Russia and Ukraine

Putin positive but cautious about Russia's political future

2012-02-11T08:43:00.001-08:00

On February 6, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published his fourth program article, in which he continued to describe his views about the further development of the country. Also on Monday, Putin had a meeting with leading political scientists of the country to discuss the course of the election campaign.

"I do not want to say long monologues. It would be much more interesting if we could exchange opinions about the current situation and the prospects of the nation's development, about the economy and the social field, about the state construction, about democratic institutes and about the presidential campaign, of course," Putin said in the beginning of the meeting.

The meeting started with the discussion of the subject of election rights and the development of the party system. First and foremost, Putin said that the changes, which the sitting president had made, would definitely lead to the increase of the number of parties. However, the prime minister added, there were some hidden rocks, which he would like to avoid.

"We have a very complex country. It is not just a federative state. Our country is unique because we have national and territorial establishments. We have autonomous entities, there are ethnic nations, which are strongly connected to their territories. If we make granulate the parties, which is what we are heading to, then we must not allow any sort of national parties, otherwise we will pull the country apart," Putin said.
The same goes for the situation with direct gubernatorial elections and the elections of the members of the Federation Council. On the one hand, one should expand the framework of democratic procedures of brining regional leaders to power. On the other hand, one should be accurate here as well not to repeat the mistakes of the past, when local oligarchic and criminal structures would hide behind the backs of the candidates.

"Of course, one should not restrict the spheres of direct democracy for good because of those reasons. We should keep this detail in mind, though," Putin said.

In general, one may say that Putin is positive, although cautious, about the future of the above-mentioned reforms. Speaking about program statements from other candidacies, Putin said that all those people were experienced and reasonable individuals, whom he treated with respect.

"The good thing is that none of the current presidential candidates will betray the interests of the country. I can say that responsibly. I've known them for a long time, and I am sure of that," he said.

However, he added, his colleagues in the presidential race may very often say impossible things. "If a candidate suggests something unrealizable and then, if he is president, begins to implement them, they are not going to do anything but harm to the country," he said.

Commenting a suggestion from Gennady Zyuganov to elect judges on the level of cities and districts, Putin said that there was such practice in the USSR. "It was like that during the time of the USSR. However, all that electivity was a pure formality, just like all kinds of elections," he said.

As for the present-day situation, the law allows the election of peace justice. "Have they ever elected one in at least one entity of the Federation? No. There are representatives of the communist party, LDPR and Just Russia in those territories. Why is it so? Because it's expensive!" Putin said.

"The electivity of judges is becoming a political process. Judges must be out of politics," Putin said. "If we introduce the elections of judges, I think that we will create even more problems in the field, not to mention the fact that we will add the political aspect there," he noted.

Putin is skeptic about the total nationalization and total privatization. They both can lead to negative consequences due to objective reasons, which one should try to overcome, of course.

For instance, Sergei Mironov, a presidential candidate from Just Russia, said that he wanted to reduce prices on AI-95 petrol and diesel fuel to 15 rubles per liter. According to Putin, this can be technically possible. However, this will at least result in the shortage of the fuel. "We may not have the 95th petrol at gas stations. It will simply disappear in two or three days. They will simply stop to make this product. This is completely unprofessional, you know," he said about Mr. Mironov's initiative.

There are less serious obstacles on the way of such seemingly attractive initiatives as the nationalization of banks or promises to provide young families with homes. "This can only evoke the feelings of regrets. One would like to give everything for free to everyone. I would like to ask Mr. Zyuganov if they were able to give everything for free to all during the Soviet times. It did not happen. The problem was extremely serious, and it still seems that it is impossible to solve it today, although we try to solve it. The housing problem is one of those social problems, which we will be able to solve within the forthcoming five, six, seven, eight years - fundamentally. But it was impossible to give away everything for free back then and now," Putin said.

The same goes about the idea to give away land. According to Putin, this is pure populism. The problem is not about land per se. It is about the required infrastructure - electricity, water and heat supplies, roads, etc. "The state will be investing in the infrastructure, this is big money," Putin said.

Another popular idea - the establishment of the contractual army - is also all about the money. "The professional army is a positive thing, of course, taking into consideration the fact that military hardware has become more complicated. We need professionals for this army. We also think that we could recruit people from both military and civil institutes. Will we be able to do that by 2015? I am not sure. It goes about enormous resources. We have certain plans about it, and we will continue to work in this direction," Putin said.

As for the questions regarding the formation of the government after the elections, Putin said that he would like to attract people with different political views in the new government.

"It's important those people are professionals, although it is not going to be a coalition government in the classic perception of this word. When different parties come to the parliament, none of them has the majority, so they have to share. I do not think that this is very effective. When we have people sharing different views, then it very often happens that the decisions that they make are made on the base of compromise - they are not always effective," Putin said.

Any discussion about the rotation will make sense only after the results of the voting become known, he concluded.

Russia and China chain the dogs of war

2012-02-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

The diplomatic struggle due to the crisis in Syria on Sunday (5th) moved into a new phase after failing in a week of overwhelming pressure from western powers to achieve the fall of Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

Meanwhile, Syrian forces discovered two workshops for the manufacture of explosives

US/westerm global domination objectives were masked in a draft resolution expressing the support of the Security Council on a proposal from the Arab League in which the Syrian president would transfer the government as a first step to elections and other actions.

The maneuver was shot down on Saturday by the double veto of Russia and China against the document, discussed for eight days by 15 members of this body and subjected to constant changes that resulted in three different versions.

The pressure from western nations, headed by the United States, France and Britain, forced a special session of tense extraordinary sessions and the vote ended with the rejection of the text with 13 votes in favor and two opposed.

Washington, Paris and London were accompanied in their vote by the 13 delegation members of the Security Council: Germany, Portugal, India, Colombia, Guatemala, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa, Togo and Azerbaijan.
n explaining his opposition to the initiative, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, criticized the attempts by some members who want to force regime change in Syria.

The text constituted a bad sign for the conflict and efforts to advance a political solution, by not considering that opposition groups are largely responsible for the violence in that country, the diplomat stated.

In this sense, promoters of the resolution indicated their demand that the Syrian government withdraw its forces unilaterally, and leave the ground free for armed opposition groups to continue their violence.

