KIEV, Ukraine -- The French parents were trying to sneak the twins out of Ukraine into Hungary because, they said, France refused to issue the children passports, as it does not recognise surrogacy.
The mother said: “We are not child traffickers, we are their parents. We tried to cross the border out of despair and love for our little girls.”
Ukrainian border guards took the pictures on Monday and a criminal investigation into illegal transportation of minors abroad has been launched while the babies, named Vicky and Kim, have been taken to hospital.
The French couple, held in Ukraine, visited the girls on Wednesday and the mother said: “I want to write to all the countries in the world and ask them to give my girls any passport just so that I can take them with me.”
Parents adopting surrogate children face legal hurdles in European countries that do not recognise such arrangements.
A gay Belgian couple waited more than two years to be reunited with their son – born to a mother in Ukraine – after Belgium initially refused to issue him a passport.
They also unsuccessfully tried to smuggle the boy out of the country by car.
Saturday 26 March 2011
EU Commissioner Warns Ukraine Against 'Political' Justice
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- A top European Union official on Thursday warned Ukrainian authorities against using justice 'for political ends.'
EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule made the comment after meeting former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, now an opposition leader who says corruption charges brought against her are politically motivated.
Tymoshenko is alleged to have misappropriated some 380 million dollars in state funds and improperly used official vehicles during her 2009 unsuccessful presidential election campaign.
'I reiterated to Mrs Tymoshenko the need for criminal law not be used for political ends,' Fule said in a statement.
Fule said Tymoshenko agreed with him on the need to 'play a constructive role' over government plans to reform electioral rules, the constitution and the judiciary.
Prosecutors allowed Tymoshenko to travel to Brussels for a meeting of the European People's Party, an umbrella group of European conservative parties.
Earlier this year, her two previous requests to visit the EU capital had been rejected.
Tymoshenko has argued that she and her allies are the victims of a state campaign to repress the opposition.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has denied the allegations, saying his government is cracking down on high-level corruption without regard to political associations.
EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule made the comment after meeting former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, now an opposition leader who says corruption charges brought against her are politically motivated.
Tymoshenko is alleged to have misappropriated some 380 million dollars in state funds and improperly used official vehicles during her 2009 unsuccessful presidential election campaign.
'I reiterated to Mrs Tymoshenko the need for criminal law not be used for political ends,' Fule said in a statement.
Fule said Tymoshenko agreed with him on the need to 'play a constructive role' over government plans to reform electioral rules, the constitution and the judiciary.
Prosecutors allowed Tymoshenko to travel to Brussels for a meeting of the European People's Party, an umbrella group of European conservative parties.
Earlier this year, her two previous requests to visit the EU capital had been rejected.
Tymoshenko has argued that she and her allies are the victims of a state campaign to repress the opposition.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has denied the allegations, saying his government is cracking down on high-level corruption without regard to political associations.
Ukraine Ex-Leader Charged Over Reporter's Murder
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine on Thursday charged ex-president Leonid Kuchma over the 2000 murder of a journalist, its most notorious post-Soviet crime, amid doubts he could be jailed even if found guilty.
Ukrainian prosecutors confirmed they had presented charges of "abuse of power" to Kuchma as he attended a second session of questioning after a criminal probe was formally opened earlier this week.
The headless body of 31-year-old Georgy Gongadze -- the founder of the liberal Ukrainska Pravda website and a virulent critic of Kuchma -- was found in 2000 after he was abducted from central Kiev.
"I have been served with charges," Kuchma, Ukraine's president from 1994-2005, told reporters outside the prosecutors office.
"I have not yet read (them) from beginning to end," he said, adding he would have another session with the investigators on Monday.
He declined to elaborate on the nature of charges, only saying it was "nothing new".
The spokesman for prosecutors, Yury Boichenko, later confirmed to AFP that Kuchma had been charged for abuse of power under an article in the Ukrainian penal code from 1960.
Ukrainian press reports have said the statute of limitations under this article was 10 years, meaning that even if Kuchma is found guilty he could escape jail. This was not confirmed by prosecutors.
"Leonid Kuchma is not threatened with jail," wrote Sergiy Leshchenko, one of the main writers for Ukrainska Pravda which even after Gongadze's death remains one of the most vibrant voices in the national media scene.
Prosecutors announced earlier this week they had opened a criminal probe against Kuchma on suspicion that he gave the orders that led to Gongadze's brutal murder.
The prosecutors stopped short of saying Kuchma was suspected of personally masterminding the murder, saying the former president was suspected of abuse of power and giving illegal orders to police that led to Gongadze's death.
The announcement caused a sensation in Ukraine, coming after a decade of pressure from Kuchma's opponents to have him face trial for the killing of the journalist.
Previously, prosecutors had appeared to draw a line under the case last year by saying that former interior minister Yury Kravchenko -- who committed suicide in 2005 -- ordered the murder.
Given that Kravchenko took his evidence to the grave, the move prompted accusations from Gongadze's family that the authorities were seeking to pin all the blame on a dead man to protect someone of greater importance.
Former interior ministry employee Olexy Pukach has been in custody since 2009 in connection with the murder. He has confessed to personally strangling the journalist with his belt and beheading him with an axe.
Kuchma said he had personally confronted Pukach, who had been summoned to the prosecutors office earlier in the day.
"I can say that there was a confrontation with Pukach," local news agencies quoted Kuchma as saying.
"Pukach, I believe...(acts) according to a principle -- no man, no problem," he said, suggesting that Pukach was seeking to pass the buck to deceased Kravchenko.
Also present as the prosecutors office Thursday was Mykola Melnichenko, a former bodyguard of Kuchma who recorded tapes where voices -- including one alleged to be of Kuchma -- could be heard speaking about eliminating Gongadze.
Crucially, prosecutors ruled that the tapes were admissible evidence, for the first time since they were made public in 2000.
The tapes, whose publication at the time prompted mass protests in Ukraine, contain a voice resembling that of Kuchma suggesting to have Gongadze "kidnapped by Chechens".
Melnichenko left the prosecutors declaring he was still hoping for a formal confrontation with Kuchma to air his allegations but this had been postponed until the coming days.
Ukrainian prosecutors confirmed they had presented charges of "abuse of power" to Kuchma as he attended a second session of questioning after a criminal probe was formally opened earlier this week.
The headless body of 31-year-old Georgy Gongadze -- the founder of the liberal Ukrainska Pravda website and a virulent critic of Kuchma -- was found in 2000 after he was abducted from central Kiev.
"I have been served with charges," Kuchma, Ukraine's president from 1994-2005, told reporters outside the prosecutors office.
"I have not yet read (them) from beginning to end," he said, adding he would have another session with the investigators on Monday.
He declined to elaborate on the nature of charges, only saying it was "nothing new".
The spokesman for prosecutors, Yury Boichenko, later confirmed to AFP that Kuchma had been charged for abuse of power under an article in the Ukrainian penal code from 1960.
Ukrainian press reports have said the statute of limitations under this article was 10 years, meaning that even if Kuchma is found guilty he could escape jail. This was not confirmed by prosecutors.
"Leonid Kuchma is not threatened with jail," wrote Sergiy Leshchenko, one of the main writers for Ukrainska Pravda which even after Gongadze's death remains one of the most vibrant voices in the national media scene.
Prosecutors announced earlier this week they had opened a criminal probe against Kuchma on suspicion that he gave the orders that led to Gongadze's brutal murder.
The prosecutors stopped short of saying Kuchma was suspected of personally masterminding the murder, saying the former president was suspected of abuse of power and giving illegal orders to police that led to Gongadze's death.
The announcement caused a sensation in Ukraine, coming after a decade of pressure from Kuchma's opponents to have him face trial for the killing of the journalist.
Previously, prosecutors had appeared to draw a line under the case last year by saying that former interior minister Yury Kravchenko -- who committed suicide in 2005 -- ordered the murder.
Given that Kravchenko took his evidence to the grave, the move prompted accusations from Gongadze's family that the authorities were seeking to pin all the blame on a dead man to protect someone of greater importance.
Former interior ministry employee Olexy Pukach has been in custody since 2009 in connection with the murder. He has confessed to personally strangling the journalist with his belt and beheading him with an axe.
Kuchma said he had personally confronted Pukach, who had been summoned to the prosecutors office earlier in the day.
"I can say that there was a confrontation with Pukach," local news agencies quoted Kuchma as saying.
"Pukach, I believe...(acts) according to a principle -- no man, no problem," he said, suggesting that Pukach was seeking to pass the buck to deceased Kravchenko.
Also present as the prosecutors office Thursday was Mykola Melnichenko, a former bodyguard of Kuchma who recorded tapes where voices -- including one alleged to be of Kuchma -- could be heard speaking about eliminating Gongadze.
Crucially, prosecutors ruled that the tapes were admissible evidence, for the first time since they were made public in 2000.
The tapes, whose publication at the time prompted mass protests in Ukraine, contain a voice resembling that of Kuchma suggesting to have Gongadze "kidnapped by Chechens".
Melnichenko left the prosecutors declaring he was still hoping for a formal confrontation with Kuchma to air his allegations but this had been postponed until the coming days.
Sunday 20 March 2011
Afghan Citizens Beaten In Detention At Ukraine Airport
KIEV, Ukraine -- Amnesty International has condemned the mistreatment of eight Afghan citizens awaiting deportation from Ukraine, who are being beaten by border guards and denied adequate food, water and medical treatment.
The eight men have been in detention at Boryspil Airport in Kiev for three days and sources have told Amnesty International that, as a result of the ill-treatment, some of them are so severely injured that they are unable to lie down.
"The Ukrainian authorities must stop these deportations," said Andrea Huber, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia.
"They also need to rein in their border guards, and provide adequate medical treatment, food and water to these men as required by international law. The appalling reports of detainee abuse must be investigated immediately."
Some of the detained group applied for asylum in Ukraine, but their claims were rejected and they have not been able to appeal, contravening Ukraine's obligations under refugee law.
The Afghans claim that they were not provided with interpreters while claiming asylum, nor during the deportation procedure.
They also allege that they were required to sign documents in a language they do not understand, and that some were not present during the hearings on their cases.
"These people should not be deported until they have been given the right to appeal their asylum decision and effectively challenge their deportation, in line with Ukraine's domestic and international obligations," said Andrea Huber.
Amnesty International is also asking the Ukrainian authorities to ensure the detained men are given access to lawyers and the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR.
Six other Afghans who were originally detained with the group have already been deported to Afghanistan in the last two days, including an unaccompanied minor.
Also allegedly subjected to abuses by guards, some of these detainees self-harmed in protest but were deported anyway.
The eight men have been in detention at Boryspil Airport in Kiev for three days and sources have told Amnesty International that, as a result of the ill-treatment, some of them are so severely injured that they are unable to lie down.
"The Ukrainian authorities must stop these deportations," said Andrea Huber, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia.
"They also need to rein in their border guards, and provide adequate medical treatment, food and water to these men as required by international law. The appalling reports of detainee abuse must be investigated immediately."
Some of the detained group applied for asylum in Ukraine, but their claims were rejected and they have not been able to appeal, contravening Ukraine's obligations under refugee law.
The Afghans claim that they were not provided with interpreters while claiming asylum, nor during the deportation procedure.
They also allege that they were required to sign documents in a language they do not understand, and that some were not present during the hearings on their cases.
"These people should not be deported until they have been given the right to appeal their asylum decision and effectively challenge their deportation, in line with Ukraine's domestic and international obligations," said Andrea Huber.
Amnesty International is also asking the Ukrainian authorities to ensure the detained men are given access to lawyers and the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR.
Six other Afghans who were originally detained with the group have already been deported to Afghanistan in the last two days, including an unaccompanied minor.
Also allegedly subjected to abuses by guards, some of these detainees self-harmed in protest but were deported anyway.
Ukraine's Chernobyl Cleanup Workers Protest Planned Benefit Cuts
KIEV, Ukraine -- Hundreds of Ukrainians involved in the cleanup of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster on Wednesday protested the government's plans to cut to their social benefits.
More than 800 demonstrators gathered in front of the Cabinet of Ministers building in the Ukrainian capital Kiev to show their opposition to reductions or outright elimination of their benefits.
Some 700,000 people involved in the cleanup have the status of 'liquidator,' which gives them maximum monthly benefits equivalent to 250 dollars.
The government has proposed cutting the number of people with liquidator status by between one-third and one-half.
Deputy Prime Minister Serhy Tyhypko spoke to the generally peaceful crowd for about five minutes.
'We have heard you, and we will meet with your representatives. Ukraine knows what you have done,' he said.
People in the crowd said they were sceptical of receiving fair treatment from the government.
'What is happening is that the government is trying to save money, they are trying to economize on us,' said Oleg Goncharov, 40. 'We risked out lives, but that is not important to them.'
Pensions and benefits are often the only income of survivors of the Chernobyl cleanup, who are too sick from radiation exposure to be employed.
A reactor meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear station on April 26, 1986, spread radiation across Europe and forced the resettlement of more than 300,000 people, most of them in Ukraine and Belarus.
More than 4,000 people are thought to have lost their lives bringing the core of the runaway nuclear reactor under control.
More than 800 demonstrators gathered in front of the Cabinet of Ministers building in the Ukrainian capital Kiev to show their opposition to reductions or outright elimination of their benefits.
Some 700,000 people involved in the cleanup have the status of 'liquidator,' which gives them maximum monthly benefits equivalent to 250 dollars.
The government has proposed cutting the number of people with liquidator status by between one-third and one-half.
Deputy Prime Minister Serhy Tyhypko spoke to the generally peaceful crowd for about five minutes.
'We have heard you, and we will meet with your representatives. Ukraine knows what you have done,' he said.
People in the crowd said they were sceptical of receiving fair treatment from the government.
'What is happening is that the government is trying to save money, they are trying to economize on us,' said Oleg Goncharov, 40. 'We risked out lives, but that is not important to them.'
Pensions and benefits are often the only income of survivors of the Chernobyl cleanup, who are too sick from radiation exposure to be employed.
A reactor meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear station on April 26, 1986, spread radiation across Europe and forced the resettlement of more than 300,000 people, most of them in Ukraine and Belarus.
More than 4,000 people are thought to have lost their lives bringing the core of the runaway nuclear reactor under control.
