Monday 25 March 2013
Russian woman flees back to Russia to save her child
Irina Vinogradova of Russia was forced to flee from New Caledonia to Russia. It was her only chance to save the child, whose father was suspected of sexual abuse over the boy. The woman's attempts to seek help from local authorities were not successful. Now she asks the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation to launch investigation into the case.
Irina's story reminds of thousands of other love stories. The woman met her future husband on the Internet, and after six months of correspondence and phone calls she moved in with him and they got married. However, almost immediately after the birth of the baby, the man, who had previously assured the woman that he wanted to have a family, stopped intimate relationship with her. Irina was too much preoccupied with her child.
Soon afterwards, the baby, who was not even two years old at the time, started showing strong signs of discomfort. The child would suddenly wake up at night crying and shouting "no" and saying that his daddy was hurting him. The frightened mother rushed to the doctor, but medics assured her that everything was fine. The boy's strange behavior continued, and the mother discovered suspicious stains on his clothes. The woman went to police, but they denied her request of investigation.
Irina filed for divorce in a hope that her son would stay with her. The medical specialist from child protection services, who talked to the woman, said that she was paranoid. An independent psychiatrist later refuted the claim and said that the woman was mentally healthy. However, the court eventually ruled the child should stay with the father. Irina was allowed to see her child only a few hours a week.
After another visit, Irina found stains on her son's body again. The stains clearly indicated that the child had been sexually abused. She turned to police again, and again she was denied in the investigation. Owing to the intervention of the pediatrician, who expressed his suspicions of sexual violence committed against the child, child protection services took the child away from the father.
The child was handed over to a foster family. However, there was no criminal case filed against the father. Moreover, the man was given an advantage in visiting the boy. He was allowed to take the child twice a month for a full day and twice for half of the day. The mother was allowed to see her son twice a month for four hours.
The last straw that pushed the woman to the decisive step was the day when she saw her son on February 6th. "He came all dirty and he looked shocked. Initially, he did not want to say anything. Then he admitted that he fell in the shower and hit his head. It turned out that it was his father, who pushed him. When I asked him " why did he push you?" he said : "I do not want my dad to touch me," Irina Vinogradova told Pravda.Ru. The mother found stains on the boy's body again. She wrote another statement to the police, but again received no response.
"I have long realized that it was all useless. Protection is only for those who have money and power. All lawyers do not work for you - they work for the system. I asked my lawyer to claim at court the child be handed over to me, but she only asks for weekend visits," says Irina.
When Irina posted her story on Facebook, she began to receive messages from people of New Caledonia , who were sharing similar stories with her. Irina thought at first that she was the only woman, who had found herself in such a situation. It turned out later that she was not alone at all.
"I was approached by a local resident, who told me that her 18-month-old baby had been raped. Not only have they punished the rapists, they started threatening the woman with a prison term," says Irina.
According to Irina, all the stories that she has heard from local people have more or less the same ending. If a parent demands investigation over suspicions of sexual abuse, the parent would be denied the right to communicate with the child. After that, I had no choice left but to flee to Russia," says Irina. Fortunately, the boy was a Russian citizen and they were able to leave on their Russian passports. In Russia, Irina will have to start from scratch - she has no one left in the country.
Having arrived to Russia, Irina called "Russian Mothers" public organization. They found the woman a place where she could live and hired a lawyer for her.
"My story proves that you should never give up, you should fight for yourself and for your children, and help will come," says Irina.
Same-sex couples looking for children in Russia and China
Russian Foreign Ministry is investigating the story of the adoption of a Russian child by a same-sex couple in the U.S. Meanwhile, representatives of the State Duma are headed to France to remind deputies that under the Family Code of the Russian Federation a family is a union between a man and a woman. The gay community has been trying to convince us that same-sex couples can raise healthy children.
Yegor Shatabalov was adopted by a U.S. citizen Marcia Ann Brandt in 2007. The decision was made by Kemerovo regional court. The American acted as a criminal and did not disclose her homosexuality, which would eliminate the possibility of adopting a child in Russia. Now the Russian Foreign Ministry in cooperation with competent Russian authorities is establishing the circumstances of the adoption.
As discovered by the Russian Embassy in Washington, Brandt at the time of adoption had a spouse, Beth Chapman. In 2009, Brandt and Chapman broke up and met in court over custody of the child. Similar adoptions occurred in other countries.
A few years ago China grew suspicious of the increased number of single women from the U.S. and other countries that submitted applications for adoption. The Chinese, however, as usual, tried to save the face and actually lost it. Instead of limiting the adoption of their children to the countries where homosexuals are allowed to create a family and adopt children, they decided to require each suspicious candidate to submit a formal declaration of heterosexual orientation.
According to the sociological service Gallup, about 3.4 percent of the U.S. population is openly gay. Homosexuals and lesbians have formed 20,000 families in the United States. According to statistics, same-sex couples in 2009 were raising 30,000 adopted children. There is no information on how many of them are Russian.
At the time, gay community made considerable effort and spent significant amount of money to be allowed to adopt children. An entire body of scientific texts and research was prepared that claimed that sexual orientation of the parents does not affect children's orientation.
The results of the studies cause doubt. If we recognize that a child's development is mainly determined by the environment, the presence of two parents of the same sex cannot but affect this child.
Not that long ago an American scientific journal published a work of the American sociologist Mark Regnerus. In his research he interviewed 3,000 people including those poor, rich, white, and of color. Among them there were 248 homosexuals raising children. Only 2.13 percent of children from heterosexual families believed adultery to be acceptable, while among the children from homosexual families this number was 40 percent.
Children who grew up in gay families are turning to psychiatrists more often - 19 percent vs. 8 percent. This is not strange, because in 25 percent of such families children at least once experienced sexual abuse. In heterosexual families this number is 8 percent. 69 percent of children raised in lesbian families and 57 percent raised in gay families received state subsidies, while in heterosexual families this number is 17 percent.
In homosexuals families 60-70 percent of the children call themselves heterosexual. In traditional families, these are more than 90 percent. The gay community did not like these numbers. First they tried to question the methods of research.However Regnerus used a classic technique used in thousands of studies and accurately followed the procedure. This was established by a special committee. Then homosexuals called sponsors and partners of the University, where Regnerus works to stop financial partnership with this institution.
This is expected since increasingly more western countries pass laws on same-sex marriage and adoption opportunities for such families
Was Stalin worse or better than Truman and Roosevelt?
Fierce disputes about the interpretation of events and actions committed by various individuals in our history never stop. Who was a tyrant and who was a benefactor? Who deserves monuments in their honor and who should be blamed of all deadly sins?
Look at the creepy photo: children - prisoners of the Gulag. The inscription on the wooden board above them reads: "Those who talk through the wire will be killed." The caption says: "Russia, the successor of the Soviet system. Collective Gulag." This is disgusting.
But then there was a wicked Stalinist, who published the photo in full. It turned out that the upper part of the inscription on the wooden board was written in the Finnish language. The children on the photos are prisoners of the Gulag indeed, but it was a Finnish camp, namely the 6th Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk. During the occupation of the Soviet Karelia by the Finns, there were seven camps built in the city of Petrozavodsk for local Russian-speaking residents. Camp No. 6 held 7,000 people. The photo in question was taken after the Soviet troops liberated Petrozavodsk on June 28, 1944.
This picture was presented as part of the evidence at Nuremberg war crimes trials.
The girl, who is second right from the column, is Claudia Nyuppieva. Many years later that moment, she published her memoirs: "I remember how people would faint from heat in the so-called bathhouse and then they would pour cold water on them. I remember the disinfection of barracks, after which there was buzzing in the ears. Many had nose bleeds."
Another photo depicts a mountain of human corpses. Caption: "Victims of the Gulag." Alas, that photo was also featured at Nuremberg. This is a photo of Klooge camp in Estonia.
What is this? Separate errors? No. Russian liberal anti-Stalinists have been trying to convince Russian people for half a century already that concentration camps were invented by Stalin. Just take a look at the media on the Internet and pay attention to the adjectives used with word combination "concentration camp." Eighty percent of such occurrences will be - "Stalin concentration camps" and 20 percent - "Hitler concentration camps." Well, the British, Polish, Finnish, American and other concentration camps are no mentioned at all - no references. They can probably be found in special literature with a circulation of 100-500 copies.
However, it is the "enlightened sailors" who are considered to be the pioneers of death camps. In 1900, the British tried to drive all civilians Boers into camps (descendants of Dutch settlers). I am stressing it out - women and children only. They sent all the men to concentration camps on the island of St. Helena and to India. As many as 4,000 women and 22,000 children were killed in concentration camps in only two years. That does not seem a lot compared to 3 million of Gulag prisoners.