Likewise he criticized "influential members of the international community who since the beginning of the Syrian crisis are undermining the possibility of a political solution and urging regime change, stoking the opposition against the authorities."

For their part, the chief representative of China, Li Baodong, backed Russian proposals to amend the text under discussion and lamented that the project has been submitted to a vote without taking them into account.

Beijing's ambassador reiterated the need to seek a political solution to the Syrian crisis through dialogue, to restore stability in that country.

"The idea of a regime change does not contribute to an arrangement, but it complicates the situation in a State of great importance for the Middle East region," he underlined.

Churkin and Li also executed the veto that their respective countries imposed last October to another western project directed against the government of Damascus.

After yesterday's vote, the Permanent Representative of Syria to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, argued that the promoters of the text tried to turn the United Nations, created as an instrument for peace, into a tool for war.

He also accused the west and some Arab countries of funding and supporting the armed opposition terrorist groups that are attempting to overthrow the government of al-Assad by force and violence.

"If those responsible for this situation stop instigating and financing these terrorists, Syria can solve the crisis by itself through political dialogue," he said.

The document vetoed by Russia and China would have imposed six demands on Syrian officials, including "the withdrawal of armed forces and security for the cities, villages and people and their return to their barracks."
It also called for free movement and full access to "all relevant institutions of the Arab League and Arab and international media to all parts of Syria to determine the truth about the situation on the ground and monitor incidents that occur."

After the veto from Russia and China, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, took advantage of the opportunity to side with the countries that supported the resolution and regretted that the Security Council had been unable to agree on the project that supported the Arab League.

He thought that the failure to approve the text "undermines the role of the UN and the international community when the Syrian authorities should hear a unified voice that calls for an immediate end to 'their violence' against the Syrian people. The Security Council has missed an opportunity to decide on a united action to help end the crisis," he insisted.

Nevertheless, Moscow announced yesterday that its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and Secretary of the National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, will travel next Tuesday to Damascus to meet with President al-Assad.

Perhaps this is the first movement of a new diplomatic battle between the promoters of a political solution and the instigators of regime change in that Arab country as occurred in Libya last October.

Russia can be in trouble because of Finland's new president

2012-02-11T08:39:00.000-08:00

Finland elected a new president. It is Saul Niinistö, a 63-year-old right-wing politician, former Speaker of the Parliament and a representative of the Coalition Party. While he does not deliver Anti-Russian speeches, Russia still needs to be alarmed. Niinistö established himself as a politician who is not opposed to Finland's NATO membership.

Niinistö won by a large margin. He enlisted the support of nearly 62.6 percent, while his rival, the representative of the "green" Pekka Haavisto, scored 37.4 percent. The losing candidate initially was unacceptable for the residents of the Finnish outskirts. An open homosexual who never served in the Army and who quit the church is too much even for such an "ultra-democratic" country as Finland. This means that for the next six years the country will be led by Niinistö.

Saul Niinistö is one of the oldest Finnish politicians with 35 years of tenure. At various times he served as the Minister of Justice and Treasury, and the chairman of the Parliament. In 2006 he ran for presidency, but lost to the outgoing President Tarja Halonen at least by four percent. For some time Niinistö served as the Deputy Director of the European Investment Bank and knows about the European policy firsthand.
With regard to the basic internal political guidelines of the new President, he advocates for raising taxes on the rich. Before, such statement from the right-wing politicians was virtually impossible, but the crisis dictates its own terms. Niinistö is considered a champion of European integration. He strongly objects the exit of Finland from the euro zone, but openly called the acceptance of Greece into Euro zone a mistake.

Since Finland is a neighbor of Russia, Niinistö's attitude towards Russia is a very important issue. "Many Russian tourists travel to Finland. At the same time many Finns are interested in and own businesses in Russia. We must create such conditions that our relationship continues to evolve smoothly," said Niinistö in a recent interview with Finnish television. According to him, Russia does not present a threat to Finland.

Niinistö said that the question of Finland's accession to NATO could be put to a referendum. In Russia, these words can be interpreted as support for Euro-Atlantic integration of the neighboring country with which it has 1,300 kilometers of common border. Niinistö's companion in the Coalition Party, Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb of Finland, is known as one of the most ardent "Atlanticists."

Another issue is possible territorial claims of Finland for Vyborg, Karelia isthmus and part of the territory of Karelia. Niinistö never made these claims, neither did Finland. However, there are well-known politicians among those who seek the return of these territories. The dissatisfaction with the introduction of the ban on the sale of land in the border zone in Russia was met with resentment among the country's top leadership. The new President's position is fundamentally important.

There are a few other important issues in the Russian-Finnish relations. For example, visas. Although the Finnish Consulate is different from its many colleagues in the EU because of its effective work, the leadership of Finland has never talked about the total abolition of visas. Niinistö has not yet paid particular attention to this issue.

On the first night after winning the elections, Niinistö did something that Russia was not particularly happy with. He appointed the deputy of the European Parliament from the Green Party Heidi Hautala the Minister of International Cooperation in the affairs of Finland. She is known for her close ties with the Russian non-systemic opposition. In addition, she has repeatedly criticized Russia for poor care of the preservation of the Finno-Ugric peoples.

What could the Russian-Finnish relations under President Niinistö be like? Should Russia be afraid of their deterioration and the accession of Finland to NATO? A Finnish professor and political scientist, chairman of the Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee Johan Backman answered :
"Saul Niinistö cannot be called a supporter of the Finnish entry into NATO. He never openly spoke of accession to the North Atlantic Alliance. The very fact of his belonging to the right Coalition Party that is the biggest advocate for the development of ties with the U.S. says that he is not an "Atlanticist."

Niinistö's program on Russia reflects quite objective, realistic interests, focused on economic integration. Being a supporter of Finland's entry into NATO is equal to committing a political suicide. The recent polls showed that 68 percent of the Finns are dead set against NATO membership. Finland will never be its member, only a madman could demand this.

Niinistö has good political instincts. Here is an example from his biography. He was in Thailand in 2004 when the tsunami hit. Hundreds of people were killed around him, but he escaped. This man was born twice, and it left a mark on his life experiences. In addition, he worked briefly in the European structures, so for Russia such a partner is very convenient.

