and mutual accusations of treason. Its cheerleaders are often bitter and disgruntled, while its villains are unpunished and have no remorse.

Orange Revolution
The revolution was a peaceful popular uprising against the falsification of presidential election results in November 2004. It brought millions of people from all over Ukraine to Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti to rally under orange flags that symbolized presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko.

Natalya Dmytruk, the sign-language translator who de facto started the revolution on Nov. 25, does not want to hear about it now. “I don’t talk about it anymore,” she said. This is a sad contrast to her courage and energy in 2004. This is what she gestured during a live news program on the national TV: “Don’t believe the Central Election Committee. It’s all lies. Our President is [Victor] Yushchenko. I don’t know if you’re going to see me again…”

She received several international awards for her integrity, and – ironically – lost her job half a year later when another revolution hero, Andriy Shevchenko from Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc, came to “reform” the national TV.

Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, frontman of Okean Elzy rock band, who spent days on stage in the freezing cold in December 2004, cheering the crowd, was later elected to parliament on the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party list.

He was the first-ever parliament member in 17 years of Ukraine’s independence who quit his lucrative job to return to making music last September. “The struggle for power is the Verkhovna Rada's only sense for existence,” he said.

Roman Kalyn, leader of Gryndzholy, the band that created the revolution’s anthem, says he now craves a Mussolini-type leader for the country, because the main achievement of the Orange revolution, democracy, is interpreted too freely. “Yushchenko is a democratic president, but Ukraine has not matured enough to have such a president,” he says.

The villains are doing well, though.

Serhiy Kivalov, head of the Central Election Commission in 2004, who lost his job for falsifying the results of the second vote, received an award in 2007 from the Central Election Commission “for significant personal contribution in guaranteeing the constitutional rights of Ukrainian citizens.”

He had a monument erected in his honor in Odesa. He is a member of the Party of Regions, and a parliament deputy, making regular appearances on TV and in press.

Victor Medvedchuk, who was reputedly the vote-rigging architect and the evil genius of President Leonid Kuchma’s Ukrainian politics, was in the shadows for over three years.

But he has made an impressive comeback lately. He was restored as a member of the Supreme Justice Council. Having close ties with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (who is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s child) and President Dmitry Medvedev (whose wife is the godmother), he has been reputedly helping the Orange Princess Tymoshenko to improve her relationship with Russia.

The party of Regions is now competing with Tymoshenko to get Medvedchuk's expertise. Even the president was rumored to offer him a position of the National Security Council chief.

Bandits were promised jail, but the promise has not been kept. A small consolation prize for those who rallied for justice is that they live without fear of the likes of Medvedchuk and Kivalov, at least for now and, hopefully, forever.

Source: Kyiv Post

Yushchenko ‘Poisoning’: Where Do AC Milan Stars Come In?

KIEV, Ukraine -- While President Yushchenko is still licking his wounds over the never-ending political games in Ukraine, an on-going investigation into his poisoning – if it indeed was a poisoning as he insists it was – has taken an unexpected turn.

(L-R) ex-Dinamo Kiev football players Kakha Kaladze and Andrey Shevchenko, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
As part of the investigation, which has been going on for the past four years, the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office has called in for questioning two ex-Dinamo Kiev football players: Andrey Shevchenko and Kakha Kaladze, both of whom currently play for AC Milan.

Their ex-team mate Andrey Gusin has already appeared at the Prosecutor’s Office and given testimony. Gusin himself is still puzzled as to the reasons behind his summoning.

“It is all stupid, to my mind, but I can’t do anything about it. They asked me to come and I did. Evidently there’s no logic in the move. The Prosecutor’s Office seems to have gone off the rails,” said Gusin in an interview to Ukraine’s Kommersant newspaper.

The Prosecutor’s Office, however, does see sense in questioning the players. All three of them have been linked to businessman Tamaz Tsintsabidze, who was present at a dinner at a country house of the former head of Ukraine’s security service Vladimir Satsyuk on September 5, 2004, which it is presumed was where and when the current Ukrainian president was poisoned.

However, there’s little hope that football stars Shevchenko and Kaladze will do any better than Gusin in shedding any light on this complicated story.

Source: RT News

Kiev Stressed As Population Grows

KIEV, Ukraine -- City government is drafting a new general plan, but experts said it’s not good. Teeming with people, jammed with traffic, stinky with pollution and endangered by crumbling infrastructure, Kyiv is crying out for help.


The city government is drafting a new development plan, but experts have already condemned it, saying it promises to offer little or no help in solving the city’s major problems.

Yuriy Dmytruk, a Kyiv City Council member representing Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s political faction, is one of the fiercest critics. Dmytruk said the plan under consideration would effectively endorse all the shady deals that have happened in recent years – such as opaque “land grabs,” in which huge parcels of property have been sold off for low prices to insiders without competitive bidding.

The city is trying to devise a new development strategy until 2025. The idea of a new plan was supported by 112 of 115 council members during a Sept. 18 vote. But the new detailed draft is not expected to be submitted for debate until 2010.

The existing plan was adopted six years ago and is supposed to provide a framework for the city’s development until 2020. But Denys Bass, deputy head of the Kyiv city state administration, said it’s already out-of-date and doesn’t address today’s realities.

“It was worked out for a population of two million people and half a million cars,” Bass said. “And now at least five million live in the city and the number of cars including transit is almost one million and a half.”

But the ideas in the new city plan are controversial indeed. To ease traffic congestion, for example, the city authorities want to adopt Moscow’s strategy, widely ridiculed as a disaster.

Roads account for just two percent of the city’s territory, compared to an average of six percent in other European capitals, Dmytruk said. Kyiv officials plan to visit Moscow at the end of November to discuss cooperation, according to Maryna Shapoval, spokeswoman for Kyiv's general office for city planning architecture and design.

But residents of the Russian capital know that traffic there is approaching permanent gridlock. “The situation with traffic jams is close to catastrophic. The average car speed is about 15-18 kilometers per hour,” said Moscow resident Leon Gudkov. While new roads aren’t being built, Moscow’s local government has not succeeded in limiting traffic, Gudkov said.

The Kyiv city government plans to build underground tunnels to optimize traffic flow in the central part of the city and provide parking spaces near metro stations so that people can leave their cars and use the metro. The construction of underground parking in the city center is another priority.

Volodymyr Nudelman, a member of the Ukrainian Academy of Architecture, said the construction of expensive underground infrastructure is a waste of money. “Learning our neighbors’ experience is good, but not enough to solve problems,” he said. “If we begin tunnel construction, we won’t have resources for solving other problems.”

Nudelman offers a radical alternative solution to the traffic problems in the city center: move the central government institutions to the periphery.

Another major problem the city government wants to address is the reconstruction of outdated residential housing. Once again, they look to Moscow, where an extensive project is under way to reconstruct “Khrushchovkas,” the five-storied buildings named after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. They were initially built in the 1950s and 1960s as temporary housing, with a maximum life of 25 years, but are still housing millions of people today.

In Moscow, residents of “Khrushchovkas” were supposed to receive new apartments in the same neighborhoods where old residences are being torn down to make way for reconstruction, Shapoval said.

But Gudkov said that many such Moscow residents were, in fact, moved to the outskirts of the city. Also, new bigger residential houses were constructed with an existing utilities infrastructure that became overloaded.

Nudelman said Moscow’s experience with “Khrushchyovkas” should be regarded cautiously by Kyivans, since it would mean squeezing more residents into the same space.

Experts fear that some of the city’s more serious problems are not going to be addressed at all in the new plan under consideration.

Kyiv has an outdated sewage system that could spell ecological disaster. But the issue is not even of the council’s agenda, Nudelman said. The other time bomb is an outdated network of gas pipes.

But as with so many actions undertaken by city government, ulterior – and nefarious – motives are involved, said Dmytruk of Tymoshenko’s bloc.

Dmytruk said that one of the main reasons for local government’s interest in developing a new city plan is to legalize dubious land deals approved in the recent years.

Nudelman said that residents must be involved in the process if the city hopes to adopt an effective plan. The city’s budget also needs transparency and accountability. “Any strategy for changes should be voted at a referendum,” he said.

Source: Kyiv Post

NATO Rebuff On MAP Would Be No Tragedy: Ukraine Aide

KIEV, Ukraine -- A Ukrainian presidential aide said on Tuesday it would not be a tragedy if NATO failed next month to put Kiev on the road to membership of the alliance.


His remarks appeared to signal that Ukraine recognises its hopes of joining NATO are receding -- at least for now -- and that it has little chance of next month securing a Membership Action Plan (MAP), seen as the first step towards membership.

At a summit last April, NATO promised Ukraine it would one day join the military alliance but opted not to offer Kiev a MAP. Despite U.S. support for Ukraine, many European states are reluctant to let it join.

The former Soviet republic hopes to secure a MAP when NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels next month but is playing down the impact of any failure to do so.

"Even if that is the scenario, I would not make a tragedy out of it. The main thing is the doors must be open," Andriy Goncharuk, President Viktor Yushchenko's political adviser, told a news conference.

"We should stress that Ukraine is doing quite well in the framework of annual (cooperation) plans. And securing a MAP does not mean joining the alliance. A decision on joining will be taken when Ukraine and NATO are both ready."

In Brussels, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said it was too early to predict a decision at the ministerial meeting.

"The process of MAP itself has become highly politicised," he told a briefing. "Regardless of the decision, we should not politicise it."

Some alliance member states say offering MAP to a would-be member is only a technical step and does not prejudge any final membership decision. Others say it is difficult to refuse entry to a state once MAP has been granted.

European countries opposing Ukrainian membership point to recurring political turmoil since the 2004 "Orange Revolution" protests brought pro-Western politicians to power.

Yushchenko has long been at odds with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and had called an early parliamentary election for December to try to break the political deadlock. But that poll will now not take place, at least until early next year.

Opponents of Ukrainian membership also cite opinion polls showing limited support for membership inside the country -- no more than 30 percent of respondents want to join the alliance.

Russia fiercely opposes the notion of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, another former Soviet republic that is seeking to join, and said last week it would pull out of a conventional arms treaty if they were admitted.

Western reluctance to membership for both countries has grown since Russia's brief war with Georgia in August.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukraine Cuts Traffic Violations By Upping Fines

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's new programme of drastically higher traffic fines has cut road violations substantially and piled cash into government coffers, officials said Tuesday.

Ukrainian traffic militia (police).
Road violations of all types were down some 64 per cent, according to a statement from Ukraine's DAI traffic police made public 24 hours after the new penalty system came into effect.

Ukraine's legislature in October approved laws upping fines for traffic violations from an average 5 - 15 dollars, to an average 40 to 80 dollars.

Traffic injuries and fatalities were down by a third, Korrespondent newspaper reported.

Nationwide on Monday, road police said more than 7,800 drivers had netted the state over 250,000 dollars in fines, the Interfax news agency reported.

Though low by European standards, Ukraine's new traffic fine system is in local terms a substantial change, and will hit most drivers hard in the pocket. The average monthly salary in Ukraine is some 300 dollars.

Ukraine's roads historically have been poorly-regulated by a traffic police widely considered corrupt. Ukraine has one of Europe's worst road death rates, because of drivers' unwillingness to obey speed limits, traffic signs or seatbelt rules.

Ukraine's traffic police command appealed to motorists not to pass bribes to traffic cops shortly before the new fine system went into effect.

Reduced accident and injury rates aside, the new fine system has resulted in a 50 per cent increase in the price of a bribe, Sehodnia newspaper reported.

Source: DPA

From Ukraine With Attitude

LONDON, England -- Olga Kurylenko talks to The Globe and Mail about playing one of the new Bond girls to Daniel Craig's 007 in Quantum of Solace, the latest entry in the durable franchise.

Ukrainian Olga Kurylenko as Camille in Quantum of Solace.
Ah, the Bond Girl. Devastatingly beautiful, good with a gun (or a knife, a sports car, an atom bomb and even, in one spectacular instance of cheap 007 Freudian play, her neck-snapping thighs), devilish but gold-hearted (she really just wants to be loved), the Bond Girl is as reliable an archetype as Bond himself, if not more so.

A swell Bond Girl will enliven even the worst late-period Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton franchise wheeze. Remember Grace Jones and her tower of laser-cut hair in A View to a Kill, or scary-perky Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in The World Is Not Enough? Of course you do, because the 007 movies have always been more about the exotic, ludicrous women than the personality-deprived contract killer doing the Queen's dirty work.

While the latest revival of the Bond brand has generated an enormous amount of ink about the suitability of Daniel Craig — probably because he's the first Bond since Sean Connery to take the part seriously and play against the camp factor, to wallow in Bond's dark, murderous well of self-loathing — the Bond Girls have yet to catch up.

And, yes, my post-feminist friends, the producers still call them "girls." In the Bond world, you can blow up a building, fly a cargo plane, or plug any number of goons with hot lead, but if you're female, you're still not quite a grownup. Eva Green made a valiant attempt in Casino Royale to turn the Girl into a Bond Woman, but she got bumped off in the end.

Enter Olga Kurylenko's Camille, another beautiful but damned creature with a scarred past (literally in this case) and a disarming pout. Already a star in France, Kurylenko will be familiar to North American audiences from Paris, je t'aime, wherein she played a vampire, or from her two other sexy-people-with-guns movies, Hitman and Max Payne.

While Kurylenko hardly breaks the Bond Girl mould, it's not for lack of trying. In every scene she has to herself, the energetic actress practically inhales the screen, daring to out-sulk and out-glare Craig. But then, stuff starts to blow up and she's quickly relegated to the familiar damsel in (flawlessly made-up) distress role.

Now that America has an African-American president, is it too much to ask for a Bond heroine who's not half 007's age and who wears army boots, not heels, to a shootout?

The Bond films, after 21 previous instalments, are now entertainment machines. How do you make your mark as an artist when the franchise is more important than the players?

Well, you know, it's funny, because I didn't feel that at all. For me, first off, it was my first time. Probably if you do only that kind of film, it becomes, you know, too much, and I don't want to do that. The goal is to do as many different parts as possible. But, for me, it was the first time I had to do my own stunts, and I had to learn so much, and it was so exciting! I've never done anything like this ever — why else would I do it?

Watching you do action scenes in beautiful haute couture outfits was a marvel.

Well, it was not haute couture! It was just simple.

But pretty. How do you jump out of an airplane in a bespoke dress?

In the last scene, I'm just wearing jeans, that was very handy. And in the first part of the movie, I'm wearing a skirt and I go on the boat, and what we chose is a bathing suit for under the skirt. It's perfect! It's one piece, so if I turn over in the skirt, it's not like you see my underwear! Ha! At the same time, it looks cool. This girl is always ready to fight, so she dresses accordingly, but at the same time she can't walk around in cargo pants, because she has to be attractive, because she uses her looks for charming people. She has to be in between. She goes for something cute, but at the same time very handy. No bling-bling, no diamonds, nothing crazy, because she's ready to run.

Many actresses have played Bond heroines, and some have done very well after, but some less so. There is a belief that the role comes with a curse.

No, no, I don't believe in that. I believe I'm going to keep working. I've already done a film after this, and I'm the main character. We can't generalize. It's about what you want to do. I want to work, I want to act, not just be present in movies. When you want something, you work on it.

You are Ukrainian, but most of your work has been done in French. Now you're playing a Latino secret agent. Only in Hollywood!

Yeah! Ha! But I think it's great, you know? Talk about transformation. That's why this job is so interesting, because you have to go in the skin of different people. They can be from all over the world. People ask me, when I am tanned, if I am Brazilian. I always get that. In Paris, in New York, people ask me what I am. So I knew it was something I could do, because I've heard it before.

You're taller than Daniel Craig. Did they make you stand in a ditch?

I don't think I am taller! No, no! But if I put heels on, I think I am the same height. But without the heels, he is taller.

How many films do you have to make before the press stops calling you a "model/actress"?

Ah, it's their fault! I don't know why they call me that! I think people just don't want to think, so they keep writing that. I guess they need to present that I was a model before, so they keep talking about that. At the same time, it is my past, but I don't do it any more, so what do they want me to do?

The film has a very open ending. Are you in the next one?

Ha! I don't think so! I mean, nobody has spoken to me about that. Ask the producers! There is no Bond Girl who ever came back, because each time they need new women, so I don't think it's going to happen.

Are you ready for this sudden leap into global fame?

I don't think you can ever be ready. It's all happening so fast, some days it's like a big wave coming at me. It's unbelievable. And it's fun! People say I am lucky, but it's not just luck, you have to know how to catch the luck. And it could end tomorrow, so I'm enjoying it and I appreciate it.