However, these three million victims died during 70 years in the 180-million-strong country. The British destroyed one-sixth of the Boer women and children in two years. I give most minimal numbers here. According to other sources, there were 30-40 thousand women and children killed.
Americans destroyed over 90% of Indians in the XIX century, whereas the British exterminated more than 90% of Aboriginal people in Australia. On the island of Tasmania, the size of which is equal to the Moscow and Vladimir regions combined, colonial troops and white settlers were scouring the territory for 40 years, killing all local residents, including women and children. By the time the world saw the birth of Joseph Dzhugashvili (Stalin), all the natives had been killed in Tasmania to the last one of them!
During World War II, the basic strategy of England and the United States was the killing of women and children. While Russians and Germans were fighting near Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Kiev, the Anglo-Americans were systematically destroying German women and children. Huge amounts of money were spent on the construction of thousands of huge strategic bombers that leveled dozens of German cities, but were not very effective in operations against tanks and infantry.
In Dresden alone, in February of 1945, the Allies killed more than 250,000 civilians in three days. There were no defense factories in the city was not. The entire anti-aircraft artillery was sent to the Eastern Front - Soviet tanks were 70 km far from Dresden.
Surprisingly, Western propagandists hold Stalin responsible for killing 250,000 women and children in Dresden. Stalin supposedly persuaded Churchill in Yalta to bomb the city. Churchill allegedly tried to resist, he cried, but in the end could not stand the pressure of the Kremlin dictator.
In fact, with the destruction of Dresden, the British prime minister wanted to frighten "Uncle Joe" before the Yalta Conference. The weather turned out to be not the best, and the city was destroyed after the end of the conference.
The Allies were fighting with the Japanese civil population in 1942-1945 in a similar fashion. The Japanese in Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Darwin, Colombo and other places attacked only military targets and did not touch residential quarters. Well, the Yankees, by contrast, preferred large cities of Japan. In Hiroshima, there were no military objects. But U.S. strategists were not interested in those objects. They targeted the density of the housing development of the city and a large percentage of wooden houses.
Noteworthy, by August 8, 1945, the Japanese army was occupying much larger areas than during the beginning of the war. The Red Army for a month, from August 9 to September 9, defeated the million-strong Kwantung Army and occupied the entire Manchuria. Our tanks were about 100 km from Beijing. And what did the Americans do during that month? By tradition, they bombed Japanese cities.
How many millions of civilians in North and South Vietnam did the Americans kill in 1960-1970's?
But let's get back to our anti-Stalinists. Their favorite argument is as follows: "Would you like to be thrown in the Gulag?" No, we wouldn't. But if I had to choose between the Solovetsky monastery prison of the XIX century, a British concentration camp in 1918 on the Kola Peninsula and in Arkhangelsk, a Solovetsky camp in 1920-1930s or a modern American secret prison in Guantanamo Bay, I would not hesitate to choose a Solovetsky camp. And, of course, not out of reverence for Stalin, but out of the sense of self-preservation. There were more chances to survive tThousands of articles and dozens of books have been written about how the prisoners were building Belomorbalt, Moscow and Volga-Don canals. There was a mass of creepy, but, alas, technically illiterate details. For some reason, no honest man has ever compared them to the construction of Panama and Suez canals. How many people were employed there? How many of them died? Alas, Russian anti-Stalinists have no interest in any canals whatsoever. They only want scary stories.
For example, the Volga-Don Canal was built by Turkish sultans, and Peter the Great was building it for ten years. It was Stalin who completed the construction in 3.5 years.
As with the construction of other canals, prisoners' labor was used massively. As many as 236,778 prisoners were involved in the works. "Of these, 114,492 people were released, 1,766 died and 1,123 escaped. The maximum number of slave laborers fell on January 1, 1952 - 118,178 people ..."
Thus, during three years of hard work, a half of the prisoners was freed; 3,000 of them were decorated with government awards.
I'm curious how the prisoners of colonial prisons of the first half of the twentieth century of Britain and France react to the proposal to go to the construction of the Volga-Don? I'm afraid they all would rush to the Gulag.
There is a paradoxical situation. "Stalinists" demand all archives of the NKVD should be exposed, without exception, to learn the truth about Stalin's crimes, the number of prisoners, charges against them, and so on.
Anti-Stalinists, who were foaming at the mouth before 1992 demanding transparency and open archives, suddenly changed their mind. They are strongly opposed to the opening of NKVD archives. How not to be afraid? The lists of prisoners are full of hundreds of thousands of Trotskyists, Ukrainian, Baltic and other nationalists. There are hundreds of thousands of honest people there too. But the cases say who reported what and against whom. This is what our "refined" intelligentsia does not need to have exposed. The lists of informants include their idols, teachers and relatives.
Here is what one of the leaders of Russian anti-Stalinists, Marietta Chudakova says in response to the requirement to open the archives. "They say that archives are closed, and nothing is known. How is that?" And then lists a long list of books of her adherents. Chudakova offers a pile of unscientific literature, stipulating that archives do not matter at all.
Imagine for a moment what would happen if people like Chudakova win. Stalin and his legacy would be cursed. Well, were Peter the Great, Ivan IV and Ivan III better? They destroyed a lot more people than Stalin. Or did they observe human rights? The Russian people would then have to acknowledge that their state was created by monsters of the human race. And we should all be on our knees in front of the "civilized world" begging forgiveness.
The Kuril Islands, Karelia, Smolensk, Krasnodar, Russian sector of the Arctic - take it all, Russia is large enough!
One can go to a bookstore and buy there a book titled "The Beast on the Throne." This is a biography of Peter the Great. By the way, 90 percent of it is true. However, if you compare our "blood-thirsty tyrants" with the rulers of the East and West at the same point in time, the two Ivans, Peter and Stalin would look bloody, but quite moderate rulers.
Is it time to recall that there are hundreds of monuments to Napoleon in France and Italy, that many squares and streets are named after him?
In the U.S., Roosevelt and Truman are regarded as national heroes. They were the presidents who ordered to kill millions of women and children.
In Turkey, there is still a cult of Ataturk, and it is stronger than the cult of Lenin in the USSR during the 1970s. The Turks revere him for mass murders of hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Greeks. The day of May 19 is a holiday in Turkey and Greece. The Turks celebrate the day in honor of Ataturk, who ordered to slaughter the Greeks. The Greeks mark the day as the day of genocide of the Pontic people.
In Finland, there is a national hero - Marshal Mannerheim. It was him, who in the summer of 1918 organized the first concentration camp in the former Russian empire.
Poland also has a national hero - Marshal Pilsudski. He arranged first concentration camps in the country in 1919. In 1921, about 70,000 Soviet POWs were killed in the Polish camps.
Is that not enough? Let's take the great Mao, who killed 20 times more people than Stalin. Why are there so many monuments to the great Mao in China? And it did not stop the Chinese from making their economy the world's second largest after the United States.
In Mongolia, they put up monuments to Mongolian national hero Genghis Khan.
Finally, let's consider a small example, which has been a subject for heated debate in the country and abroad for 80 years. We are talking about the famous Pavlik Morozov. It was his mother, Tatiana Morozov, who testified against Pavlik's father, Trofim Morozov. Pavlik only confirmed her testimony. He has never been a pioneer, and there was no pioneer organization in his village.
Tatiana wrote: "Comrades, my husband gives fake certificates to wealthy peasants so that they could go home, and he lives for 3 years with his young lover. Punish the villain and return him to the family!"
Trofim Morozov was sentenced to ten years "on the horns." For three years, he was working on the construction of Belomorbalt, was then released, received an award for his work. Then lived quietly in Tyumen.
On September 4, 1932, the bodies of 14-year-old Pavlik and his 9-year-old brother Fyodor were found in the woods. The boys were stabbed. The criminal has never been found. However, the authorities massacred the whole Morozov clan. The 81-year-old grandfather and 80-year-old blind grandmother had been tortured in prison. Pavlik's uncle and cousin had been shot.
Interestingly, in the U.S. there were polls conducted to study the public opinion about the acts committed by Pavlik Morozov. The overwhelming majority of Americans approved of denunciations of his father and said that Pavlik adequately fulfilled his civic duty.
Egyptian sentenced to 1.5 years in Russia for desecrating memory of war victims
Egyptian national Mohammed Montafer, who urinated in the Eternal Flame at the Alley of Heroes in Volgograd on New Year's night, was sentenced to 1.5 years in a penal colony.