As for the topic of territorial claims, the very statement is offensive to people of Vyborg. This issue was settled in the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947. During the reign of President Martti Ahtisaari, who was born in Vyborg, there were a number of provocations on the Finnish side. But Niinistö is not a revanchist. "

Russian communists politically impotent, albeit prone to dictatorship

2012-02-11T08:37:00.000-08:00

Presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, released quite exotic ideas about the future of the political development of the country. If Mr. Zyuganov wins the presidential election, he promises to change the Constitution and abolish the position of the prime minister.

Mr. Zyuganov became the last candidate, who presented his vision about the new government and new political reforms in the country. One shall admit that the communist leader is planning curious changes in Russia indeed.

First and foremost, Zyuganov wants to establish the government of people's trust. The new government will consist only of professionals who have remarkable education, extensive work experience and abilities to work in the team. As long as the world is expecting another wave of the economic crisis, as Zyuganov said, one would have to combine the positions of the president and the prime minister for the period of the crisis.

This would of course require adequate changes in the text of the Russian Constitution. To make it happen, the leader of Russian communists offers to set up the constitutional council to develop and introduce the adequate amendments. The council, Zyuganov added, would be chaired by Sergei Baburin and Yury Boldyrev. The political evolution of these two men is like a salad of Yeltsin, Yabloko, Just Russia and finally the CPRF.
As a matter of fact, Zyuganov intends to establish a mild form of dictatorship. He wants to have the "people's" government and hold unlimited powers as the head of state.

Boris Yeltsin did something like that in 1991. When he became the President of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic), he chaired the government too. Making a speech at the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR, Yeltsin surprised the country and the world. He stated that he would chair the Russian government, or the "cabinet of reforms," as he put it, during this critical time of the country's history.

The eye-opening news generated a joke: "When looking for the prime minister, Yeltsin looked into the mirror and chose himself."

The democratic community was hailing the "courageous" decision of the president. There were also many of those who said that Yeltsin was not competent at all as far as the economic side of the question was concerned. No one listened to them, though. Everyone knows the outcome of the experiment connected with the government of Yegor Gaidar.

Such attempts were taken during the Soviet times as well. The excessive concentration of power in the hands of Joseph Stalin was later interpreted as "personality cult." Nikita Khrushchev also tried to combine high-ranking official positions, for which he was subsequently criticized. It was later decided not to combine the positions of the First Secretary of the Central Committee and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko later used the new opportunity to combine the positions of the General Secretary of the Central Committee and the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council.

Mikhail Gorbachev was not an exception either. He set a record on the number of official positions that were taken in Soviet history. In May 1989, he became the chairman of the Supreme Council of the USSR. It is worthy of note that Boris Yeltsin criticized Gorbachev for doing that and said that the concentration of power in the hands of one person contradicted to democratic principles.

"When there are no clear ideas about the development of economy and the social field, when there's nothing to say about the strengthening of Russia's international position - this is the time when such absurd suggestions appear. Change the Constitution and make president and prime minister become one. All this testifies to Zyuganov's political weakness," Dmitry Vyatkin, a member of United Russia party, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee for constitutional legislation said.
Zyuganov's other initiatives raise many questions too. For example, the leader of the Communist Party believes that Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front, should be in charge of youth policies. Mr. Udaltsov is known for his activities to organize unauthorized actions of protest.

Moreover, Gennady Zyuganov said that Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of Yabloko Party, was a "professional economist." However, Zyuganov preferred not to include Yavlinsky in the structure of his "new government" for personal reasons. Zyuganov claimed that Yavlinsky literally compared communists to fascists in his TV ad. "I consider this insulting," Zyuganov said.

Consumer rights watchdog targets McDonald’s

2012-01-17T11:32:00.000-08:00

A consumer rights watchdog wants McDonald’s to list the contents of its hamburgers and it has gone to court to see that the fast-food chain does so.
The Consumer Rights Protection Society filed a lawsuit against the fast-food empire demanding it disclose all its ingredients information to customers, especially since it enjoys a lower tax rate applicable to stores and not the usual tax for restaurants.
“The McDonald’s restaurant chain deliberately violates the Russian consumer rights legislation, profiting twice from the privileged situation created by Moscow’s Arbitration Court decision,” an announcement on the organization’s website read.
McDonald’s milkshakes shouldn’t mention milk in their name, since a considerable amount of vegetable oil was contained in the product, a CRPS-backed investigation claimed.
If the court finds CRPS’ claims justified, the fast food chain will have to provide full information on ingredients, product weight and the standards it was made in accordance with.
And the list of requirement should be the same as for regular store-bought food, since McDonald’s has been “recognized as a grocery chain” by courts, the watchdog claims.
After an arbitration court’s ruling from July 2011, some of McDonald’s products are being sold as regular food commodities, which allows the company to pay VAT at the rate of 10 percent. The regular VAT rate for restaurants is 18 percent.
The McDonald’s says the lower tax rate applies only to certain products listed in respective government documents, according to a press-release published on its official website.
However, there is little chance that the corporation will lose the case. The tax scheme is absolutely legal – it is not widely used only because smaller food chains don’t have the resources to implement it given the modest revenue it will bring given their turnover, Yelena Perepelitsina, director general at consulting company Restcon, told Kommersant. And lawyer Alina Toporina from law firm Yukov, Khrenov i Partnyory believes that CRPS might have difficulties proving that one the world’s most famous chains operates entirely as a grocery store.
Back in 2007, the CRPS tried to force McDonald’s to change its take-outs scheme but courts took the side of the company.
McDonald’s representatives said they didn’t receive any notification of the lawsuit and it was also absent in the court’s database, according to an official statement sent to The Moscow News. A staff member of the Tverskoi court, where the CRPS said the lawsuit had been submitted, confirmed to Vedomosti that the document has been filed.
The company also added that information on their products’ energy and nutrition value is provided and only high quality ingredients are used. And the milkshakes frowned upon by the CRPS are produced according to a technology certified by the Russian branch of Europe’s biggest milk product manufacturer Ehrmann.

Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov

2012-01-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is close to getting into the presidential race after announcing that his campaign has gathered the necessary 2 million signatures to register with the Central Election Commission. Yet in spite of getting more campaign donations than Putin, his political prospects remain unclear.
The lanky businessman towered over supporters and journalists who crowded into his reception office Friday hoping for a chance to talk, but some people came away hoping for more certainty – did the oligarch even stand a chance against the far more popular Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has effectively been running the country since 2000?
“Prokhorov doesn’t have enough faith in himself,” Adam Kungayev, a pensioner who had signed up to support of Prokhorov’s campaign, told The Moscow News. “If he did, he could win the presidential race.”
Just 3 percent of respondents said they would vote for Prokhorov in a presidential election according to the latest Levada poll released Jan. 12, where Putin led with 42 percent.
But Prokhorov – who has a predominantly business-oriented middle-class support base and has even called for a longer working week in the past – can boast one area where he’s well ahead of Putin: Campaign donations.
In that arena, the billionaire beats the Prime Minister four to one – with over 400 million rubles ($13.3 million) collected against Putin’s 102.5 million ($3.4 million), Vedomosti reported Friday. If Prokhorov were campaigning in the U.S., that would give him a key edge. But in Russia, where state-owned television has been accused of leaning toward coverage of Putin and his United Russia party, that’s just not the case.
Prokhorov’s campaign managers dismissed the achievement. “That’s an exceedingly small sum for a campaign,” Anton Krasovsky, the TV anchor who heads Prokhorov’s campaign staff, said during Friday’s meeting.
Prokhorov was ousted as leader of the pro-business Right Cause party by pro-Kremlin forces in September, after just three months in the job, and is now determined to forge a successful party for Russia’s burgeoning middle class. Prokhorov, who accused other opposition leaders of being longtime “Kremlin agents” in a Monday article for RBC Daily, pledged to create an independent party when announcing his presidential bid on Dec. 12.
He may have some help from longtime Putin ally and former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who posted on his Twitter page Friday that he was holding “consultations on joining democratic and liberal forces and creating a new party.”
Prokhorov’s staff confirmed that talks with Kudrin were taking place.“Especially since the raid on Right Cause, it is crucial to create a party that’s not run from Staraya Ploshchad,” Krasovsky said, referring to the address of the presidential administration and underlining the need for full independence
But so far Prokhorov, who is widely seen as having the Kremlin’s blessing to run, has avoided open criticism of his opponent, Vladimir Putin.
“I think the slogan ‘Fire Putin’ is too radical,” Prokhorov told Radio Liberty on Friday.
Last week, Prokhorov called for evolution rather revolution in a column in The Guardian. Commenting that the age of managed democracy was “over,” he vowed to make free elections a priority.
To accusers who claim that his campaign is a Kremlin project, Prokhorov cheekily replied that that the Kremlin is his project instead. “I believe I have two opponents, Putin and [Communist Party head Gennady] Zyuganov. I will fight for second place – and for a second round of elections,” he was quoted by Radio Liberty as saying Friday.
Asked about the negotiations with Kudrin, and Kudrin’s de facto status as a mediator between the government and the opposition, Krasovsky, Prokhorov’s campaign manager, suggested that Kudrin’s connections could only be an asset.
“Why should [Kudrin’s closeness to Putin] be a bad thing? I’m for continuity,” Krasovsky said.

The latest in the watch on Ukrainian democracy

2012-01-17T11:25:00.000-08:00

2012 starts with a grim tone in Ukraine: Ukrainian democracy dropping in the ratings, Yulia Tymoshenko’s appeal overturned, state budget reduces social spending for dubious purposes and 90 percent of public protest banned.

The 2011 Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit holds Ukraine in 79th place out of 167 countries; a 12 rank drop from 2010. The index is based on indicators categorised into five key areas: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture. Ranked countries are rated from full democracies to flawed democracies, hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes.
Ukraine’s 2010 and 2006 positions, 67th and 52nd respectively, placed Ukraine among the world’s flawed democracies. The 79th position on the current index means Ukraine is now a hybrid regime. Russia, though possessing a lower overall 2010 position of 107th, has experienced a drop in 2011 to 117th, which, although not as severe a fall as Ukraine’s 2011 result, secures Russia’s position in the authoritarian regimes category.
British experts have stated that support for democracy within the population has fallen in Ukraine as well as in 10 other Eastern European countries. Ukraine seems o have undone many of the democratic achievements brought about by the Orange Revolution, such as free elections, free mass media and an unprejudiced attitude among the authorities towards opposition. The sentencing and imprisonment of Ukrainian ex-Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko is considered an example of abusing the judicial system to promote political interests(2). If this trend continues Ukraine is bound join the category of authoritarian regimes along side Russia, Nigeria, Jordan, Morocco and Ethiopia.

People First Comment: Not only has Ukraine fallen 12 places in the 2011 Democracy Index, it is in the unenviable position of recording the 6th highest fall in all the 128 countries surveyed as the following table indicates.

Highest falls in democratic standards 2008 to 2010
Rank Country Fall Background
1 Madagascar 1.63 Military Coup
2 Iran 0.89 Authoritarian Islamic regime
3 Ethiopia 0.84 Civil war
4 Egypt 0.82 Regime now overthrown by public protest
5 Gambia 0.81 Authoritarian quasi military regime
6 Ukraine 0.67 Dysfunctional political system

It should also be noted that Ukraine had the highest fall in democratic standards in the whole of Eastern Europe and that includes Russia where the fall was only 0.22.

Deeper analysis of the report indicates that during this period some parts of the Ukrainian democratic system faired very well with the election process and pluralism ranking equal to that of the USA and civil liberties equal to that of Argentina which is one of the highest in South America, however in the three other categories of the functioning of government, political participation and political culture Ukraine scored badly and on par with Peru, Paraguay and Serbia.

This report is really a reflection of the former government rather than that of today so it is hardly surprising that the results have unfolded as they have bearing in mind the political chaos of the period. What will be interesting is next years ranking which will give a clear picture of the impact of the Viktor Yanukovych presidency on democracy in Ukraine as by current standards we can anticipate an even more impressive decline.

In the final week of 2011, Kyiv Appeal Court issued a decision to overturn the appeal against the sentence brought upon Yulia Tymoshenko. The imprisoned ex-Prime Minister is to continue serving a 7-year sentence for overseeing gas deals that lost the state Hr 1.5 billion (almost $200 million).

The decision by Kyiv Appeal Court has only strengthened criticism from Ukraine’s intellectual elite who have for some time chastised the authorities for allegedly destroying democracy, the foundations of justice and human rights as well as Ukraine’s hopes for European integration. On the delivery of the decision Yuliya Tymoshenko thanked her supporters in Ukraine and abroad. The following step in this case will be a hearing at the European Court of Human Rights that is preliminarily set for March 2012.