PARTICULARS

*Born Nov. 14, 1979, Berdyansk, Ukraine.

*What's next? Olga Kurylenko's next film is Tyranny, about a man who participates in a brain-mapping experiment and begins to see images of what may be a conspiracy to take over the world. Then she returns to the Femme Nikita thing as a prostitute/hit woman in next year's Kirot.

*Oh, those Communists! A Communist group in St. Petersburg, Russia, has accused the actress of "moral and intellectual betrayal" for starring in a film with James Bond, who of course is the arch-nemesis of the Soviet Union. Okay then.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Struggling Ukraine Braces For Tough IMF Medicine

KIEV, Ukraine -- The global economic crisis has hit with hurricane force in Ukraine, which faces turmoil as it seeks to comply with the terms of an emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund, experts said.

Ceyla Pazarbasioglu (L), IMF mission chief for Ukraine, shakes hands with Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko.
As world leaders head to Washington for a summit on the crisis this weekend, Ukraine has the dubious distinction of being the first country to get IMF help this year, having been approved for a 16.4-billion-dollar loan last week.

Ukraine received the first tranche of the rescue loan Monday, boosting state efforts to prop up banks amid a broad downturn, largely caused by a drop in the price of steel, the key export of this ex-Soviet republic of 46 million people.

The Washington-based fund offered assistance once Kiev adopted a package of measures including "a prudent fiscal stance," Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, IMF mission chief for Ukraine, told reporters after the loan was approved.

Those steps included a bank rescue programme, a zero-deficit budget for 2009 and movement towards "a flexible exchange rate" for the hryvnia, Ukraine's embattled currency.

Some experts fear that could lead to a further devaluation after the hryvnia fell about 20 percent against the dollar in recent weeks.

"The purchasing power of Ukrainian consumers in dollar and euro terms will become worse. Much worse," said Dmytro Boyarchuk, the head of CASE Ukraine, an economics research centre in Kiev.

Meanwhile, the balanced budget along with reduced tax revenues from the steel sector means the government will have trouble paying social benefits, Boyarchuk said.

"Next year we can expect many backlogs in the payment of pensions," he said.

And in a move likely to cause grumbling this winter, Pazarbasioglu said Kiev had pledged "to correct the pricing policies in the energy sector," meaning an end to subsidized heating bills.

Ukrainians face a 35 percent rise in their gas bills starting December 1, according to media reports.

All this is unwelcome at a time when mass layoffs are expected in Ukraine's industrial east, work is frozen at numerous construction sites and more than 20 banks have received help from Kiev's central bank to ease liquidity problems.

Experts described the IMF's terms as painful but necessary and argued that some measures were inevitable.

"The rise in gas fees would have happened anyway," said Ildar Gazizullin, an economist at the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kiev.

The IMF loan restored confidence in Ukraine and its conditions "will force the politicians to focus and work together," said Peter Vanhecke, chief executive of Renaissance Capital Ukraine, an investment bank.

"With the IMF you get an international stamp of approval for your country," Vanhecke said in an interview.

The decision to accept the IMF's tough medicine was a sharp turnaround for Ukrainian politicians, accustomed to handing out government largesse after years of rapid economic growth.

"Politicians will have to adjust their populist rhetoric and wean the populace off the idea that the government can guarantee social benefits when the money is lacking," the Kyiv Post, a weekly newspaper, said in an editorial.

Aside from the economic fallout, some also fear the crisis could undermine democracy in Ukraine, which faces an ongoing political crisis that may lead to snap parliamentary elections early next year.

Kiev's ruling pro-Western coalition collapsed in September amid feuding between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, former allies in the "Orange Revolution" of 2004.

"The economic crisis, as well the extended political crisis... have boosted society's desire for order, for the 'strong hand' model of government," said Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst at the Penta think tank in Kiev.

That may increase the appeal of neighbouring Russia, where former president Vladimir Putin embarked on an authoritarian path during his eight years in the Kremlin, Fesenko added.

"There is some demand for a Ukrainian Putin," he said. "But it's not clear whether there is such a person."

Source: AFP

NATO Reaffirms Close Ties With Ukraine

TALLINN, Estonia -- NATO defense ministers on Thursday reaffirmed the alliance's commitment to assist Ukraine in its goal of joining the military bloc, a move likely to further strain the West's relations with Russia.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the meeting with Ukrainian defense officials was "productive" but that Ukraine still faced numerous obstacles before it could become a NATO member.

"It's clear that ... Ukraine still has some distance to go in being ready for membership in the alliance," he said.

Ukrainian leaders need to bolster public support for NATO membership and address budget constraints for financing military reform, Gates said.

Even the talks, designed to assess overall bilateral cooperation and whether Ukraine has met targets, is likely to anger Russia.

Russia, which borders Ukraine, is vehemently opposed to Ukrainian membership in the military alliance and generally regards NATO as irrelevant after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991.

One thing NATO members receive is a promise of mutual defense if any of them are attacked by countries outside the alliance.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer dismissed Moscow's objections to strengthening ties between the military alliance and Ukraine.

"A country's right to freely choose its security alignments is an important principle ... and it is a principle that we will not compromise," de Hoop Scheffer said.

Earlier this year NATO leaders said at a summit in Romania that Ukraine could eventually become a member of the alliance.

However, many NATO members are tepid toward the prospect of Ukrainian membership, given the country's political turmoil and a lack of popular support among the population for the military alliance.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Yury Yekhanurov acknowledged the criticism of Ukraine and that Kiev was facing an uphill struggle in integrating with the military alliance. Much of the problem, he said, boiled down to a lack of money to implement reforms.

"Sometimes in Ukraine there is a lack of funds for necessary reforms in the security sector," Yekhanurov said.

He said 19 non-governmental organizations are working with the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to bolster public support for NATO membership.

Ukraine and Russia have traded barbs in recent weeks, particularly over Russia's naval fleet in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. Russia wants to keep its warships at the base after the current contract expires in 2017, but the current Ukrainian government insists that the ships should leave.

Yekhanurov reiterated Thursday that Ukraine was unhappy with having no control over Russian ships anchored at the Sevaspotol base as this could draw the nation into an armed conflict with a third country.

Russia used its Black Fleet ships stationed in Sevastopol in its war against Ukraine's ally Georgia in August.

Source: International Herald Tribune

A Nation Deeply Unhappy

KIEV, Ukraine -- Four years after the democratic Orange Revolution, most Ukrainians believe they still are not living in a democracy. They think corruption is as bad as ever and they have overwhelmingly lost faith in their political leadership.


Those are the damning results of a poll released on Nov. 11. The survey was commissioned by the Washington-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology and funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

“The Orange Revolution provided the chance for major changes to take place in the nation. But the survey results suggest that this opportunity was not utilized by Ukraine’s political elite,” said Jamie Dettmer, IFES’ director for communications and advocacy.

Of 1,218 citizens surveyed between Oct. 17 and Oct. 28, only 15 percent believe that they live in a democratic country. Ukrainians were almost unanimous in their deep disappointment with the current economic and political situation in the nation, with 93 percent registering this sentiment.

The survey suggests complete frustration in a society that once had high hopes for change. “Political standstill is stalling reforms and sidelining the development of state institutions that could help Ukraine overcome crises and reach economic growth,” Dettmer added.

The poll results were made public on the very day that Victor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s increasingly unpopular president, announced he would delay plans to hold a snap parliamentary election. If an early election happens at all, it will probably take place next year at the soonest.

“It would not be reasonable to hold elections during the year-end holidays,” Yushchenko said during a trip to Warsaw on Nov. 11.

The poll results became known a day before the Verkhovna Rada voted on Nov. 12 to oust presidential loyalist Arseniy Yatsenyuk as acting speaker. A total of 233 out of 450 members voted to get rid of Yatsenyuk, 34, as leader.

The rising public dissatisfaction comes a year before a presidential election campaign expected to feature rivals Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Party of Regions leader Victor Yanukovych.

Fed up

The polls also found that 76 percent of citizens believe Ukraine is moving into chaos. It shows the highest disappointment rating in recent years of any IFES-commissioned poll, its director, Rakesh Sharma, said.

In February 2005, just after the Orange Revolution, some 43 percent considered Ukraine to be on the way to stability. In September 2007, during pre-term parliamentary elections, some 47 percent said that the country is becoming more stable.

The picture is so much bleaker today. “It’s impossible to live and to expect that everyday life will become more worthwhile,” said Valentyna Dudenko, a Kyiv pensioner. “I don’t trust anyone in power anymore.”

While the 2004 Orange Revolution was seen as a major victory for democracy in post-Soviet Ukraine, the poll clearly shows that two bitter parliamentary elections since then have eroded public trust.

The poll indicated that citizens see corruption to be as widespread as ever and don’t believe the nation’s justice system is capable of defending basic human rights. Citizens polled by the IFES study said the most corrupt institutions in the country were parliament, police, customs and the educational system.

Citizens are feeling the pinch of inflation, and see worsening relations with Russia as one of the most serious problems.

The IFES poll shows that 84 percent don’t trust Yushchenko, 83 percent don’t trust parliament, 72 percent don’t trust the government and 63 percent mistrust Tymoshenko. The villain of the Orange Revolution – Yanukovich – was not unscathed, either. Some 64 percent distrust him, the polls indicate.

“The [political elite] killed the hopes of Ukrainians from the Orange Revolution for a better state and nation,” said Mykhailo Nodelman, a Kyiv teacher who supported Yushchenko in 2004. “The president is the first to blame.”

Its not only the president, but the entire presidential system of government that bothers people, too. In the IFES survey, only 25 percent favored a presidential system of government. A bit more, or 38 percent, would prefer a parliamentary system of government. Only 12 percent support the status quo, a mixed parliamentary-presidential system with unclear divisions of authority.

The poll showed that only 3 percent of Ukrainians think political parties serve the interests of the population, while 56 percent said parties serve their own interests. “Ukraine’s political elite don’t understand that power means responsibility. The power must serve people, not itself,” said Kyrylo Nesterov, a university student. “I don’t see any sense in voting at the elections. My vote will change nothing.”

More elections aren’t the answer, citizens say. According to the IFES poll, more than three quarters believe that an early election won’t help and a similar number believe they don’t have any influence on decision-makers.

A glimmer of hope

Despite the overwhelming pessimism, analysts do not think Ukraine is on the verge of collapse. “If you were to ask people in Western Europe what they think about their politicians, they will also be heavily disappointed,” said Sergiy Taran, the director of International Democracy Institute. “People like their political elites only in authoritarian countries.”

Taran said that Ukrainians' highly negative feelings today are a threat only to the current political elite. “This political elite has become bankrupt, just like its predecessor before 2004,” he said.

But, unless new faces emerge, voters will be confronted with the same old choices on election ballots.

Source: Kyiv Post

When Love Hurts

KIEV, Ukraine -- In Ukraine, bitter divorces among the country's influential and rich elite are just starting to make headlines of their own

Marharyta Chervonenko, ex-wife of politician and affluent businessman Yevhen Chervonenko, may have ushered in an era of tabloid celebrity divorces with her bitter split after 18 years of marriage.
Twice-divorced real-estate tycoon Donald Trump knew how to get out clean.

Along with a hand in marriage, he offered his former partners expensive accessories: pre-nuptial agreements. Ivana Trump and Marla Maples, with $25 million and $1 million in farewell dowries, respectively, even wished him well with his new brides.

The painful divorce cases of the rich and famous, such as Trump, have been splattered all over tabloids in the West for decades. In Ukraine, such bitter splits among the country’s influential and rich elite are just starting to make headlines of their own.

Juicy divorce details, assets in contention and even family photographs dominate the pages of such paparazzi publications as www.tabloid.com.ua

Yet the process of divorcing a mogul in Ukraine remains a far cry from tales of glitter, fortune and fame seen in the West. Most Ukrainians see marriage contracts as urban legends from Hollywood films with no relevance to local realities.

“But when you leave home and cannot come back because of guards at the door … then it is serious,” said Marharyta Chervonenko, drawing a line through her 18 years of marriage.

She married a big shot. Her ex-husband is Yevhen Chervonenko, an affluent businessman and former car racer. He is also a former transportation minister and was governor of Zaporizhya Oblast. Now he supervises preparations for the Euro 2012 soccer championship to be co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland.

The Chervonenkos got divorced in 2007 without benefit of a prenup that would spell out how to divide the considerable assets. They went along with the “all-is-fair-in-love-and-war” scenario, so the split has become quite nasty.

“Since then, I have been through raider attacks, bankruptcy and threats,” she said. “He once told me that I broke up with the system, not just him.”

Fearing she would be left with nothing after divorce, Marharyta launched a fight over the couple’s assets two years ago along with a public campaign to defend her rights and help others in similar situations.

Under Ukrainian law, divorcing couples must split everything they accumulated in marriage 50-50 – unless there is a contract, of course. The Ukrainian rich, however, rarely list assets in their own name. They declare only small official incomes, a path that leads to a lot of mystery and insinuations in turbulent times.

The Chervonenko case seems to be just like that.

When the former racer landed in politics, he transferred some of his businesses to his wife’s name, she said. Their properties had a different story.

In court, a judge managed to revoke Marharyta’s rights to their house in a prestigious Kyiv suburb and her mother’s flat in Yalta. The ex-husband, however, was not a beneficiary.

A former friend who had officially given these properties as presents to the Chervonenko family suddenly decided to take them back and won the case.

Marharyta did not give up and continues appealing the verdict. Her daughter from a previous marriage also filed a lawsuit against her former stepfather, alleging that he denied her entry to the flat where she is still formally registered.

Yevhen Chervonenko refused to comment on personal matters.

This messy case is likely to drag on.

“These processes take years,” said Zoryslava Romovska, author of Ukraine’s Family Code.

“A defendant pretends he is sick, and then his lawyer is sick. Then, they are both on a holiday and so it goes in circles.”

According to Justice Ministry statistics, every second marriage ends in divorce in Ukraine. But, strangely enough, prenups are still frowned upon.

“A prenup will not guarantee you love, but it will ensure stability,” Romovska said.

For instance, a husband moves in with his wife into her flat. Under civil law, he can live there indefinitely. However, authorities will make him leave in the event of divorce, if there is a contract. Contracts can be beneficial in other ways, too, spelling out responsibilities.

“You cannot contract how many times a week you should kiss each other,” laughed Romovska. “However, no one can stop you from specifying that a woman is responsible for raising children and a man for making money.”

A prenup is free in form, she added, and lawyers usually include whatever the couple thinks is important. Family law does not clarify the division of responsibilities. It says that only material rights can be discussed in a contract. But its author, Romovska, argues that domestic duties have a direct relationship to the joint assets.

An average prenup costs Hr 800. However, even lawyers ignore them.

One lawyer who might have wished he had a prenup is Serhiy Vlasenko, famous for defending Victor Yushchenko’s case in the Supreme Court during the disputed 2004 presidential vote. On the waves of the Orange Revolution, the popular uprising, Vlasenko set the stage for Yushchenko winning the presidency.

Famous after appearing on television during the legendary court case, Vlasenko married a model and socialite, Natalya Okunska.

Although it was not his bride’s first marriage and she had children, the lawyer failed to arrange a prenup. Accusing each other of adultery and assault, they divorced last September. Okunska hooked up again with her previous husband, himself high in political echelons and father of one of her children.

“It’s all over the papers, I have nothing to add,” said Vlasenko, chary on words.

In earlier interviews, he denied beating his wife and specified that he provides for the children in line with a financial agreement they had. Okunska, however, is complaining that she was exploited and then left with nothing.

Romovska said in cases like these, there could be psychological reasons behind the mess.

“Like any other divorcees, the women of oligarchs are left with a scar,” said Romovska. “Despite a car, a house and a dacha left by their husbands, they keep lamenting for their former status and money.”

Not all of them, however. A Ukrainian dancer who married a distant cousin of Sophia Lauren, the famous Italian actress, said she wanted neither.

“We bought a wedding dress and a tuxedo with my own money,” said Olga Kopitsa, now 32, reflecting on her marriage with Roberto Skala, now 35. “I thought the rest would come in its own time.”

At a concert in Pisa, he spotted her on stage and in a few months they got married. When Kopitsa got pregnant, they moved in with his family in Naples. She claims to have felt like a prisoner there.

“He rarely worked and only partied with friends,” she recalled. “His family watched my every step. I was allowed a bath only once a week and could only watch TV until nine in the evening.”

She finally escaped on the pretense of a holiday in Ukraine. Kopitsa said all she wanted was a divorce to start a new life at home. But without a marriage certificate, it seemed impossible. With the help of the Italian Embassy in Kyiv, she located their marriage certificate and then divorced under Ukrainian law. In Italy, however, she may still be considered officially married. “We didn’t have a prenup. We had nothing,” she shrugged.