The state prosecution insisted on three years in a penal colony, whereas the defense requested to mitigate the sentence to two months.
In the midst of New Year holidays, a drunk 29-year-old Egyptian man was walking with friends in the center of Volgograd. He climbed up onto the pedestal and relieved himself in the Eternal Flame in the Valley of Heroes. A man was passing by at that moment, who made a remark to the foreign visitor. The Egyptian assaulted and beat the man. Other witnesses of the incident called the police, who arrested the malefactor.
"Having sobered up, he expressed remorse and explained that he was celebrating the New Year drinking absinthe with champagne and was thus not aware of what he was doing," officials said.
Russia to sign adoption agreement with Spain
Russia will sign an adoption agreement with Spain. Russia's Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said that the work on the adequate document was going through the final stage.
After the agreement is approved, the foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation plans to develop similar agreements with the United Kingdom and Israel. In addition, negotiations are underway with Ireland, Cyprus, Slovenia, New Zealand and Malta. According to the minister, citizens of these countries adopt Russian children most actively. For the time being, there are two agreements with Italy and France.
One of the important conditions of such agreements is the preservation of Russian citizenship for Russian children after their adoption. In addition, the document stipulates foreign adoptive parents should register their child at the Russian consulate office, and provide regular reports on his life conditions and education.
Local Grandfather Being Held As Political Prisoner In Ukraine
LOS ANGELES, USA -- It’s a local story that reads more like a political thriller.
The family of a former minister of Tajikistan says their beloved dad departed on a business trip to Ukraine and never came home.
That, was over six weeks ago.
“It will destroy me and my family, it will destroy us,” says daughter Nigina Abdulladjanova.
A desperate plea from a devastated daughter.
“I see fear in his eyes,” Abdulladjanova says.
The family of 64 year Abdumalik Abdullajanov says these images of a defeated and tired man are a far cry from the father who departed Los Angeles, February 4th, on his way to Ukraine for what was to be a simple business trip.
“He thought maybe they had forgotten him it had been 16 years, but they were waiting for him,” Abdulladjanova says.
16 years ago, the former prime minister fled his country of Tajikistan, a region north of Afghanistan, known for drug smuggling and corruption, after he was put on the international most wanted list for war crimes.
“The things they accuse him of — they are looking for someone new to blame", Abdulladjanova says.
According to court documents, Abdullajanov is accused of attempting to assassinate his former political opponent, Emomalii Rahmon, the current president of Tajikistan.
“That’s where I come from, I’m happy I’m not there.”
The grandfather was granted political asylum here in the US where the family insist they have been living peacefully for over a decade until this fateful business trip over six weeks ago.
“He says they will not keep me alive, they will kill me,” Abdulladjanova says.
According to the UN’s refugee agency, he is being held in Ukraine while Tajikistan has requested extradition … a move the family believes will be his last.
“If Ukraine extradites him they will kill him,” Abdulladjanova fears.
But it’s not just her father’s life that could be in danger … frightened, Niginia translates a vulgar and threatening voice mail from a mysterious man.
“Basically a threat to my dad’s partner his wife and kids will be killed, Abdulladjanova says.
KTLA contacted the State Department, who refused to comment due to privacy issues … but Nigina insist on speaking out about Abdullajanov’s innocence.
“If he goes back I can’t even imagine what they will do to him,” Abdulladjanova says.
Because — if they stay silent, they fear they will never see their father or grandfather again.
In a hearing today – the judge ruled that Ukraine will hold Abdullajanov for another 12-months while they investigate Tajikistan’s extradition request.
Another twist – he is not a Tajik or Ukranian citizen so neither country has a right to hold him.
But despite numerous requests from the US, Ukraine is standing its ground.
The Art Of Obtaining Schengen Visa For The European Union
KIEV, Ukraine -- Did you ever wonder what is like to obtain a Schengen visa for a citizen of country that is not a member of European Union? I will show you by example, as a citizen of Ukraine.
The Schengen visa covers travel between its 25 member countries (22 European Union states and 3 non-EU members).
Traveling on a Schengen visa means that the visa holder can travel to any (or all) member countries using one single visa, thus avoiding the hassle and expense of obtaining individual visas for each country.
This is particularly beneficial for persons who wish to visit several European countries on the same trip.
The Schengen visa is a “visitor visa” and is issued to citizens of countries who are required to obtain a visa before entering Europe.
I am an Ukrainian citizen.
First of all I need to mention that I received an invitation from Poland to attend the TTG Travel Outbound Travel Exhibition and accordingly, I needed to apply for a visa via the Consulate of Poland.
In my case, and to reduce the processing, I applied only for the Polish Visa in Donetsk, Ukraine at the Polish visa application center.
What is a visa application center?
It is just a local firm that officially provides the service of processing applications of visas and redirecting it to the closest consulates depending on the location.
If you choose to apply through a visa application center, then you only contact this firm, and you collect your passport again also from this center without having to visit the consulates or embassies.
Before I began collecting necessary documents, I made a few calls to a call center to the Donetsk visa application center for Poland.
After hours of conversations with consultants of this center, they convinced me that for my business visa, I needed not only the invitation to the event in Poland, but the bookings confirmation and prepayment receipts for hotels in poland would be important in the decision of the consulate to grant my visa.
I was told to bring documents to prove the trip was prepaid.
After all these preparations, I scheduled my visit to the visa center and arrived in Donetsk at about 5:30 AM.
It's a 2 hour bus ride from my hometown to Donetsk.
By 9:40 AM I was at the visa center located in a big office plaza in the heart of the city.
The visa application center is not big room where you can find seats for visitors.
There is a desk with application forms, and 3 windows, like in banks.
One window is for obtaining documents and two are to actually apply for the visa.
When my turn came and I took a seat at one of the windows, the representative who accepts documents asked me the first question.
Do you have insurance? I responded, not yet.
She proposed that I obtain the insurance immediately, which could be done in the same room at the different desk where you can find a manager of an insurance company.
It took me less than 5 minutes to get the insurance, and I went back to the application window where the worker looked up my documents and told me they are fine.
She didn’t like the hotel document, because it indicated it was prepaid only for the first night and not 30% of the entire stay period.
Also, the document did not show the price of one day and how much was charged, despite the fact that the transaction was done with a scanned check.
So the outcome was that she didn’t accept this hotel document.
She then told me that I only needed to apply for a business visa, and for that I only needed the invitation.
I told her I knew that and I had the invitation, but I wanted to know why the call center consultants gave me different information about the list of documents required.
She didn’t say anything, just started to look through the other documents.
She stared at my invitation and then proclaimed, “Its a copy! You printed it from a computer! It’s not possible to accept for processing.”
I agreed with her that it was not an original with a wet stamps and signature, but with the event only one week away, there was no time for those inviting me to deliver original documents to me.
This was an invitation from a big firm that never sent original invitations and believed it was fine to email invitations.
The worker, however, remained adamant and also said that I should ask for a visa for 8 days even though the event in invitation was only for 2 days.
In trying to help, she advised me that the only thing possible to do now in this situation was to have the firm inviting me send a fax.
She told me to ask my host to change the dates of the invitation to match the dates in my application.
She told me I could ask someone in the shopping plaza to let me use a fax machine.
I was in shock. Where would I find a fax? Who would let me use their fax?
Would the firm fax the invitation in time, and would they even fax it?
I visited few offices in the building and found an insurance company that said that I could use their fax but only if I bought insurance for my trip from them.
I had to agree, and after calling my host in Poland, I did successfully receive the fax.
With a happy smile I returned to the room with the three windows.
The worker took 2-3 minutes to read the fax, and then she asked, “Will your host confirm that they invited you if someone from the Consulate decides to call there?”
I answered, “Yes.”
Next she gave me invoices and a little map showing the way to a bank.
I was instructed that I had to do my transaction at this bank only.
The bank was located about 30 minutes away by foot from the visa center, which I only found out after having walked half hour to get there.
At the bank I paid the 35 euro ($45) visa fee, a 35 euro payment for expedited consideration of the application, 20 euro ($26) for insurance, plus a 20 euro payment for the visa center.
The cashier was quick, I got my stamped invoices, and I headed back to the office plaza.
I was back at the window again and the worker checked my documents and invoices.
The most interesting thing I noted is that she made a photocopy of the fax to attach to my application and gave the original back to me, yet she could not accept the printed copy of the invitation from a computer.
I am told that the good news is that my passport will be back at the visa application center after 4 days at 10:00 AM.
This was he day my flight left for Poland.
The bad news is that I won’t know if the visa was approved until I arrived at the visa application center to get my passport back.