This final court decision in Tymoshenko's case has provoked a distinctly negative reaction from the international community. The U.S. Department of State immediately pronounced its disappointment with Tymoshenko's sentencing and the ongoing violations of the principles of democracy and supremacy of law in Ukraine. It also expressed hopes that the Ukrainian ex-prime minister would be released from prison and allowed to participate in the parliamentary elections in autumn 2012.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised the decisions taken by Ukrainian justice system, describing them as rash and not compliant with rights for defence. Catherine Ashton, High Representative of European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, also emphasized the defects of Ukrainian justice. Finally, the Ukrainian World Congress expressed its concerns with Tymoshenko's trial, specifically stating that it did not comply with international standards for justice and independence. Thus, ymoshenko's case remains one of the principal reasons for Ukraine's worsening international relations.

People First Comment: The decision to jail Tymoshenko must go down as one of the greatest political blunders of this century. In one stroke the presidential administration has totally destroyed the president’s entire national and international credibility and turned him and his administration into a pariah. In addition they have clearly demonstrated to the world at large that they are not going to take any notice of internationally recognised legal due process or the rule of law and that has now set the tone not only for this Presidency but also for the nation as a whole. The problem is that his administration would appear to neither care nor even notice as they continue to feed the President bad advice and irresponsible decision making.
The crazy part about the whole venture is that it was simply not necessary. He won the election, he was ahead in all the polls and Tymoshenko as leader of the opposition was floundering like a beached whale. All they needed to do was to maintain a level head and she would have destroyed herself without the President having to lift a finger. Now she is Europe’s most famous political prisoner, an accolade she hardly warrants.
It was only natural that the President might want to exact some sort of revenge after his humiliation after the Orange revolution but wiser heads should have prevailed. Somebody should have whispered in his ear that the only person who suffers as a result of such malice is the bearer. Instead they have consigned him to one of the darker periods of Ukrainian history.

On Dec. 28, President Victor Yanukovych signed the Ukrainian state budget for 2012. Budget revenue is fixed at Hr 332.8 billion ($41.7 billion) and budget expenditure at Hr 358 billion (44.8 billion) leaving an approximate budget deficit of Hr 25 billion ($3.1 billion).
But even representatives of the authorities severely criticise the government's financial plan for the current year.
Hanna Herman, the president’s adviser, states that the new budget is less transparent and even more conducive to corruption. For example, there is no separate expense item for students' stipends or development of the Ukrainian language. Experts, including a significant number of politicians, state that the current budget will require revision as soon as spring 2012 because it is not effective for Ukraine's development.

№ Expenses on bodies of state power(8) 2011 2012
1 Funding for State Executive Office Hr 1.051 billion ($131 million) Hr 1,403 billion ($176 million) – increased by $45 million (+32%)
2 Interior Ministry Hr 13,858 billion ($1,732 million) Hr 14,435 billion ($1,804 million) – increased by $72 million (+4.15%)
3 Security Service of Ukraine Hr 3,022 billion ($378 million) Hr 3,258 billion ($407.3 million – increased by $29.3 million (+7.75%)
4 Ministry of Defense Hr 13,689 billion ($1,711 billion) Hr 17,402 billion ($2,175 billion) – increased by $464 million (+27.11%)
5 Prosecutor General's Office Hr 2.3 billion ($286 million) Hr 2.5 billion ($313 million) – increased by $27 million (+9.4%)

While expenses on military and policing agencies, the president's administration, Rada and the government are increased, many important social expenses are being cut. Particularly, the Ministry of Social Policy will get only $6.7 billion, which is $1.15 billion less than in 2011 (-17.16%), the Ministry of Health will get Hr 7 billion ($880 million) while at the same time the authorities have allocated Hr 7.5 billion ($935 million) for Euro 2012. Increases in minimum wages and pensions will not cover the inflation rate. The budget for 2012 will inevitably cause a further increase in poverty in Ukraine, which in turn will not fail to result in mass protests and meetings.

People First Comment: According to this budget the Presidential administration is currently costing the country $482,192 per day to run… whilst some 70% of the nation is living in relative poverty and 12.3 million are living on less than $3 a day. That’s $14 million a month or is equal to the monthly salaries of approximately 122,223 state workers.
In this age of austerity and even taking into consideration all the ‘ants’ that toil daily in Bankova Street or tend the Presidential estate this would seem just a tad over the top. This budget would ease the suffering of some 160,730 people every single day and yet nobody in this government seems to care as they have cut social protection by $1.15 billion and want to spend more on ego building football matches than on the Health Service.
The Ministry of the Interior is costing almost $5 million a day, the SBU $1.12 million a day and the Ministry of Defence almost $6 million a day and that comes to a grand total $12.12 million a day and it achieves absolutely nothing for the nation or its people. Finally there is one ray of sunshine in that the General Prosecutor’s office budget has been increased to $857,534 per day so the public now have the right to expect at least some progress in the fight against corruption…

Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Nina Karpachova has stated in her report that Ukrainian courts now forbid over 90% of protest actions, thus revoking the citizens' rights to the freedom of expression, association and assembly. According to the Ombudsman of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people long for open and direct dialogue with the authorities and demand that public opinion and public interests be taken into account; the authorities seem to think avoiding communication with the people is in their interests. This discredits the reforms, which are supposed to be doing the opposite of adding new limitations to human rights, as guaranteed by both the Constitution and more recent legislation.

To attract Ukrainian and international attention towards the violations of human rights the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union has once again awarded the “Golden Thistle” anti-prize to the most dangerous violators of human rights in Ukraine. Kyiv District Administrative Court received its “prize” for flagrant violation of the right to assembly, through multiple prohibitions of meetings and protest actions on Kyiv's central square Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, Vice Prime Minister Serhiy Tihipko and Minister of Finance Fedir Yaroshenko won the nomination for illegal actions towards judicial authorities and disrespect to the institution of justice(10). Tongue-in-cheek though the awards may be they highlight just how badly respect for human rights at the highest level in Ukraine has degraded.

Turchynov: Tax officials removed Tymoshenko's medical card from private clinic

2012-01-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

The State Tax Service has removed the medical card of former Ukrainian Premier Yulia Tymoshenko from the Medikom private clinic, where Tymoshenko has been treated for over ten years, the Batkivschyna Party has said.