PM Vows To ‘Persist’ On EU Trade Accord
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine will “persistently” continue talks with the European Union over free trade despite a warning from Moscow that such accord may trigger prohibitive trade barriers imposed by Russia.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, at a meeting with Martin Schultz, the leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, on Thursday said Ukraine hopes to sign the accord by year-end.
“We are persistently holding the talks with European Commission officials in order to establish the free trade,” Azarov said. “We are persistent people, so we work consistently and seek to achieve the desired results.”
The comment comes a day after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has threatened with the prohibitive trade barriers against Ukrainian goods if Ukraine reaches the accord with the EU.
On the other hand, Putin said, Ukraine would benefit economically by joining the trade bloc with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Putin’s remarks signal that Moscow has been seeking to discourage Ukraine politically from negotiating the free trade accord with the EU. Any progress in talks between Ukraine and the EU may further worsen relations between Kiev and Moscow.
The developments come amid cooling relations between Ukraine and Russia over the past three months battered by problems in talks over trade and natural gas.
The cooling has been reflected in the lack of meetings between President Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, who had never yet met this year.
This is a sharp contrast with the year of 2010 when Medvedev and Yanukovych have met 11 times in the course of 10 months between March 2010 and December 2010.
The EU-Ukraine free trade talks have stumbled over the past six months over issues like energy and agriculture, and Yanukovych had last month ordered the government must speed up the talks.
Yanukovych last month appointed First Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Kliuyev in charge of the Ukrainian team of negotiators, but Kliuyev’s first visit to Brussels on March 2 has failed to trigger any progress.
Deputy Economy Minister Valeriy Piatnytsky, who was in charge of the Ukrainian team before the Kliuyev appointment in February, said the agriculture sector is perhaps the most “painful” question in the talks.
But Azarov said: “We are not losing optimism.”
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, at a meeting with Martin Schultz, the leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, on Thursday said Ukraine hopes to sign the accord by year-end.
“We are persistently holding the talks with European Commission officials in order to establish the free trade,” Azarov said. “We are persistent people, so we work consistently and seek to achieve the desired results.”
The comment comes a day after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has threatened with the prohibitive trade barriers against Ukrainian goods if Ukraine reaches the accord with the EU.
On the other hand, Putin said, Ukraine would benefit economically by joining the trade bloc with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Putin’s remarks signal that Moscow has been seeking to discourage Ukraine politically from negotiating the free trade accord with the EU. Any progress in talks between Ukraine and the EU may further worsen relations between Kiev and Moscow.
The developments come amid cooling relations between Ukraine and Russia over the past three months battered by problems in talks over trade and natural gas.
The cooling has been reflected in the lack of meetings between President Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, who had never yet met this year.
This is a sharp contrast with the year of 2010 when Medvedev and Yanukovych have met 11 times in the course of 10 months between March 2010 and December 2010.
The EU-Ukraine free trade talks have stumbled over the past six months over issues like energy and agriculture, and Yanukovych had last month ordered the government must speed up the talks.
Yanukovych last month appointed First Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Kliuyev in charge of the Ukrainian team of negotiators, but Kliuyev’s first visit to Brussels on March 2 has failed to trigger any progress.
Deputy Economy Minister Valeriy Piatnytsky, who was in charge of the Ukrainian team before the Kliuyev appointment in February, said the agriculture sector is perhaps the most “painful” question in the talks.
But Azarov said: “We are not losing optimism.”
Lessons From Chernobyl For Japan
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine -- Twelve times a month — the maximum number of shifts the doctors will allow — Sergei A. Krasikov takes a train across the no man’s land and reports for work at a structure enclosing Reactor No. 4 known as “the sarcophagus.”
Among his tasks is to pump out radioactive liquid that has collected inside the burned-out reactor. This happens whenever it rains.
The sarcophagus was built 25 years ago in a panic, as radiation streamed into populated areas after an explosion at the reactor, and now it is riddled with cracks.
Water cannot be allowed to touch the thing that is deep inside the reactor: about 200 tons of melted nuclear fuel and debris, which burned through the floor and hardened, in one spot, into the shape of an elephant’s foot.
This mass remains so highly radioactive that scientists cannot approach it. But years ago, when they managed to place measurement instruments nearby, they got readings of 10,000 rem per hour, which is 2,000 times the yearly limit recommended for workers in the nuclear industry.
Mr. Krasikov, who has broad shoulders and a clear, blue-eyed gaze, has been baby-sitting this monster for eight years. He’ll stay until he is pensioned off and then leave his job to another man, who will stay until he is pensioned off. Asked how long this will continue, Mr. Krasikov shrugged.
“A hundred years?” he ventured. “Maybe in that time they will invent something.”
The death of a nuclear reactor has a beginning; the world is watching this unfold now on the coast of Japan. But it doesn’t have an end.
While some radioactive elements in nuclear fuel decay quickly, cesium’s half-life is 30 years and strontium’s is 29 years. Scientists estimate that it takes 10 to 13 half-lives before life and economic activity can return to an area.
That means that the contaminated area — designated by Ukraine’s Parliament as 15,000 square miles, around the size of Switzerland — will be affected for more than 300 years. All last week, workers frantically tried to cool the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant 140 miles north of Tokyo.
But one had to look at Ukraine to understand the sheer tedium and exhaustion of dealing with the aftermath of a meltdown. It is a problem that does not exist on a human time frame.
Volodymyr P. Udovychenko drove to Ukraine’s Parliament building on Tuesday, dressed in a shiny purple shirt and tie. He is the mayor of Slavutych, which is home to most of the 3,400 workers who are still employed at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station.
Most of them have not received their full salaries since January, and the mayor was requesting $3.6 million to pay them. “The leadership turns away from this, they think that Chernobyl doesn’t exist,” he said. “Chernobyl does exist. And those 200 tons — they also exist.”
To visit Chernobyl today is to feel time passing.
In Pripyat, the plant workers’ former bedroom community, a little over a mile from the plant, where 50,000 people were given a few hours to evacuate, wallpaper has slipped down under its own weight and paint has peeled away from apartment walls in fat curls.
Ice glazes the interiors. On a residential street, where Soviet housing blocks tower in every direction, it is quiet enough to hear the sound of individual leaves brushing against branches.
The wild world is gradually pressing its way in. Anton Yukhimenko, who leads tours of the dead zone, said that wild boars and foxes had begun to take shelter in the abandoned city, and that once, skirting a forest, he noticed a wolf soundlessly loping along beside him.
Not long ago, one of the city’s major buildings, School No. 1, came crashing down, its supporting structures finally rotted out by 25 winters and summers.
“This is a city that has been captured by wilderness,” he said. “I think in 20 years it will be one big forest.”
The public is not allowed within 18 miles of Reactor No. 4, but a photographer and I made the journey last week with Chernobylinterinform, a division of Ukraine’s Emergency Ministry.
At the checkpoint leading to the exclusion zone, there is a small statue of the Virgin Mary and a placard listing the amounts of cesium and strontium found in mushrooms, fish and wild game.
At the six-mile radius begins the zone of mandatory resettlement. A stand of scorched-looking trees marks the so-called Red Forest, after the color of dead pines that were bulldozed en masse and buried in trenches.
As we approached the plant, the guides’ radiation detector suddenly registered 1,500 microrem — 50 times normal, they said, perhaps because we had been caught by a gust of wind.
At the center of it all is the sarcophagus, its sides uneven and streaked with rust.
Since the early 1990s, Ukrainian officials have been working on a plan to replace it, finally launching a project called the New Safe Confinement, a 300-foot steel arch that will enclose and seal off the reactor for the next 100 years.
Its cost is estimated at $1.4 billion, to be paid largely by donor nations. The project, originally scheduled to be finished in 2005, has been beset by delays and financing shortfalls.
In the meantime, the winter’s snows are turning to rain, and rainwater leaking into the reactor could have unpredictable results, said Stephan G. Robinson, a nuclear physicist who works for Green Cross Switzerland, an environmental organization.
“In winter, it will freeze,” said Dr. Robinson, who was touring the site last week. “Water expands, and it breaks. Then maybe some of the inside collapses. A little cloud disappears through a crack. If there’s rain, it means there is a way in. And if there is a way in, there is also a way out.”
But even after the new arch is built, Mr. Krasikov doubts that it will be possible to end the long vigil over Reactor No. 4.
“Nobody knows what to do with what is inside,” he said. “There will be enough work for my children and my grandchildren.”
By evening, on our way out of the site, light is tilting through the pine forests, a peaceful enough scene except for the vivid yellow-and-orange triangles planted in the forest floor, warning of radiation.
Workers stream out through a wall of man-sized Geiger counters, each one waiting for the machine to thunk and flash green before making his or her way out of the exclusion zone and down the battered highway.
Tomorrow, they will come back to Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station for another day of work.
Among his tasks is to pump out radioactive liquid that has collected inside the burned-out reactor. This happens whenever it rains.
The sarcophagus was built 25 years ago in a panic, as radiation streamed into populated areas after an explosion at the reactor, and now it is riddled with cracks.
Water cannot be allowed to touch the thing that is deep inside the reactor: about 200 tons of melted nuclear fuel and debris, which burned through the floor and hardened, in one spot, into the shape of an elephant’s foot.
This mass remains so highly radioactive that scientists cannot approach it. But years ago, when they managed to place measurement instruments nearby, they got readings of 10,000 rem per hour, which is 2,000 times the yearly limit recommended for workers in the nuclear industry.
Mr. Krasikov, who has broad shoulders and a clear, blue-eyed gaze, has been baby-sitting this monster for eight years. He’ll stay until he is pensioned off and then leave his job to another man, who will stay until he is pensioned off. Asked how long this will continue, Mr. Krasikov shrugged.
“A hundred years?” he ventured. “Maybe in that time they will invent something.”
The death of a nuclear reactor has a beginning; the world is watching this unfold now on the coast of Japan. But it doesn’t have an end.
While some radioactive elements in nuclear fuel decay quickly, cesium’s half-life is 30 years and strontium’s is 29 years. Scientists estimate that it takes 10 to 13 half-lives before life and economic activity can return to an area.
That means that the contaminated area — designated by Ukraine’s Parliament as 15,000 square miles, around the size of Switzerland — will be affected for more than 300 years. All last week, workers frantically tried to cool the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant 140 miles north of Tokyo.
But one had to look at Ukraine to understand the sheer tedium and exhaustion of dealing with the aftermath of a meltdown. It is a problem that does not exist on a human time frame.
Volodymyr P. Udovychenko drove to Ukraine’s Parliament building on Tuesday, dressed in a shiny purple shirt and tie. He is the mayor of Slavutych, which is home to most of the 3,400 workers who are still employed at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station.
Most of them have not received their full salaries since January, and the mayor was requesting $3.6 million to pay them. “The leadership turns away from this, they think that Chernobyl doesn’t exist,” he said. “Chernobyl does exist. And those 200 tons — they also exist.”
To visit Chernobyl today is to feel time passing.
In Pripyat, the plant workers’ former bedroom community, a little over a mile from the plant, where 50,000 people were given a few hours to evacuate, wallpaper has slipped down under its own weight and paint has peeled away from apartment walls in fat curls.
Ice glazes the interiors. On a residential street, where Soviet housing blocks tower in every direction, it is quiet enough to hear the sound of individual leaves brushing against branches.
The wild world is gradually pressing its way in. Anton Yukhimenko, who leads tours of the dead zone, said that wild boars and foxes had begun to take shelter in the abandoned city, and that once, skirting a forest, he noticed a wolf soundlessly loping along beside him.
Not long ago, one of the city’s major buildings, School No. 1, came crashing down, its supporting structures finally rotted out by 25 winters and summers.
“This is a city that has been captured by wilderness,” he said. “I think in 20 years it will be one big forest.”
The public is not allowed within 18 miles of Reactor No. 4, but a photographer and I made the journey last week with Chernobylinterinform, a division of Ukraine’s Emergency Ministry.
At the checkpoint leading to the exclusion zone, there is a small statue of the Virgin Mary and a placard listing the amounts of cesium and strontium found in mushrooms, fish and wild game.
At the six-mile radius begins the zone of mandatory resettlement. A stand of scorched-looking trees marks the so-called Red Forest, after the color of dead pines that were bulldozed en masse and buried in trenches.
As we approached the plant, the guides’ radiation detector suddenly registered 1,500 microrem — 50 times normal, they said, perhaps because we had been caught by a gust of wind.
At the center of it all is the sarcophagus, its sides uneven and streaked with rust.
Since the early 1990s, Ukrainian officials have been working on a plan to replace it, finally launching a project called the New Safe Confinement, a 300-foot steel arch that will enclose and seal off the reactor for the next 100 years.
Its cost is estimated at $1.4 billion, to be paid largely by donor nations. The project, originally scheduled to be finished in 2005, has been beset by delays and financing shortfalls.
In the meantime, the winter’s snows are turning to rain, and rainwater leaking into the reactor could have unpredictable results, said Stephan G. Robinson, a nuclear physicist who works for Green Cross Switzerland, an environmental organization.
“In winter, it will freeze,” said Dr. Robinson, who was touring the site last week. “Water expands, and it breaks. Then maybe some of the inside collapses. A little cloud disappears through a crack. If there’s rain, it means there is a way in. And if there is a way in, there is also a way out.”
But even after the new arch is built, Mr. Krasikov doubts that it will be possible to end the long vigil over Reactor No. 4.
“Nobody knows what to do with what is inside,” he said. “There will be enough work for my children and my grandchildren.”
By evening, on our way out of the site, light is tilting through the pine forests, a peaceful enough scene except for the vivid yellow-and-orange triangles planted in the forest floor, warning of radiation.
Workers stream out through a wall of man-sized Geiger counters, each one waiting for the machine to thunk and flash green before making his or her way out of the exclusion zone and down the battered highway.
Tomorrow, they will come back to Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station for another day of work.
Size Of Chernobyl's Deadly Legacy Hard To Measure
PRIPYAT, Ukraine -- The ruins of a city call up questions in the mind, and this high-rise ghost town where the Chernobyl nuclear power plant workers once lived raises a daunting number of them.
How many people have died, or may die in the future, because of the April 26, 1986, reactor explosion that spewed radioactive fallout across much of the Northern Hemisphere?
The only clear answer is "too many" - the number is still hotly debated.
Will the effects of the world's worst nuclear accident ever go away? In time, maybe, but in this generation, the Chernobyl consequences can seem like an endless run of rapids as studies detect possible new problems.
Perhaps the only question with a possible concrete answer is how much it will cost to make Chernobyl reasonably safe. At least 1.6 billion euros ($2.27 billion) - but 740 million euros ($1.05 billion) of that has yet to be found.