I guess it was meant to be a surprise, kind of like a lottery.
Will there be a visa or won’t there be a visa? That is the question.
The workers at the visa application center know that I had a flight the same day.
In addition they warned me that all passports may not arrive in time if there is a snowstorm.
This winter there has been a lot of scandals at visa application centers, because people arrived to get their passports with little or no time to catch a flight.
On the day of my departure, I arrived at the visa application center at 3:00 PM.
Fortunately, everything was successful, and I received my visa.
I have shown you only one example – mine – of applying for a Schengen visa to Poland.
Perhaps the consulates and visa centers of other countries under the Schengen agreement have a better situation with the terms and rules, but Poland is commonly known as one of the most loyal countries of requirements of documents for Ukrainians.
Definitely the system invented for getting this small visa sticker on your passport requires significant improvement.
Ukrainian Capital Paralyzed By Snowstorm
KIEV, Ukraine -- The city of Kiev has declared a state of emergency after the Ukrainian capital was paralyzed by an unprecedented snowstorm that has stalled car, railway and air traffic.
The city was hit by about 50 centimeters (20 inches) of snow in the past day, more than it usually receives per month during this season.
Tractors, armored vehicles and other heavy equipment were dispatched Saturday to clear roads blocked by kilometers-long traffic jams.
Desperate to get home, some Kiev drivers simply abandoned their stalled cars on the roads and set out on foot.
Kiev's main airport, Boryspil, was working with delays, the smaller Zhulyany airport was closed and Ukraine's International Airlines grounded all its planes until Sunday morning.
APC's Deployed On Kiev Streets, Emergency As Record Snowfall Turns Ukraine Into Chaos
KIEV, Ukraine -- A state of emergency has been declared in Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on Saturday as the city is paralyzed by heavy snowfall and blizzard totally abnormal for March.
"Due to the deterioration of weather conditions [heavy snowfall, blizzards, snow-banks] a state of emergency is declared in the capital," the statement by the Kiev State Administration said.
The situation in the city is so dire that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has signed a special decree urging all government agencies to provide maximum assistance to victims of the snowstorm.
The military is also involved in rescuing the city from its snowbound condition as 550 servicemen are deployed to the capital to aid the community services.
Besides 253 snow-cleaning vehicles, 13 armored fighting vehicles are being used to tow stranded cars, with 270 trucks, 540 cars, 83 buses and 15 trolleybuses already removed from snow banks.
The government has created a crisis center to tackle the snowfalls, which is being personally overseen by Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov.
“In these difficult conditions, the government calls on everybody to show orderliness, self-restraint, cooperativeness, humanity and, if possible, to join the clean-up efforts in the aftermath of the bad weather, to help each other in tough situations," the government’s statement said.
In just one day Kiev saw over 50 centimeters (20 inches) of snowfall - while the entire monthly norm is 47 centimeters.
Community services are ordered to work around the clock, with priority given to cleaning the approaches to the Metro stations and subway stairs, as well entrances to hospitals and grocery stores.
Dozens of flights in Kiev’s biggest airport, Boryspil, are delayed or cancelled, with the city’s second aerial port, Zhuliany, halting operations altogether.
The harsh weather conditions forced the authorities to make Monday, March 25, a day off for all those employed in the government sector in Kiev and the Kiev Region, except medical facilities and entities involved in tackling the aftermath of the snowfall.
Owners of private businesses are also recommended to provide a one-day holiday for their staff.
Meanwhile, bloggers report that some of the city’s residents managed to find joy in the tempest as some daredevils was seen snowboarding in the streets.
The weather conditions remain difficult in other parts of Ukraine as well, which led to electricity shortages in over 600 settlements in ten regions of the country.
The highway services are fighting with snow 24/7 in the north of the country, while the southern regions are suffering from heavy rains.
The snow front is moving eastward and is expected to hit Moscow on Saturday evening or Sunday, lasting until almost the end of March.
A gale warning is announced in Russia's capital and the Moscow Region.
The synoptic service say that the current March may become the coldest in Moscow in the last 33 years as they forecast temperatures of around minus 9 or 10 degrees Celsius (48 or 50 F), which is around nine degrees below average.
Heavy snowfalls are already in full swing in Russia’s Tula and Lipetsk Regions, with snow-clearing vehicles taking to the streets, while the city of Kursk, the administrative center of Kursk Region, which borders Ukraine, was forced to declare the state of emergency, like Kiev.
Subzero temperatures and snow mixed with rain are causing problems to residents of continental Europe and the British Isles as well, where the current March became the coldest in 50 years.
Russia’s national football team was to play a 2014 World Cup qualifier against Northern Ireland in Belfast on Friday.
The match was initially rescheduled to Saturday, but subsequently canceled, with stadium employees failing to remove the ice crust from the pitch.
Ukraine Relatively Unworried By Cyprus Crisis
KIEV, Ukraine -- In the Cyprus banking crisis, almost all the focus has been on Russian money in account there, but Ukraine also has strong business and financial ties with the island.
Many companies with Ukrainian links are incorporated in Cyprus .. but experts say that they don’t keep very large sums of money parked there, as it tends to quickly move on to tax havens.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said his countrymen are far less exposed than the Russians:
“We can say that the losses for Ukraine will be way lower than for Russia. This is why Russia has reacted the way it has. For us this won’t have such a serious impact as for Moscow.”
And he added maybe Ukrainians might think twice now about keeping their money abroad as it seems it’s safer at home.
Ukrainian businesses are incorporated in Cyprus for the tax advantages that brings when they move their money there and then bring it back.
Expert Dmytro Boyarchuk with the CASE economic research think tank told euronews that events in Cyprus will disrupt that:
“Probably the oligarchs, the businessmen will take some time to relocate their money in some other banks and other countries and this may affect the amount of investments coming into Ukraine.”
Banking secrecy laws make it difficult to know how much Ukrainian money is in Cyprus.
Estimates range from less than four billion euros ($5.2 billion) to more than 15 billion ($19.5 billion), but certainly much less than the totals of Russian cash.
GRECO Approves Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Progress
KIEV, Ukraine -- The Council of Europe's anti-corruption monitoring body GRECO acknowledged the implementation of a number of anti-corruption recommendations by the eastern European country.
The feedback was provided at the 59th GRECO plenary meeting, where Ukraine presented its anti-corruption progress report.
Ukraine reported on the adoption of the new Criminal Procedure Code and a law on ethical conduct.
The meeting took place in Strasburg, France, on March 18-22, 2013.
During the session, the Group of States against Corruption ruled that Ukraine had fulfilled recommendations on the development and implementation of anti-corruption strategy and the action plan.
Ukraine implemented recommendations to adopt public servants' code of conduct and provide training on professional ethics and prevention and combating corruption for public servants, reported Minister of Justice Oleksandr Lavrynovych.
The group also welcomed public participation in the evaluation of the state anti-corruption efforts.
At the GRECO meeting, the Ukrainian government presented anti-corruption measures scheduled for the future - adoption of draft laws regulating confiscation procedure, criminal procedure against legal entities, and better financial control.
The drafts were produced following earlier recommendations by GRECO.
Ukraine is expected to present its next anti-corruption progress report to GRECO on December 31, 2013.
Recent anti-corruption efforts of the Ukrainian authorities targeted legislative changes and increased efficiency of state apparatus.
Namely, in February 2013, the Ukrainian customs service reported 33 percent corruption decrease over the last two years due to implementation of the internal risks monitoring system.
Additionally, in 2014, Ukraine plans to make any public services in Ukraine available online, informed the State Agency for Science, Innovation and Information.
Online public services will reduce time spent by clients to obtain a service and help prevent corruption.
Another international anti-corruption initiative - NGO Global Integrity - rated Ukrainian anti-corruption law 100 on the 0-100 scorecard, as reported in November 2012.
The international organization highlighted the improvements in Ukrainian legislation in its annual report summarizing 2011 anti-corruption efforts.
Ukraine joined GRECO in 2006, after ratifying the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption.
Founded in 1999, the multinational anti-corruption group currently features 47 European states, as well as six observers, including the U.S., Japan, and Canada.
In 2007, GRECO produced the first report on Ukraine featuring 25 recommendations.
The feedback was provided at the 59th GRECO plenary meeting, where Ukraine presented its anti-corruption progress report.
Ukraine reported on the adoption of the new Criminal Procedure Code and a law on ethical conduct.
The meeting took place in Strasburg, France, on March 18-22, 2013.
During the session, the Group of States against Corruption ruled that Ukraine had fulfilled recommendations on the development and implementation of anti-corruption strategy and the action plan.