Skala was not immediately available for comment.

Most lawyers, however, recommend a contract in the event of marriage to foreigners, since divorce laws vary wildly. The Economist magazine even published “A Globetrotters Guide to Divorce” for those born in one country, married in another and working somewhere else.

In Ukraine, a woman was traditionally blamed for divorce. High-profile cases were hushed up. Across the ocean, things were different. Backed by the prenup, Trump wife No. 1 wrote a self-help book for divorcees. Trump wife number No. 2 co-starred in a reality show “Ex-wives Club.”

Marharyta Chervonenko seems to have started a trend by going public with her version of “The War of the Roses,” the 1989 Hollywood hit movie starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

She founded an organization called “I Am Strong” to help abandoned wives. She says in marriage she felt like a horse running in a circus arena. She now claims to be better off helping others get over the same.

Source: Kyiv Post

Gates' Visit Shows US Support For Ukraine, Baltics

WASHINGTON, DC -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates is preparing for a meeting in Eastern Europe that's big on symbolism.

US Secretary of Defense, Dr. Robert M. Gates.
Gates' will be at a NATO meeting of defense ministers in Estonia tomorrow.

The main purpose is to talk with Ukraine about its effort to join NATO, which is currently stalled.

A Gates spokesman says he wants to "send a very strong signal of his support for Ukraine and the Baltic states."

But the friction between Russia and some of its eastern European neighbors is also likely to come up.

A Pentagon spokesman says if Russia hadn't invaded Georgia back in August, it's unlikely Gates would have made the trip.

Since the invasion, relations between the U.S. and Russia have grown frosty.

Source: AP

Ukraine's Assembly Sacks Chairman, Ally Of President

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's parliament on Wednesday dismissed its chairman, an ally of President Viktor Yushchenko, after accusing him of violating rules of order in the chamber.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk
A total of 233 members voted to oust Arseniy Yatsenyuk, more than the 226 votes required in the 450-seat chamber.

Yatsenyuk, 34, long loyal to the president, tendered his resignation in September, a day after the collapse of the governing coalition linked to the 2004 "Orange Revolution".

His resignation was never confirmed in a vote.

Source: Kyiv Post

Ukrainian President Indicates Poll Delay Till 2009

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko indicated Tuesday that Ukraine's early legislative elections would now be delayed until next year, amid a power struggle with his prime minister in the crisis-hit country.

President Viktor Yushchenko (R) is locked in a bitter power struggle with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
"It would not be reasonable to hold elections during the year-end holidays," he told journalists in Warsaw on the sidelines of ceremonies marking the 90th anniversary of Poland's independence.

Last month, Yushchenko had decided to delay the snap polls by a week to December 14 as he recalled parliament to enact emergency measures to fight the global financial crisis.

But on October 29 the parliament rejected legislation proposed by the ruling party to finance the snap elections.

"We will do everything to adopt an anti-crisis package and to adopt the 2009 budget including an item on the financing of early elections," he added.

Yushchenko dissolved parliament on October 8 in a bitter power struggle with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who along with her supporters in parliament had long refused to prepare for the early elections.

Analysts said delaying the elections until next year could help Yushchenko chip away at Tymoshenko's popularity by pinning the economic crisis on her.

"Yushchenko has decided to wait until the crisis takes a bite out of Tymoshenko's popularity," said political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Penta Political Research Centre in Kiev.

"He will present himself as the professional economist and will try to blame all the problems on Tymoshenko."

"The president has nothing to lose. On the other hand, he has a chance to devalue the influence of Tymoshenko," the influential online daily Ukrainska Pravda wrote recently.

Elections were last held on September 30 last year, five months after Yushchenko dissolved the parliament, giving a short majority to the pro-Western coalition grouping supporters of Timoshenko and the president. The alliance broke up in September.

Ukraine has been among the countries hardest hit by global financial turmoil as a plunge in the price of steel, its main export, exacerbates a credit crunch and a sharp fall in stock prices.

The country's currency, the hryvnia, has lost 20 percent of its value in recent weeks, sparking panic in a population already suffering from massive layoffs.

At the same time, the downturn has become increasingly politicised, with the president blaming the government for the country's problems.

Needing urgent help, the parliament on October 31 approved legislation clearing the way for a 16.5 billion dollar (12.8 billion euro) International Monetary Fund crisis loan after long political wrangling.

Yushchenko and his supporters in parliament had argued the measures should be adopted alongside the bill to finance the early parliamentary elections.

Source: AFP

USA Made USSR Collapse, Now It’s Ukraine’s Turn, Communists Say

KIEV, Ukraine -- US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, who said that America had never had any plans to dismember the USSR and Russia, was not sincere in his statements.

Ukraine's #1 Communist - Pyotr Simonenko.
As a matter of fact, the USA harbors plans to split Ukraine too, the leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Pyotr Simonenko said in an interview with Novy Region news agency.

“One needs to understand that the whole politics of the United States, which the country has been running during the recent ten years, shows that America defends its strategic interests in every spot on the globe.

They either use financial and economic sanctions or an armed conflict to achieve their goals,” the official said.

“They also set goals for the “fifth column” in Ukraine, which splits the nation into two. A possible dismemberment of Ukraine is not just a threat. This plan is being implemented already,” Simonenko said .

“They exacerbate the situation around the Crimea Peninsula, Ukraine’s NATO membership and the fate of our Orthodoxy. Ukraine is being divided into eastern and western Ukraine,” the official said.

“The Orthodox blood was first shed in 1991, and Orthodoxy was split into three different branches. Nowadays, Yushchenko takes efforts to aggravate the situation by means of canonizing the Kiev Patriarchy,” Simonenko said.

“Ukraine is being dismembered economically too. The country has been divided into donor regions and those regions which consume the things, which the eastern part of the country makes. All these processes will be intensified in the nearest future,” the chairman of the Ukrainian Communist Party said.

US Ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, stated that the US administration had never planned to dismember the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The US diplomat made the statement during a talk show aired on Ukraine’s Inter TV channel.

Valery Bevz, a deputy of the Communist Party of Ukraine, said prior to Taylor’s remarks that there was documented evidence to prove the plans of the US administration to split the USSR and present-day Russia into several independent states.

Taylor strongly protested to such a statement. “I’ve never heard anyone saying anything about the plans to dismember Russia or the USSR,” he said.

The official continued with saying that president-elect Barack Obama would continue supporting Ukraine’s independence. “The decisive support to Ukraine will not change, there are no doubts about that,” he said.

Source: Pravda

Ukrainians No Longer Trust Yushchenko

KIEV, Ukraine -- - The vast majority of people in Ukraine express no confidence in Viktor Yushchenko, according to a poll by FOM-Ukraine. 81.7 per cent of respondents say they do not trust the president, up 26.1 points since January.

Eight out of ten Ukrainians do not trust their president.
A series of public demonstrations took place in Kiev after the November 2004 presidential run-off. The Ukrainian Supreme Court eventually invalidated the results of the second round, and ordered a special re-vote.

Opposition candidate Yushchenko—whose supporters wore orange-coloured clothing at events and rallies—received 51.99 per cent of all cast ballots, defeating Viktor Yanukovych.

In 2006, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions (PR) secured 186 seats in the Supreme Council. Yanukovych eventually became prime minister in a coalition government with the Socialist Party (SPU) and the Communist Party (KPU).

After a long political stalemate and disagreements between the president and prime minister, a new legislative ballot took place in September 2007.

Final election results released in October gave the "orange forces"—including the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and Yushchenko’s People’s Union-Our Ukraine (NS-NU)—228 seats, while Yanukovych and his Communist allies took control of 202 seats. In December, Tymoshenko was ratified as prime minister, with the support of 225 lawmakers.

Her cabinet features finance minister Viktor Pynzenyk and interior minister Yury Lutsenko.

On Sept. 3, Ukraine’s governing coalition split in great part due to disagreements over a Georgia-Russia conflict.

In the days following an incursion by Russian forces into South Ossetia, a Georgian breakaway province, Yushchenko asked the government to fiercely condemn Russia’s actions in Georgia, but Tymoshenko refused to take a strong stance against Russia.

Yushchenko left the coalition as a result. A new parliamentary election will take place on Dec. 14.

On Nov. 3, Yushchenko said that Ukrainians have "lost faith" in current prime minister Tymoshenko, adding that his Our Ukraine party has "no desire to return to the coalition" and that, at this point, "snap elections are the only constitutional way out."

The next presidential election in Ukraine should take place in 2010.

Source: Angus Reid

Yushchenko Uses Security Service Against Former Orange Allies

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU - the Soviet era KGB) is targeting the president’s former Orange ally, the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT), as part of a strategy to undermine Tymoshenko’s popularity ahead of the January 2010 presidential elections.

Deputy SBU chairman Valentyn Nalyvaichenko.
The campaign uses methods similar to those used by former President Leonid Kuchma. The concerted campaign aims at smearing the BYuT, Tymoshenko, and pro-Tymoshenko defectors from the erstwhile supporters of the president Our Ukraine-Peoples Self Defense (OU-PSD) with accusations of “corruption” and other abuses of office.

The biased nature of the campaign is similar to those in the Kuchma era insofar as the campaign ignores loyal political forces (pro-regime centrist parties and oligarchs under Kuchma and the pro-Yushchenko wing of OU-PSD) and potential coalition allies (the Communist Party under Kuchma, Party of Regions under Yushchenko).

There are four facets to the campaign. Firstly, the presidential secretariat compiled a 350-page dossier of accusations of “treason” against Tymoshenko and presented it to the prosecutor’s office in August. The SBU spent from July to September investigating the accusations.

Two days after the secretariat presented its “evidence,” the prosecutor’s office announced that it had found no “concrete criminal infringements of the law” by the government and that the dossier included nothing that could be used to launch criminal charges against Tymoshenko.

Secondly, they are besmirching the prime minister’s reputation by linking Tymoshenko’s position as CEO of United Energy Systems in the mid-1990s to then-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.

Yushchenko and Kuchma are trying to have Lazarenko extradited from the United States where he is serving a jail term on money laundering charges, after seeking political asylum there in 1999.

Thirdly, the secretariat is challenging the citizenship of naturalized Ukrainians, such as Davyd Zhvania, a businessman who provided funding for the Pora (Its Time) youth NGO and Orange Revolution protests in 2004 and the Peoples Self Defense Party in 2007. Zhvania is a deputy in the PSD wing of OU-PSD, which has de facto aligned itself with the BYuT in the inter-orange quarrels.

Zhvania became a Ukrainian citizen in 1999 after renouncing his Georgian citizenship. The prosecutor’s office and courts rebuffed the presidential secretariat’s challenge that the citizenship had been received “illegally” and that he had kept his Georgian citizenship, although Ukraine does not recognize dual citizenship.

Pro-Yushchenko oligarch Igor Kolomoysky, CEO of the Pryvat group, openly admitted in an interview that he had Israeli and Ukrainian citizenship but has not been investigated. Party of Regions deputy Yukhym Zvyahilsky, who fled to Israel in November 1994 but returned to Ukraine in March 1997, also has dual Israeli-Ukrainian citizenship.

Finally, BYuT and PSD deputies have been accused of “corruption.” The president has claimed that the deputies were involved in contraband in collusion with “organized crime.” Significantly, the SBU’s investigation is only targeting deputies from BYuT and the pro-Tymoshenko wing of OU-PSD.

One of the accused is deputy head of the PSD Gennadiy Moskal, who is deputy head of the parliamentary committee to combat organized crime and corruption.

It is unlikely a coincidence that Moskal submitted a request on October 21 to the prosecutor’s office to investigate how the biggest castle in Central-Eastern Europe in Mukachevo, an important symbol in Hungarian history, was transferred until 2056 to Vysokyi Zamok, a small private company owned by family members of the presidential secretary Viktor Baloha.

A BYuT statement rejected accusations made by the SBU as merely part of a campaign to “blacken whomever Yushchenko sees as his main enemy—the government, its head and team”.

The BYuT warned that acting SBU chairman Valentyn Nalyvaichenko would face consequences for “the privatization of the SBU on behalf of certain private persons, the degradation and discrediting of the Security Service, and its transformation into a directorate of the presidential secretariat for black PR”.

As Ukraine approaches the fourth anniversary of the Orange Revolution on November 21 and the pros and cons of what has changed for the better are being analyzed, one area that remains negative is civil-military relations. One important element of this is the continued practice, inherited from the Kuchma era, of the politicizing of the SBU.

The decline and growth of the SBU’s politicization are related to how the president is faring in the opinion polls. It always increases and becomes most acute when the president feels under threat from his domestic opponents.

In the Kuchma era the SBU became politicized during his second term following the November 2000 “Kuchmagate” scandal and climaxed during the 2004 elections. Under Yushchenko the SBU’s re-politicization, after a short respite following the Orange Revolution, increased quickly starting in the middle of his first term.

The SBU’s re-politicization has taken place for three reasons. First was the appointment of Deputy SBU chairman Valentyn Nalyvaichenko as acting chairman after parliament refused to support his candidacy which was proposed, as per the constitution, by the president.

Nalyvaichenko has seemingly agreed to act as the head of a politicized SBU, unlike SBU chairman Ihor Smeshko who acquitted himself in a positive manner during the Orange Revolution.

Rumors that Nalyvaichenko was to be replaced because of his unpopularity in parliament were leaked by an SBU officer to the newspaper 24. The position was offered to a Party of Regions deputy who turned it down. Nalyvaichenko is reportedly to be transferred to the presidential secretariat or National Security and Defense Council.

Secondly, the president’s approval ratings collapsed in 2006 from a very high point in his first year in office. They recovered briefly in 2007 and then collapsed again in 2008 to below 5 percent.

A recent poll showed that the lack of confidence in the president among Ukrainians has gone up from an already high 56 percent in January to a staggering 82 percent in October.

Thirdly, it is not coincidental that the SBU’s re-politicization has taken place during the last two years under acting chairman Nalyvaichenko, while the presidential secretariat is headed by Viktor Baloha. Baloha’s aggressive “in your face” defense of the president has drawn on the SBU to battle the president’s opponents.

The SBU’s re-politicization has brought no real benefits to Yushchenko in terms of improved public support or greater security. If anything, the opposite has occurred as can be seen by the willingness of the BYuT to vote with the Party of Regions on September 2 to change the law on the SBU to make it accountable to parliament as well as to the president.

Source: Eurasia Daily Monitor

Moscow Flexes Muscle In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Armed with petrodollars and success in restoring control over two enclaves in the Caucasus, Russia is increasing political pressure on Ukraine and trying to dampen its aspirations for NATO membership and closer ties with the West.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has been at odds with Moscow since his Orange Revolution.
In recent months, the Moscow government has accused Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko of approving arms sales to Georgia.

Mr. Yushchenko and his supporters say Moscow has distributed Russian passports to ethnic Russians in the Crimea and has sought an alliance with Yushchenko rival Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

"Russia will do whatever it can to destabilize Ukraine," said Danylo Yanevsky, director of research at Kiev´s Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy. "It needs to ruin Ukraine for its own survival."

Yevgeniy Khorishko, press secretary for the Russian Embassy in Washington, adamantly denied the accusations.

"The Russian Federation does not interfere and has never interfered into the internal affairs of any country, including Ukraine," Mr. Khorishko said. He called reports that Russia "is engaged in massive distribution of the Russian passports in Ukraine pure disinformation."

However, Russia has shown a willingness to choose favorites among politicians in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, industrial powerhouse and breadbasket.

In 2004, Moscow publicly supported the presidential bid of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who now heads the opposition pro-Russian Party of Regions. Russian support backfired and helped bring about the Orange Revolution, which elevated Mr. Yushchenko, who favors stronger ties with the West.

Since then, Russian opposition to Mr. Yushchenko has intensified. Moscow strongly opposes Kiev´s bid to join the European Union and NATO and has threatened Europe with political repercussions should Ukraine be granted a so-called membership action plan when NATO foreign ministers meet in December.

Russian pressure comes at a time when Ukraine is especially vulnerable. The nation´s currency, the hryvnia, has fallen more than 20 percent; output of steel, which makes up 6 percent of gross domestic product and 40 percent of exports, is down 30 percent; and a run on banks in October has stripped the sector of $3.4 billion, according to the Associated Press. The country is seeking $16.5 billion in emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund.

Faced with political deadlock in parliament, Mr. Yushchenko has called for new elections on Dec. 14 - the third in as many years.