If any of the troubled nuclear reactors in Japan go into full meltdown or explode like the one here did 25 years ago, one lesson from Chernobyl is that the consequences are likely to be breathtakingly expensive, unimaginably complicated and traumatic for decades to come.
Japan may not have fully learned Chernobyl's clearest lessons - that candor about a catastrophe is key. Authorities there are coming under increasing criticism from the international community as well as their own people for failing at full disclosure.
Still, the Japanese have been more forthcoming than Soviet officials, who were variously secretive, defensive and bewildered about the plant in what is now Ukraine.
There was no official acknowledgment of the blast until three days later; the first indications of trouble came from a Swedish nuclear plant where unusual levels of radiation were detected on workers' clothes.
"At that time, for a day and a half we did not know anything about what had happened," Mikhail Gorbachev, who was then Soviet leader, said Tuesday.
Even in Pripyat, few knew what had happened when the plant's No. 4 reactor blew up around 1:30 in the morning.
Andrei Glukhov, a reactor operator, heard the explosion in his apartment when he was up late entertaining friends visiting from Moscow, but didn't think much of it.
The next morning he called that reactor's unit to find out and there was no answer. He called a colleague at another reactor's control room, who told him "everything went OK."
"When I asked him what was the condition of unit 4, he made a pause and said, 'Look out the window.' That was my first feeling that something serious had happened," he said recently during a trip to the town arranged for reporters. Glukhov now works for one of the organizations involved in building a new shelter over the reactor.
Buses were still running and Pripyat's residents waited for them outside, unaware that fallout was sprinkling down on them. But within 36 hours, the city was dead, its 49,000 residents moved out in a mass evacuation.
Eventually, some 120,000 people were taken out of a zone extending 30 kilometers (19 miles) around the plant.
Pripyat now is an eerie relic, its abandoned white apartment towers slowly disintegrating and half-hidden behind trees uncut in a quarter-century. Weeds and brush choke the town's main square, overlooked by a derelict hotel and a rusting sign bearing the emblem of the long-gone Soviet Republic of Ukraine.
A Ferris wheel that never carried a customer looms on the horizon - it was to have opened the week after the explosion.
When Soviet authorities finally admitted publicly that something had gone wrong, they spoke in vague terms. The delay and opaqueness appear to have hindered protective measures Ukrainians could have taken.
Many first heard advice to take iodine to try to stave off thyroid cancer on Voice of America broadcasts they listened to clandestinely.
It's difficult to assess whether the delay led to sicknesses. Scientists are even deeply divided on how many have died as a result of the Chernobyl explosion, which released about 400 times more radiation than the U.S. atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima.
Radioactive material stayed in soil and got into plants, and because livestock ate the vegetation, milk and meat were contaminated for many years. Thousands of children developed thyroid cancer from radiation exposure, and scientists are still working to document other possible health problems.
Even now, people who were children and teens at the time of the accident are still developing thyroid cancer, the U.S. National Cancer Institute said Thursday in a new research study.
That indicates these cancers - among the most curable when treated in a timely manner- can develop over a long time after exposure from drinking contaminated milk and no protection from potassium iodide pills.
In 2005, the Chernobyl Forum - a group comprising the International Atomic Energy Agency and several other U.N. groups - said fewer than 50 deaths could be confirmed as being connected to Chernobyl.
It also said the number of radiation-related deaths among the 600,000 people who helped deal with the aftermath of the accident would ultimately be around 4,000.
The U.N. health agency, however, has said about 9,300 people are likely to die of cancers caused by radiation. Some groups, including Greenpeace, have put the numbers 10 times higher.
The ecological effects are also open to debate. Wildlife has returned to the region despite high radiation and even thrived - biologists even report seeing lynx and moose there.
Some researchers say that emptying the zone of people helped halt the destruction of habitat. Others say the animals appear to be suffering deformation and other ills.
The trees in Pripyat have grown big enough to almost block the abandoned apartment towers from view, but they're stunted in other parts of the zone.
They're growing, "but clearly they don't feel comfortable here," said Volodymyr Holosha, head of the Ukrainian agency that manages the so-called "exclusion zone."
Parts of the zone are apparently safe for short-term human habitation. The town of Chernobyl, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the plant, houses workers constructing a new shelter for the destroyed reactor's building - but they stay there only two weeks at a time.
They have years of work ahead, constructing a shelter resembling a gargantuan Quonset hut (Nissen hut) that is to be rolled on rails over the building housing the destroyed reactor.
The structure is intended to block any radioactive emissions as the reactor is disassembled. The so-called "sarcophagus" that was hastily built to cover the reactor has already exceeded its life expectancy, and the shelter won't be completed until at least 2014.
But the project, directed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is still far short on money. The bank hopes a donors' conference coinciding with the explosion's 25th anniversary will bring pledges for the euro 740 million ($1.05 billion) still needed to complete the shelter and a waste storage facility. International donors already have put up euro864 million.
Most of the donors are highly developed nations whose budgets have been sapped by financial crises. One of the biggest donors is Japan, now facing its own costly nuclear crisis. There is quiet anxiety about where the rest of the money will come from.
"I'm confident we will get the full amount. But you have to recognize that we are living in difficult financial circumstances," said Jean-Paul Joulia of the European Commission's Nuclear Safety Unit.
Even when the shelter is completed, there's no consensus on whether the area around the plant will ever be habitable.
That's a blow for Pripyat loyalists like Glukhov, who remembers the town as a model of enlightened planning, with good services, a cinema and a stirring central plaza.
Glukhov eventually moved to the United States, but "despite the fact that I live in Washington (state), I would come back."
A few hundred of the people who were sent out of the zone after the explosion have come back, despite warnings from the Ukrainian government to stay out. But they can't be seen as harbingers of a better future.
"They just want to finish their days in the areas they were born in, close to the graves of their relatives," said Holosha.
How many people have died, or may die in the future, because of the April 26, 1986, reactor explosion that spewed radioactive fallout across much of the Northern Hemisphere?
The only clear answer is "too many" - the number is still hotly debated.
Will the effects of the world's worst nuclear accident ever go away? In time, maybe, but in this generation, the Chernobyl consequences can seem like an endless run of rapids as studies detect possible new problems.
Perhaps the only question with a possible concrete answer is how much it will cost to make Chernobyl reasonably safe. At least 1.6 billion euros ($2.27 billion) - but 740 million euros ($1.05 billion) of that has yet to be found.
If any of the troubled nuclear reactors in Japan go into full meltdown or explode like the one here did 25 years ago, one lesson from Chernobyl is that the consequences are likely to be breathtakingly expensive, unimaginably complicated and traumatic for decades to come.
Japan may not have fully learned Chernobyl's clearest lessons - that candor about a catastrophe is key. Authorities there are coming under increasing criticism from the international community as well as their own people for failing at full disclosure.
Still, the Japanese have been more forthcoming than Soviet officials, who were variously secretive, defensive and bewildered about the plant in what is now Ukraine.
There was no official acknowledgment of the blast until three days later; the first indications of trouble came from a Swedish nuclear plant where unusual levels of radiation were detected on workers' clothes.
"At that time, for a day and a half we did not know anything about what had happened," Mikhail Gorbachev, who was then Soviet leader, said Tuesday.
Even in Pripyat, few knew what had happened when the plant's No. 4 reactor blew up around 1:30 in the morning.
Andrei Glukhov, a reactor operator, heard the explosion in his apartment when he was up late entertaining friends visiting from Moscow, but didn't think much of it.
The next morning he called that reactor's unit to find out and there was no answer. He called a colleague at another reactor's control room, who told him "everything went OK."
"When I asked him what was the condition of unit 4, he made a pause and said, 'Look out the window.' That was my first feeling that something serious had happened," he said recently during a trip to the town arranged for reporters. Glukhov now works for one of the organizations involved in building a new shelter over the reactor.
Buses were still running and Pripyat's residents waited for them outside, unaware that fallout was sprinkling down on them. But within 36 hours, the city was dead, its 49,000 residents moved out in a mass evacuation.
Eventually, some 120,000 people were taken out of a zone extending 30 kilometers (19 miles) around the plant.
Pripyat now is an eerie relic, its abandoned white apartment towers slowly disintegrating and half-hidden behind trees uncut in a quarter-century. Weeds and brush choke the town's main square, overlooked by a derelict hotel and a rusting sign bearing the emblem of the long-gone Soviet Republic of Ukraine.
A Ferris wheel that never carried a customer looms on the horizon - it was to have opened the week after the explosion.
When Soviet authorities finally admitted publicly that something had gone wrong, they spoke in vague terms. The delay and opaqueness appear to have hindered protective measures Ukrainians could have taken.
Many first heard advice to take iodine to try to stave off thyroid cancer on Voice of America broadcasts they listened to clandestinely.
It's difficult to assess whether the delay led to sicknesses. Scientists are even deeply divided on how many have died as a result of the Chernobyl explosion, which released about 400 times more radiation than the U.S. atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima.
Radioactive material stayed in soil and got into plants, and because livestock ate the vegetation, milk and meat were contaminated for many years. Thousands of children developed thyroid cancer from radiation exposure, and scientists are still working to document other possible health problems.
Even now, people who were children and teens at the time of the accident are still developing thyroid cancer, the U.S. National Cancer Institute said Thursday in a new research study.
That indicates these cancers - among the most curable when treated in a timely manner- can develop over a long time after exposure from drinking contaminated milk and no protection from potassium iodide pills.
In 2005, the Chernobyl Forum - a group comprising the International Atomic Energy Agency and several other U.N. groups - said fewer than 50 deaths could be confirmed as being connected to Chernobyl.
It also said the number of radiation-related deaths among the 600,000 people who helped deal with the aftermath of the accident would ultimately be around 4,000.
The U.N. health agency, however, has said about 9,300 people are likely to die of cancers caused by radiation. Some groups, including Greenpeace, have put the numbers 10 times higher.
The ecological effects are also open to debate. Wildlife has returned to the region despite high radiation and even thrived - biologists even report seeing lynx and moose there.
Some researchers say that emptying the zone of people helped halt the destruction of habitat. Others say the animals appear to be suffering deformation and other ills.
The trees in Pripyat have grown big enough to almost block the abandoned apartment towers from view, but they're stunted in other parts of the zone.
They're growing, "but clearly they don't feel comfortable here," said Volodymyr Holosha, head of the Ukrainian agency that manages the so-called "exclusion zone."
Parts of the zone are apparently safe for short-term human habitation. The town of Chernobyl, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the plant, houses workers constructing a new shelter for the destroyed reactor's building - but they stay there only two weeks at a time.
They have years of work ahead, constructing a shelter resembling a gargantuan Quonset hut (Nissen hut) that is to be rolled on rails over the building housing the destroyed reactor.
The structure is intended to block any radioactive emissions as the reactor is disassembled. The so-called "sarcophagus" that was hastily built to cover the reactor has already exceeded its life expectancy, and the shelter won't be completed until at least 2014.
But the project, directed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is still far short on money. The bank hopes a donors' conference coinciding with the explosion's 25th anniversary will bring pledges for the euro 740 million ($1.05 billion) still needed to complete the shelter and a waste storage facility. International donors already have put up euro864 million.
Most of the donors are highly developed nations whose budgets have been sapped by financial crises. One of the biggest donors is Japan, now facing its own costly nuclear crisis. There is quiet anxiety about where the rest of the money will come from.
"I'm confident we will get the full amount. But you have to recognize that we are living in difficult financial circumstances," said Jean-Paul Joulia of the European Commission's Nuclear Safety Unit.
Even when the shelter is completed, there's no consensus on whether the area around the plant will ever be habitable.
That's a blow for Pripyat loyalists like Glukhov, who remembers the town as a model of enlightened planning, with good services, a cinema and a stirring central plaza.
Glukhov eventually moved to the United States, but "despite the fact that I live in Washington (state), I would come back."
A few hundred of the people who were sent out of the zone after the explosion have come back, despite warnings from the Ukrainian government to stay out. But they can't be seen as harbingers of a better future.
"They just want to finish their days in the areas they were born in, close to the graves of their relatives," said Holosha.
Did Britain try to assassinate Lenin?
Nearly a century ago, Britain was accused of masterminding a failed plot to kill Lenin and overthrow his fledgling Bolshevik regime. The British government dismissed the story as mere Soviet propaganda - but new evidence suggests it might be true.
For decades what became known as the "Lockhart plot" has been etched in the annals of the Soviet archives, taught in schools and even illustrated in films.
In early 1918, in the final months of World War I, Russia's new Bolshevik government was negotiating a peace deal with Germany and withdrawing its exhausted troops from the front.
This did not please London. The move would enable Berlin - which had been fighting a war on two fronts - to reinforce its forces in the West.
Determined to get the Russians back into the war on the Allied side, the British despatched a young man in his 30s to be London's representative in Moscow.
His name was Robert Bruce Lockhart.
Lockhart, a Scot, was a colourful character. Known for his love of wine, women and sports, he also prided himself on his alleged ability to read five books at the same time.
At first, the well-read Lockhart seemed to be making progress on the issue but, in March that year, the Soviets signed the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany, so ending hope of them rejoining the war with the Allies.
Lockhart, it seems, had no intention of giving up.
Instead, the suggestion is, his attention was now turning to overthrowing the Bolshevik regime and replacing it with another government that would be willing to re-enter the war against Germany.
Documents show that, in June, Lockhart asked London for money to fund various anti-Bolshevik organisations in Moscow.
This letter, marked "urgent", was sent from the Foreign Office to the Treasury. It sums up the Foreign Secretary's attitude to the Moscow's representative's request:
"Mr. Balfour is of the opinion that the moment has arrived when it has become necessary to take this action, and I am to request that you will move the Lords Committee to give the necessary sanction for the expenditure of such funds as Mr. Lockhart can collect for this purpose."
In late May, the British decided to send a small military force to Archangel in northern Russia.
The official line was that the troops were going to prevent thousands of tonnes of British military equipment, supplied to the Russians, from falling into German hands.
However, documents from the day suggest that plans were later drawn up for these 5,000 British troops to join forces with 20,000 crack Latvian troops who were guarding the Kremlin but could, it was thought, be turned against the Bolsheviks.
In the summer of 1918, Lockhart sent a telegram to London following a meeting with a local opponent of the Bolsheviks called Savinkov.