Ukraine implemented recommendations to adopt public servants' code of conduct and provide training on professional ethics and prevention and combating corruption for public servants, reported Minister of Justice Oleksandr Lavrynovych.
The group also welcomed public participation in the evaluation of the state anti-corruption efforts.
At the GRECO meeting, the Ukrainian government presented anti-corruption measures scheduled for the future - adoption of draft laws regulating confiscation procedure, criminal procedure against legal entities, and better financial control.
The drafts were produced following earlier recommendations by GRECO.
Ukraine is expected to present its next anti-corruption progress report to GRECO on December 31, 2013.
Recent anti-corruption efforts of the Ukrainian authorities targeted legislative changes and increased efficiency of state apparatus.
Namely, in February 2013, the Ukrainian customs service reported 33 percent corruption decrease over the last two years due to implementation of the internal risks monitoring system.
Additionally, in 2014, Ukraine plans to make any public services in Ukraine available online, informed the State Agency for Science, Innovation and Information.
Online public services will reduce time spent by clients to obtain a service and help prevent corruption.
Another international anti-corruption initiative - NGO Global Integrity - rated Ukrainian anti-corruption law 100 on the 0-100 scorecard, as reported in November 2012.
The international organization highlighted the improvements in Ukrainian legislation in its annual report summarizing 2011 anti-corruption efforts.
Ukraine joined GRECO in 2006, after ratifying the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption.
Founded in 1999, the multinational anti-corruption group currently features 47 European states, as well as six observers, including the U.S., Japan, and Canada.
In 2007, GRECO produced the first report on Ukraine featuring 25 recommendations.
Saturday 16 March 2013
Russian MP calls on U.S. to interfere into Russia's affairs
The controversial trip of Russia's State Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov to the United States of America became the reason for an address to the State Duma committee on parliamentary ethics. All four factions of the Russian parliament asked the committee to assess the behavior of the former member of Just Russia Party. However, a little bit later, the Communist Party and Just Russia refused from their request.
According to one of the authors of the request, Deputy Secretary of the General Council of United Russia, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma, Sergei Zheleznyak, "we, together with colleagues from all factions of the State Duma, sent a request to the State Duma committee on parliamentary ethics in connection with Dmitry Gudkov's statements and calls for the United States to interfere into Russia's internal affairs. Gudkov made the statements during his trip to America, at the anti-Russian forum that took place in the United States on March 5 this year," Zheleznyak said.
"Looking for support for one's political struggle from foreign government is not a new method in political history, and its name has long been known," the official added.
In early March, Dmitry Gudkov visited an event, which was organized at the U.S. Congress by human rights organization Freedom House. During the forum, Gudkov urged U.S. politicians to put pressure on corrupt officials in the Russian government. After returning to Russia, Gudkov said that he allegedly managed to win the support of U.S. congressmen and senators in the search for real estate property of Russian officials in the U.S..
Representatives of United Russia said that the State Duma needs to introduce changes in the regulations about the trips of State Duma deputies abroad. State Duma deputies should travel abroad together with the speaker of the parliament and the leadership of the factions. The leader of the Liberal and Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, stated that Gudkov should be arrested for "treason."
The chairman of Just Russia, Nikolay Levichev, was not that radical, but he did not have any kind words for the former fellow party member (Gudkov visited the U.S. as a member of Just Russia). According Levichev, Gudkov purchased plane tickets for the trip to the United States three weeks in advance, but did not consider it necessary to inform the party administration of that. The chairman of the party said that such an act was unethical. Moreover, Gudkov went to the States during the regional week of the party, when he was supposed to communicate with voters in Ryazan and Tambov regions.
However, Just Russia and the Communist Party later withdrew their requests to the committee on parliamentary ethics. According to them, it is a personal initiative of party members, rather than that of factions.
"Initially, the Communist Party and Just Russia apparently agreed that such demonstrative acts that Gudkov committed in the State should be condemned. Afterwards, I think, when Gudkov was excluded from Just Russia, they reversed the decision," Aleksey Zudin, deputy director of the Center for Political Conjuncture of Russia said.
Dmitry Gudkov and his father, Gennady Gudkov, were excluded from Just Russia on March13th, "for committing the actions detrimental to the party." The Gudkovs could not refuse from their intention to cooperate with the Coordinating Council of the opposition, which Just Russia considered unacceptable.
Russian army to purchase inflatable military hardware
From 2014, the Russian army will start purchasing inflatable dummy tanks, planes and missile complexes. Victor Talanov, Deputy Director General of Research and Production Enterprise RusBal, said that it goes about, T-72 and T-80 dummy tanks, Su-27 and MiG-31 dummy fighters, as well as a number of missile complexes of different purpose.
The purchases will be held within the scope of the program to obtain camouflage and simulation hardware.
An inflatable model of military hardware is a frame covered with airtight material. Each model is equipped with thermal and radar simulators, power units and fans. All models can be transported by road, sea and air transport without restrictions. Such models are not exported abroad.
Ireland celebrates Russian Maslenitsa
The Irish capital of Dublin holds the festival of Russian Maslenitsa - the carnival that takes place in Russia at the end of winter or in the beginning of spring to see the long winter off. Maslenitsa usually translates into English as the pancake week. The carnival, held by the Russian community of the city, is being held for the fourth time. The event attracts more and more Irish people every year. Last year, more than 7,000 people took part in the carnival.
In addition to traditional Maslenitsa ceremonies, organizers attract people's attention to the Russian culture. In particular, negotiations are currently ongoing to organize exhibitions of the State Tretyakov Gallery in the Irish capital.
The celebrations will continue before March 14, as at the end of the week, on March 17, Ireland is celebrating its national holiday - St. Patrick's Day.
Ireland celebrates Russian Maslenitsa
The Irish capital of Dublin holds the festival of Russian Maslenitsa - the carnival that takes place in Russia at the end of winter or in the beginning of spring to see the long winter off. Maslenitsa usually translates into English as the pancake week. The carnival, held by the Russian community of the city, is being held for the fourth time. The event attracts more and more Irish people every year. Last year, more than 7,000 people took part in the carnival.
In addition to traditional Maslenitsa ceremonies, organizers attract people's attention to the Russian culture. In particular, negotiations are currently ongoing to organize exhibitions of the State Tretyakov Gallery in the Irish capital.
The celebrations will continue before March 14, as at the end of the week, on March 17, Ireland is celebrating its national holiday - St. Patrick's Day.
Ukraine Beheadings: Police Correct Arrest Report
KIEV, Ukraine -- Police in Ukraine say no arrests have been made over the beheading of a judge and his family in December, correcting their earlier statement.
They say they are studying evidence on several suspects.
One person has been detained over an unrelated drugs crime.
Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko earlier said a suspect had been held over Volodymyr Trofymov's murder.
He said the judge had been targeted because of his antiques collection and that a suspect was later arrested.
The beheadings in eastern Ukraine shocked the whole country.
Baffling case
The police said on Thursday that they were studying whether items - found during the search of the suspects' apartments - belonged to the judge.
According to a report by the ministry in February, drug-dealers in the Kharkiv and neighbouring Donetsk regions were found using the coins as a method of payment.
It is believed Mr Trofymov and the three others were each shot in the head, and their heads were then severed and removed by the killer or killers.
Judicial sources quoted by local media say the victims were probably beheaded in an attempt to conceal traces of the weapon or weapons used to kill them.
However, gunpowder traces were found on the victims' clothing.
Mr Trofymov, 58, was well known for collecting rare coins, World War II medals and china statuettes.
The crime on 15 December initially baffled investigators, with speculation in the media that it was linked to the judge's work or even that it was a case of ritual murder.
Tunisia Gives Ukraine Firm Oil Exploration Permit
TUNIS, Tunisia -- Tunisia’s industry ministry on Thursday announced the award of an oil exploration permit to Ukrainian firm YNG Exploration Limited for the Tatouine region in the south of the country.
The permit, covering the Araifa site 988 square kilometres (395 square miles) in size, covers seismic exploration and the drilling of two test wells over a five-year period at a cost of $21 million (around 16 million euros).
Under the contract, signed by YNG Exploration Limited and ETAP (Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activites Petrolieres), the Ukrainian firm will finance the exploration phase.
If deposits are found, ETAP will have the option to participate to the tune of 50 percent.
Unlike its immediate neighbours Libya and Algeria, Tunisia has limited resources of hydrocarbons.
But it is studying ways of increasing its energy production, notably by exploiting potential shale gas deposits.
Killer Secret-Agent Dolphins Go AWOL In Ukraine
NEW YORK, USA -- They’re trained to kill — but these dolphins can’t resist their animal instincts.