"The State Tax Service withdrew from the medical establishment all of the materials connected with treatment of the various illnesses of Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko for over ten years," the first deputy head of the party, Oleksandr Turchynov, said during a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

According to him, the documents were withdrawn on Jan. 13, 2012.

Turchynov said that the clinic reported this in an answer to the deputy's request.

According to him, by such "demonstrative cynicism" the authorities are trying to falsify a criminal case against Tymoshenko, as well as information about her state of health.

"We only can forecast that it is not enough for them to falsify the criminal case. Probably they want to falsify medical cases, medical documents," he stressed.

Turchynov added that the Batkivschyna Party is planning to address international organizations on the violation of Tymoshenko's rights, in particular, the Doctors Without Borders organization.

On Oct. 11, 2011, Pechersky District Court in Kyiv sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office in signing a gas deal with Russia in 2009.

Tymoshenko was put in a pre-trial detention center in Kyiv on Aug. 5, 2011. On Dec. 30, she was transferred to Kachanivska penal colony No. 54 in Kharkiv.

The Main Investigatory Department of the SBU is continuing to investigate a criminal case against Tymoshenko on an attempt to embezzle state funds of Ukraine in especially big amounts via passing to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine obligations of the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU) corporation before the Defense Ministry of Russia for $405.5 million.

Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky District Court ordered the arrest of Tymoshenko under the UESU case. Because of this, Tymoshenko is being held in the pretrial detention center of the Kachanivska colony in Kharkiv and is not involved in community work.

EU expert: Schultz not to influence struggle in Ukraine

2012-01-17T11:21:00.000-08:00

Brussels – The newly elected president of the European Parliament, Socialist leader Martin Schulz, will not influence the political struggle in Ukraine in general, but he could change its tone, European expert Ina Kirsch has said.

He said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine in Brussels, while speaking about possible changes in the European Parliament related to Schultz's election as its president that Schulz had clearly outlined the priorities of his work in the post. "He said that he intends to make clearer the position of the European Parliament in its relations with other EU institutions. Therefore, his activity, at least, at the beginning of his mandate, will be more oriented towards the EU's internal policy and less towards its external policy," she said. But the expert categorically rejected the possibility that the European Parliament would forget about Ukraine during Schulz's presidency. "The Eastern Partnership and partnership with the EU's neighboring countries play a significant role in the European Parliament. Schultz represents the interests of the whole parliament, and therefore, the struggle that is going on in the European Parliament with respect to Ukraine will continue, but will, perhaps, change in its tone," the expert said. In addition, she said that the tone of statements and assessments made with respect to Ukraine "was not set by the president." "The leading forces were the factions that will remain: the faction of the [European] People's Party will continue to support [former Ukrainian Prime Minister] Yulia Tymoshenko, and cooperation will continue between the European Socialists and [Ukraine's] Regions Party. The tone of this struggle will not change," Kirsch said. She also said that Schultz would not use his levers of influence as president of the European Parliament. "The president represents the interests of the whole parliament, and he, as president, will represent the interests of all parliamentary groups - both the Populists and Socialists," she said. Kirsch also stressed the important role of the European Parliament in connection with the upcoming initialing and signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. "We hope that the association agreement will be initialed soon, and then it will be important whether the EP is ready to support the signing of this document and its ratification – much depends on the EP. Therefore, they are unlikely to forget Ukraine, and they might not remember only Tymoshenko, but also other important issues," Kirsch said. Schultz was elected president of the European Parliament on January 17, 2012 by a majority of parliament. The post of EP president was earlier held by Jerzy Buzek, a representative of the European People's Party

Ukraine clawing up ag ladder

2012-01-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

THE State Statistics Service of Ukraine reports that the volume of agricultural production in the country enjoyed an estimated growth of 17.5 percent of the period of 2011. The highest growth was documented in the north eastern Ukraine (Kharkiv, Poltava, and Symy regions).
Interestingly, both agricultural firms and households experienced production growth – 23.8 and 12.3 percent, respectively. In 2011 each region of Ukraine boosted agricultural production while in 2010 overall agricultural production in the country dropped by 1.5 percent.

On December 31, 2011, the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Mykola Prysyazhnyuk stated that over the year Ukraine increased its agricultural products export potential by 35 percent.

“This year showed growth of export figures for agricultural products shipped to the EU,” noted the Minister in his interview with Channel 5. He explained this development by the improved quality of the produced goods.

Ukraine has been gaining a stronger position on world’s agricultural market over the recent years. In 2011 Ukraine cropped the record amount of grain in twenty years (since declaring independence).

The unprecedented harvest – over 55 million tons of grain – as well as the removal of the export taxes and quotas contributed to export boost in 2011. This resulted in Ukraine becoming one of the world’s top three grain exporters. The country is also ranks number one in barley exports globally. Moreover, this year Ukraine became the third corn supplier in the world, surpassing Brazil and being the second runner-up to the USA and Argentina.

Given Ukraine’s rich grain production in 2011, in August that year the country initiated the creation of the world’s grain reserve under the auspices of the United Nations. Ukraine aimed to form a grain reserve of 10 to 12 million tons, preserve it and make grain interventions on the market. This would allow for more efficient price regulation on the world grain market.

Traditionally, Ukraine claims its position as one of the leading agricultural countries in the world. The country possesses 30 percent of world’s black soil – the most favorable soil for agriculture. This allows for a certain commercial advantage. Accordingly, agricultural exports brought ten billion dollars to the Ukrainian budget in 2011.

Irish bank foiled in attempt to recoup Ukraina mall for debt

2012-01-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

Kyiv’s lucrative Ukraina shopping mall is on the verge of forever falling out of the reach of foreign shareholders following a court ruling on Dec. 23 that could render it bankrupt.

An Irish bank’s attempt to collect on debts by taking control of Kyiv’s landmark Ukraina shopping mall is being frustrated at every turn by a mysterious company whose representatives evidently wield strong influence in Ukraine.

On Dec. 23, a Kyiv court granted a $45.2 million claim filed by a British Virign Islands-registered firm against the property, putting the shopping mall on the verge of bankruptcy.

The ruling was just the latest move in a grueling battle over control of the 45,000 square-meter property.