It read: "Savinkov's proposals for counter-revolution. Plan is how, on Allied intervention, Bolshevik barons will be murdered and military dictatorship formed."
Underneath that telegram is a note bearing the signed initials of Lord Curzon, who was then a member of the British War Cabinet.
It says: "Savinkoff's methods are drastic, though if successful probably effective, but we cannot say or do anything until intervention has been definitely decided upon
Meanwhile Lockhart had teamed up in Moscow with another highly colourful character.
Sidney Reilly, a Russian who had earlier changed his name from Rosenbloom, was a flamboyant, high-rolling entrepreneur who had recently begun working for the British Secret Services.
He became known as the Ace of Spies, made famous in books of derring-do, and was even credited as being the inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond.
But both were soon in for a shock.
In the late summer of 1918, an attempt was made in Moscow to assassinate Lenin. He was shot twice from close range by a young Russian woman.
The Bolshevik's secret police, the Cheka, arrested Bruce Lockhart a few hours later and he was taken to the Kremlin for questioning.
Reilly escaped the Cheka's clutches on that occasion but was shot dead several years later after being lured back into Russia.
According to Cheka records, Lockhart confessed to being part of a plot proposed by London to kill Lenin and overthrow the Bolshevik government. But in early October 1918, Britain's representative to Moscow was freed in an exchange for his Russian counterpart in London.
In his best selling book, Memoirs of a British Agent published in the 1930s, Lockhart insisted that he had played no part either in attempts to kill Lenin or overthrow the Bolshevik government.
Instead, he insisted that the maverick "Ace of Spies" Sidney Reilly was the man behind plans for a coup.
Lockhart added that he had little to do with Reilly who some claimed was out of control.
However, a letter written by Lockhart's son, Robin, has been discovered in archives in America. It suggests that his father was being rather economical with the truth:
"If the question of my father's relationship with Reilly still exercises anyone's mind in the F.O., it is clear from his book Memoirs of a British Agent that once intervention in Russia had been decided on in 1918, he gave his active support to the counter-revolutionary movement with which, of course, Reilly was actively working.
"My father has himself made it clear to me that he worked much more closely with Reilly than he had publicly indicated…"
The man who found that letter, Professor Robert Service, believes the only way to be sure of the truth would be to gain access to the rest of the files from the day.
But, more than 90 years later, the British government continues to keep many of them secret. All, in Robert Service's view, to maintain the myth that Lockhart-style plots have not - nor ever would be - countenanced by London.
"Britain today has a policy for its intelligence services that is openly averse to subverting foreign governments or assassinating foreign political leaders," he says.
"My guess is that the thinking in Whitehall is that the pretence ought to be that this has always been the case. That the British have always been clean.
"The British haven't always been clean. They have been as dirty as anyone else."
Sunday 13 March 2011
Hamas Slams Palestinian's Kidnap In Ukraine
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Authority -- Hamas condemned on Friday the abduction of a Palestinian engineer in the Ukraine, which his family blamed on the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, and demanded his release.
"This kidnapping violates international law and Ukraine's sovereignty. It is further proof of the contempt of the (Israeli) occupation for the international community," spokesman Sami Abu Zohi told AFP.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, demanded the immediate release of Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, and called on the Ukraine to "take responsibility for a crime committed in its territory".
The Israeli justice system has imposed a gag order on information connected to the disappearance of Abu Sisi, an alleged Hamas member and director of a power station in Gaza.
A court in Petah Tikva upheld a ban on publishing any information from Israel about the mysterious disappearance of Abu Sisi on February 19.
The tribunal rejected an appeal to remove the gag order by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, but permitted publication of information already circulated abroad.
On Thursday, the Ukranian interior ministry said it had received a request from Abu Sisi's wife "to establish the whereabouts of her husband who disappeared in unknown circumstances," spokesman Sergiy Burlakov said.
He told AFP that Abu Sisi was reported to have disappeared on a train between Kiev and the northern city of Kharkiv and that his wife said he could be in Israel.
The engineer's sister, Sozan, told AFP her brother had "traveled to Ukraine to obtain Ukranian nationality" and accused Mossad of abducting him without reason.
He is being held at Shikma prison in Ashkelon, according to a Ukranian delegate at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees cited by Israeli media.
The Israeli press has said Ukranian security services may have collaborated in the kidnapping.
"This kidnapping violates international law and Ukraine's sovereignty. It is further proof of the contempt of the (Israeli) occupation for the international community," spokesman Sami Abu Zohi told AFP.
Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, demanded the immediate release of Dirar Abu Sisi, 42, and called on the Ukraine to "take responsibility for a crime committed in its territory".
The Israeli justice system has imposed a gag order on information connected to the disappearance of Abu Sisi, an alleged Hamas member and director of a power station in Gaza.
A court in Petah Tikva upheld a ban on publishing any information from Israel about the mysterious disappearance of Abu Sisi on February 19.
The tribunal rejected an appeal to remove the gag order by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, but permitted publication of information already circulated abroad.
On Thursday, the Ukranian interior ministry said it had received a request from Abu Sisi's wife "to establish the whereabouts of her husband who disappeared in unknown circumstances," spokesman Sergiy Burlakov said.
He told AFP that Abu Sisi was reported to have disappeared on a train between Kiev and the northern city of Kharkiv and that his wife said he could be in Israel.
The engineer's sister, Sozan, told AFP her brother had "traveled to Ukraine to obtain Ukranian nationality" and accused Mossad of abducting him without reason.
He is being held at Shikma prison in Ashkelon, according to a Ukranian delegate at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees cited by Israeli media.
The Israeli press has said Ukranian security services may have collaborated in the kidnapping.
Ukraine Prosecutor Office Ready To Take Tymoshenko Case To Court
KIEV, Ukraine -- The Prosecutor General’s Office is ready to take the criminal case against ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to court, the press service of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Friday.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office is ready to take to court the criminal case immediately after the defendant and her counsel complete its study,” the statement says.
The press service noted that on March 10 the investigator for particularly important cases of the Prosecutor General’s Office handed to Tymoshenko’s lawyer Bogdan Ferents a letter that he should pass to his client.
The letter says that on February 21 Tymoshenko was notified of the completion of the pre-trial investigation in a criminal case on charges of exceeding power, abuse of office that led to serious consequences and violations of the budget legislation.
“According to the protocol announcing the completion of the pre-trial investigation, Tymoshenko expressed the desire to get familiarised with the case materials with the participation of the counsel. According to the requirements of Article 218 of the Ukrainian Criminal Procedure Code, it is a right, not an obligation of the defendant,” said the Prosecutor General’s Office.
“However, expressing the desire to familiarise with the case, the accused should not take actions to make an unjustified delay in this process.”
The press service said that every working day from 9:00 to 18:00 hours Tymoshenko has an opportunity in a convenient time for her to get acquainted with the case materials.
“If the defence lawyer cannot come for valid reasons, the defendant can postpone the familiarisation with the case until he appears,” the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said.
Tymoshenko is accused that being on the prime minister’s post, acting intentionally, out of personal interest, she decided to use part of the funds received from the sale of quotas for greenhouse gas emissions and that had a specific purpose, to cover Ukraine’s state budget expenditures, first of all for fulfilling obligations on the payment of pensions. The total amount of misused funds amounted to 380 million euros.
Another criminal case against the former prime minister concerns the purchase under the government guarantees and importation into the territory of Ukraine of the allegedly specialised medical vehicles Opel Combo.
The amount of damage caused to the state in this case is 67 million hrivnas (more than $8 million US dollars). The Prosecutor General’s Office consolidated the criminal cases against Tymoshenko in one proceeding.
According to Tymoshenko, they want to deliver a verdict to her, which provides for imprisonment for a term of 5 to 10 years.
After questioning at the Main Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office on December 15, 2010, Tymoshenko said, “I have just found out from the investigators that a criminal case has been opened against me for allegedly having used environmental money for pensions during the crisis.”
The investigators wanted to bring official changes against Tymoshenko but did not do it due to the absence of her layer, the former prime minister said.
In March 2009, Ukraine agreed to sell 30 million greenhouse gas emission units to Japan. In April Tymoshenko said Ukraine had received three billion hrivnas ($375 million US dollars) from this sale.
On April 22, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich accused the former Tymoshenko government of misuse of funds allocated to Ukraine under the Kyoto Protocol.
He made an assumption that the money received by Ukraine under the Kyoto Protocol had not been used for proper purposes. “It was stolen. And this shame is still in store for us,” the president said.
Tymoshenko denied the misuse of the funds because they were kept in special accounts of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources and said the present government could use them if need be.
“It would take a minute for a specialist to see that there is not a single payment order for the transfer of the environmental money. They say that the environment money was used to pay pensions. Pensions were paid but not with the environmental money,” she said.
However the Prosecutor General’s Office said the funds received by Ukraine from the sale of quotas under the Kyoto Protocol had been misused.
“Tymoshenko’s statement that these funds are kept in special deposit accounts is wrong,” it said. Tymoshenko said after an interrogation on December 2 that the sum in question was 320 million euros.
In October, she said the use of earnings from the sale of greenhouse gas emission quotas by her government for other purposes should not be considered a crime.
She also stressed that she would have used the money for the payment of pensions if she had faced the same situation again.
“The Prosecutor General’s Office is ready to take to court the criminal case immediately after the defendant and her counsel complete its study,” the statement says.
The press service noted that on March 10 the investigator for particularly important cases of the Prosecutor General’s Office handed to Tymoshenko’s lawyer Bogdan Ferents a letter that he should pass to his client.
The letter says that on February 21 Tymoshenko was notified of the completion of the pre-trial investigation in a criminal case on charges of exceeding power, abuse of office that led to serious consequences and violations of the budget legislation.
“According to the protocol announcing the completion of the pre-trial investigation, Tymoshenko expressed the desire to get familiarised with the case materials with the participation of the counsel. According to the requirements of Article 218 of the Ukrainian Criminal Procedure Code, it is a right, not an obligation of the defendant,” said the Prosecutor General’s Office.
“However, expressing the desire to familiarise with the case, the accused should not take actions to make an unjustified delay in this process.”
The press service said that every working day from 9:00 to 18:00 hours Tymoshenko has an opportunity in a convenient time for her to get acquainted with the case materials.
“If the defence lawyer cannot come for valid reasons, the defendant can postpone the familiarisation with the case until he appears,” the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office said.
Tymoshenko is accused that being on the prime minister’s post, acting intentionally, out of personal interest, she decided to use part of the funds received from the sale of quotas for greenhouse gas emissions and that had a specific purpose, to cover Ukraine’s state budget expenditures, first of all for fulfilling obligations on the payment of pensions. The total amount of misused funds amounted to 380 million euros.
Another criminal case against the former prime minister concerns the purchase under the government guarantees and importation into the territory of Ukraine of the allegedly specialised medical vehicles Opel Combo.
The amount of damage caused to the state in this case is 67 million hrivnas (more than $8 million US dollars). The Prosecutor General’s Office consolidated the criminal cases against Tymoshenko in one proceeding.
According to Tymoshenko, they want to deliver a verdict to her, which provides for imprisonment for a term of 5 to 10 years.
After questioning at the Main Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office on December 15, 2010, Tymoshenko said, “I have just found out from the investigators that a criminal case has been opened against me for allegedly having used environmental money for pensions during the crisis.”
The investigators wanted to bring official changes against Tymoshenko but did not do it due to the absence of her layer, the former prime minister said.
In March 2009, Ukraine agreed to sell 30 million greenhouse gas emission units to Japan. In April Tymoshenko said Ukraine had received three billion hrivnas ($375 million US dollars) from this sale.
On April 22, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich accused the former Tymoshenko government of misuse of funds allocated to Ukraine under the Kyoto Protocol.
He made an assumption that the money received by Ukraine under the Kyoto Protocol had not been used for proper purposes. “It was stolen. And this shame is still in store for us,” the president said.
Tymoshenko denied the misuse of the funds because they were kept in special accounts of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources and said the present government could use them if need be.
“It would take a minute for a specialist to see that there is not a single payment order for the transfer of the environmental money. They say that the environment money was used to pay pensions. Pensions were paid but not with the environmental money,” she said.
However the Prosecutor General’s Office said the funds received by Ukraine from the sale of quotas under the Kyoto Protocol had been misused.
“Tymoshenko’s statement that these funds are kept in special deposit accounts is wrong,” it said. Tymoshenko said after an interrogation on December 2 that the sum in question was 320 million euros.
In October, she said the use of earnings from the sale of greenhouse gas emission quotas by her government for other purposes should not be considered a crime.
She also stressed that she would have used the money for the payment of pensions if she had faced the same situation again.
Ukraine To Raise Natural Gas Prices For Households By 30 Percent
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s government will raise the price of natural gas for households by 30 percent this year as the country seeks to qualify for an International Monetary Fund bailout loan, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said.
The increase will help cut the budget deficit of state-run energy company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy to 8.5 billion hryvnia ($1.07 billion), Azarov said yesterday in remarks broadcast by private TV channel Inter.
Naftogaz’s budget will be balanced next year, Azarov said.
The country first turned to the IMF in 2008 after the global recession cut demand for its exports and the budget deficit swelled.
The nation received $10.6 billion before payments were frozen when the government declined to cut spending before presidential elections at the start of 2010.
The IMF approved a second lending program in July after Ukraine agreed to trim the shortfall and raise gas prices.
Ukraine raised the price of natural gas for households by 50 percent on Aug. 1, and said it would increase it more, according to the agreement.
Households now pay an average of 725 hryvnia ($90) per 1,000 cubic meters, compared with an average of $264 the country paid for imported Russian gas in the first quarter.
The increase will help cut the budget deficit of state-run energy company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy to 8.5 billion hryvnia ($1.07 billion), Azarov said yesterday in remarks broadcast by private TV channel Inter.
Naftogaz’s budget will be balanced next year, Azarov said.
The country first turned to the IMF in 2008 after the global recession cut demand for its exports and the budget deficit swelled.
The nation received $10.6 billion before payments were frozen when the government declined to cut spending before presidential elections at the start of 2010.
The IMF approved a second lending program in July after Ukraine agreed to trim the shortfall and raise gas prices.
Ukraine raised the price of natural gas for households by 50 percent on Aug. 1, and said it would increase it more, according to the agreement.
Households now pay an average of 725 hryvnia ($90) per 1,000 cubic meters, compared with an average of $264 the country paid for imported Russian gas in the first quarter.