Three of five dolphins taught by the Ukrainian navy to attack enemy combatants are reported missing after failing to return to a Crimean port following a training exercise earlier this month, the local media reports.
The dolphins are believed to be out chasing tails.
“Control over dolphins was quite common in the 1980's,” Yury Plyachenko, a former Soviet naval anti-sabotage officer, told RIA Novosti, a Russian news source.
“If a male dolphin saw a female dolphin during the mating season, then he would immediately set off after her.
But they came back in a week or so.”
The Soviets used the smart sea creatures for similar purposes dating back to 1973.
The sleek swimmers were used by the Soviet Navy to detect mines and to plant explosives on enemy ships.
The program died when the USSR broke up and the retired military veteran dolphins were handed to the Ukrainians, who used the animals to work with disabled children.
But last year, RIA Novosti reported, the Ukrainian Navy restarted the program, training the dolphins to attack enemies with knives and guns attached to their heads.
Photos showing the military-trained dolphins have frequently appeared in the Ukrainian press, but the country’s defense department has consistently denied the reports.
Now three of the highly-trained dolphins are MIA after never returning to the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
The United States has used dolphins in warfare, too.
The animals were trained and deployed for intelligence gathering during the Iraq War.
Ukraine Seeks Foreign Clients For Pilot Training Site
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine is considering leasing out a carrier-deck pilot training site in the Crimea to other countries, and India and China are the "obvious potential candidates".
Ukrainian First Deputy Defence Minister Oleksandr Oleinik said that under a 1997 bilateral agreement, Russia occasionally uses Ukraine's Nitka Naval Pilot Training Center as the only training facility for its carrier-based fixed-wing pilots, but that could change.
"Various options are being considered. For example, if Russia is unable to use this facility 100 percent, then Russia should have no objections to its use for training by forces from other states, subject to Russia's consent," he said.
At present, the site is only used by Russia on a short-term basis to train Northern Fleet carrier pilots, who fly Su-33 naval fighter jets and Su-25UTG conversion trainers.
The Russian defence ministry has previously asked the Ukrainian defence ministry to lease the site to Russia.
Ukraine's then-defence minister Mykhailo Yezhel supported Russia's request.
However, the Russia lease option "has not been confirmed", Oleinik said, and so the Ukrainian defence ministry is looking at other options.
Douglas Barrie, air warfare analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: "India and China are the obvious potential candidates for this."
India is awaiting delivery of a refurbished Russian aircraft carrier which will operate Russian MiG-29K fighter jets.
China only has one carrier, from which naval aircraft were seen operating for the first time last year, and has little experience of fixed-wing naval operations.
Most other aircraft carrier operators either use short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft whose crews would not need a facility like Nitka, or have their own such facilities, or use only ships for training.
Under the original agreement, Russia traded use of the Nitka facilities for spare parts for Sukhoi-family naval fighter jets, which were the only type allowed to operate at the center.
Russia and Ukraine were Nitka's only users.
In August, Russia's then-defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov said Russia and Ukraine had signed a protocol on amendments to that agreement, setting out payment for using the site, unrestricted use of a range of naval aircraft for training and testing, and the possibility of sharing the centre with third parties.
The Nitka Centre was built in the Soviet era for pilots to practice taking-off and landing from aircraft carrier decks.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the facility remained under Ukraine's control.
The centre provides facilities such as a launch pad, a catapult launch device and arrester wires, a glide-path localizer, a marker beacon, and an optical landing system.
The Russian defence ministry said last year it pays about $700,000 annually for the rent of the Nitka Centre and is willing to upgrade the facility.
Russia, which has only one aircraft carrier - the Admiral Kuznetsov - is drawing up plans for a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for its navy by 2018.
Ukraine Requests Inquest Into Death Of Actress In Hurghada
HURGHADA, Egypt -- The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has requested Egyptian authorities investigate the death of a famous Ukrainian actress, Oksana Haivas, who died in Hurghada allegedly due to hospital negligence after a driving accident.
Former tour leader Mohamed Refaat said the 30-year-old actress had arrived in Hurghada with her husband on 5 March to ride dune buggies in the desert.
During the outing, Haivas crashed and broke several bones.
She also reportedly had internal bleeding.
She was taken to a private hospital in Hurghada, but her travel agency and foreign insurance company declined to pay for treatment, claiming safaris are not insured.
They also refused to pay to transport her body back to the Ukraine, leaving the Ukrainian Embassy to arrange the financing.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has issued a warning to its citizens visiting Egypt following the accident.
It also warned citizens to be aware of ongoing unrest.
Ukrainians represent 15 percent of the total number of tourists who visit Hurghada every year.
IMF To Visit Ukraine For Talks On $15 Bln Loan
KIEV, Ukraine -- Kiev needs to service debt repayments of about $9 bln. But leadership still against raising home gas prices.
An International Monetary Fund mission will visit Ukraine at the end of this month to resume talks with the Kiev government on a new $15 billion loan programme, the Fund said on Thursday.
Kiev has been in negotiation with the Fund since January on a new deal to help it service foreign debt repayments set to peak at about $9 billion this year.
Money owed by Ukraine to the IMF itself accounts for about two-thirds of that sum.
Ukraine has, to date, signed seven loan deals with the Fund.
But the last one, which was also for $15 billion, was suspended in early 2011 part way through when President Viktor Yanukovich's government refused to make Ukrainian households pay more of the real cost of the gas it buys from Russia.
The Fund has urged Ukraine to cut gas and heating subsidies for households in order to curb a ballooning budget deficit.
But Yanukovich last month once again pledged not to raise gas prices, casting doubt on the prospects of a new IMF deal.
"At the request of the authorities, an IMF mission ... will visit Ukraine from March 27-April 10 to continue negotiations on a new Stand-By Arrangement (SBA)," Max Alier, the IMF's representative in Ukraine, said in a statement on Thursday.
Ukraine's budget deficit doubled last year to $6.7 billion or 3.8 percent of gross domestic product as the government increased welfare payouts and other spending in the run-up to a parliamentary election last October.
The Fund also says the Ukrainian hryvnia, pegged at about 8 per dollar since early 2010, is overvalued and it wants Kiev to allow greater exchange rate flexibility.
Under Secretary Of State Sherman Travels To Belgium, Poland, And Ukraine
WASHINGTON, DC -- During her visit to Brussels, Belgium on March 15, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman will meet with Belgian officials, including Ministry of Foreign Affairs Chief of Cabinet Francois de Kerchove, and participate in the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum with international business, political, and civil-society leaders.
She will meet young professional leaders from around the world at the Young Professionals Summit, an adjunct to the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum.
Under Secretary Sherman will continue to Warsaw, Poland on March 17, where she will meet with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.
During her visit, she will lead U.S. participation in the U.S.-Poland Strategic Dialogue to advance bilateral cooperation on defense, energy security, and democracy promotion in Europe’s Eastern Neighborhood and beyond.
The Under Secretary will also meet with Polish opinion leaders.
On March 19, Under Secretary Sherman will travel to Kiev, Ukraine, to meet with Ukrainian Government leaders to continue our dialogue on issues of mutual concern, including Ukraine’s integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions, energy security, economic reform, and advancement of democracy and human rights.
The Under Secretary will also meet with opposition leaders.
The Two Worlds Of Viktor Yanukovych’s Ukraine
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s President Yanukovych has completed his takeover of his country’s TV channels, and is making inroads into the internet.
As Ukraine faces a choice of whether to align itself with Europe or Eurasia, Sergii Leshchenko wonders if there is a way back.
Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yushchenko, the father of five children, liked to describe his country as a ‘sleeping beauty’, awaiting her prince.
After the Orange revolution of 2004 it looked as though the fairytale had come to its happy end, but eight years later it is obvious that Ukraine is still sunk in a deep, lethargic sleep.
For three years now the government led by Viktor Yanukovych has been dismantling democracy in Ukraine.
In its latest report on world press freedom, the organisation Reporters without Borders places Ukraine in 126th position (out of 179), between Algeria and Honduras.
In 2009, just before Yanukovych took power, it was in 89th place, but the new president decided not to tempt fate any further by playing the game of western values.
Two perceptions of reality exist side by side in Ukraine.
The first is that shown on television, the main source of information for 87% of the population, owned by the country’s oligarchs and so obliged to remain loyal to the regime.
The second, for the small minority of Ukrainians who use it, is that of the internet, where opposition voices dominate.
Television is the government’s chief channel of communication with its voters.
Naturally enough, after his election as president in 2010, Yanukovych decided to bring it under control.