Mrs. Tymoshenko has called the move foolhardy, given the financial crisis. If the elections go forward and the bloc that supports Mrs. Tymoshenko does not win a majority, she most likely would resign as prime minister, putting her in a position to concentrate on challenging the president in 2010 elections.

Moscow has tried to raise the stakes by having state-run Russian media accuse Mr. Yushchenko of selling arms to Georgia, which in August lost its provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to Russian troops in a brief war.

Although the claim has not been substantiated, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Oct. 28 that he knows which countries "diligently" provided weapons to the "regime" of Georgian leader Mikhail Saakashvili and "who very actively incited him to aggression and ... are realizing plans for rebooting his regime with additional types of arms."

"Unfortunately, a number of states close to us have participated in this," Mr. Medvedev continued, in a clear reference to Ukraine. "We won´t forget this and naturally will take it into consideration in our practical politics."

Another point of friction between Ukraine and Russia involves the continued basing of Russia's Black Sea fleet on the Crimean Peninsula, which was given to Ukraine in the 1950s by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

The Russian fleet remains based there under an agreement due to expire in 2017 - an agreement that Russia says it wants to extend and Ukraine says it wants to end.

The peninsula has a large ethnic-Russian population, and reports that Russia has been issuing passports there alarm many Ukrainians because of the Russia-Georgia war.

Moscow justified its intervention in August in part by noting the presence of Russian passport holders in South Ossetia.

"If Russia succeeds in boosting the number of Russian citizens in Crimea, it will have achieved the geopolitical equivalent of ballot-stuffing," Peter Dickinson, editor of Kiev-based Business Ukraine magazine, wrote recently.

"The result will be to further cement the Kremlin´s already de facto position as the champion of Crimea´s disenchanted Russian majority and help set the stage for any future intervention."

Mrs. Tymoshenko has fed speculation that she is Moscow's new political favoriteShe held a five-hour closed-door meeting last month with Mr. Medvedev and her Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, ostensibly to negotiate a better energy deal for Ukraine.

Ukraine is a transit country for Russian natural-gas pipelines to much of Europe, and it depends on Russia for its own gas supplies.

Mrs. Tymoshenko has also refused to condemn Russia´s Georgian incursion, is neutral on Ukraine´s NATO aspirations and has criticized Mr. Yushchenko for disregarding Russian interests as he moves the country toward Europe.

Mrs. Tymoshenko declined requests for an interview. Her press secretary, Marina Soroka, said, "The premier has not entered into a union with the Russians, and she´s not going to. Everything she has done has been in the national interests of Ukraine."

Source: Washington Times

Playing A Bolivian, By Way Of Ukraine

CHICAGO, IL -- Olga Kurylenko had to shed one accent and master another for the role of Camille, a mystery woman who knows how to fight dirty.

Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko (L) with Daniel Graig at the German premiere of "Quantum of Solace".
Olga Kurylenko's career likely will get an enormous boost with the release of ''Quantum of Solace,'' but the Ukrainian actress says her road to playing the mysterious Camille in the new Bond film had a rocky start.

When she arrived for her initial audition in Paris last year, Kurylenko realized the script she had been given in advance ''wasn't the right one, not the text they were using that day.''

In order to play catch-up, the actress let others audition in front of her. ''All I could do was listen and try to pick up the correct lines, but in the end I really had to improvise a lot.

''Maybe because of that, it made me relax, knowing I had nothing to lose -- figuring there was no way I'd get the part since I was so clearly unprepared.''

Imagine her surprise when she got a callback for a second audition, and then a third one -- ultimately doing a scene with Daniel Craig in London.

''By that point I was really nervous, because you know you're close to getting it, but you still haven't got it. You suddenly get your hopes up but don't want to want it too much, in case they pick someone else.''

An added challenge for her was the fact her character ''is a Bolivian, and I knew I was competing with actresses who were Hispanic. Spanish was their first language.

''They didn't have to fake the accent. To make sure I was convincing as a Bolivian, I worked hard on my accent every day for two weeks before I had to audition with Daniel.''

After she got the good news she had won the role of Camille, Kurylenko underwent intensive stunt training -- to prepare her for several scenes involving rough fighting.

''The funny part is I have a big fight scene with Joaquin [Cosio, who plays the corrupt and very vicious Bolivian General Medrano] -- and he's such a teddy bear in real life, a real sweetie! Even though the stunt coaches spend months teaching you how to do certain movements so you don't get hurt, at the end of the day, certain things you have to do for real.''

In a climactic struggle with Cosio, Kurylenko said her co-star really did throw her around the room, violently pulling her hair.

''It did hurt, especially because you have to do about 20 takes of each scene. It's not the first time you fall that's so bad. It's when you fall on that same bruise, over and over again. That's the hard part, but it's what makes it all look real. When you hurt for real, you can communicate that pain in your acting.''

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

Hyatt Regency Concierge Arrested In Prostitution Bust

KIEV, Ukraine -- A concierge of the elite Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kyiv has been arrested on suspicion of helping guests find women for prostitution, according to the Ministry of Interior Affairs.

Kiev Hyatt Regency Hotel
The 21-year-old concierge worked in cooperation with four women who worked as prostitutes.

Clients were charged $500 per hour and $100 went to the concierge.

The concierge did not deny his involvement; on the contrary, he willingly told policemen about his business.

According to the concierge, guests of the hotel knew that the department of concierges is for the leisure of guests.

They can learn from concierges about restaurants and places for entertainment, how to find girls and where, or get their phone numbers.

He said his managers were aware of the business of procuration of women.

Police have instituted a criminal case under part 2 of article 302 of the Criminal Code.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, officers of the Kyiv department for crimes related to human trafficking on July 3 arrested a doorman of Premier Palace Hotel in Kyiv on suspicion of procuration of women.

The arrest was made by officers with the Kyiv department assigned to human trafficking crimes.

Source: Kyiv Post

Bond Bombshell From Ukraine

MELBOURNE, Australia -- When Ukrainian model-turned-actress Olga Kurylenko scored the coveted role of Camille, opposite Daniel Craig in the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, her friends wanted to know only one thing.

Ukrainian model-turned-actress Olga Kurylenko.
"I couldn't believe my friends were sending me emails asking, 'Is he wearing that hot blue bikini?'," she says, laughing. "I said, 'Yes, that's all he wears, the whole movie'."

Kurylenko is, of course, referring to the rather snug pair of budgie smugglers worn by Craig in his first outing as the British superspy in Casino Royale. At the time, the diminutive brunette was just one of millions of women who swooned as Craig dragged his supremely buffed bod out of the surf, but it clearly made an impression.

She hasn't seen all 22 of the official Bond films (they were banned as being "anti-Communist" when she was growing up in the Soviet Union), but readily names Casino Royale, which rebooted the tired franchise in spectacular fashion in 2006, as her favourite.

"When I watched it, I was a long way from thinking that I would be doing the next one, but I thought it was a great movie," she says. "I thought Daniel was a great choice."

The Quantum of Solace role was almost giftwrapped for her -- she got the news while celebrating Christmas Eve in Paris, which has been her home since modelling took her there at the age of 16.

She even happily embraces the title of "Bond girl", which tends to conjure up images of vapid sex bombs, whose main duty is to look good in something clingy, scream on cue and be rescued and bedded (not necessarily in that order) by 007.

"I am honoured," she says of the moniker. "It's such a great experience. I don't have to lie and make it all sound good, because I really truly feel all this."

If Kurylenko is happy to be called a Bond girl, it's probably because her character is much more than the run-of-the-mill bimbo with the double-entendre name (Plenty O'Toole and Holly Goodhead, we salute you). The mysterious and feisty Camille -- half Russian, half Bolivian -- is motivated largely by revenge upon the man who killed her family in front of her when she was young.

Director Marc Foster, who had the enviable task of watching tapes of 400 women from around the world to cast the role, confirms he was looking for substance as well as beauty.

"Crazy as it may sound, very few of them were beautiful and believable," he says.

"The role of the woman has changed in the world, it's three-dimensional now. You can't present a woman for her looks only, it doesn't work any more.

"Most of the women today are smarter than men anyway and they have more and more powerful jobs. So you can't purely symbolise a woman as a sex symbol, it's two-dimensional and you just can't do that.

"Olga made a French film called The Ring Finger and her performance is stunning. I think she has depth. She is smart and a very deep, three-dimensional woman. On top of that, she is gorgeous and all those aspects together worked for me for the character."

Kurylenko agrees: "Camille is quite a strong woman, very independent. She is smart, focused and skilful. She's got the tools to fight, but also she isn't afraid to use her feminine charm. I don't think Camille is a typical Bond girl. She is one of the only Bond girls in the history of the films who does not sleep with Bond."

K URYLENKO travelled to London, Panama and the remote Chilean desert to film Quantum of Solace, all of which were a world away from her modest upbringing in the provincial Ukrainian town of Berdyansk. Her father left when Kurylenko was a baby and she was raised by her art teacher mother, with help from a grandmother, uncles, aunt and cousins, all of whom lived in the same flat. She says now that if money was in short supply, love and support certainly weren't.

She began her acting career playing Santa Claus's young wife in a school play, but her star began to rise at age 16, when she was seen by a model scout in the subway in Moscow, where she was on holiday.

She moved to Paris to work, appearing on the covers of magazines such as Vogue and Elle.

At 19, in 1999, she married French photographer Cedric Van Mol, but their union broke down after four years. She then tied the knot with American entrepreneur Damian Gabrielle in 2006, but they parted a year later.

After she had mastered French, she enrolled in acting lessons and started auditioning for roles, but bided her time, rejecting the obvious model parts for something a little meatier.

Her first leading role was l'Annulaire (The Ring Finger), a racy, arthouse French film based on a Japanese book, and she followed that with a role alongside Elijah Wood in Paris Je T'Aime, an independent film in which a co-operative of acclaimed international directors told their stories of Paris.

Her first English-speaking role was in last year's Hitman, a bloody movie adaptation of the video game of the same name. She has just returned to that genre opposite Mark Wahlberg in Max Payne, which opened here last month.

Nothing in those roles could have possibly prepared her for the Bond juggernaut, but she says that the warm welcome she received and the well-oiled movie machine she encountered on set made her job a good deal easier.

"You can feel that it's a family, which is very unusual for a big movie," she says. "People are doing it because they want to and because they love it."

Which is not to say it was all vodka martinis and Aston Martins -- the world of a big-budget blockbuster is quite a quantum leap from the glitz and glamour of the catwalk.

Inspired by Craig, who does many of his own stunts, Kurylenko went home night after night bruised and sore from the intense training.

"I did rehearsal with guns -- how to fire, position, aiming, how to strip it and put it back together," she says.

"The guy from the prop department was always saying, 'Sorry, this is the boring bit, how can we make it more fun?' So, we started doing it in seconds. He started timing me. I started out at 25 seconds and got down to eight. He did it in 15."

Source: Herald Sun

Ukraine Museum Refuses To Return Looted German Paintings

AACHEN, Germany -- The management of a Ukrainian art museum on Saturday, Nov. 8 refused to return to Germany dozens of paintings brought to the Soviet Union as a result of World War II.

As the Red Army swept across Germany to Berlin, artworks went missing on the way.
Officials from the Simferopol Art Museum in south Ukraine told Germany's Foreign Ministry the museum "had no plans to give up" the 87 paintings thought originally to have belonged to the Suermondt- Ludwig Art Museum in the German city Aachen, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

A pair of Bavarian tourists photographed the paintings during a 2007 visit to Ukraine's Crimea province and sent copies of the shots to the Aachen museum after finding the paintings listed as "whereabouts unknown" on the Aachen museum website.

The art works, reportedly mostly by Western European artists, had been transferred from Aachen to the German city of Meissen for safekeeping in 1942 and had been thought to have been lost or destroyed during the later Allied invasion of Germany.

According to the tourist, one painting featured an image of the inner court of Nuremberg's St Lorenz church and a still-legible German inscription on the frame identifying the work as part of the Aachen collection.

Meissen was in the Soviet zone of control during Allied occupation of Germany.

"It is explicit, here (in the Simferopol museum) were on display 87 paintings from Aachen's Suermondt-Ludwig Museum," said Philip Becker, curator of the museum's current "Schattengalerie" exhibition.

"They (the paintings) can no longer be put on display, because the question of restitution (of the paintings to Germany) has not been resolved on the governmental level."

Disputed paintings at center of ownership row

Text descriptions accompanying the exhibition in Ukraine gave the "false impression" that the current ownership of the paintings had been resolved and that the Simferopol museum had full right to display the art works, Becker claimed.

The Aachen museum was "astounded" at the find and had no early plans to recover the paintings, he added.

Simferopol's spokeswoman told reporters the museum had no intention of returning the paintings.

The museum's management reportedly justified the intention not to give up the paintings, citing a Ukrainian law giving people or organizations having suffered property damage during the German invasion of the Soviet Union during WWII legal title to German property captured by Red Army troops in later stages of the war.

Source: Deutsche Welle

With Obama Win, NATO Prospects For Ukraine, Georgia Appear To Shi

WASHINGTON, DC -- Barack Obama's election may have prompted celebrations from Chicago to Nairobi. But in Tbilisi, it was disappointment that carried the day, with many Georgians ruefully contemplating what John McCain's defeat would mean for them.

U.S. Senator John McCain
"I was rooting for McCain because he favored a more rigorous policy toward Russia," said one man in the Georgian capital. Another added: "I was sure he would win. He was very strong in his dealings with Russia."

Since its Rose Revolution in 2003, Georgia -- like Ukraine, whose Orange Revolution brought democratic change to Kyiv the following year -- have frequently looked to the White House for support as they attempted to ease themselves out of the Russian fold and into NATO and other Western institutions.

At first this meant a close friendship with President George W. Bush, who was eager to tout the countries as success stories to bolster his wobbly legacy as a democracy-builder abroad.

More recently, it has meant strong ties with McCain, the Arizona senator who had hoped his foreign policy expertise -- including frequent advocacy on Georgia's behalf -- would secure a White House win.

It did not, however, appear to entertain the possibility of an Obama presidency -- despite suggestions by some observers that Obama's leadership style will ultimately prove the better fit for post-Soviet neighbors like Georgia and Ukraine.

Known Quantity

McCain, whose top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann was a lobbyist who counted Georgia among his clients, proved a stalwart ally during its August war with Russia. Aides reported McCain spoke to Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "every day" at the height of the conflict.

McCain was also an advocate of NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and an unyielding critic of the Kremlin. He argued that Moscow should be kicked out of the G8 group of major industrialized nations for its aggressive behavior, and provocatively suggested a planned U.S. missile-defense system would offer protection against Russia as well as rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

For Georgia and Ukraine, McCain appeared to offer a continuation of the Bush mandate to push for NATO expansion, and tamp down Russia's influence in its post-Soviet backyard.

But critics say both Bush and McCain overstated the countries' actual democratic progress, and turned a blind eye to transgressions by officials, particularly in Georgia.

"Georgia had to meet NATO at least halfway," said Lincoln Mitchell, a professor of international politics at New York's Columbia University. "And what it got under the Bush administration was the constant message: 'Have bad elections? We'll cover for you. Make a foolish decision and get pulled into a war with Russia? Here's a billion bucks, don't worry about it. Keep cracking down on media and civil liberties? It's OK.'"

Georgia's lapses have proved especially egregious to rights-watchers who say the country is far from the beacon of democratic progress advocates like Bush and McCain make it out to be.

The country on November 7 marks the one-year anniversary since police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse peaceful antigovernment protests and cracked down on nonstate media. Saakashvili was widely criticized for authorizing the violence, and was forced to call early elections the following year.

That incident prompted skeptical NATO member states to warn against fast-track membership for Tbilisi -- a sentiment that has hardened in the wake of the Russia-Georgian war, as questions continue to arise about Saakashvili's actions in the early days of the conflict.

NATO foreign ministers are due to revisit the question of providing Membership Action Plans for Ukraine and Georgia in December; without a consensus among major players like Germany and France, however, a deal is considered unlikely.

The Russia Question

Ukraine's path toward NATO is in some ways even more bedeviled than Georgia's.

While the country has been consistently praised for maintaining free elections and a flourishing press in the years since the Orange Revolution, fierce political infighting and divided loyalties between Russia and the West have kept the country at a virtual standstill.

Ukraine's lost momentum, like Georgia's democratic stumbles, have allowed Moscow, with its exploding resource wealth, to reassert authority over its former Soviet empire. Ukraine is home to millions of Russian speakers, and Moscow has threatened energy cutoffs and missile attacks to remind Kyiv of the dangers of looking West.

The country's beleaguered pro-Western forces now worry that McCain's defeat means the loss of a powerful protector, and the rise of an unknown quantity who may attempt to accommodate Moscow at the expense of countries like Ukraine.