Ukraine Offers Search And Rescue, Nuclear Control Teams To Japan
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine Saturday offered to send search and rescue teams to Japan and, if needed, to follow them up with nuclear accident control crews.
'We have an aircraft ready to fly, now, with about 40 rescue experts and their search dogs,' said Yulia Yershova, spokeswoman for Ukraine's Ministry of Emergency Situations. 'We are waiting for a request from the Japanese side.'
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych late Friday evening ordered his government to ready emergency response teams to be sent to Japan.
Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a formal offer of assistance Saturday morning.
The top priority was helping to find people buried in rubble and providing them with food, shelter, and medical assistance.
Repairing damaged infrastructure was also critical, according to Yanukovych's executive order.
Talks were in progress between Ukrainian government agencies on readying teams able to assist with limiting the effects of a nuclear accident, should Tokyo request it, Yershova said.
Ukraine was the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power accident.
Ukraine's Ministry of Emergency Situations has led the national effort for controlling the effects of radiation from the disaster.
'We have an aircraft ready to fly, now, with about 40 rescue experts and their search dogs,' said Yulia Yershova, spokeswoman for Ukraine's Ministry of Emergency Situations. 'We are waiting for a request from the Japanese side.'
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych late Friday evening ordered his government to ready emergency response teams to be sent to Japan.
Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a formal offer of assistance Saturday morning.
The top priority was helping to find people buried in rubble and providing them with food, shelter, and medical assistance.
Repairing damaged infrastructure was also critical, according to Yanukovych's executive order.
Talks were in progress between Ukrainian government agencies on readying teams able to assist with limiting the effects of a nuclear accident, should Tokyo request it, Yershova said.
Ukraine was the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power accident.
Ukraine's Ministry of Emergency Situations has led the national effort for controlling the effects of radiation from the disaster.
At The Ancient City Of Kamyanets-Podilskiy, The Wall's The Thing
KAMYANETS-PODILSKIJ, Ukraine -- Looking across the gaping stone canyon at the ancient walled city of Kamyanets-Podilskiy in southwestern Ukraine, you can imagine what it must have felt like to ride up to this place at the head of an invading horde.
It would have been a sinking feeling, as deep as the gorge in front of you.
The old city is almost entirely enclosed by the canyon created by a loop of the Smotrych River. To get to the town, you would have to lead your men straight down a rock face more than 100 feet high, then across the river, which would have been flooded, thanks to some ingenious dams.
If you managed to get to the far bank, you would have to scramble up another cliff. Even without the people inside shooting at you, your horde would be pretty grumpy when you got to the top. Oh, and then you'd be facing the city walls. ("One of you knuckleheads did remember to bring the ladder, didn't you?")
The other option would be to advance across the narrow isthmus at the mouth of the loop. But that was defended by a massive stone behemoth that looked like something out of a very dark legend - all turrets, gun ports and towers.
The walls are still there today, but now this enchanting city welcomes tourists. And if you want to get inside the ancient fortress, all you need is a ticket that costs less than $2.
Nobody knows when people first used this natural citadel to hold enemies at bay, but it was certainly occupied by the 11th century. Mongols overran the city in about 1240. After that, the defenses were stiffened.
The older of the two fortresses that guard the main approach to the town began to take shape in the 14th century. Its walls are 45 feet high and almost 15 feet thick. In 1621, a second fortress of massive earthen walls was built in front of the Old Fortress.
Over the years, the fortifications have repelled more than 50 assaults and sieges. According to legend, when the Turkish Sultan Osman arrived at the city in 1621, he asked who had created such a forbidding stronghold. "It was created by Allah himself," came the answer. "Well then, let Allah storm it," the sultan responded, before withdrawing.
The fortress has rarely been taken by direct attack.In 1393, a Lithuanian prince conquered the city thanks to dissension in the ranks of the defenders. And in 1672, a Turkish army outnumbered the garrison by a ratio of 60 to 1. After the city fell, Mehmed IV supposedly trampled looted icons as he rode into town.
You can clamber over the remains of the New Fortress without a ticket. Inside the Old Fortress, you'll get an idea of what life was like for the soldiers, see the hole where debtors were flung if they couldn't pay their bills, and examine the well in one of the castle towers from which soldiers hauled up water using a device that looks like a giant hamster wheel.
It may come as something of a surprise that such a massive and well-preserved bastion stands in Ukraine. But if Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization, the lands of present-day Ukraine are probably the cradle of conquest.
Much of the land is rich and flat, perfect for farming and war. Scythian, Mongol, Tartar, Cossack, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Lithuanian, Austrian, Hungarian, Swedish, English, Greek and German armies have all come this way.
Which is why people in Ukraine have spent a lot of time building walls. The country holds more than 300 citadels and castles. They range from walled monasteries along the Dnieper River to Genoese towers on the Black Sea, built to guard trading outposts.
Kamyanets-Podilskiy is one of the most impressive. The old part of the city - in the oxbow of the river - is not much more than half a mile long and is full of old buildings and historic churches. We hired an English-speaking guide for a 2 1/2-hour walking tour for about $20.
Wandering the cobbled streets, you can see the Windy Gate (remembered as the place where a breeze had the audacity to pluck off Peter the Great's hat in 1711) and the partially reconstructed Polish Gate, which guards a ford in the river.
There's the old city hall, which now houses three small museums, and the ruins of a 15th-century Armenian church. The facade of the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul cradles a 17th-century minaret built when the Turks ruled the city.
When the Poles got the town back by treaty in 1699, they decided not to knock it down, but topped it with an 11-foot golden statue of the Virgin Mary.
Signs in Ukrainian and English point the way to the main attractions.
Several hotels have opened in the old city and several more are in the new city within easy walking distance. We stayed in one across the river, a 10-minute walk from the historic district.
The old city suffered heavy damage during World War II. Many of the drab postwar buildings have recently been replaced with modern buildings that look as if they could have been built centuries ago.
Locals, such as Ukrainian castle expert Iryna Pustynnikova, find this quite disappointing, because drawings of what the old city looked like could have guided authentic restorations.
Local authorities opted for plans more likely to attract investors. I didn't find the new stuff offensively Disneyish, but more discerning people might.
For centuries, the city had a remarkably diverse population - Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Armenians. But with Soviet rule came many deportations. And the Nazi occupation during WWII was followed by terrible massacres. More than 23,000 Jews were killed near the city in three days in August 1941.
That incident is not prominently mentioned in tours of the city, but it is the one that came back to me as I wandered the ancient fortifications.
Today, we see such ramparts as quaint architectural marvels, almost like something from a fairy tale. But people built them out of fear - because conquerors exact a terrible price.
It would have been a sinking feeling, as deep as the gorge in front of you.
The old city is almost entirely enclosed by the canyon created by a loop of the Smotrych River. To get to the town, you would have to lead your men straight down a rock face more than 100 feet high, then across the river, which would have been flooded, thanks to some ingenious dams.
If you managed to get to the far bank, you would have to scramble up another cliff. Even without the people inside shooting at you, your horde would be pretty grumpy when you got to the top. Oh, and then you'd be facing the city walls. ("One of you knuckleheads did remember to bring the ladder, didn't you?")
The other option would be to advance across the narrow isthmus at the mouth of the loop. But that was defended by a massive stone behemoth that looked like something out of a very dark legend - all turrets, gun ports and towers.
The walls are still there today, but now this enchanting city welcomes tourists. And if you want to get inside the ancient fortress, all you need is a ticket that costs less than $2.
Nobody knows when people first used this natural citadel to hold enemies at bay, but it was certainly occupied by the 11th century. Mongols overran the city in about 1240. After that, the defenses were stiffened.
The older of the two fortresses that guard the main approach to the town began to take shape in the 14th century. Its walls are 45 feet high and almost 15 feet thick. In 1621, a second fortress of massive earthen walls was built in front of the Old Fortress.
Over the years, the fortifications have repelled more than 50 assaults and sieges. According to legend, when the Turkish Sultan Osman arrived at the city in 1621, he asked who had created such a forbidding stronghold. "It was created by Allah himself," came the answer. "Well then, let Allah storm it," the sultan responded, before withdrawing.
The fortress has rarely been taken by direct attack.In 1393, a Lithuanian prince conquered the city thanks to dissension in the ranks of the defenders. And in 1672, a Turkish army outnumbered the garrison by a ratio of 60 to 1. After the city fell, Mehmed IV supposedly trampled looted icons as he rode into town.
You can clamber over the remains of the New Fortress without a ticket. Inside the Old Fortress, you'll get an idea of what life was like for the soldiers, see the hole where debtors were flung if they couldn't pay their bills, and examine the well in one of the castle towers from which soldiers hauled up water using a device that looks like a giant hamster wheel.
It may come as something of a surprise that such a massive and well-preserved bastion stands in Ukraine. But if Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization, the lands of present-day Ukraine are probably the cradle of conquest.
Much of the land is rich and flat, perfect for farming and war. Scythian, Mongol, Tartar, Cossack, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Lithuanian, Austrian, Hungarian, Swedish, English, Greek and German armies have all come this way.
Which is why people in Ukraine have spent a lot of time building walls. The country holds more than 300 citadels and castles. They range from walled monasteries along the Dnieper River to Genoese towers on the Black Sea, built to guard trading outposts.
Kamyanets-Podilskiy is one of the most impressive. The old part of the city - in the oxbow of the river - is not much more than half a mile long and is full of old buildings and historic churches. We hired an English-speaking guide for a 2 1/2-hour walking tour for about $20.
Wandering the cobbled streets, you can see the Windy Gate (remembered as the place where a breeze had the audacity to pluck off Peter the Great's hat in 1711) and the partially reconstructed Polish Gate, which guards a ford in the river.
There's the old city hall, which now houses three small museums, and the ruins of a 15th-century Armenian church. The facade of the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul cradles a 17th-century minaret built when the Turks ruled the city.
When the Poles got the town back by treaty in 1699, they decided not to knock it down, but topped it with an 11-foot golden statue of the Virgin Mary.
Signs in Ukrainian and English point the way to the main attractions.
Several hotels have opened in the old city and several more are in the new city within easy walking distance. We stayed in one across the river, a 10-minute walk from the historic district.
The old city suffered heavy damage during World War II. Many of the drab postwar buildings have recently been replaced with modern buildings that look as if they could have been built centuries ago.
Locals, such as Ukrainian castle expert Iryna Pustynnikova, find this quite disappointing, because drawings of what the old city looked like could have guided authentic restorations.
Local authorities opted for plans more likely to attract investors. I didn't find the new stuff offensively Disneyish, but more discerning people might.
For centuries, the city had a remarkably diverse population - Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Armenians. But with Soviet rule came many deportations. And the Nazi occupation during WWII was followed by terrible massacres. More than 23,000 Jews were killed near the city in three days in August 1941.
That incident is not prominently mentioned in tours of the city, but it is the one that came back to me as I wandered the ancient fortifications.
Today, we see such ramparts as quaint architectural marvels, almost like something from a fairy tale. But people built them out of fear - because conquerors exact a terrible price.
Sunday 6 March 2011
Tymoshenko Gets Approval To Visit Her Mother
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, whose travel has been effectively restricted by authorities over the past two months, on Tuesday won permission from prosecutors to visit her mother in Dnipropetrovsk next week.
The development is a small victory for Tymoshenko, whose requests to travel to Brussels over the past two months were declined at least twice.
The permission to visit Dnipropetrovsk on March 8, Women’s Day, comes two weeks after President Viktor Yanukovych admitted that European leaders had spoken to him directly about easing Tymoshenko’s travel restrictions.
Now, it will be harder for prosecutors to decline Tymoshenko’s next international trip, and she has planned to request a permission to visit Brussels March 23–24 for a meeting with European Union leaders.
“The prosecutor investigating the case at the Prosecutor General’s Office has today reviewed and decided to satisfy the request by Tymoshenko to make the trip to Dnipropetrovsk on March 8,” the Prosecutor General’s Office reported Tuesday.
Ukraine, as most of other former Soviet Union countries, celebrate what they used to call the International Women’s Day on March 8.
The development may signal a change in the way the authorities treat Tymoshenko, the leader of the largest opposition party in Ukraine, who had been under investigation since the middle of December 2010.
Tymoshenko, who lost presidential election to Yanukovych in February 2010, is charged with abusing power while the prime minister in 2009.
In particular, the authorities accuse her of diverting some environmental funds towards payment of pensions in 2009, while other charges allege her government had ordered the purchase of ill-equipped ambulances.
Tymoshenko, who is obliged by prosecutors to stay in Kiev until the investigation is finished, has asked them two times a permission to visit Brussels in February for a meeting with European leaders.
Both times the permission has been denied on different reasons: first – because the investigation has been written in English and the prosecutors demanded a Ukrainian translation, and second – the prosecutors said that Tymoshenko may leave Ukraine for good.
But responding to mounting international criticism, Yanukovych on Feb. 16 admitted that the “restriction is not acceptable” and the trip “must take place.”
The comment showed that the European politicians had communicated directly with Yanukovych to put pressure on him for letting Tymoshenko leave Ukraine for the meetings.
Yanukovych said he was “irritated” by the restrictions that he says have been imposed by the prosecutors.
This underscored a new tactic as the Ukrainian authorities had so far failed to react to general political statements criticizing the deteriorating political freedoms in Ukraine.
Tymoshenko was against invited to join a summit of the European People’s Party in Brussels on March 23-24, during which she will be able to meet a number of European Union leaders.
Tymoshenko later reacted sarcastically to the Yanukovych comments, but said that this time the prosecutors may finally let her go.
The pressure on Tymoshenko intensified late last year after she had repeatedly traveled to Brussels to criticize Yanukovych on international arena.
After one such trip last year, an anonymous caller phoned Tymoshenko and told her that she will “cough up blood” unless she stops criticizing Yanukovych internationally.
A criminal investigation was opened shortly afterwards, and her travel restrictions had been imposed.
The development is a small victory for Tymoshenko, whose requests to travel to Brussels over the past two months were declined at least twice.
The permission to visit Dnipropetrovsk on March 8, Women’s Day, comes two weeks after President Viktor Yanukovych admitted that European leaders had spoken to him directly about easing Tymoshenko’s travel restrictions.
Now, it will be harder for prosecutors to decline Tymoshenko’s next international trip, and she has planned to request a permission to visit Brussels March 23–24 for a meeting with European Union leaders.