One player is the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, a state-owned Irish financial institution which had lent money with the mall used as collateral. Some say that another group involved is Irish citizen Sean Quinn and his family, the former beneficiary owners of the estimated $50 million shopping center, who seem to be attempting to halt the transfer of properties to the lender.

Their legal duel is being fought in Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt judicial system, among other places.

Quinn and his family had borrowed heavily from IBRC – formerly known as Anglo Irish Bank – to amass a global business empire that included concrete factories, hotels, wind farms and the Ukraina department store, as well as other international properties.

Just under four years ago, Forbes magazine ranked Quinn as Ireland’s richest man with a fortune estimated at $6 billion. But his riches dissipated in the wake of the 2009 global economic recession.

And when Quinn’s conglomerate collapsed, his banker, IBRC, began collecting what remained of his assets.

Yet IBRC’s global fishing expedition has largely come up short in trying to recover Quinn’s $675 million worth of far-flung properties in India, Russia, Cyprus and Ukraine.

Quinn’s bankers suspect he and his family are still in control of these assets and are keeping them beyond their reach, including the Ukraina shopping mall.

Altogether, IBRC is trying to recoup $4 billion in alleged losses from Quinn Group, now in bankruptcy receivership, the holding company once controlled by Quinn and his family.

On Jan. 10 a Northern Ireland court denied Quinn's recent bankruptcy application.

Thus far, it appears IBRC has the weaker position, at least in its attempt to seize and access the estimated $10 million annual rent roll of the Kyiv property.

Just days before the New Year, Kyiv Commercial Court Judge Maria Litvinova granted a $42.5 million claim against Ukraina by a mysterious company named Lyndhurst Development Trading, which is based in the British Virgin Islands,

The amount is remarkably close to the estimated market value of Ukraina, which was built in 1963 and refurbished in 2003.

The shopping mall has more than 50 shops and an entertainment complex that includes bowling, a nightclub, cafes and movie theaters.

IBRC called the ruling “legalized robbery” and an unprecedented “cynical deprivation of property.”

A spokeswoman for Quinn Group denied any involvement in the dispute, which was even raised during talks between President Viktor Yanukovych and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny when the two met in Warsaw on Sept. 29.

However, The Irish Times reported that Quinn’s 30-year old daughter, Aoife, has said in an affidavit that the family is seeking to protect its international properties from being seized by IBRC and that the family disputes the bank’s right to the properties.

Since April, Ukraina’s former Quinn-backed management launched at least seven court cases in Kyiv courts, all of which have successfully thwarted IBRC from seizing the shopping mall. The mortgage loan’s validity is in dispute.

The 92.75 percent shares in Ukraina that belong to a Quinn Group subsidiary in Sweden have been frozen, and successive court injunctions have delayed the installment of a new company director, amid additional litigation.

To add a bizarre twist to an already complicated court fight in Ukraine, the shopping mall was represented in the Dec. 23 hearing by Larysa Yanez Puga, the director who had been ousted earlier by a newly appointed supervisory board.

The newly appointed director, Rostyslav Levinzon, was barred from participating in the legal proceeding.

In addition, the ousted supervisory board members -- on which Sean Sr. and Peter Quinn sat – miraculously reinstated Puga as director on Dec. 19 with the government registrar. Peter Quinn’s signature, as head of the former supervisory board appears in the registration file, a lawyer with Magisters, which is representing the Irish bank, told the Kyiv Post.

IBRC now expects the Quinn-backed manager of the Ukraina shopping mile to file a bankruptcy application that would deny the state-owned financial institution money owed to it.

The Irish bank’s efforts to claim and manage other foreign properties that formerly belonged to the Quinn family have also been met with stiff resistance.

The scope of the effort involves a portfolio that stretches over 70 companies in 14 countries. IBRC has so far failed to gain control of a $5 million site for a hotel in India, according to a recent news report. A court injunction there blocked the bank and the company behind the move is based in the United Arab Emirates, where registered corporate directors are kept confidential.

In another strikingly similar scenario, the $180 million Kutuzoff Tower in Moscow has also been kept out of the hands of IBRC. It has an estimated rent roll of $19 million. Courts in Moscow recently recognized a debt claim worth $100 million against Finansstroy, the company that operates Kutuzoff. The company behind the debt claim is registered in Belize.

The Irish Times recently uncovered an apparent link between the Belize and British Virgin Islands companies with Quinn’s nephew and son-in-law.
“We have no idea who the brain is,” Robert Dix, director of Quinn Holdings, Sweden told the New York Times.

His company is the nearly 93 percent shareholder in Ukraina. It was established by Quinn in order to minimize taxes and enable his five adult children to control his global portfolio. “But it has to be somebody very clever because it’s very consistent,” Dix told the newspaper.

After the court hearing in Ukraine on Dec. 23, IBRC swiftly moved to counter-attack. The High Court in Belfast has barred the debt claim against the Ukraina shopping mall and Kutuzoff Tower in Moscow. IBRC also secured mirror orders from the courts in the British Virgin Islands and Belize, a person with knowledge of the case said.

The Irish bank has also launched a public campaign and has called on Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to look into the situation.

According to The Irish Times, the court injunctions prohibit the Belize and British Virgin Island offshore companies from spending any money remitted to them as a result of the loan agreements.

IBRC has also threatened to disclose evidence of fraud as part of its efforts to seize the Kyiv and Moscow properties. The bank has already secured a court order in Belize to uncover the beneficiary owners of the company there and is seeking a similar order in the British Virgin Islands

Russian billionaire battle reaches London court climax

2012-01-17T11:07:00.000-08:00

LONDON, Jan 17 (Reuters) - A gargantuan lawsuit between two of post-Soviet Russia's richest and most powerful men reached its climax in a London courtroom on Tuesday, with lawyers for tycoon Boris Berezovsky making their case that he was extorted into turning the crown jewel of his business empire over to billionaire rival Roman Abramovich.

The $6 billion case has thrown a spotlight on the shady business dealings of post-Soviet Russia, when opaque privatisation deals turned a handful of insiders into the owners of multi-billion dollar natural resources firms.

It has also captivated the legal industry in Britain, whose globally respected, tradition-bound courts - where lawyers still wear powdered wigs - have become the venue of choice for rich Russians to sue each other, generating massive fees.