"I've got the impression that Obama will conduct a traditional Democratic policy. That means that Russia will come first," said Yuriy Shcherbak, a former Ukrainian ambassador to Washington. "I think our prospects under an Obama government will be quite difficult. We don't know whether, and to what extent, Obama will be ready to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine."

Obama has acknowledged that Russia's "resurgence" is one of the major issues to be faced by the incoming U.S. administration.

Many worry Obama's pragmatic, consensus-building style will prove a losing tactic in dealing with the bluster of the Kremlin, whose first gesture after the U.S. elections was not an offer of congratulations but a threat to place missiles in Kaliningrad to counter the planned U.S. missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

A Cooler Head?

Others, however, argue it was McCain -- hotheaded and confrontational -- who would have proved the far greater risk in dealing with Russia.

"I believe there are many in Georgia who felt McCain would have been a stronger advocate for getting Georgia into NATO quickly," Mitchell said. "But McCain would never have been able to get them into NATO. I believe Georgia in the longer term probably should get into NATO. But it's only going to happen by building a coalition -- and Obama is far, far better prepared to do that than McCain."

Despite lingering doubts in Tbilisi and Kyiv, Obama indicated clear support for NATO expansion in a number of policy statements issued before the election.

One statement noted that Obama and his vice-presidential running mate, Senator Joseph Biden, "have consistently called for NATO Membership Action Plans for Ukraine and Georgia, and support their admission to NATO when they are ready."

The readiness of Georgia and Ukraine remains, however, a separate question -- particularly as Tbilisi continues to answer for its actions in the recent war with Russia.

Shalva Pichkhadze, who heads the Tbilisi-based organization "Georgia for NATO,” acknowledges the August conflict was a setback for Georgia's membership bid. But he says he believes the election of Barack Obama as the 44th U.S. president will not be a roadblock in Georgia's long-term membership goals.

"For me it's more important to what degree Georgia is doing everything it needs to in order to get into NATO,” he said. "As for Obama, if he supports NATO expansion -- and I think he will -- then Ukraine and Georgia are the likeliest candidates for entry. And we're doing everything we can so that it will be worth it to Obama and our allies to fight for our membership in NATO."

Back To Basics

Not all Georgians may measure Obama's worth in terms of his stance on NATO. Sozar Subari, the country's human rights ombudsman, has been a frequent critic of Saakashvili's leadership style and says the best contribution Obama could make would be to return Georgia's focus to questions governance and civil society.

In this, he says, he sees a notable difference between Obama and Georgia's "old friend" John McCain.

"What I expect from Obama, as opposed to McCain, is this: more support for democracy in Georgia," Subari says. "I hope that the huge support for Georgia we saw with the previous administration will continue, but that more attention will be paid to democracy within Georgia."

Mitchell of Columbia University echoes the sentiment. "The best outcome of an Obama victory," he said, "would be that the Georgian-U.S. relationship is returned to normal."

Source: Radio Free Europe

Quantum of Solace Premiere: Bond And Olga Blast Kiev

KIEV, Ukraine -- They are not in love, there is no sex, and only a short kiss. The Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, needed just that to shatter a stereotype about Ukrainian models-turned-actresses in the film industry.

Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko in “Quantum of Solace”.
“Quantum of Solace,” the 22nd sequel in the Bond saga, hit London last week and Kyiv, yesterday. It departs from the usual spy-romance, padded with daring chase, treason and location glamour.

Ukrainian model Kurylenko plays a chica Latina, Camille, contrasting delightfully English Daniel Craig as James Bond. Foreign tabloids anticipate that her “violent, sick-makingly stunning, and mercurial beauty” will tame Hollywood at the speed of light. It was about time to go beyond Ukrainian born Milla Jovovich and finally discover “the sixth element” – Kurylenko.

While Kurylenko is no staple catch in the West, in Ukraine she is a quintessential Slavic woman. Looking naturally attractive without much make-up, she graced Kyiv two weeks ago to present the film.

“I am like Camille in real life,” she said with calm confidence. “If you want something, you must go out and do it. This is what I am. I achieved everything on my own.” In the movie, Camille seeks to avenge the killing of her family, which happened before her eyes when she was a child.

Rumor has it that filmmakers picked her out of 400 women. Perhaps, the way her eyes skillfully hide emotion had something to do with it. “It is not hard to find a beautiful actress,” said Craig, reflecting on the selection process. “But we needed a stand-alone character detached from James Bond, someone on her own mission.”

Kurylenko lived up to the description. Like many Ukrainian women, she has an unspeakable solitude pertinent to Camille’s role in the film.

“Quantum” picks up from where “Casino Royale,” the 2006 film, left off. Bond’s beloved Vesper Lynd, played by enchanting Eva Green, betrayed him and eventually died in a flooded building. With a crushed heart, Bond seeks revenge chasing villains through the scenic landscapes of Italian Lakes. In historic Siena, Italy, he spares little of the medieval architecture trying to uncover the Quantum, a murky crime syndicate.

Bond then heads to Haiti where he meets Camille, the Russian Bolivian, who wants to kill the same guy he is after.

Wearing a little black skirt and an orange top, Kurylenko looks more like an icy tomboy than an international woman of mystery. Together with Bond, they seek revenge for their own personal reasons while trying to avert a coup d’etat in Bolivia planned to take control of drinking water supplies. They go globe trotting through Italy, Haiti, Austria, Bolivia, England and Russia drenching everything with blood on the way.

At one point, 007’s boss M, played by Judi Dench, says: “Bond, if you could avoid killing every lead there is, that would be appreciated.” Things get so bad that M revokes his license to kill. As a result, it gets hard to track who is duping whom and where it all began.

Many critics have complained that the film has too many action scenes and lacks the wit and the seductive appeal of the other Bond hits. For the first time, the iconic phrase, “Bond, James Bond” did not make it on screen leaving it short of comic relief.

Film director, Mark Foster, said he wanted to bring an emotional component into the movie. Last time, the franchise took a risk replacing the traditional dark Bond with blond Craig in Casino Royal. This time they slashed traditional womanizing and humor. The agent is a boiling pot of rage after Vesper let him down so – logically – there is little place for romance. This is supposed to find reflection in the movie’s name, the “Quantum of Solace.”

Film makers took the name from Ian Fleming’s story “For Your Eyes Only.” The author wrote that the quantum of solace is “a precise figure defining the comfort, humanity, fellow feeling required between any pair of people for love to survive. If the quantum of solace is 0, then love is dead.” One can see this feeling in Camille and Bond. Some agree with it; others do not.

“I was disappointed there was so little dialogue, flirtation and characterization in this Bond [movie]: Forster and his writers…clearly thought this sort of sissy nonsense has to be cut out in favor of explosions,” said Peter Bradshaw in his review for the Guardian.

James Christopher from the Times, however, found Bond “right for our times… [and] no longer a work in progress. He is now the cruel, finished article.”

Along with her “hard as nails beauty”, Kurylenko’s performance had a warm reception.

In Kyiv, it seemed as if she was still getting used to the spotlight. A recent newcomer to the acting scene, she quickly became a media babe for her rags-to-riches story. Born in the Soviet Union, she saw the demise of the great state with ensuing poverty in the small coastal town of Berdyansk. She dabbled in ballet and a little theater at school without thinking much of a career on stage. While on holiday in Moscow, however, a modeling scout recruited her for what next turned into a catwalk in France. After a few supporting roles in French movies, she played a vampire with Elijah Wood in “Paris, I Love You.” Then came “Hitman” and the “Quantum of Solace.”

In the Bond film, she insisted on doing most of the stunts herself. “I was practicing martial arts four times a day, learned how to fall, shoot, and skydive,” said Kurylenko, noticeably eager to talk on the subject. The Bond film killed her fear of heights and now she is “addicted to flight simulations in London.”

In Kyiv, she looked plain in her small black jacket and talked plainly as if asking to reciprocate.

Her Russian skills left much to be desired; she was mixing it with English and French. Questions in Ukrainian she could not make out at all. Unlike many Ukrainian celebrities, she opted to keep her private life in complete privacy and politely refused to comment.

At the age of 28, Kurylenko has been married and divorced twice. Having catwalked the world for more than 10 years now, she said she will not return to modeling. Her next big challenge is to keep the stakes high and move beyond the 22nd Bond girl with that unspeakable icy mystery and charm.

Source: Kyiv Post

IMF Approves 16.4 Bln Dollar Aid For Ukraine

WASHINGTON, DC -- The International Monetary Fund has approved a 16.4 billion dollar (12.8 billion euro) loan aimed at rescuing Ukraine from a deepening financial crisis, officials said.

IMF deputy managing director Murilo Portugal.
The IMF said Wednesday it hoped the two-year agreement for Ukraine would curb inflation to single digits and shore up banks that are suffering in concert with the global credit crunch.

"The Ukrainian economy, especially the banking system, is experiencing considerable stress," said IMF deputy managing director Murilo Portugal in a statement.

"Falling prices for Ukraine's major export, steel, have led to a substantial deterioration in Ukraine's current account outlook."

The IMF approval, made under its "fast-track emergency financing mechanism," means that 4.5 billion dollars will be immediately disbursed, Portugal said.

Some banks have reportedly frozen customers' accounts while untold numbers of Ukrainians have rushed to withdraw their cash, fearing the worst as job losses spread.

The banking sector has been hit hard due to its increased exposure to foreign loans since the Orange Revolution protests of 2004 brought to power a pro-Western leadership and economic reformers pressed for more European integration.

Portugal said the government plan and the IMF loan "aims to restore financial and macroeconomic stability by adopting a flexible exchange rate regime with targeted intervention."

On Friday, Ukraine's parliament approved legislation clearing the way for the IMF loan, and establishing a stabilization fund to help ailing banks and companies unable to service their foreign debts due to the worldwide financial crisis.

Guarantees for bank deposits will be increased so as to bolster confidence in the banking system, and the government will be able to take a stake in lenders if necessary.

In addition, Ukraine's budget will be tightened and spending cut.

Portugal said key parts of the plan include "a pre-emptive recapitalization of banks, and a prudent fiscal policy coupled with tighter monetary policy."

"Resolute implementation of the program should help reduce inflation to single digits by the end of the program," he added.

Ukraine has been among the countries hardest hit by global financial turmoil as a plunge in the price of steel, its main export, exacerbates a credit crunch and a sharp fall in stock prices.

At the same time, the downturn has become increasingly politicized, with the president earlier in the week blaming the government for the country's problems.

Portugal praised the Ukrainian government's plan, calling it "a strong and comprehensive package of measures to address the challenges Ukraine is facing and the Fund has provided commensurate financial assistance."

Last month, Olexandre Chlapak, a senior figure with the presidential administration, said Ukraine faced bleak prospects for the coming year.

It could expect "a fall in GDP, a drop of up to 40 percent in foreign demand for Ukrainian products, and zero industrial growth, or in the best case, two to three percent."

Source: AFP

4 x 4 ‘Bribe’ Allegations Over Yushchenko Arms Scandal

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, sold weapons to Georgia with a 20% discount in exchange for two luxury Land Rover cars, according to a parliamentary inquiry.

Luxury Range Rover Sport
The accusations over the gifts, worth $100,000 each, were made by Valeryi Konovalyuk, the head of the inquiry committee which is attached to the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada. Yushchenko has denied the allegations.

In an interview with the Russian daily “Izvestia”, Konovalyuk said that, according to his sources, the Land Rovers were received as prepayment for a weapons’ transaction two and a half years ago.

But information about the deal has only just emerged and, according to Konovalyuk, severely taints the president's credibility.

Yushchenko's press secretary, Irina Vannikova, released a statement saying the Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili, has never given the Ukrainian president Land Rovers as gifts.

However, according to the inquiry committee's sources, the president himself and his closest entourage currently drive the cars.

It’s alleged that attempts were made to legitimise the ownership of the 4 x 4 cars after the story emerged. This could be achieved through tying the cars to a government organisation.

The investigation into the legitimacy of Ukraine's arms trade with Georgia opened on the 2nd of September - on the same day that the governing coalition in the Rada broke down.

Since that day, Konovalyuk has made multiple accusations against the Ukrainian government. He claimed, for example, that the president secured several illegal arms deals with the Georgian side and continued to supply the Georgian army even after the August conflict in the Caucasus began.

The investigation was partially provoked by Russian and South Ossetian claims that Ukraine supplied the Georgian army during the August conflict.

Konovalyuk, whilst summing up his investigatory visit to Georgia and South Ossetia, said: "We have seen Ukrainian military technology on the site, which has been left there by the Georgian army. We have received information regarding Ukrainian specialists who have participated in military action on the Georgian side."

The president and his cabinet have never denied selling weapons to Georgia, pointing out that the arms trade between the two was never banned, and was conducted within the framework of international law.

Nevertheless, the presidential office remains adamant that there were never any illegal actions within Ukraine's military transactions with Georgia.

Source: RT

Yushchenko Ruins NATO Chances With His Behavior

KIEV, Ukraine -- Harboring Yuliaphobia is hampering the Ukrainian president’s ability to govern. A leading Western ambassador in Kyiv said recently that he and others had repeatedly warned President Victor Yushchenko that he had to choose between removing Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister, thereby ruining the 2004 Orange Revolution coalition, or advancing the nation toward NATO membership. He could not have both.

Viktor Yushchenko at NATO headquarters.
Maintaining a united pro-democratic coalition and government in place has been the West’s demand since the military alliance first began to consider allowing Ukraine to enter a membership action plan, a concrete step towards NATO membership, after Yushchenko visited Washington in April 2005. Only a year later, Ukraine failed the test of political stability and Orange unity in 2006 during NATO’s Riga summit. It failed again in April, during the Bucharest NATO summit and a NATO review meeting.

Still, in September, Yushchenko incredibly said: “Everyone needs to understand that everything Ukraine needed to do to obtain a positive answer (on NATO), if we speak openly and honestly, has been done.”

That is not true. The main obstacle to Ukraine’s successful drive to join NATO is Yushchenko’s inability to place national interests above his personal animosity toward Tymoshenko. The president’s undermining of political stability will lead to Ukraine having five governments during his term in office, instability that has prevented any government from launching an effective NATO awareness campaign.

Yushchenko also removed the most pro-NATO and most effective military reformer that Ukraine has possessed, former defense minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, who is untainted by corrupt allegations. While defense minister under three governments, Hrytsenko was never once invited by Yushchenko to his office for a meeting.

Hrytsenko was in Yushchenko’s office on four occasions during his tenure between 2005-2007, but each time it was at his initiative. As Hrytsenko said in an interview in June, Yushchenko never understood the depth and types of reforms that were required in the armed forces to integrate them with NATO. This was, Hrytsenko believes, because NATO membership was never a priority for Yushchenko.

Ukraine’s pre-term parliamentary elections, now in doubt, were originally called for the same weekend in December that NATO foreign ministers are due to meet to review Ukraine and Georgia’s “progress” toward meeting NATO criteria. Obviously, NATO will postpone a decision on Ukraine until next year.

If Yushchenko follows Leonid Kravchuk in serving only one presidential term, then the last chance he has of fulfilling his dream of being the president who takes Ukraine into the preparatory stage of NATO membership will be in 2009, his last year in office. Ukraine, though, could also fail the test of political stability in April 2009, during NATO’s 60th anniversary summit when Ukraine and Georgia could again come under consideration for membership action plans.

Yushchenko’s preference for pre-term elections over compromise, because of his loathing of Tymoshenko, means that a new parliamentary coalition and government will not be in place until March 2009, a month before the NATO anniversary and too little time to show NATO doubters, like Germany, that Ukraine is politically stable.

Ukraine’s chances of advancing toward NATO membership next year, even after an election, might be thwarted by Yushchenko’s own actions. In recent years, the West has pushed for Orange unity as a stepping stone to NATO and European Union membership. This, though, is no longer likely. That train has left the station.

Ukraine’s chances of moving closer to NATO membership will be derailed, as in 2006, if an anti-crisis coalition is formed with Yanukovych returning as prime minister in 2009. Next year will also be the year of the presidential election campaign. NATO membership is an unpopular topic for candidates to campaign on.

The irony is that the August crisis in Georgia has made NATO membership more popular in Ukraine. In recent polls, 31 percent of Ukrainians now support membership.

Ukraine and Georgia will always be the two most difficult countries to get into NATO, since they are nations that Russia regards as part of its sphere of influence. Both countries have Russian military bases and both have pro-Russian separatist enclaves. Ukrainians are also much less supportive of NATO membership than Georgia, where public sentiment is 70 percent favorable.