“The prosecutor investigating the case at the Prosecutor General’s Office has today reviewed and decided to satisfy the request by Tymoshenko to make the trip to Dnipropetrovsk on March 8,” the Prosecutor General’s Office reported Tuesday.
Ukraine, as most of other former Soviet Union countries, celebrate what they used to call the International Women’s Day on March 8.
The development may signal a change in the way the authorities treat Tymoshenko, the leader of the largest opposition party in Ukraine, who had been under investigation since the middle of December 2010.
Tymoshenko, who lost presidential election to Yanukovych in February 2010, is charged with abusing power while the prime minister in 2009.
In particular, the authorities accuse her of diverting some environmental funds towards payment of pensions in 2009, while other charges allege her government had ordered the purchase of ill-equipped ambulances.
Tymoshenko, who is obliged by prosecutors to stay in Kiev until the investigation is finished, has asked them two times a permission to visit Brussels in February for a meeting with European leaders.
Both times the permission has been denied on different reasons: first – because the investigation has been written in English and the prosecutors demanded a Ukrainian translation, and second – the prosecutors said that Tymoshenko may leave Ukraine for good.
But responding to mounting international criticism, Yanukovych on Feb. 16 admitted that the “restriction is not acceptable” and the trip “must take place.”
The comment showed that the European politicians had communicated directly with Yanukovych to put pressure on him for letting Tymoshenko leave Ukraine for the meetings.
Yanukovych said he was “irritated” by the restrictions that he says have been imposed by the prosecutors.
This underscored a new tactic as the Ukrainian authorities had so far failed to react to general political statements criticizing the deteriorating political freedoms in Ukraine.
Tymoshenko was against invited to join a summit of the European People’s Party in Brussels on March 23-24, during which she will be able to meet a number of European Union leaders.
Tymoshenko later reacted sarcastically to the Yanukovych comments, but said that this time the prosecutors may finally let her go.
The pressure on Tymoshenko intensified late last year after she had repeatedly traveled to Brussels to criticize Yanukovych on international arena.
After one such trip last year, an anonymous caller phoned Tymoshenko and told her that she will “cough up blood” unless she stops criticizing Yanukovych internationally.
A criminal investigation was opened shortly afterwards, and her travel restrictions had been imposed.
Biden Thanks Yanukovych For Evacuation Of U.S. Citizens From Libya
KIEV, Ukraine -- U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden has thanked Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych for Ukraine's assistance in the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Libya, the press service of the Ukrainian head of state has reported.
In a phone conversation on March 2, the sides also discussed the fulfillment of mutual commitments in the sphere of nuclear security.
"Ukraine is ready to conduct further work to remove all stocks of highly enriched uranium before a nuclear security summit in 2012," Yanukovych said.
The sides appreciated the outcome of the third session of the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Commission, which was held in Washington on February 15, 2011.
Speaking about the development of democracy in Ukraine, Yanukovych said that he highly appreciated the efforts taken by the United States to promote democracy in the world and its attention being paid to the development of democratic institutions in Ukraine.
"We remain open to the constructive dialog on the strengthening of democracy and the rule of law, as well as the implementation of relevant reforms," Yanukovych said.
The parties also discussed the improvement of criminal justice and electoral legislation in Ukraine in order to strengthen civil society.
Yanukovych and Biden also discussed preparations for a summit dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy. Biden said that the United States would be represented at a high level at the summit.
"Ukraine, together with the international community, is currently actively preparing for the summit and a scientific conference. Our initiative was supported by most countries and international organizations," Yanukovych said.
The sides also spoke about the improvement of the business climate in Ukraine and the creation of better conditions for attracting foreign direct investment.
"Ukraine is currently introducing a number of important reforms that should thoroughly modernize the country," Yanukovych said.
In a phone conversation on March 2, the sides also discussed the fulfillment of mutual commitments in the sphere of nuclear security.
"Ukraine is ready to conduct further work to remove all stocks of highly enriched uranium before a nuclear security summit in 2012," Yanukovych said.
The sides appreciated the outcome of the third session of the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership Commission, which was held in Washington on February 15, 2011.
Speaking about the development of democracy in Ukraine, Yanukovych said that he highly appreciated the efforts taken by the United States to promote democracy in the world and its attention being paid to the development of democratic institutions in Ukraine.
"We remain open to the constructive dialog on the strengthening of democracy and the rule of law, as well as the implementation of relevant reforms," Yanukovych said.
The parties also discussed the improvement of criminal justice and electoral legislation in Ukraine in order to strengthen civil society.
Yanukovych and Biden also discussed preparations for a summit dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy. Biden said that the United States would be represented at a high level at the summit.
"Ukraine, together with the international community, is currently actively preparing for the summit and a scientific conference. Our initiative was supported by most countries and international organizations," Yanukovych said.
The sides also spoke about the improvement of the business climate in Ukraine and the creation of better conditions for attracting foreign direct investment.
"Ukraine is currently introducing a number of important reforms that should thoroughly modernize the country," Yanukovych said.
While IMF Takes Pause, Ukraine Considers Ailing Banks
KIEV, Ukraine -- The mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed its work in Kyiv on February 14, but more difficult talks are ahead. Ukraine still has to prove that it qualifies for the next $1.6 billion IMF loan tranche.
The government of President Viktor Yanukovych like its predecessor, whose economic populism prompted the IMF to freeze assistance in late 2009, failed to meet its commitments as many reforms remain unfinished.
The IMF approved a $15 billion loan for Ukraine last July and $3.4 billion arrived last year in two tranches. If the tranche expected in March is delayed, the schedule may be changed so fewer than four tranches would be received this year.
This may strain public finances ahead of the crucial Euro-2012 soccer championship, a costly event which Ukraine will co-host with Poland.
The IMF mission stated on February 15 that though the economy performed well last year and the economic program supported by IMF loans had been broadly on track, more discussions would be held. In particular, agreement was yet to be reached on household gas price hikes. The mission said a more gradual schedule of hikes was agreed than planned earlier.
Last year, the government promised to hike gas prices for households by 50 percent from April 2011, in addition to a 50 percent hike last August. It is not clear how the combined deficit of the government and the debt-ridden national oil and gas company Naftohaz Ukrainy would be narrowed to 3.5 percent this year as promised to the IMF without the April hike.
On February 17, the IMF released on its website documents dated December 10, 2010 containing Ukraine’s obligations under the mutually agreed reform plan. The publication of the documents had been delayed by the IMF apparently at the government’s request in order to avoid negative reactions in Ukraine as many of the reforms agreed with the IMF are likely to prove unpopular.
The agreements with the IMF were reached in the wake of the popular protests against a new tax code last fall so the precaution was apparently justified. Now that more than two months have passed, it is clear than many obligations have not been met.
The government promised a 5.5 percent state budget deficit in 2010, yet the target was exceeded. It pledged to approve pension reform by January 2011, however parliament plans to pass it only in March.
The government admitted that Naftohaz’s deficit would be reduced to 0.4 percent of GDP in 2011 rather than to zero as promised earlier. At the same time, the government pledged to hike household gas prices by 50 percent in April. However, the government made clear to the IMF mission this month that this plan was abandoned.
Ukraine’s central bank reportedly rejected the IMF’s advice that only one of the three mid-sized banks which were bailed out in 2009, Ukrhazbank, should be rescued. Instead, the government is going to revive at least two of these banks plus the large ailing bank Nadra.
In order to rescue Nadra, the central bank plans an increase in the capital of the state-owned Oshchadbank so that Oshchadbank should issue a loan to the equivalent of $440 million to Nadra while the same sum should be contributed by private investors.
Another large state-owned bank, Ukreximbank, should lend to Rodovid, which is in the worst condition among the three bailed-out banks. Later, Rodovid should be transformed into a “bad bank” for the toxic assets of Ukrgazbank, the Kyiv bank and possibly Nadra, while Kyiv would be merged with Ukrgazbank, according to the plan.
Later on, IPO’s would be conducted for several of those banks. The IMF has yet to approve the plan.
Central bank governor, Serhy Arbuzov, confirmed most of these developments in a recent interview. Arbuzov also said the IMF was recommending remedies which had been used elsewhere but could not be implemented in Ukraine.
The government has invested over $2 billion in Rodovid, Ukrgazbank and Kyiv since 2009, but an audit conducted in late 2010 showed that more should be invested. Nadra has been in limbo since late 2008 while the central bank’s plan has been to rescue it jointly with the energy and chemical tycoon Dmytro Firtash who co-owns the RosUkrEnergo (RUE) gas intermediary with Gazprom.
International and independent domestic experts have been against state participation in Nadra, arguing that either Firtash should rescue the bank on his own or Nadra should be liquidated otherwise it will continue to drain public funds.
The government has invested over $2 billion in Rodovid, Ukrgazbank and Kyiv since 2009, but an audit conducted in late 2010 showed that more must be invested.
Nadra has been in limbo since late 2008 while the central bank’s plan has been to rescue it jointly with the energy and chemical tycoon Dmytro Firtash who co-owns the RosUkrEnergo (RUE) gas intermediary with Gazprom.
International and independent domestic experts have been against state participation in Nadra, arguing that either Firtash should rescue the bank on his own or Nadra should be liquidated otherwise it will continue to drain public funds.
Firtash should have cash to rescue Nadra as RUE will receive 12 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from Naftohaz this year as emerged from the December 10 documents released by the IMF.
Last year, courts ruled that the former Ukrainian government illegally seized 11 bcm of gas from RUE in early 2009. Naftohaz was ordered to return the gas plus damages. Naftohaz started returning the gas to RUE last December and RUE will sell it in Europe.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who reportedly thwarted Firtash’s intention to take over Nadra in early 2009, has opposed the new plan for Nadra. Tymoshenko predicted that the plan to help Firtash rescue Nadra with the help of Oshchadbank would spark a corruption scandal.
The government of President Viktor Yanukovych like its predecessor, whose economic populism prompted the IMF to freeze assistance in late 2009, failed to meet its commitments as many reforms remain unfinished.
The IMF approved a $15 billion loan for Ukraine last July and $3.4 billion arrived last year in two tranches. If the tranche expected in March is delayed, the schedule may be changed so fewer than four tranches would be received this year.
This may strain public finances ahead of the crucial Euro-2012 soccer championship, a costly event which Ukraine will co-host with Poland.
The IMF mission stated on February 15 that though the economy performed well last year and the economic program supported by IMF loans had been broadly on track, more discussions would be held. In particular, agreement was yet to be reached on household gas price hikes. The mission said a more gradual schedule of hikes was agreed than planned earlier.
Last year, the government promised to hike gas prices for households by 50 percent from April 2011, in addition to a 50 percent hike last August. It is not clear how the combined deficit of the government and the debt-ridden national oil and gas company Naftohaz Ukrainy would be narrowed to 3.5 percent this year as promised to the IMF without the April hike.
On February 17, the IMF released on its website documents dated December 10, 2010 containing Ukraine’s obligations under the mutually agreed reform plan. The publication of the documents had been delayed by the IMF apparently at the government’s request in order to avoid negative reactions in Ukraine as many of the reforms agreed with the IMF are likely to prove unpopular.
The agreements with the IMF were reached in the wake of the popular protests against a new tax code last fall so the precaution was apparently justified. Now that more than two months have passed, it is clear than many obligations have not been met.
The government promised a 5.5 percent state budget deficit in 2010, yet the target was exceeded. It pledged to approve pension reform by January 2011, however parliament plans to pass it only in March.
The government admitted that Naftohaz’s deficit would be reduced to 0.4 percent of GDP in 2011 rather than to zero as promised earlier. At the same time, the government pledged to hike household gas prices by 50 percent in April. However, the government made clear to the IMF mission this month that this plan was abandoned.
Ukraine’s central bank reportedly rejected the IMF’s advice that only one of the three mid-sized banks which were bailed out in 2009, Ukrhazbank, should be rescued. Instead, the government is going to revive at least two of these banks plus the large ailing bank Nadra.
In order to rescue Nadra, the central bank plans an increase in the capital of the state-owned Oshchadbank so that Oshchadbank should issue a loan to the equivalent of $440 million to Nadra while the same sum should be contributed by private investors.
Another large state-owned bank, Ukreximbank, should lend to Rodovid, which is in the worst condition among the three bailed-out banks. Later, Rodovid should be transformed into a “bad bank” for the toxic assets of Ukrgazbank, the Kyiv bank and possibly Nadra, while Kyiv would be merged with Ukrgazbank, according to the plan.
Later on, IPO’s would be conducted for several of those banks. The IMF has yet to approve the plan.
Central bank governor, Serhy Arbuzov, confirmed most of these developments in a recent interview. Arbuzov also said the IMF was recommending remedies which had been used elsewhere but could not be implemented in Ukraine.
The government has invested over $2 billion in Rodovid, Ukrgazbank and Kyiv since 2009, but an audit conducted in late 2010 showed that more should be invested. Nadra has been in limbo since late 2008 while the central bank’s plan has been to rescue it jointly with the energy and chemical tycoon Dmytro Firtash who co-owns the RosUkrEnergo (RUE) gas intermediary with Gazprom.
International and independent domestic experts have been against state participation in Nadra, arguing that either Firtash should rescue the bank on his own or Nadra should be liquidated otherwise it will continue to drain public funds.
The government has invested over $2 billion in Rodovid, Ukrgazbank and Kyiv since 2009, but an audit conducted in late 2010 showed that more must be invested.
Nadra has been in limbo since late 2008 while the central bank’s plan has been to rescue it jointly with the energy and chemical tycoon Dmytro Firtash who co-owns the RosUkrEnergo (RUE) gas intermediary with Gazprom.
International and independent domestic experts have been against state participation in Nadra, arguing that either Firtash should rescue the bank on his own or Nadra should be liquidated otherwise it will continue to drain public funds.
Firtash should have cash to rescue Nadra as RUE will receive 12 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from Naftohaz this year as emerged from the December 10 documents released by the IMF.
Last year, courts ruled that the former Ukrainian government illegally seized 11 bcm of gas from RUE in early 2009. Naftohaz was ordered to return the gas plus damages. Naftohaz started returning the gas to RUE last December and RUE will sell it in Europe.
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who reportedly thwarted Firtash’s intention to take over Nadra in early 2009, has opposed the new plan for Nadra. Tymoshenko predicted that the plan to help Firtash rescue Nadra with the help of Oshchadbank would spark a corruption scandal.