All the main channels began to function as elements of a homogeneous information stream overseen by Russian spin doctor Igor Shuvalov, and those who refused to toe the line were marginalised.
The TVai channel, for example, first lost its broadcasting frequencies, and then, just before last year’s parliamentary elections, even cable operators stopped carrying it.
The big TV channels belong to four groups, all of them with no option but to be loyal to Yanukovych.
Media group No 1, consisting of the popular Inter channel along with half a dozen minor channels, has since January of this year belonged to oligarch Dmytro Firtash and Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the presidential administration.
Group No 2 is in the hands of Rinat Akhmetov, the president’s right hand man, the richest person in Ukraine and chief sponsor of the ruling Party of Regions.
Two other media groups belong to ex president Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk and the Dnipropetrovsk oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.
For none of them is television their main business.
They have accepted these roles as the price of government support in areas like energy privatisation and favours for their metallurgical companies.
The Ukrainian public is moreover not even aware of who cooks up their daily information menu – 82% have no idea who is behind their media.
Most amazingly, the mainstays of television’s loyalty to Yanukovych are two TV stars from Russia, the legendary Yevgeny Kiselyov from NTV and Savik Shuster from Radio Svoboda.
Fleeing from Putin’s authoritarian regime into the arms of Yanukovych, both happily agreed to play by his somewhat less onerous rules.
he latest example of an oligarch bowing to pressure from the regime is the UNIAN website, owned by Ihor Kolomoysky.
He brought his respected 20 year old brand into disrepute by posting, on government orders, a preposterous story about jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s lawyer Sergei Vlasenko.
According to this article, Vlasenko was a pathetic character who believed that he was being followed by government agents disguised as cartoon bears.
The website’s journalists protested, and were imperiously told by Kolomoysky to shut up, or the site would be closed down.
The fate of Ukraine’s most popular TV channel, Inter, is symptomatic of the trend.
It recently changed hands after its previous owner, businessman and former acting deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky, dared to challenge President Yanukovych.
After resigning his post last December as a protest against Yanukovych’s choice of Prime Minister, Khoroshkovsky decided to show his independence by dropping all censorship on his TV channel and dismissing a pro-government presenter.
But his satisfaction was short-lived.
The tax authorities were immediately ordered to investigate his affairs, so he left Ukraine and is now resident in London, where his son is a student at City University.
From the UK he agreed to sell his TV shares to Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the presidential administration, and the change of ownership was immediately followed by the disappearance of a political talk show hosted by journalist Anna Bezulik and the disbanding of the public advisory council set up by Khoroshkovsky to monitor balance in the channel’s news coverage.
A recent development has been the idea of the president’s ‘Family’ getting into direct media ownership.
Yanukovych is trying to acquire his own information weapon system, to avoid the need for oligarchic support in the 2015 presidential elections.
His media group consists mainly of a few small TV channels, radio stations and websites, but his ‘big gun’ is to be ‘Kapital’, a new business newspaper which will be published in conjunction with the Financial Times.
Interrupting the flow of news
The main result of Yanukovych’s media takeover has been to stop corruption allegations leaking from the internet to television.
Since Yanukovych’s election as president in 2010, not a single major channel has mentioned the scandal of his out-of-town residence Mezhyhirya.
This tale of corruption on a fantastic scale would be a sensation anywhere in Europe, but in Ukraine it is simply a non-story.
The government owned estate, formerly used by Ukraine’s communist bigwigs, is now 140 hectares of presidential private property (an area almost the size of Monaco) with a palatial residence where a single chandelier cost $100, 000.
The interesting thing, however is that although television has made no mention of the president’s scandalous palace, it seems that the public is well aware of its story.
A poll commissioned by the popular internet newspaper ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ showed that 42% of Ukrainians know about the machinations around the president’s residence despite the silence of the TV channels.
For the moment, the most popular Ukrainian websites have nothing to do with politics.
The most visited site is Google, followed by the Russian social networking site ’vKontakte’.
The third most popular site belongs to the Russian postal service; the fifth is another Russian social network, ‘Odnoklassniki’ (literally, ‘Classmates’).
Facebook is in tenth place, beaten by the file sharing site Ex.ua, which distributes pirated content.
However the recent elections showed that the internet is becoming ever more dangerous for Yanukovych and his political forces.
In Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, not a single seat was won by a Yanukovych candidate.
Despite the stream of TV propaganda, Kievan voters were getting their information from alternative, online sources.
Indeed attempts at falsification at Kiev polling stations were foiled thanks to Facebook and Twitter, which were used to mobilise people to combat fraud.
For Yanukovych, internet users are lost voters.
If his name appears anywhere on the web, it is only as a source of mockery for his frequent verbal slips, such as when he described Anton Chekhov as a Ukrainian poet.
He has also been known to confuse Montenegro with Kosovo, and Stockholm with Helsinki.
An amusing incident when a floral wreath fell on the president's head during a memorial ceremony during a high wind didn’t make the TV screens, but got 2.7 million hits on the internet and became the subject of innumerable cartoons and satirical remixes.
The internet is still a free zone where people can express their opinions and passions.
In fact it is even beneficial for Yanukovych, as a safety valve for people’s anger.
Ukrainians are not smashing windows and storming the notorious presidential residence.
They are too busy honing their artistic skills in drawing cartoons and pressing the ‘like’ button beside blogs and articles that criticise the regime.
The growing influence of the Web
Sooner or later the internet will become a powerful weapon against corruption in Ukraine.
The ‘Nashi Dengi’ (‘our money’) site, which reports on the abuse of public funds, has become the main source of financial news for the media in general.
It is obvious that in the future the internet will have a direct influence on election results.
Social networking sites may also become an alternative channel of communication between the opposition and the voters, although for the moment none of its leaders has much of a presence on Facebook or Twitter – the person with the most followers (31,000) is Vitaly Klychko, which is hardly surprising given his dual status as sports star and politician.
But 31,000 isn’t even enough to guarantee a victory in a single constituency, let alone become mayor of Kiev or president of Ukraine (on the government side, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s Facebook page has 24,000 followers, and on Friday evenings he opens it for readers’ questions, though only of a non-critical variety, which leads to a widespread suspicion that the answers come from a ghost-writer).
Other opposition leaders have an even lower online profile: Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Yulia Tymoshenko’s successor as head of the ‘Fatherland’ party, has only 9,600 followers, while nationalist leader Oleh Tyahnybok has a mere 6,500.
These figures are pathetically low, but increasing online interest in political matters is reflected in other ways.
For instance, a photo of Arseniy Yatsenyuk doing his bit to combat corruption by flying economy class –unheard of behaviour for a political leader – gathered more than 3,000 Facebook ‘likes’, a record for a photo of a Ukrainian politician.
The regime, meanwhile, has its own use for the internet - to harass anti-Yanukovych journalists, hacking into their email accounts as well as recording their phone calls and publishing them online on pro-government sites.
At the same time journalists are in general loath to stand up for their rights.
The exception to this is the small number of people who have united under the slogan ’Stop the censorship!’.
They recently attended a presidential press conference wearing Yanukovych masks, the idea being to point out that Ukraine’s leader is out of touch with reality and talking to himself when he denies that censorship exists in Ukraine.
Which road to take?
Of course the reality is that Ukraine’s whole future hangs in the balance, caught as it is between Europe – it is one step away from signing an Association Agreement with the EU – and the Russian dominated Eurasian Customs Union.
After a summit in Brussels last month, the EU has compiled a list of a dozen specific issues on which the Ukraine must take action by May in accordance with previous agreements.
These include reforms in the justice system, in criminal law and the criminal procedure code, and in the fight against corruption, as well as the implementation of the recommendations of the Cox-Kwasniewski mission.
It is clear, however, that for the sake of Ukraine’s future the EU Association Agreement must be signed, however undemocratic its institutions.
It is not so important whose face is on the presidential mask.
What is important is the fate of a fledgling 46 million strong nation that has spent the last twenty years at the east-west crossroads, and is still waiting for someone else to decide which road it should take.
As Ukraine faces a choice of whether to align itself with Europe or Eurasia, Sergii Leshchenko wonders if there is a way back.
Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yushchenko, the father of five children, liked to describe his country as a ‘sleeping beauty’, awaiting her prince.
After the Orange revolution of 2004 it looked as though the fairytale had come to its happy end, but eight years later it is obvious that Ukraine is still sunk in a deep, lethargic sleep.
For three years now the government led by Viktor Yanukovych has been dismantling democracy in Ukraine.
In its latest report on world press freedom, the organisation Reporters without Borders places Ukraine in 126th position (out of 179), between Algeria and Honduras.