To have any chance of making progress toward NATO, Yushchenko will have to place national interests above personal conflicts by restoring the Orange union in order to show NATO and the EU that a pro-Western coalition is in place. Yushchenko must also summon the will to battle corruption and establish the rule of law. Instead, as senior Western officials advising Ukraine have complained, Ukraine has stagnated in both areas since the Orange Revolution.

Yushchenko has often not abided by the law, does not understand the importance of the equality of all citizens before the law and blocks the prosecution of members of the elite for abuse of office. Senior officials continue to be involved in energy corruption in RosUkrEnergo and Vanco.

Instead, the president’s ostensible support for Ukraine’s NATO membership has been completely undermined by his own inability to contain his deep "Yuliaphobia." After the 2007 parliamentary elections, Yushchenko eventually agreed to support an Orange coalition and Tymoshenko as prime minister, but then proceeded to immediately undermine it.

He appointed Party of Regions parliamentary faction leader Raisa Bohatyriova to chair the National Security and Defense Council, which, again, became misused as an alternative government rather than as what it is constitutionally defined to do: coordinate foreign and security policy.

It is supremely ironic that the president’s support for Ukraine’s NATO membership is undermined by his own actions. Yushchenko has made a choice: namely, that it is more important for him to destroy and remove Tymoshenko from government than it is for Ukraine to join NATO. The president and Ukraine will have to live with the consequences.

Source: Kyiv Post

Kiev's Scammers Target Easy Prey Foreigners

KIEV, Ukraine -- Tricks and trade of Kyiv con artists revealed. “Reinvest, and tell your friends!” This was Charles Ponzi’s enthusiastic sales pitch for the infamous pyramid scheme bearing his name.

Kiev's wallet drop scam.
What Ponzi realized is what modern-day scammers do also: the vulnerabilities of human nature, not necessarily low intelligence levels, are the driving forces behind the success of scams. Tricksters prey on human weaknesses like greed, lust, dishonesty and vanity. If that doesn’t work, then exploiting traits such as honesty, compassion or naivety will do just fine. Whatever brings in the cash.

Kyiv’s most notorious confidence trick, used exclusively against foreigners, is the old wallet drop scam (kydalyvo in Ukrainian). Despite numerous warnings on embassy websites, web forums and by word-of-mouth, the ingenious scam is still successfully performed on unwitting visitors to Ukraine’s capital.

It is creative in its simplicity and crafty in its form since it is usually non-violent and involves the extraction of an unsuspecting victim’s money via sleight of hand. Police consider petty theft a criminal case only when the loss of money or valuables exceeds Hr 723. Lesser thefts are punished by administrative sanctions, such as fines.

One variation of the hustle works like this: An individual notices a wallet or transparent bag full of money in plain view. It is then scooped up by a passerby, who asks the targeted victim to split the money. During the conversation, a second person appears, claiming to have lost his money. The “discovered” money is counted and soon the hapless victim finds himself accused of theft and asked to produce his wallet, which is emptied of its contents.

“There are different variations of the wallet drop scam but all of them involve two individuals working together,” said Ronnie Catipon, the security attache for the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.

Catipon cites a variation, in which the second person poses as a police officer, and threatens the victim with arrest if he doesn’t hand over their wallet for inspection to answer for the “missing” money. “It’s non-confrontational, it’s non-violent, but, nevertheless, it is a crime and people have lost considerable amounts of money,” Catipon said.

In the first half of 2008, there were 437 crimes committed against foreigners in Ukraine, of which 45 resulted in deaths, according to Internal Ministry statistics.

The vast majority of foreign deaths in Ukraine are citizens from the former Soviet republics, mostly Russians and Moldovans, according the central administration of the Internal Ministry.

And many crimes occur in Kyiv where, in the first eight months of the year, there were 240 reports filed by foreigners with the Kyiv police, of which 84 became criminal cases upon review, said Kyiv city’s Internal Ministry deputy spokesperson, Volodymyr Dmytrenko.

Interestingly, the police and American Embassy couldn’t provide statistics on confidence scams. The embassy’s Catipon said many cases go unreported, since the victims are too embarrassed and ashamed to say they were victims. “Besides, the whole operation happens so quickly that the details get lost in hindsight,” the security attache said.

There appears, however, to be a direct correlation between economic hard times and an increase in scams.

“If the economic situation is bad, more people are desperate, more people are hungry, they want to put food on their table. They look to victimize other people,” Catipon, a former police officer, said.

So foreigners should brace themselves.

Jason Pochapsky might have fallen victim to the wallet drop on his first trip to Kyiv two years ago. But he was missing a crucial ingredient: He had no money on him. “I saw a clear bag filled with what looked like $20 bills,” Pochapsky recalled. “A man picked up the bag, offered to split it ‘50-50’ and, when I declined, he stuck it in the inside of his jacket. When the second man appeared and padded the man down to no avail, he asked to see my wallet, which was empty … the two played out their supposed roles and disappeared both looking disappointed,” the Canadian said.

Although the wallet scam is by far the most successful operation, according to Catipon, it’s not the only scam for which foreigners fall.

An American who didn’t want to be identified said he fell for the “deaf/mute” scam, which preys on the desire to help those in distress. In this scenario, a foreigner is approached by a person posing as a deaf-mute, holding a piece of paper with a written address on it. When the victim tries to help him find his way, his pockets are picked while distracted by the constant flailing and guttural mumbling of the “deaf-mute.” In this case, the American was relieved of his smart-phone.

Scams usually take place at popular tourist spots, such as Pecherska Lavra, Andriyivskiy Uzviz, St. Sophia Square and “wherever there are large numbers of tourists,” Catipon observed.

Female hustlers bring natural advantages to the world of scamming.

The advent of online dating has enriched Ukrainian women to the tune of thousands – or even tens of thousands of dollars. Much of it is extracted from foreigners harmlessly, for the most part, except to the men’s bank accounts.

The U.S. Consular section said the internet scams have a common theme. “The Ukrainian woman solicits money and gifts from the U.S. citizen while leading him on about her true intent in the relationship.” Westerners and their money are used for travel, computers, fake requests for medicine and fictional surgeries.

“Many men victimized in these scams harbor misconceptions about women from this part of the world,” the U.S. Consular section said in a statement. “The men also believe the women here are so desperate to emigrate that physical differences, i.e. beauty and age, are not factors in finding a husband … this usually is not the case.”

According to anti-scam.org, an online blacklist of women in the former Soviet Union who are identified as scammers, there are three types of scenarios.

The most common and simplest one is to request “money for correspondence.” Small amounts of up to $100 are asked to pay for tabs at Internet cafes to continue exchanging e-mails.

A second and bolder approach is to ask for gift deliveries, even money to pay for the processing of travel visas, usually a student or fiance visa, and airfare to the U.S. to visit their newly found loved ones.

A third reason for money is to help pay for medicine or an urgently needed surgery. “Sometimes a woman strings along the man for so long that she actually goes through the visa process, gets the visa, travels to the U.S. for a few months, and then comes back to Ukraine. And sometimes the woman will begin the process all over again (sometimes with the same man),” the U.S. Consular section said.

Female online scammers are getting more sophisticated, according to David Skol, owner of flowerstoukraine.com, a flower delivery service. He also offers a U.S.-based scam-check service. “What we’re seeing is that women are providing more information to look like they’re not hiding anything, such as a scanned visa they send when corresponding. Or, a group of people start a website advertising a fictitious travel agency to look legitimate, which they shut down as soon as they successfully extract money several times,” Skol said.

Skol said he started the online scam-check service when many addresses for flower deliveries turned out to be phony or non-existent. Skol said his network of agents cover more than 600 towns and cities in the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine.

Exercising basic common sense is the best way of avoiding street scams, Catipon said. “Simply walk away. Because if you get involved, if you try to engage the person, and the second person gets involved, it becomes a mess,” he said.

As for petty theft, to which many foreigners fall victim, being aware and being prepared for outings significantly decreases the chances of falling prey, said Serhiy Pashynskyy, safety and security coordinator for the U.S. Peace Corps in Ukraine, which has almost 300 volunteers.

“Plan ahead. When entering public places like markets or stadiums, take small bills and keep your wallet hidden and be wary of people asking questions,” Pashynskyy said. “Do not flash valuables and stay near elderly people who are considered to be decent and harmless, uniformed personnel and keep one part of your body next to a wall to minimize the directions from which people could approach you.”

As for online dating scams, Skol said the advice is simple: “Never send money.”

Source: Kyiv Post

Turkey Willing To Host Euro 2012 If Ukraine, Poland Out

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Turkey has offered to host the 2012 European Football Championship if Ukraine and Poland, co-hosts of Europe's biggest football organization, back out over the economic turmoil that badly affected Ukraine, the Turkish sports minister said on Wednesday.

Turkish State Minister for Sports Murat Basesgioglu.
Turkish State Minister for Sports Murat Basesgioglu told a parliamentary committee meeting that Turkey has hosted major international sporting events in the past and could competently host Euro 2012.

News reports earlier said that Ukraine's severe financial crisis was threatening the country's ability to host the 2012 European Championship as most construction projects have stalled due to a liquidity crunch.

Ukraine is co-hosting the championship with neighboring Poland, but both have been warned on multiple occasions by UEFA, European soccer's governing body, to speed up preparations for the organization.

Poland's soccer chief suggested late October that Germany could replace Ukraine as co-host of Euro 2012.

Source: Hürriyet

Taras Kuzio: Yushchenko Should Not Have Called Ukraine To The Ballot Box

WASHINGTON, DC -- In the forthcoming parliamentary elections, the Ukrainian president Victor Yushchenko hopes to get around 15 to 16 per cent of the vote for his supporters and then enter into a grand coalition with the Party of the Regions.

Taras Kuzio is an adjunct professor at the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University. He was speaking at Chatham House.
This would give Yushchenko about 50 seats in the December elections, but the president still expects to be able to appoint the prime minister. He wants to appoint a "technical" figure such as the speaker of the Rada, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Yushchenko is only able to work with a "technical" prime minister (an office holder without his own distinct political identity).

By forming such a coalition, Yushchenko expects the Party of the Regions to support his presidential campaign. He will put the case to the oligarchs in Eastern Ukraine that the Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is the real danger to their interests and present himself as the status quo president.

This strategy could easily fail. Yushchenko may not win 50 seats; the number of deputies supporting him could be closer to 20.

Tymoshenko will campaign on the basis that she didn't want the election, but it has come at an opportune time for her. She could get 35 to 37 per cent of the vote, which, as some parties do not cross the threshold for representation in the Rada, would translate to more than 40 per cent of the seats.

Tymoshenko may return as prime minister, at which point the West will ask itself and the Ukraine's executive what was the point of all this.

Alternatively, the Party of the Regions could form a coalition with the Communists and Lytvyn. They will then make the case to the Akhmetov clan that they are in a strong enough position to put forward Viktor Yanukovich, the leader of the Party of Regions, as prime minister and eventual presidential candidate.

If this occurs, Yushchenko is finished. Yushchenko has thrown the dice up in the air, hoping for the best, but he has little idea how they will land.

Everyone is amazed that he is going into an election with a popularity rating of just 7 per cent. This is the end of the Yushchenko–Tymoshenko alliance. It is very hard to see how they could patch things up now.

Source: The Independent

Ukraine Seeks Arms, Energy Deals With Libya

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's president called Tuesday for greater military and energy cooperation with Libya as he courted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who was making his last stop on a three-nation tour of former Soviet republics.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (L) and Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko take part in an official welcoming ceremony in Kiev November 4, 2008.
Gadhafi's visits to Ukraine, Belarus and Russia appear aimed at spurring competition for arms and energy deals with Libya, an energy-rich north African nation.

President Viktor Yushchenko said at a news conference that Ukraine has "colossal potential" for supplying arms, technology and other materiel to Libya.

He also said Ukraine can offer Libya access to Ukraine's oil refinery industry or networks of retail filling stations.

Neither Gadhafi nor Yushchenko would say whether they had reached a formal deal on arms or on oil and gas supplies. More talks are planned for Wednesday.

Gadhafi may also be using the trip to increase the competitive pressure on Western companies that have sought weapons deals and or access to Libya's gas reserves.

Attention from the West jumped after 2003, when Gadhafi renounced terrorism and efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Under Thunder

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine has made a sure step toward overcoming the consequences of the global financial crisis. The Verkhovna Rada has adopted (in the first reading) the notorious package of anti-crisis bills. The co-authors of the document call it “historic” and mete out interviews.

Deputies applaud after voting anti-crisis measures in Kiev. Ukraine's parliament approved legislation clearing the way for a 16.5 billion dollar (12.8 billion euro) International Monetary Fund crisis loan.
Their well-trained voices have a ring of fear. Yes, they are afraid, and many say honestly that they do not know why. Some huff and puff to cameras, spouting abstruse terms. The incompetent cite the competent and venture to make forecasts. The cognizant judiciously refrain from public statements. Everyone is aware of an imminent impact.

Few know when and no one knows how. It is very difficult to predict the scale or even possible forms of the impending doom. Theoretical knowledge and practical experience prove to be of little help. Far from all victims of the financial tsunami in Europe and the United States were naпve ignorant bunglers, but the crisis hit them all the same.

The positive vote for the document that opened the door to the IMF loan was not a conscious step but a reflexive attempt to do something. It is totally wrong to call this first step “conscious” and “sure”.

Some even say that “Ukraine has taken a resolute step toward restoring the democratic coalition.” It would sound funny if it did not look so regrettable. All the reasons why the MPs voted for the anti-crisis bill are known, but the terms “coalition” and “democracy” are not in that number.

“Ukraine has taken a step toward cancellation of the preterm parliamentary election.” This is the main political result of the past week. Now the probability of yet another race is very low.

“The crisis has buried the President’s absurd idea and stopped the election.” Such categorical statements made by Tymoshenko’s supporters are somewhat hasty and not quite earnest. Confronted by the threat, the political leaders had to change their plans and actions but have not joined their forces yet.

Each of them tries to make the approaching economic recess “the enemy’s enemy.” Yushchenko believes that the crisis will “drown” Tymoshenko. Yanukovych hopes that it will “bury” both. Such a specific attitude to the real threat disables resistance.

Economic crises make victims of friends and foes alike, so the country’s bankruptcy is sure to ruin each leader’s political career – Yushchenko’s, Tymoshenko’s, and Yanukovych’s.

Bankova (street in downtown Kyiv, seat of the Presidential Secretariat) is evidently revising its initial plans. Yushchenko keeps insisting on the early election, but his insistence is losing resolve.

The Premier is so far making the most of her trump cards – her influence on courts and control over the central budget. The presidential decree [on the parliament’s dissolution and the preterm election] is still in court limbo and the Central Election Commission is still waiting for money to launch the election campaign.

It is already clear to everyone that the election will not take place this year. But will it do Yushchenko any good next year? His initial aim – to get rid of Tymoshenko – makes no sense now. He took this aim in September, but under the present circumstances the country will get a new government in late spring at the earliest – just a couple of weeks ahead of the presidential race.

Besides, Yushchenko is beginning to see the approaching economic danger. Those who have the privilege of contacting him are still doubtful whether he realizes the hugeness of the looming threat.

He simply turned a blind eye to it until the nosedive of the national currency drew him from his idйes fixes – the NATO Membership Action Plan, the Holodomor [international recognition of the Great Famine of 1932-1933], and the early election.

Yushchenko must have come to realize that in the coming months the country can not remain without the parliament and government and that Tymoshenko’s premiership might eventually earn him good political fortune as all impacts of the crisis could be blamed on her.

Yushchenko’s “alter ego” Baloha (chief of the Presidential Secretariat) is not interested in the early election, either. He sees that his political party (United Center composed of renegade members of the pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine and other rightist and centrist parties) stands no chance of entering the new parliament.

Seeing that the OU is on the verge of political death, its “flexible” members refuse to ally with Baloha’s party in an election bloc and even demand guarantees from Yushchenko that after the election he will not force them to join the Regions Party in a new coalition.

The latest surveys show that the pro-presidential political force has meager electoral chances. Baloha does not want to be left holding the bag after his political project fails and so has to restrain his ardor.

Yushchenko and his confidants keep declaring their determination to follow through, but their serious doubts as to the expediency of their venture are already visible.

The Regions Party is no longer enthusiastic about the election race. Most of its members, who hated to ally with Tymoshenko, regarded the early election as the only reasonable alternative to such an alliance, but now this “hard choice” looks petty vis-а-vis a far more serious problem: the party’s sponsors are running out of money and are reluctant to invest in the election campaign.

One of them said recently, “The robbed don’t perform charities.” They are not even ready to continue paying the regular “party tithe.” Why should they sponsor Yushchenko’s election campaign?