Russia Considers Possible Participation Of Ukraine In Customs Union Of CES Not Excluding Creation Of Free Trade Area With European Union
MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia does not think Ukraine's possible participation in the Custom Union of the Common Economic Space excludes creation of the free trade area between Ukraine and the European Union.
First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Igor Shuvalov gave the position during a joint news briefing with Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister/Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrii Kliuev.
"We deem these formats as being not excluding one another. Moreover, Ukraine's possible participation in the Customs Union could even accelerate at a certain stage the creation of the free trade area with the European Union," said Shuvalov.
He said the Russian delegation informed Ukraine on advantages of the Customs Union of the Common Economic Space during the negotiations.
He added that participants in the Customs Union of the CES strive to conclude an agreement on free trade area with the European Union on mutually beneficial basis.
Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister Andrii Kliuev for his part informed about the process of negotiations on free trade area with the European Union.
"Yesterday we held consultations in Brussels with the European Commission on creation of the free trade area... On certain questions we came to quite good achievements and now we agreed to have on-line consultations by the end of April in order to shift to the next 16th round of the negotiations," he said.
Andrii Kliuev said the negotiations with the Russian delegation concerned among others the question of creation of a free trade area within the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Kliuev gave a positive assessment of the negotiations with the Russian delegation.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine decided to hold parliamentary hearings on May 11, 2011, on the situation and prospects for development of economic relations with the European Union and customs union in frames of the Common Economic Space.
Ukraine has decided to observe at the negotiations between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on the formation of customs union in the frames of the Common Economic Space.
President Viktor Yanukovych has said that Ukraine may consider joining the customs union of the common economic space that Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are creating if the CES proves efficient.
According to Yanukovych, if Ukraine signs an agreement on joining the CES's customs union it will be necessary for the parliament to ratify it and make the relevant amendments to the constitution, and these will require the support of at least 300 parliamentary deputies.
The European Union's Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fuele has said that creation of a free trade zone between Ukraine and the European Union, to which Ukraine aspires, is incompatible with Ukrainian membership of the Common Economic Space's customs union.
First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Igor Shuvalov gave the position during a joint news briefing with Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister/Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrii Kliuev.
"We deem these formats as being not excluding one another. Moreover, Ukraine's possible participation in the Customs Union could even accelerate at a certain stage the creation of the free trade area with the European Union," said Shuvalov.
He said the Russian delegation informed Ukraine on advantages of the Customs Union of the Common Economic Space during the negotiations.
He added that participants in the Customs Union of the CES strive to conclude an agreement on free trade area with the European Union on mutually beneficial basis.
Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister Andrii Kliuev for his part informed about the process of negotiations on free trade area with the European Union.
"Yesterday we held consultations in Brussels with the European Commission on creation of the free trade area... On certain questions we came to quite good achievements and now we agreed to have on-line consultations by the end of April in order to shift to the next 16th round of the negotiations," he said.
Andrii Kliuev said the negotiations with the Russian delegation concerned among others the question of creation of a free trade area within the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Kliuev gave a positive assessment of the negotiations with the Russian delegation.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine decided to hold parliamentary hearings on May 11, 2011, on the situation and prospects for development of economic relations with the European Union and customs union in frames of the Common Economic Space.
Ukraine has decided to observe at the negotiations between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on the formation of customs union in the frames of the Common Economic Space.
President Viktor Yanukovych has said that Ukraine may consider joining the customs union of the common economic space that Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are creating if the CES proves efficient.
According to Yanukovych, if Ukraine signs an agreement on joining the CES's customs union it will be necessary for the parliament to ratify it and make the relevant amendments to the constitution, and these will require the support of at least 300 parliamentary deputies.
The European Union's Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fuele has said that creation of a free trade zone between Ukraine and the European Union, to which Ukraine aspires, is incompatible with Ukrainian membership of the Common Economic Space's customs union.
Uncertain World: Yanukovych Has Boosted Ukraine’s Stability – But For How Long?
MOSCOW, Russia -- The world’s view of Ukraine has changed dramatically since Viktor Yanukovych was elected president.
Before that, Russia, the EU and the United States all thought that Ukraine’s energy problems and the future of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet could lead to acute crises and possibly even military intervention.
Events in Ukraine were breaking news from the battlefield of geopolitical rivalry between Russia and the West.
Since then, that torrent of Ukrainian news has shrunk to a rivulet of journalists’ complaints about government pressure. The investigation into the alleged crimes of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her entourage is proceeding at a snail’s pace, with European politicians only rarely speaking up on their behalf.
Ukraine’s western and eastern provinces continue to debate whose version of history is correct, and sporadic warnings of an impending economic catastrophe have so far come to naught.
Ukraine’s gas transit talks with both Moscow and Brussels have essentially ground to a halt. Even the termination of constitutional reform, which restored the president’s powers, and the decision to extend its legislative and executive powers went almost unnoticed by the international community.
And lastly, the Russian-Ukrainian deal of April 2010, under which Russia agreed to cut the price of its gas supplies to Ukraine by 30% in exchange for a 25-year extension to the lease allowing its Black Sea Fleet to remain stationed in Sevastopol, were only in the news for a few days.
Moreover, Russia’s expected economic expansion in Ukraine was limited to a few high-profile statements by Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s evasive replies.
Ukraine has been relegated to the political periphery.
This is, in part, for objective reasons. The recent economic crisis has shifted the priorities of the world’s leading powers. The EU and the Untied States are busy dealing with their own internal problems and have little time for external developments.
Economic recovery has done nothing to revive their pre-crisis interests. Instead it has bolstered new challenges, such as the impressive growth of China and Asia more broadly, and the ongoing revolts with an unpredictable outcome across the Middle East and North Africa.
These new events have overshadowed all those conflicts that, even recently, seemed dramatic. Nearly all post-Soviet republics are now less of a priority.
When the pressure from the West eased, Russia, which almost always acts reactively, scaled down its aggressive policies there, too.
On the other hand, Ukraine has also changed. No matter what you think about the “orange” ideology, it is a fact that the reign of Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko was marked by numerous domestic and foreign policy shocks.
These upheavals were caused both by the entirely natural desire for change after stagnation at the end of Leonid Kuchma’s term in office, and the new authorities’ sheer incompetence and inability to formulate any reasonable strategy and coordinate their approach to reform.
They tried to compensate for their managerial flops by foregrounding ideology. But their attempts to effect a rapid change in the ethnic identity of such a complex country as Ukraine, while simultaneously splitting from Russia, only escalated internal tensions.
On top of that, alliances collapsed as former allies started fighting each other.
While all these turbulent processes were underway, Ukraine remained the focus of international attention.
Objective reasons included U.S. and European interests, with the subjective reason being that Yushchenko recognized that confrontation with Russia was a reliable way of holding his Western partners’ attention.
Although Russia’s policy was neither ideal nor fail-safe, Ukraine was far too willing to add fuel to even the smallest fire. Crucially, Yushchenko believed that the further Ukraine moves from Russia, the better its future will be.
But he went too far once too often. There came a day when foreign partners and Ukrainians alike became tired of endless domestic political scandals and clashes with Russia.
Their current apathy is a result of this five-year “orange” rule.
That is why Viktor Yanukovych needed only a year to virtually take complete control over the country’s political system without encountering serious internal or external resistance.
The fleet-for-gas swap has allowed the sides to settle two massive problems without needing to impose any unpleasant conditions. Russia turned money it would have never received from Ukraine anyway into a “gift,” while Ukraine allowed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which has no influence over the balance of forces in the country, to stay put.
Seeing this, the external forces relaxed: in any case the last thing they need is new hot spots.
A year after his inauguration, Yanukovych has consolidated power, eased tensions, and proved that Ukraine is not as unreliable as many had become accustomed to think.
He has created conditions for a consistent political and economic strategy, which he should now formulate. But he has been working so hard to stabilize the country, that he has not had time to formulate this new strategy.
He is only at the beginning of his term, but life shows that political honeymoons do not last long.
You cannot keep exploiting people’s disappointment with your predecessor forever, and the lack of any clear opposition soon becomes a major drawback: you can not continue to blame your predecessor for painful decisions or use him to help ease tensions.
Many post-Soviet republics lack an opposition, but Ukraine is not one of them, and besides, such regimes eventually become mired in deadlock that can only be broken by major social upheavals.
Geopolitically, the lack of external rivalry, which in any case was only tearing Ukraine apart, is certainly a boon.
But Ukraine still needs to take a stand. The country now finds itself suspended between Russia, (and contrary to claims made by Yanukovych’s opponents, Ukraine will not cede its sovereignty to Russia) and the EU, which currently has little time for Ukraine.
Ukraine can only maintain this delicate balancing act for a short time because progress is impossible without movement.
As Yushchenko’s presidency showed, moving in one direction only risks aggravating the problems the country faces while maneuvering requires both flexibility and careful consideration. If Yanukovych has these qualities, now is the time to prove it.
Before that, Russia, the EU and the United States all thought that Ukraine’s energy problems and the future of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet could lead to acute crises and possibly even military intervention.
Events in Ukraine were breaking news from the battlefield of geopolitical rivalry between Russia and the West.
Since then, that torrent of Ukrainian news has shrunk to a rivulet of journalists’ complaints about government pressure. The investigation into the alleged crimes of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and her entourage is proceeding at a snail’s pace, with European politicians only rarely speaking up on their behalf.
Ukraine’s western and eastern provinces continue to debate whose version of history is correct, and sporadic warnings of an impending economic catastrophe have so far come to naught.
Ukraine’s gas transit talks with both Moscow and Brussels have essentially ground to a halt. Even the termination of constitutional reform, which restored the president’s powers, and the decision to extend its legislative and executive powers went almost unnoticed by the international community.
And lastly, the Russian-Ukrainian deal of April 2010, under which Russia agreed to cut the price of its gas supplies to Ukraine by 30% in exchange for a 25-year extension to the lease allowing its Black Sea Fleet to remain stationed in Sevastopol, were only in the news for a few days.
Moreover, Russia’s expected economic expansion in Ukraine was limited to a few high-profile statements by Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s evasive replies.
Ukraine has been relegated to the political periphery.
This is, in part, for objective reasons. The recent economic crisis has shifted the priorities of the world’s leading powers. The EU and the Untied States are busy dealing with their own internal problems and have little time for external developments.
Economic recovery has done nothing to revive their pre-crisis interests. Instead it has bolstered new challenges, such as the impressive growth of China and Asia more broadly, and the ongoing revolts with an unpredictable outcome across the Middle East and North Africa.
These new events have overshadowed all those conflicts that, even recently, seemed dramatic. Nearly all post-Soviet republics are now less of a priority.
When the pressure from the West eased, Russia, which almost always acts reactively, scaled down its aggressive policies there, too.
On the other hand, Ukraine has also changed. No matter what you think about the “orange” ideology, it is a fact that the reign of Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko was marked by numerous domestic and foreign policy shocks.
These upheavals were caused both by the entirely natural desire for change after stagnation at the end of Leonid Kuchma’s term in office, and the new authorities’ sheer incompetence and inability to formulate any reasonable strategy and coordinate their approach to reform.
They tried to compensate for their managerial flops by foregrounding ideology. But their attempts to effect a rapid change in the ethnic identity of such a complex country as Ukraine, while simultaneously splitting from Russia, only escalated internal tensions.
On top of that, alliances collapsed as former allies started fighting each other.
While all these turbulent processes were underway, Ukraine remained the focus of international attention.
Objective reasons included U.S. and European interests, with the subjective reason being that Yushchenko recognized that confrontation with Russia was a reliable way of holding his Western partners’ attention.
Although Russia’s policy was neither ideal nor fail-safe, Ukraine was far too willing to add fuel to even the smallest fire. Crucially, Yushchenko believed that the further Ukraine moves from Russia, the better its future will be.
But he went too far once too often. There came a day when foreign partners and Ukrainians alike became tired of endless domestic political scandals and clashes with Russia.
Their current apathy is a result of this five-year “orange” rule.
That is why Viktor Yanukovych needed only a year to virtually take complete control over the country’s political system without encountering serious internal or external resistance.
The fleet-for-gas swap has allowed the sides to settle two massive problems without needing to impose any unpleasant conditions. Russia turned money it would have never received from Ukraine anyway into a “gift,” while Ukraine allowed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which has no influence over the balance of forces in the country, to stay put.
Seeing this, the external forces relaxed: in any case the last thing they need is new hot spots.
A year after his inauguration, Yanukovych has consolidated power, eased tensions, and proved that Ukraine is not as unreliable as many had become accustomed to think.
He has created conditions for a consistent political and economic strategy, which he should now formulate. But he has been working so hard to stabilize the country, that he has not had time to formulate this new strategy.
He is only at the beginning of his term, but life shows that political honeymoons do not last long.
You cannot keep exploiting people’s disappointment with your predecessor forever, and the lack of any clear opposition soon becomes a major drawback: you can not continue to blame your predecessor for painful decisions or use him to help ease tensions.
Many post-Soviet republics lack an opposition, but Ukraine is not one of them, and besides, such regimes eventually become mired in deadlock that can only be broken by major social upheavals.
Geopolitically, the lack of external rivalry, which in any case was only tearing Ukraine apart, is certainly a boon.
But Ukraine still needs to take a stand. The country now finds itself suspended between Russia, (and contrary to claims made by Yanukovych’s opponents, Ukraine will not cede its sovereignty to Russia) and the EU, which currently has little time for Ukraine.
Ukraine can only maintain this delicate balancing act for a short time because progress is impossible without movement.
As Yushchenko’s presidency showed, moving in one direction only risks aggravating the problems the country faces while maneuvering requires both flexibility and careful consideration. If Yanukovych has these qualities, now is the time to prove it.
Chernobyl: The Toxic Tourist Attraction
KIEV, Ukraine -- As Ukraine prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster next month, its legacy remains as divisive as ever.
Sitting in his run-down office in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, Yuri Andreyev recalls the events of 25 years ago as if they were yesterday.
As a survivor of the world's worst nuclear accident, he is also surprised that he is still around to tell the tale.
"I absorbed a dose of radiation that should have killed me," says the former Chernobyl engineer, his eyes welling up with tears. "I thought afterwards that it would only be a matter of time before my family had to fend for themselves."
Now 60 and the head of an organisation representing 450,000 people affected by the tragedy, Mr Andreyev's pessimism is understandable.
Many of his co-workers have since died from radiation-related illnesses, and he himself very nearly perished in the explosion itself.