In 2009, just before Yanukovych took power, it was in 89th place, but the new president decided not to tempt fate any further by playing the game of western values.
Two perceptions of reality exist side by side in Ukraine.
The first is that shown on television, the main source of information for 87% of the population, owned by the country’s oligarchs and so obliged to remain loyal to the regime.
The second, for the small minority of Ukrainians who use it, is that of the internet, where opposition voices dominate.
Television is the government’s chief channel of communication with its voters.
Naturally enough, after his election as president in 2010, Yanukovych decided to bring it under control.
All the main channels began to function as elements of a homogeneous information stream overseen by Russian spin doctor Igor Shuvalov, and those who refused to toe the line were marginalised.
The TVai channel, for example, first lost its broadcasting frequencies, and then, just before last year’s parliamentary elections, even cable operators stopped carrying it.
The big TV channels belong to four groups, all of them with no option but to be loyal to Yanukovych.
Media group No 1, consisting of the popular Inter channel along with half a dozen minor channels, has since January of this year belonged to oligarch Dmytro Firtash and Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the presidential administration.
Group No 2 is in the hands of Rinat Akhmetov, the president’s right hand man, the richest person in Ukraine and chief sponsor of the ruling Party of Regions.
Two other media groups belong to ex president Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk and the Dnipropetrovsk oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.
For none of them is television their main business.
They have accepted these roles as the price of government support in areas like energy privatisation and favours for their metallurgical companies.
The Ukrainian public is moreover not even aware of who cooks up their daily information menu – 82% have no idea who is behind their media.
Most amazingly, the mainstays of television’s loyalty to Yanukovych are two TV stars from Russia, the legendary Yevgeny Kiselyov from NTV and Savik Shuster from Radio Svoboda.
Fleeing from Putin’s authoritarian regime into the arms of Yanukovych, both happily agreed to play by his somewhat less onerous rules.
he latest example of an oligarch bowing to pressure from the regime is the UNIAN website, owned by Ihor Kolomoysky.
He brought his respected 20 year old brand into disrepute by posting, on government orders, a preposterous story about jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s lawyer Sergei Vlasenko.
According to this article, Vlasenko was a pathetic character who believed that he was being followed by government agents disguised as cartoon bears.
The website’s journalists protested, and were imperiously told by Kolomoysky to shut up, or the site would be closed down.
The fate of Ukraine’s most popular TV channel, Inter, is symptomatic of the trend.
It recently changed hands after its previous owner, businessman and former acting deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky, dared to challenge President Yanukovych.
After resigning his post last December as a protest against Yanukovych’s choice of Prime Minister, Khoroshkovsky decided to show his independence by dropping all censorship on his TV channel and dismissing a pro-government presenter.
But his satisfaction was short-lived.
The tax authorities were immediately ordered to investigate his affairs, so he left Ukraine and is now resident in London, where his son is a student at City University.
From the UK he agreed to sell his TV shares to Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the presidential administration, and the change of ownership was immediately followed by the disappearance of a political talk show hosted by journalist Anna Bezulik and the disbanding of the public advisory council set up by Khoroshkovsky to monitor balance in the channel’s news coverage.
A recent development has been the idea of the president’s ‘Family’ getting into direct media ownership.
Yanukovych is trying to acquire his own information weapon system, to avoid the need for oligarchic support in the 2015 presidential elections.
His media group consists mainly of a few small TV channels, radio stations and websites, but his ‘big gun’ is to be ‘Kapital’, a new business newspaper which will be published in conjunction with the Financial Times.
Interrupting the flow of news
The main result of Yanukovych’s media takeover has been to stop corruption allegations leaking from the internet to television.
Since Yanukovych’s election as president in 2010, not a single major channel has mentioned the scandal of his out-of-town residence Mezhyhirya.
This tale of corruption on a fantastic scale would be a sensation anywhere in Europe, but in Ukraine it is simply a non-story.
The government owned estate, formerly used by Ukraine’s communist bigwigs, is now 140 hectares of presidential private property (an area almost the size of Monaco) with a palatial residence where a single chandelier cost $100, 000.
The interesting thing, however is that although television has made no mention of the president’s scandalous palace, it seems that the public is well aware of its story.
A poll commissioned by the popular internet newspaper ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ showed that 42% of Ukrainians know about the machinations around the president’s residence despite the silence of the TV channels.
For the moment, the most popular Ukrainian websites have nothing to do with politics.
The most visited site is Google, followed by the Russian social networking site ’vKontakte’.
The third most popular site belongs to the Russian postal service; the fifth is another Russian social network, ‘Odnoklassniki’ (literally, ‘Classmates’).
Facebook is in tenth place, beaten by the file sharing site Ex.ua, which distributes pirated content.
However the recent elections showed that the internet is becoming ever more dangerous for Yanukovych and his political forces.
In Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, not a single seat was won by a Yanukovych candidate.
Despite the stream of TV propaganda, Kievan voters were getting their information from alternative, online sources.
Indeed attempts at falsification at Kiev polling stations were foiled thanks to Facebook and Twitter, which were used to mobilise people to combat fraud.
For Yanukovych, internet users are lost voters.
If his name appears anywhere on the web, it is only as a source of mockery for his frequent verbal slips, such as when he described Anton Chekhov as a Ukrainian poet.
He has also been known to confuse Montenegro with Kosovo, and Stockholm with Helsinki.
An amusing incident when a floral wreath fell on the president's head during a memorial ceremony during a high wind didn’t make the TV screens, but got 2.7 million hits on the internet and became the subject of innumerable cartoons and satirical remixes.
The internet is still a free zone where people can express their opinions and passions.
In fact it is even beneficial for Yanukovych, as a safety valve for people’s anger.
Ukrainians are not smashing windows and storming the notorious presidential residence.
They are too busy honing their artistic skills in drawing cartoons and pressing the ‘like’ button beside blogs and articles that criticise the regime.
The growing influence of the Web
Sooner or later the internet will become a powerful weapon against corruption in Ukraine.
The ‘Nashi Dengi’ (‘our money’) site, which reports on the abuse of public funds, has become the main source of financial news for the media in general.
It is obvious that in the future the internet will have a direct influence on election results.
Social networking sites may also become an alternative channel of communication between the opposition and the voters, although for the moment none of its leaders has much of a presence on Facebook or Twitter – the person with the most followers (31,000) is Vitaly Klychko, which is hardly surprising given his dual status as sports star and politician.
But 31,000 isn’t even enough to guarantee a victory in a single constituency, let alone become mayor of Kiev or president of Ukraine (on the government side, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s Facebook page has 24,000 followers, and on Friday evenings he opens it for readers’ questions, though only of a non-critical variety, which leads to a widespread suspicion that the answers come from a ghost-writer).
Other opposition leaders have an even lower online profile: Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Yulia Tymoshenko’s successor as head of the ‘Fatherland’ party, has only 9,600 followers, while nationalist leader Oleh Tyahnybok has a mere 6,500.
These figures are pathetically low, but increasing online interest in political matters is reflected in other ways.
For instance, a photo of Arseniy Yatsenyuk doing his bit to combat corruption by flying economy class –unheard of behaviour for a political leader – gathered more than 3,000 Facebook ‘likes’, a record for a photo of a Ukrainian politician.
The regime, meanwhile, has its own use for the internet - to harass anti-Yanukovych journalists, hacking into their email accounts as well as recording their phone calls and publishing them online on pro-government sites.
At the same time journalists are in general loath to stand up for their rights.
The exception to this is the small number of people who have united under the slogan ’Stop the censorship!’.
They recently attended a presidential press conference wearing Yanukovych masks, the idea being to point out that Ukraine’s leader is out of touch with reality and talking to himself when he denies that censorship exists in Ukraine.
Which road to take?
Of course the reality is that Ukraine’s whole future hangs in the balance, caught as it is between Europe – it is one step away from signing an Association Agreement with the EU – and the Russian dominated Eurasian Customs Union.
After a summit in Brussels last month, the EU has compiled a list of a dozen specific issues on which the Ukraine must take action by May in accordance with previous agreements.
These include reforms in the justice system, in criminal law and the criminal procedure code, and in the fight against corruption, as well as the implementation of the recommendations of the Cox-Kwasniewski mission.
It is clear, however, that for the sake of Ukraine’s future the EU Association Agreement must be signed, however undemocratic its institutions.
It is not so important whose face is on the presidential mask.
What is important is the fate of a fledgling 46 million strong nation that has spent the last twenty years at the east-west crossroads, and is still waiting for someone else to decide which road it should take.
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