They are too busy saving their assets to work at political projects. They are convinced that this crisis will hit both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko and believe that the lower their ratings fall the more votes the RP will collect.

They have every reason to expect Tymoshenko to become more compliant under the present political and economic circumstances and each of them wants to get his piece of the pie in a haggle. The RP team has never been so disunited.

The Tymoshenko team, which has always been known for discipline and submissive subordination, is confused as never before. Each player is waiting for a “miracle” but none imagines how Tymoshenko can work it out.

For months Tymoshenko has been advised to give up holding on to her post and vacate the “electric chair.” Now it is too late, even if she does.

Today she has the tactical advantage: Yushchenko is now less persistent about the election and has to echo her rhetoric about “confronting the crisis as one.” This is ingratiating, but what’s the use? The time for lip service is over and the leadership is unprepared to act.

Tymoshenko says she is ready for her Cabinet’s partial or even complete rotation. Many experts call her executive team the weakest one in the country’s independent history. The question is: where are those who are able to adequately respond to new challenges? Tymoshenko could invite practicing entrepreneurs, but once they occupy top positions they may just as well lobby for their own business. And after all, who would let them manage the country?

Tymoshenko is obviously on the horns of a dilemma: she knows that the government needs professionals (though she hardly knows where to find such kamikazes) and that she needs the majority in the parliament. To the latter end she is even ready to make concessions to Yushchenko, Yanukovych, and Akhmetov.

The presence of their proteges in her Cabinet would even spare her the trouble of undivided responsibility for the possible fiasco. Her teammates explain, “Nothing doing – one has to break an egg to fry it.” They are right, but why break it over a trash can instead of a frying pan?

So far, the RP is not ready to delegate its men to the Tymoshenko Cabinet and is in no hurry to resume “peace talks” with her (on which she counts so much). Yushchenko does not want to close the books on the election issue. Both forces believe they have time to wait and see how painfully the crisis hits the country and how effectively Tymoshenko deals with it.

Tymoshenko has no time to wait. If her government proves to be helpless in the next few months, her career is doomed. She hopes to keep the situation under control for six months and counts on Yushchenko’s support. She does not expect him to put spokes in her wheel: if the country goes to pot, he will have to answer for it, too.

For the time being she withholds criticism against him and his chancellery, but when the presidential race starts in summer she is going to put herself across as a “guardian angel” whose wings he has been cutting.

Yushchenko, on the contrary, plays up his role in saving the country from economic upheavals. He has almost given up on his idea of reelecting the parliament but has not decided yet how to explain his retreat. Admitting that Tymoshenko was right and he was not, he would own to his failure to follow through and so let his low popularity rating drop to zero.

It was vitally important for him to get the parliament to adopt his version of the anti-crisis bill: if the resistance to the crisis proved to be consolidated and effective, he would attribute its success to himself; if not, then he would blame Tymoshenko for her failure to implement “such a good plan of saving the country.”

Meanwhile, Bankova keeps its horses ready for the race: if the situation worsens in the near three months, it will simply drown Tymoshenko in the way of popular anger and will have a good excuse for its possible alliance with the RP under the slogan of “uniting the East and West of the country in the face of economic collapse.”

Bankova may as well be contemplating another scheme: introduction of direct presidential rule and concentration of all power in the President’s hands. However, such a scheme is hardly feasible. Both Tymoshenko and her political rivals in the RP understand that it would frustrate their political plans because Yushchenko would conserve his regime at any cost.

Besides, it is clear to everyone that Yushchenko is the least fit for the role of an “economic stabilizer.”

There are those who believe that his predecessor Leonid Kuchma would cope with this mission at the head of the government. Just imagine how many MPs would vote for him…

As we can see, the incumbent lawmakers are not only actively resisting the preterm election. They are resisting the hard choice of either joining hands or risking their heads. But they can no longer sit on the fence behind others’ backs…

Source: Zerkalo Nedeli

Cash Crunch Halts Work On Ukraine Hotels For Euro Cup

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s severe financial crisis is threatening the country’s ability to host the 2012 European Championship as most construction projects have stalled due to a liquidity crunch, an organizing official said Friday.

Chairman of Ukraine’s organizing committee, Evhen Chervonenko.
The chairman of Ukraine’s organizing committee, Evhen Chervonenko, said construction has frozen at about 80 per cent of the hotels needed to be built for the event, as banks are no longer extending loans to developers.

“For sure it (the crisis) will not help,” Chervonenko said. “I don’t want to think and believe that Ukraine will lose Euro.”

The global financial crisis has hit Ukraine hard, and the country is expected to plunge into a recession next year. Chervonenko said he would seek government support to help finance the construction of hotels, adding that guests and athletes could be put up on cruise ships in the host cities if they are not ready in time for the tournament.

However, the main projects — airports and stadiums — are going well and are on schedule, Chervonenko said.

Ukraine is co-hosting the championship with neighbouring Poland, but both have been warned multiple times by European soccer’s governing body to speed up preparations for the event.

UEFA will decide in the first half of 2009 how many stadiums and cities will be used as venues.

Asked whether Ukraine will host the games, Chervonenko was unsure.

“You know, I don’t even want to think,” he said. “If, when getting into a racing car, you think that you will crash, this will happen for sure.”

Chervonenko also criticized a statement by Grzegorz Lato, the newly elected head of the Polish Football Federation, who suggested that Poland might end up co-hosting the championship with Germany.

“I think Germany could join in” if Ukraine drops out, Lato said.

Source: AP

As Ukraine Staggers, Its Leaders Quarrel

KIEV, Ukraine -- Four years ago this month, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of this capital city to take back an election they saw as stolen.

A sign last week in Kiev, Ukraine, showing that one United States dollar could be exchanged for 5.85 Ukrainian hryvnia. The hryvnia hit a low point that week.
That outpouring, called the Orange Revolution, brought fresh hopes for freedoms and for a release from the country's Soviet past that few other former republics had ever experienced.

The early promise of those days frayed in recent years, but economically times were good, and the country always seemed to manage.

But now, confronted by the global financial crisis, the new Ukraine is facing the single biggest test of its stability, and its leaders, by most accounts, seem to be close to failing.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister, and Viktor Yushchenko, the president, onetime political allies, are now locked in a bitter power struggle that has paralyzed the state, leaving it without a leader at precisely the time it most needs one.

Even as the West bends to help it, with the International Monetary Fund pledging an emergency $16.5 billion loan last month, it barely pulled itself together to meet the conditions for the money. Yushchenko, intent on getting rid of Tymoshenko, is trying to force early elections for December. To make sure the elections come off, his party spent most of last week trying to slip a campaign finance clause into the legislation that was required for the loan.

On Monday he relented and signed the crisis legislation into law without the clause. But his administration continued to insist that the elections proceed.

"It is a crime to conduct elections in this situation," said Yulia Mostova, a prominent writer at Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, a weekly newspaper published in Kiev. "The chain of authority in Ukraine is broken. It's at war with itself."

Ukraine's paralysis raises difficult questions for the West. It is a country of 46 million in a strategic spot between European Union countries and Russia, and its stability is crucial to the region.

Yushchenko has taken a combative approach toward Russia, which demonstrated a new willingness to settle disputes by force in Georgia this summer. He has pushed for Ukraine to join NATO, an agenda not particularly popular among Ukrainians, 17 percent of whom are ethnic Russians. And he has vowed not to renew a contract that allows Russia's Black Sea fleet to dock in a Ukrainian port. On Saturday, a ban on Russian cable television programming took effect.

For Ukrainians, the fears are more about their immediate future. At one point last week, their currency hit its lowest point since it was introduced in 1996, and securities that insure Ukrainian government debt are trading at near-default levels. But perhaps their greatest disappointment is over their leaders, whose energies are focused not on ways to lift the country out of crisis, but instead on what is widely seen as a selfish struggle over power.

"People feel let down to the point of tears," Mostova said. "Many feel they've been used. Ukraine had a chance for a qualitative, civilized jump forward, but it wasn't taken."

Ukraine's economy is particularly vulnerable. About 40 percent of its foreign currency earnings come from the sale of industrial metals, which have plunged in price in recent weeks. And while its government has borrowed responsibly, its banks have not, having taken billions of dollars in foreign currency loans. With global credit markets drying up, those loans will be difficult to refinance. Ukraine's central bank has already had to bail out one, Prominvestbank, the country's sixth largest.

Despite the turmoil, Yushchenko's main focus in recent weeks has been on attacking Tymoshenko. He has issued presidential decrees blocking the majority of her decisions since she became prime minister for the second time in December. When a judge in Kiev ruled that his decree to dissolve the Parliament and call elections was illegal, Yushchenko disbanded the court.

"Yushchenko thinks he is God," said Mikhail Pogrebinsky, a political analyst at a research and polling center in Kiev, pointing to Yushchenko's visit last week to Istanbul, where he gave Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Eastern Orthodox Church a specially minted coin with his image on it, while at home his country's currency plummeted.

Tymoshenko is also capable of political magic tricks. Last year she colluded with Yushchenko, withdrawing all her deputies from Parliament to give him legal justification for dissolving it and calling new elections.

Neither has ever liked the other. Tymoshenko, a former gas industry executive whose head is wreathed in a signature blond plait, is Ukraine's political celebrity.

Yushchenko, a former banker whose own popularity has plunged, has lashed out. There are even hints of the political fight in Yushchenko's infamous poisoning episode, which left his face pockmarked and ravaged in 2004: His political opponents have been called in for questioning in the case.

Tymoshenko came from Ukraine's business world, where quick wits and bare knuckles made fortunes in the 1990s. But her aim appeared to be less money than power, and she later joined the government. She and Yushchenko led the revolution in 2004 with the motto, "bandits to prisons," but they soon grew beholden to yet another set of wealthy men.

Oleg Zarubinsky, a member of Parliament from an opposition party, put it bluntly: "Our political parties aren't funded by membership fees."

Oleksandr S. Donii, a Ukrainian lawmaker who led a popular student movement against the Soviet regime in 1990, compared Ukraine's first-generation businessmen to divers dizzy with the bends. "The Ukrainian business elite was born too quickly," he said, adding that "there was no sense of social responsibility."

The country's current predicament is not entirely the fault of its leaders. It runs much deeper, into the roots of Ukrainian society. Communism pitted citizens against one another, leaving people distrustful and incapable of the collective action that holds governments accountable in developed countries.

"We trust our brother, son, father, mother and godfather, but no one else," said Mostova, the writer. "That's our problem."

That is why the Orange Revolution was so important: It seemed to break that pattern.

"People found their backbones," Mostova said. "They cried in front of strangers."

But after the protests ended, there was little follow-up. The crowd came together and then broke apart.

Still, the fact that it happened at all was a big step forward for Ukraine, which has been independent for only 17 years, and is now going through a period that Pogrebinsky compares to the tumultuous late 18th century in the United States, during the ratification of the Constitution.

The economic crisis, for all its pain, may also be a catalyst. Financial turmoil has swept out governments in Indonesia, Turkey and Russia in recent history, and even, many argue, the Soviet Union. Today's Ukraine may be similarly susceptible.

Tymoshenko seems to realize this. In a television talk show about the economic crisis on Friday night, she extended a hand to Yushchenko. "Let's for once not get into these political dogfights and come together as a national team with a united program, like the president said," she declared. "Be a team in the face of this big global challenge."

Yushchenko did not return the favor. He accused Tymoshenko's government of accumulating debts from energy purchases "like fleas on a dog," and of allowing inflation to rise.

"Who did it?" he railed. "The world crisis? Lies! The crisis is sitting right here."

Source: International Herald Tribune

Elections Only Solution To Ukraine Political Crisis - Yushchenko

KIEV, Ukraine -- Lack of trust in Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko means snap parliamentary elections are the only way out of Ukraine's political crisis, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said on Monday.

Viktor Yushchenko
Answering journalists' questions on the chance of restoring the coalition between his supporters and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, Yushchenko said the issue was trust in the prime minister, adding that Our Ukraine had "no desire to return to the coalition."

"In this situation, snap elections are the only constitutional way out," Yushchenko was quoted as saying by the presidential press service.

The previous coalition collapsed when the Tymoshenko Bloc sided with the opposition Party of Regions in voting to reduce the president's powers. Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, leaders of the 2004 "Orange Revolution," have drifted apart over a host of issues, including Russia's war with Georgia in August.

Both are expected to run for president in 2010.

Yushchenko said that he could see no group in parliament, except for her own bloc, that would support the prime minister.

"I am convinced that if the prime minister had behaved honestly as part of the coalition, and not conducted secret negotiations ... this coalition would be working for a long time yet," Yushchenko said.

After political groups failed to form a new government, the president on October 9 dissolved the legislature and called snap elections for December.

According to recent opinion polls, 90% of Ukrainians are against holding early parliamentary elections.

The election was called off to allow the government to work to overcome the global financial crisis, and parliament voted on Friday to approve a set of laws aimed at stabilizing the financial system in order to meet the International Monetary Fund's conditions for a $16.5 billion standby loan.

Although the anti-crisis bill was passed with the support of the president's Our Ukraine group and the Tymoshenko Bloc, a senior Yushchenko aide said on Monday it had taken two weeks and did not mean the sides had been reunited.

"Approval of the anti-recessionary bill can in no way be considered a sign that the ability of the Supreme Rada [parliament] to work has been restored," said Andrey Kislinskiy, deputy head of Ukraine's presidential secretariat.

"The reasons for the decree on dissolving parliament have not changed. The Ukrainian parliament requires urgent improvement."

Source: RIA Novosti

Ukraine Faces Devaluation As Politicians Haggle Over `Lifeline'

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian politicians have been unable to agree on much of anything since the country rejected its Soviet past in the 2004 Orange Revolution. Their squabbling now may lead to a currency devaluation and more capital flight.

Supporters of Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko block the parliament's tribune to try to disrupt a debate on anti-crisis measures in Kiev October 31, 2008.
Parliament took more than a week to pass legislation on Oct. 31 accepting the initial terms of a $16.5 billion International Monetary Fund loan, as a tumbling currency and $100 billion in debt to be repaid next year threaten the economy and the financial system. Still to be debated are the final belt- tightening measures required by the IMF.

President Viktor Yushchenko has called an early election to face off against pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, who initially claimed victory in the rigged 2004 presidential election that led to the Orange Revolution, and his own prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko. Yet he can't fix a date because Timoshenko doesn't want to. Her party has prevented lawmakers from voting on a date by physically barring access to the chamber.

"Instead of uniting to save the country, they're falling apart," said Ariel Cohen, a political analyst at the Heritage Foundation, speaking of Yushchenko and Timoshenko by telephone from Washington. "The IMF threw them a lifeline. Instead of grabbing it, they're pushing each other away from it, so everyone sinks."

Ukraine needs the money because much of its debt is in dollars. As the currency, the hryvnia, falls, the cost of repaying the debt rises. Yushchenko puts the value of debt due to be repaid next year at about $80 billion in corporate debt and about $20 billion that is owed by the state.

Second-Worst

Foreign-currency reserves stand at about $30 billion and investors are fleeing: Ukrainian stocks are the world's second- worst performers in the past twelve months, after Iceland's. They were the best in 2007. Central bank Governor Volodymyr Stelmakh warned on Oct. 29 that Ukraine may be forced to default on billions of dollars of debt should it fail to secure the promised IMF loan.

"Devaluation is inevitable," said Katya Malofeeva, an economist at Renaissance Capital, by telephone from Moscow.

The hryvnia has fluctuated this year despite a currency band within which the National Bank supports it. In September the level was set at 4.85 hryvnia per dollar, with a permitted fluctuation of 4 percent. On Oct. 7 this was lowered to 4.95, with a fluctuation of 8 percent. In practice it hasn't worked: on Oct. 29 the hryvnia traded at 7.055 per dollar.

Floating Currency

The IMF has asked Ukraine to move away from a managed exchange-rate system to a freely floating one, although details of its conditions haven't been made public.

In a worst-case scenario the currency could reach 15 to the dollar by the end of next year, said Olena Bilan, an economist at Dragon Capital in Kiev. If the financial crisis stabilizes then she expects 9 to the dollar.

Malofeeva was less pessimistic, saying Renaissance sees the hryvnia at 6.5 to the dollar by the end of 2009. All agree that the government urgently needs to set a coherent plan for the exchange rate.

"We just want clarity in terms of exchange-rate policy," said Timothy Ash, head of emerging-market research at London- based Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, in Kiev on Oct. 30. "What is the policy? It's not clear."