He clocked off his shift at the plant a mere one hour and 23 minutes before a huge blast ripped through its fourth reactor, and was less than two miles away as lethal radioactive matter began to pour out of the stricken building's roof.
Hours later, though, he and three colleagues were back at the plant trying to stop its second reactor blowing up too, water pouring into the control rooms and the alarm system flashing red as they struggled to shut it down.
Thankfully, for the world and for Mr Andreyev, they succeeded.
As Ukraine prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster next month, its legacy remains as divisive as ever, however.
Opponents of nuclear power insist that Chernobyl proved once and for all that the technology is unsafe. They argue that no more nuclear power stations should be built – ever.
"Chernobyl was a warning for the future," said Valery Makarenko, the first Soviet TV reporter on the scene. "It was not just a banal disaster, it was a message that nuclear power is not safe. It is time to think, consider alternatives, and bring the industry under tight international control. Otherwise, humankind will destroy itself."
Proponents of nuclear energy, however, claim the fallout from Chernobyl was actually not as bad as first thought and pin the blame on shoddy Soviet management practices.
Safety standards are much higher now, they point out, and nuclear power is cheap and clean compared to fossil fuels.
As evidence that the effects of radiation are not as bad as critics contend, they cite how wildlife has staged a remarkable comeback in the area around Chernobyl.
Audits in the past have shown that the 18-mile exclusion area or "dead zone" around the plant is now home to 66 different species of mammals, including wild boar, wolves, deer, beavers, foxes, lynx and thousands of elk.
Moreover, with oil supplies finite and coal viewed by many as unacceptably polluting, many developing countries, including India and Iran, are pressing ahead with new nuclear facilities.
Ironically, it is Russia's atomic energy agency, the successor to the Soviet atomic energy agency that built Chernobyl, that is winning many of the contracts to build these new plants.
Conceived as the largest such plant in the world, the Soviets originally planned to build 12 such reactors at Chernobyl, a peaceful wooded spot that lies 70 miles north of the modern-day capital of Ukraine.
A model Soviet town called Pripyat, built in 1970 to house almost 50,000 plant workers and their families, lay less than two miles from the sprawling power station and completed the Kremlin's nuclear-powered master plan.
That plan ended in the small hours of April 26, 1986, when a "routine experiment" went badly wrong and Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded, sending a plume of radiation equivalent to 400 Hiroshimas into the night sky.
Many of the 176 staff on duty that night were killed instantly; others would die later in hospital. The reactor core burned for 10 days, and the resultant pollutants - including plutonium isotopes with a half-life of 24,360 years - drifted around the world, raining toxicity down on faraway places such as the lakes of Japan and the glens of Scotland.
The Soviets tried to hush the disaster up and waited almost three days - until the drifting radioactive fallout triggered alarms in Sweden - before publicly acknowledging that an accident had occurred.
The reactor-core eventually had to be sealed with a cement mixture, dropped from the air, and a giant steel and concrete sarcophagus erected over it to contain the radiation.
The Soviet Union's mania for secrecy and its desire to save face mean that it is still not known precisely how many people died as a result of the tragedy.
Estimates of human fatalities, both direct and indirect, vary wildly, from less than a hundred in the immediate aftermath to tens of thousands in the years that followed.
More widely, an estimated five million people were exposed to potentially hazardous levels of radiation in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Doctors claim that cancer rates are far higher than they were before 1986, and that tens of thousands of Ukrainians and people in neighbouring Belarus (worse affected than Ukraine because of the wind direction at the time) may have died prematurely as a result.
"I now understand that health is the main thing in life," laments Ilya Bosakovsky, 72, a former Chernobyl worker, who recalls how soldiers drafted in to help with the clean-up operation refused to do some jobs because they feared being irradiated.
"I was really healthy when I started working at the plant but by the time I had finished my health was shot to pieces. I started getting really bad headaches and my blood pressure rose. "
In the meantime Chernobyl itself and Pripyat, the Soviet model town that has now become a ghostly monument to humankind's incompetence, have become ghoulish tourist attractions open to anyone ready to spend the equivalent of about £100 ($163) for a day trip.
The Ukrainian government legalised such tours for the first time in January, and is now developing plans to attract more tourists to the area ahead of the 2012 European football championship in Ukraine.
Ukraine's emergency situations ministry claims that radiation levels in parts of the "dead zone" around Chernobyl are now returning to normal levels, paving the way for the area to be marketed as a tourism destination more widely.
"The Chernobyl zone is not as scary as the whole world thinks," said spokeswoman Yulia Yurshova. "We want to work with big tour operators and attract Western tourists, from whom there is great demand."
The tours are not for the faint-hearted.
Visitors have to sign a waiver, exempting the tour operator from all responsibility in the event that they later suffer radiation-related health problems.
Driven round at breakneck speed, and told not to touch any of the irradiated vegetation or metal structures, "tourists" are invited to briefly inspect the stricken number four reactor from a short distance as the geiger counter guides carry clicks ever higher.
"Let's leave now, it is very dangerous to be here," Vita Polyakova, a tour guide, told a group including The Sunday Telegraph last week. "There are huge holes in the sarcophagus covering the reactor," she added, in a tone that suggested she was not joking.
The most arresting "attraction" is not the ruined plant, however, but the ghost town of Pripyat nearby.
Visitors get to walk through the debris-strewn corridors of its Palace of Culture, admire its crumbling Olympic-sized swimming pool, and wander through the eerily empty classrooms of one of its biggest schools.
Hundreds of discarded gas masks litter the floor of the school canteen.
Soviet propaganda continues to hang on classroom walls, and children's dolls are scattered about, left where their young owners dropped them in a hurry a quarter of a century ago.
Mr Andreyev, who lived with his family in Pripyat, said it broke his heart to return there a few years ago.
"When I went to have a look at my old flat in the 1990s my heart almost stopped," he remembered. "When I looked at everything that was once so familiar to me I realised how much we had lost."
Alexander Sirota, who now runs an organisation trying to keep the disaster's memory alive, was a 9-year-old school boy in Pripyat at the time. Like most youngsters, he was kept unaware of the true nature of the explosion, and initially had happy memories of being evacuated.
"For us it was an exciting game," he said. "There were soldiers, military helicopters, and firefighters and plenty of time off school."
But with adulthood came knowledge of what had really happened - and the horrifying legacy.
"When people I knew started to die around me, a proper understanding of what it was all about came to me," he said.
He believes that any tours to Chernobyl should be more educational than entertainment-focused, and wants the government to recognise the town of Pripyat as a monument so that it can be preserved.
"If people do not know anything about it history could repeat itself," he warned. "It is impossible to leave Pripyat without being changed."
For Mr Andreyev, however, the real lesson to be had about Chernobyl is not about the future, but about the past. During the Soviet era, he was taught that "Soviet reactors do not explode", especially not ones like Chernobyl, which was originally named in honour of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.
"I was a Communist and of course an atheist back then," he said, as he downed a tumbler of cognac in one go.
"But later, I understood that God had helped us cope with Chernobyl."
Sitting in his run-down office in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, Yuri Andreyev recalls the events of 25 years ago as if they were yesterday.
As a survivor of the world's worst nuclear accident, he is also surprised that he is still around to tell the tale.
"I absorbed a dose of radiation that should have killed me," says the former Chernobyl engineer, his eyes welling up with tears. "I thought afterwards that it would only be a matter of time before my family had to fend for themselves."
Now 60 and the head of an organisation representing 450,000 people affected by the tragedy, Mr Andreyev's pessimism is understandable.
Many of his co-workers have since died from radiation-related illnesses, and he himself very nearly perished in the explosion itself.
He clocked off his shift at the plant a mere one hour and 23 minutes before a huge blast ripped through its fourth reactor, and was less than two miles away as lethal radioactive matter began to pour out of the stricken building's roof.
Hours later, though, he and three colleagues were back at the plant trying to stop its second reactor blowing up too, water pouring into the control rooms and the alarm system flashing red as they struggled to shut it down.
Thankfully, for the world and for Mr Andreyev, they succeeded.
As Ukraine prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster next month, its legacy remains as divisive as ever, however.
Opponents of nuclear power insist that Chernobyl proved once and for all that the technology is unsafe. They argue that no more nuclear power stations should be built – ever.
"Chernobyl was a warning for the future," said Valery Makarenko, the first Soviet TV reporter on the scene. "It was not just a banal disaster, it was a message that nuclear power is not safe. It is time to think, consider alternatives, and bring the industry under tight international control. Otherwise, humankind will destroy itself."
Proponents of nuclear energy, however, claim the fallout from Chernobyl was actually not as bad as first thought and pin the blame on shoddy Soviet management practices.
Safety standards are much higher now, they point out, and nuclear power is cheap and clean compared to fossil fuels.
As evidence that the effects of radiation are not as bad as critics contend, they cite how wildlife has staged a remarkable comeback in the area around Chernobyl.
Audits in the past have shown that the 18-mile exclusion area or "dead zone" around the plant is now home to 66 different species of mammals, including wild boar, wolves, deer, beavers, foxes, lynx and thousands of elk.
Moreover, with oil supplies finite and coal viewed by many as unacceptably polluting, many developing countries, including India and Iran, are pressing ahead with new nuclear facilities.
Ironically, it is Russia's atomic energy agency, the successor to the Soviet atomic energy agency that built Chernobyl, that is winning many of the contracts to build these new plants.
Conceived as the largest such plant in the world, the Soviets originally planned to build 12 such reactors at Chernobyl, a peaceful wooded spot that lies 70 miles north of the modern-day capital of Ukraine.
A model Soviet town called Pripyat, built in 1970 to house almost 50,000 plant workers and their families, lay less than two miles from the sprawling power station and completed the Kremlin's nuclear-powered master plan.
That plan ended in the small hours of April 26, 1986, when a "routine experiment" went badly wrong and Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded, sending a plume of radiation equivalent to 400 Hiroshimas into the night sky.
Many of the 176 staff on duty that night were killed instantly; others would die later in hospital. The reactor core burned for 10 days, and the resultant pollutants - including plutonium isotopes with a half-life of 24,360 years - drifted around the world, raining toxicity down on faraway places such as the lakes of Japan and the glens of Scotland.
The Soviets tried to hush the disaster up and waited almost three days - until the drifting radioactive fallout triggered alarms in Sweden - before publicly acknowledging that an accident had occurred.
The reactor-core eventually had to be sealed with a cement mixture, dropped from the air, and a giant steel and concrete sarcophagus erected over it to contain the radiation.
The Soviet Union's mania for secrecy and its desire to save face mean that it is still not known precisely how many people died as a result of the tragedy.
Estimates of human fatalities, both direct and indirect, vary wildly, from less than a hundred in the immediate aftermath to tens of thousands in the years that followed.
More widely, an estimated five million people were exposed to potentially hazardous levels of radiation in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
Doctors claim that cancer rates are far higher than they were before 1986, and that tens of thousands of Ukrainians and people in neighbouring Belarus (worse affected than Ukraine because of the wind direction at the time) may have died prematurely as a result.
"I now understand that health is the main thing in life," laments Ilya Bosakovsky, 72, a former Chernobyl worker, who recalls how soldiers drafted in to help with the clean-up operation refused to do some jobs because they feared being irradiated.
"I was really healthy when I started working at the plant but by the time I had finished my health was shot to pieces. I started getting really bad headaches and my blood pressure rose. "
In the meantime Chernobyl itself and Pripyat, the Soviet model town that has now become a ghostly monument to humankind's incompetence, have become ghoulish tourist attractions open to anyone ready to spend the equivalent of about £100 ($163) for a day trip.
The Ukrainian government legalised such tours for the first time in January, and is now developing plans to attract more tourists to the area ahead of the 2012 European football championship in Ukraine.
Ukraine's emergency situations ministry claims that radiation levels in parts of the "dead zone" around Chernobyl are now returning to normal levels, paving the way for the area to be marketed as a tourism destination more widely.
"The Chernobyl zone is not as scary as the whole world thinks," said spokeswoman Yulia Yurshova. "We want to work with big tour operators and attract Western tourists, from whom there is great demand."
The tours are not for the faint-hearted.
Visitors have to sign a waiver, exempting the tour operator from all responsibility in the event that they later suffer radiation-related health problems.
Driven round at breakneck speed, and told not to touch any of the irradiated vegetation or metal structures, "tourists" are invited to briefly inspect the stricken number four reactor from a short distance as the geiger counter guides carry clicks ever higher.
"Let's leave now, it is very dangerous to be here," Vita Polyakova, a tour guide, told a group including The Sunday Telegraph last week. "There are huge holes in the sarcophagus covering the reactor," she added, in a tone that suggested she was not joking.
The most arresting "attraction" is not the ruined plant, however, but the ghost town of Pripyat nearby.
Visitors get to walk through the debris-strewn corridors of its Palace of Culture, admire its crumbling Olympic-sized swimming pool, and wander through the eerily empty classrooms of one of its biggest schools.
Hundreds of discarded gas masks litter the floor of the school canteen.
Soviet propaganda continues to hang on classroom walls, and children's dolls are scattered about, left where their young owners dropped them in a hurry a quarter of a century ago.
Mr Andreyev, who lived with his family in Pripyat, said it broke his heart to return there a few years ago.
"When I went to have a look at my old flat in the 1990s my heart almost stopped," he remembered. "When I looked at everything that was once so familiar to me I realised how much we had lost."
Alexander Sirota, who now runs an organisation trying to keep the disaster's memory alive, was a 9-year-old school boy in Pripyat at the time. Like most youngsters, he was kept unaware of the true nature of the explosion, and initially had happy memories of being evacuated.
"For us it was an exciting game," he said. "There were soldiers, military helicopters, and firefighters and plenty of time off school."
But with adulthood came knowledge of what had really happened - and the horrifying legacy.
"When people I knew started to die around me, a proper understanding of what it was all about came to me," he said.
He believes that any tours to Chernobyl should be more educational than entertainment-focused, and wants the government to recognise the town of Pripyat as a monument so that it can be preserved.
"If people do not know anything about it history could repeat itself," he warned. "It is impossible to leave Pripyat without being changed."
For Mr Andreyev, however, the real lesson to be had about Chernobyl is not about the future, but about the past. During the Soviet era, he was taught that "Soviet reactors do not explode", especially not ones like Chernobyl, which was originally named in honour of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin.
"I was a Communist and of course an atheist back then," he said, as he downed a tumbler of cognac in one go.
"But later, I understood that God had helped us cope with Chernobyl."
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