Tempers were running high as deputies in the Rada, the parliament, argued about the terms of the IMF loan. They passed a series of bank-capitalization and deposit-guarantee changes as a condition for receiving the money late on Oct. 31, after starting the debate on Oct. 22.

Not Understanding?

"Don't you understand!" shouted the speaker of the parliament, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, 34, during the debate. "Someone is going to get $16.5 billion, but it's not going to be Ukraine if you don't stop arguing," he roared.

About half the country supports the pro-Western policies of Yushchenko, who is pushing for Ukrainian membership in the European Union and NATO. Timoshenko, whose party initially supported him, has wavered between his pro-Western policies and a more conciliatory attitude to Russia. The other half backs Yanukovych, 58, who ceded to Yushchenko after a court ruled his victory in the 2004 presidential election was rigged.

Timoshenko, 47, and Yushchenko, 54, have fallen out, leading to the standoff over the early parliamentary election. Opinion polls suggest Yanukovych's party will win 28.4 percent of the vote against 27.6 percent for Timoshenko's bloc, ensuring a continuation of the paralysis. Yushchenko's party has the support of 8.2 percent.

Balanced Budget?

Though parliament met IMF demands on bank recapitalization, more requirements are ahead. The IMF wants Ukraine to have "strong monetary and prudent fiscal policies," said Ceyla Pazarbasiogan, head of the lender's mission to Ukraine, on Oct. 29. Specific budget strictures will come after the IMF votes on the Ukraine loan; no date has been set because of parliament's delay on the initial measures.

Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk said earlier this month that he already plans to propose a balanced budget. Passing it might be tough: lawmakers are refusing to delay raising minimum wages next year, which will increase spending by 35 percent, said Oleksandr Shlapak, deputy head of the president's staff.

The infighting during the crisis is leading the country to hold its politicians in contempt, as many did before the Orange Revolution, said Taras Kuzio of the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University in Canada, by telephone from Toronto.

"All of this undermines Ukraine's democracy as it leads to a growth of legal nihilism and cynicism" he said.

Source: Bloomberg

Yushchenko’s And Tymoshenko’s Strategies Remain Confusing

KIEV, Ukraine -- In a television debate on 2 November on Channel 5 Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko called for a second time in two weeks for the President to support the renewal of a broader orange coalition of the Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT), Our Ukraine-Peoples Self Defence (OU-PSD) and the Volodymyr Lytvyn bloc that would have a comfortable majority of 248 deputies.

Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko on Inter TV 'Freedom of Speech" show on 1 November.

If a coalition was created pre-term elections, planned for 14 December but likely to be postponed until late January or February, would become unnecessary. Tymoshenko believes that, ‘if there is good will on the part of the President a coalition can be created tomorrow’.

The former orange coalition has voted together in support of the Presidents Anti-Crisis package and the IMF loan in the last week of November.

The Party of Regions and Communist Party did not vote for these two issues. But, the former orange coalition remains divided over voting for the provision of financial resources for pre-term elections which has only received backing from the Party of Regions and the pro-presidential half of OU-PSD giving it insufficient votes to be adopted.

On the basis of the vote by the former orange coalition Tymoshenko expressed guarded optimism that the orange coalition could be revived. The Prime Minister said, ‘on the basis of those factions who voted this is a good signal that the democratic coalition can be revived and parliament can function a lot more effectively than it could in the previous few months’.

In a television show on 19 October the Prime Minister said it would be ‘reckless’ to hold pre-term elections during a global crisis. She suggested instead that a government of national unity be formed while the crisis remained a threat. ‘Such a coalition should act until such time as the threat of financial and economic collapse is removed from our country and the world at large. After that, you can have any elections you like’.

In the Channel 5 debate on 2 November, Tymoshenko said that she would be willing to, ‘fulfill all of the demands made by the President. I am ready to sit at a table for negotiations’.

Asked if Tymoshenko would be willing to give up any presidential ambitions she replied, ‘All serious proposals put forward by the President will be taken on board, accepted so that we can move ahead’.

Tymoshenko believes that a new coalition is being blocked by the half of OU-PSD controlled by the President. A parliamentary faction needs a simple majority vote to join a coalition which in the case of OU-PSD would require 37 (out of 72) deputies. Approximately 30 deputies reportedly support Tymoshenko’s call for a new coalition.

Tymoshenko’s and Yushchenko’s strategies are both baffling, but for different reasons.

Opinion polls and Ukraine’s history show that Tymoshenko could resign herself to Yushchenko’s demand for pre-term elections that would most likely push her replacing the position of Prime Minister with head of the opposition.

Ukraine’s history shows that head of the opposition does not ruin your electoral odds. In the 1994 and 2004 elections the head of the opposition (Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko respectively) succeeded in winning the presidency. BYuT, then in opposition, also increased their support in the 2006 elections to 23 percent more than three times more than BYuT received in 2002.

Most political leaders would prefer to be in opposition, rather than heading a government, during a severe crisis that require unpopular policies that could negatively affect their popularity.

Every opinion poll has also shown that BYuT is likely to again increase its position in parliament in pre-term elections.

Polls show that with support increasing to maybe 35 percent, BYuT could have the same number or a larger number of seats than the Party of Regions. Tymoshenko therefore - unlike the President - has nothing to fear from pre-term elections.

Tymoshenko’s implied offer to not run in the presidential elections is also baffling because it will open the door to a victory by Viktor Yanukovych. Only Tymoshenko can defeat Yanukovych in a second round presidential contest.

Polls show that Yushchenko would lose to Yanukovych. Two polls in October gave Yanukovych and Tymoshenko roughly equal support in a second round of between 31-33 percent in one poll and 37-39 in another. In a second round contest between Yanukovych and Yushcenko, Yanukovych would win by 44 to 15 percent or 36 to 13 percent.

In addition, 72 percent of Ukrainians believe that Yushcenko should not stand in the presidential elections. Meanwhile, a striking 82 percent have no confidence in the President.

Postponing or canceling pre-term elections would save the orange coalition. Going for pre-term elections would permanently destroy any unity in orange forces. Tymoshenko’s and Yushchenko’s strategies are different but only one seeks to preserve unity forged during the orange revolution.

Source: Taras Kuzio Blog

From Ukraine With Love

LONDON, England -- For most actresses, being cast as a Bond girl has one obvious highlight - the chance to film a love scene with Daniel Craig.

Olga Kurylenko at the premiere of the new James Bond film 'Quantum of Solace'.
But Olga Kurylenko, the Ukrainian beauty who plays Bond's love interest in Quantum Of Solace, is not most actresses. For her, there are greater perks to the role than sleeping with 007.

Unlike some previous incarnations of the Bond girl, Kurylenko's character is no purring, preening sex bomb content to be bedded then chucked by the debonair British spy.

She is tough and driven and what's more, Bond never seduces her. Instead - and Bond purists should look away now - he actually empathises with her.

"I really did get lucky that I did the Bond movie in 2008 when the woman got more interesting and more independent and had much more to her," Kurylenko, a former model, says.

"The part has much more than just beauty. The beauty is just a fact, something aside, but there is much more to this character, luckily."

There is plenty of substance to Kurylenko, too. At 28, she has rejected as unsuitable more roles than many actresses see in a lifetime.

She has two divorces behind her, she performs her own stunts on the Bond movie and, although she has graced the covers of Elle, Vogue and marie claire, she bristles at any mention of her incredible beauty.

"Nobody likes to be judged on their looks," she says, fixing me earnestly with her startling grey-green eyes.

"Maybe someone does but not me. It's just very sad but not for me, because I'm fine. I know who I am."

Kurylenko's character in the new film mirrors the actress's own crisp independence.

She plays Camille, a feisty Bolivian on a revenge mission, a woman unafraid to use her sex appeal to manipulate the men she needs to achieve her goal. She matches Bond in the action stakes, particularly during one high-speed motorboat chase set in Haiti.

Inspired by Craig's determination to do all his own stunts, Kurylenko overcame her initial fears to become something of an action heroine herself.

"It's like I learned a new profession," she says of her experience with the stunt work.

"It was six months of intense training.

"It makes me think I can work on anything, you know?"

Kurylenko's singular determination makes sense when you consider her upbringing.

Born into a poor family in Soviet-era Ukraine, she is about as far away from a pampered Hollywood princess as possible.

Her father left the family when she was a baby so it fell to her art teacher mother to raise her, aided by a close-knit extended family of grandmother, uncles, aunt and cousins, all of whom lived in the same flat in the small town of Berdyansk.

Money was tight in her family but love was bountiful, the actress says.

Although there were no non-Soviet films screened in her local cinema and no town theatre, Kurylenko saw some children rehearsing a play at school and asked whether she could join in.

"It was the Soviet Union and all the foreign films didn't get to us," she says.

"It was such a different type of life. It's such a pity, because they don't have access to any culture. I didn't either, because there was nothing at all, nothing, because it was so small."

Nonetheless, Kurylenko fed her soul with her acting, which she teamed with ballet classes. Then at 13, on a trip to Moscow with her mother, she was spotted by a modelling scout.

After three years modelling in Russia, her mum allowed her to travel to Paris for a "meet and greet" with a French modelling agency, for which the young Ukrainian wore a garish shirt emblazoned with bright-yellow flowers.

The black-clad fashion pack were aghast but she was nonetheless signed by the agency and her fashion sense has clearly evolved.

Today she is flawlessly elegant in a khaki military-style blouse in chiffon tucked into high-waisted tailored black trousers and teamed with simple flats.

Her hair is loosely bundled up and she wears no jewellery but a pair of diamond stud earrings and a diamond ring - on her middle finger.

In Paris, Kurylenko soon found success as an international model, an unsurprising development given her exotic looks - all high cheekbones, huge eyes and sensuous lips.

But she missed her acting, so - after mastering French - she decided to enrol in drama classes.

"Then one day I thought: 'Rather than just doing it as a hobby, why don't I go for some auditions?"' she says.

The offers came flooding in immediately but they were for the wrong type of roles.

"I realised very quickly that very often I was getting cast as a model, or parts where I just had to be a shadow of a guy or like a cliche, and I said no," she says shyly.

"Coming from modelling, the first impression, the first thing people will see me in is going to stay.

"So I knew I had to start with something serious. So I just waited for the project."

That project was l'Annulaire (The Ring Finger), an arthouse French film based on a Japanese book.

"Nothing explodes and there are no special effects," Kurylenko says, describing it with evident pride. "It's a little, weird artsy film but beautiful, interesting."

The leap from French indie flick to starring in the second-most lucrative film franchise of all time (after Star Wars) is a fairly big one. Along the way there were two husbands: photographer Cedric Van Mol, to whom she is still close, followed by US entrepreneur Damian Gabrielle. She clearly doesn't miss being married. "Thank God I'm single!" she said recently. "I hate jealousy, I hate possessiveness. I'm nobody's possession."

In 2007, she starred in the Hollywood-produced comic-book adaptation Hitman and in 2006 she was in Paris je t'aime with Elijah Wood but both are tiny films compared with the Bond juggernaut.

"For Bond, there was definitely no hesitation because it's just Bond," Kurylenko says of being offered the part of Camille.

"It's such a big long legacy and the film has existed for decades and it's so important. "People really love it around the world."

Already Kurylenko is feeling the effects Quantum Of Solace has had on her profile - both good and bad.

Although l'Annulaire was not released outside France, the British tabloids last week published stills of sensational erotic scenes from the movie. Headlines called it a "sex film" and drew attention to the actress's nudity.

On the other hand, Kurylenko's phone is ringing a lot more and she hopes that after the release of Quantum she will be offered a raft of interesting parts.

Ideally, she would like to have the sort of cross-over career that actresses such as Juliette Binoche or Judi Dench (who reprises her role as M in Quantum) have enjoyed.

She wants to do both interesting Hollywood films and small European ones.

"You realise at some point: 'Okay, I am acting in France' but if you want to make it bigger you have to do an international film and American films are international."

Next she will appear in a small Israeli film, Kirot, about a friendship between two women, and after that she's not sure. As with her career path so far, it seems certain Kurylenko will consider her next move extremely carefully.

"The most important thing is to make the right choice," she says sagely.

Quantum Of Solace opens on November 19.

Source: The Sun-Herald

New Bond Babe Olga Kurylenko Says She's Not Interested In Men

LONDON, England -- She's one of the most seductive-looking Bond girls ever to catch the eye of 007, but when it comes to men, Olga Kurylenko is not interested.

Ukrainian-born actress Olga Kurylenko is the latest James Bond babe.
Following the recent break-up of her second marriage - to American mobile phone mogul Damien Gabrielle - Olga has made it a point that she would rather be alone.

"You can't judge someone by the way they look because it's actually totally different," the Mirror quoted the Ukrainian-born actress, as saying.

"I'm not what you think I am. I'm not a person who has had a lot of romance in my life. Maybe I look like that, but I'm not a romantic person. Sorry to disappoint you," she added.

Olga left Gabrielle claiming he was jealous of her blossoming career and seems determined to remain single.

"I never look for romance and I'm not interested in it. If it happens, it happens, but it's very hard for me to like somebody. I'd rather be alone than with a person who doesn't fit with me. Most of my life I've been alone," she said.

In Quantum Of Solace, which opened this week, Olga plays Camille, a girl with a tragic past who is bent on revenge against the man who killed her family. In the process, she is one of the few Bond girls who does not sleep with 007, played again by Daniel Craig. It's something Olga is proud of.

In 2000, the stunner got married for the first time, to photographer Cedric Van Mol. Four years later they were divorced, although they remain good friends.

Source: New Kerala

Yushchenko Blames Finance Ministry For Growing Inflation In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has blamed the Finance Ministry for growing inflation and suggested that the National Bank of Ukraine has come under the Finance Ministry's influence.

Finance Minister Victor Pynzenyk is blamed for Ukraine's high inflation.
"In three months, we reached 12% inflation and surpassed the yearly target. This was done because of the government's and the Finance Ministry's actions, because we were pursuing a weak spending policy. It disrupted stability. Then a scapegoat was found, the National Bank, which was told: come and correct the situation," Yushchenko said on the Inter television channel on Friday evening.

In these circumstances, the National Bank improved the inflation situation using its tools, but the ensuing shortage in national currency, the hryvnia, negatively affected the production sectors of the economy, he said.

"I am sure that the National Bank should have said a categorical 'no' in May and June. The National Bank is actually the only institution in Ukraine that needs always to say 'no'. It should be like a rock in defending the stability of the national hryvnia," Yushchenko said.

The National Bank of Ukraine was building its exchange rate policy under pressure from the government, he said.

"The fact that the hryvnia strengthened in May and then rolled back three months later undeniably shows that the National Bank made concessions where it should have stood professionally till the very end," he said.

Source: iStockAnalyst

Bond Olga Sparks Cold War

LONDON, England -- Hot new Bond babe Olga Kurylenko has sparked a real-life Cold War that has seen her branded a “traitor”. Russian communists have accused her of betraying her mother country by cosying up to James Bond.

Olga Kurylenko as Camille with Daniel Craig as James Bond.
The gorgeous actress, 28, who plays agent Camille in new 007 film Quantum Of Solace, comes from Ukraine – formerly part of the Soviet Union.

And the Communist Party of St Petersburg in Russia has reacted furiously to seeing her joining forces with superspy 007, played by Daniel Craig, 40.

It has accused her of helping “the killer of hundreds of Soviet people and their allies” by starring in the new movie.

It is even feared Russian extremists could put a price on her head, leaving her needing protection from real-life agents.

The spat erupted last night as Quantum Of Solace hit UK cinemas. The communists blasted Bond as “a man who worked for decades to destroy the USSR”.

And they told Olga: “The Soviet Union brought you up. No-one suspected that you would commit this act of betrayal. Where is your patriotism?”

However, they have offered her an amnesty – if she hands Craig over to the Russian secret services for interrogation.

They said: “Let him tell what other plans are being written in the Pentagon and Hollywood to discredit Russia.”

It is the latest – and most bizarre – rift between the UK and Russia. In 2006, relations hit a new low after Brits accused Russian agents of killing former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, 44, with radioactive poison in London.

But it seems that Olga is simply being used as a pawn in a row over Ukraine’s desire to join Nato and snub Russia.

Party leader Sergei Malinkovich, 34, said: “Everyone knows the CIA and MI6 finance Bond films as a special operation of psychological warfare against us.

“This Ukrainian girl sleeps with Bond – and that means that Ukraine is sleeping with the West.”

They are not the only ones to accuse film-makers of capitalism. Claims have circulated on the internet that Quantum Of Solace bosses had lined up £48million worth of product placement deals.

But a spokesman insisted: “Our policy is not to accept any cash from anyone.”

Source: Daily Star