Berezovsky, 65, accuses Abramovich - known in Britain as the owner of Chelsea soccer club - of intimidating him into selling his stake in oil firm Sibneft at a knockdown price. Abramovich, 45, denies Berezovsky ever had an interest in Sibneft.

Speaking in a courtroom packed with bodyguards and ranks of lawyers and aides on Tuesday, Berezovsky's lawyer devoted a large part of his closing statement to examining what he said was untruthful evidence by Abramovich and his witnesses.

"The dishonesty of Mr Abramovich and his key witnesses, their cynical manipulation of evidence and indeed of the trial process, is...perhaps the most important of the general points which my Lady will wish to have in mind when weighing up the evidence and making findings of fact in this case," Laurence Rabinowitz told judge Elizabeth Gloster.

A Kremlin insider in the 1990s under former President Boris Yeltsin, Berezovsky left Russia after falling out with Yeltsin's hand-picked successor Vladimir Putin. He says he gave up his Sibneft stake because he feared that if he refused, Abramovich would ensure Putin had the shares expropriated.

Abramovich says he paid Berezovsky $2 billion for his political patronage and protection from criminal gangs, but not as dividends from Sibneft because Berezovsky was never an owner.

Abramovich has since sold Sibneft to the Russian state natural gas monopoly Gazprom.

The trial has been tabloid fodder in Britain ever since a tussle between the two tycoons and their retinues of bodyguards in a Hermes luxury boutique in London, when Berezovsky spotted Abramovich and served him with a writ.

During Tuesday's hearing, Berezovsky appeared relaxed, often laughing and conferring with his younger girlfriend. Abramovich, sitting at the opposite end of the courtroom, listened intently to the Russian translation of the proceedings in headphones.

The trial, which started in early October, is being followed closely by Russia watchers from London and Moscow for new clues into Russian business and politics under Putin, now prime minister but expected to become president again this year.

Abramovich and Berezovsky were close allies when making their fortunes in Russia in the 1990s under Yeltsin.

Since then, Berezovsky has become a sworn enemy of Putin, fending off requests to extradite him from London on Russian criminal charges by arguing that he could not get a fair trial in Russia. Abramovich became a Putin ally and prospered.

Ukrainians Seek Better Terms From Russia

2012-01-17T11:05:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine appears to have few good cards to play to secure a significant reduction in the price of its Russian gas imports as it readies for a resumption of crucial talks with Russia, Reuters reported on Monday, citing experts.

The ex-Soviet republic, which depends hugely on Russian gas supplies to power its heavy industries and heat homes, has sought for more than a year to renegotiate a 2009 deal with Moscow, which it says sets an exorbitant price for the fuel.

Talks have failed to produce any results.

Ukrainian officials are now more optimistic that a new round of negotiations, which open in Moscow on Tuesday, will be more successful.

But, with Russia under little pressure to review a lucrative 10-year contract, the big question is: what will the Kiev government concede in exchange for a reduction in price from the present $416 per 1,000 cubic meters to a hoped-for $250?

Moscow has long said a discount is possible only if Russian gas giant Gazprom gets a stake in the network.

But, with issues of national sovereignty at stake which the opposition could easily exploit, the Ukrainian leadership is saying the network is not for sale.

"The issue of (a pipeline network) sale has never been on the agenda. We dismissed it immediately," Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko told reporters on Jan. 13.

"If we find a model that satisfies both sides, we will make a deal. Otherwise we will work under the existing contract."

The Kiev government is also under pressure from the European Union with which it concluded talks late last year on an association agreement.

EU diplomats say EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger reminded Boyko last Friday by telephone that any final agreement with Russia had to be compatible with Ukraine's membership of the Energy Community Treaty and its other commitments on energy security.

These rule out sale of the network to Russia.

Kiev-based experts expect the Ukrainians to revive their offer of Russian participation in a consortium, also involving some European firms, to modernise the pipeline network.

But the Russian reaction has so far been lukewarm to the idea and EU diplomats say they are not aware of any European firm being approached by the Ukrainians to take part.

Some experts say that Russia's development of other export routes such as the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany means the Ukrainian transit system is rapidly losing its value as negotiating currency - an added pressure on Ukraine.

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller, a key player in the new round of talks, sought to drive this point home on Monday, remarking laconically to reporters:

"If, as we hear from Ukraine, the gas pipeline system is a historical treasure, then its place should be in a museum."

"The two sides seem doomed to reach an agreement at some stage. But the main question now is what concessions are the Ukrainians prepared to make. It is not clear what they have to play," said one EU diplomat.

Others doubt there will be any serious attempt by Moscow to solve the gas issue until after the Russian presidential election in March.

"There will be a consortium but not now - after March, after the Russian elections," Valentin Zemlyansky, an independent Ukrainian expert, said.

Experts expect much of the early discussion to turn on a demand by Ukraine to cut the volume of natural gas it is contracted to import this year.

Ukrainian authorities say they will insist on cutting imports to 27 billion cubic meters (bcm) this year from an estimated 40 bcm last year.

But Gazprom insists this level is too low according to the present contract.

Ukrainian Ex-Minister Wants Witnesses Forced To Testify

2012-01-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko has requested that witnesses in his trial be forced to attend and testify.

Lutsenko, one of the leaders of the Our Ukraine-People's Self Defense (NUNS) parliament faction, was arrested in December 2010 and went on trial on May 23 for abuse of office and misappropriation of funds while he was interior minister.

At the trial on January 16, Lutsenko stated that he had looked through the list of the witnesses in his case prepared by the Prosecutor-General's Office and discovered that 10 of them have never been summoned to court and some 45 individuals who were officially summoned to his trial never appeared.

"More than 20 of those 45 potential witnesses have been summoned to court three or even five times," Lutsenko said.

"I do not understand why the court does not force those people to come and testify in the hearings."

According to one charge against Lutsenko, he illegally helped his former personal driver, Leonid Pristuplyuk, to obtain an apartment in Kiev.

In court on January 16, Lutsenko asked why no one from the commission that made the decision to allocate the apartment to Pristuplyuk was invited to testify.

Lutsenko, 47, also said he fears that his case may be forced to a quick conclusion.

He said he is innocent of all charges and his case is politically motivated.

In October, members of the European Parliament officially expressed concern about the continued detention of Lutsenko and the jailing of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, one of the premiers whose cabinet he served in.

Lutsenko was interior minister in 2005-06 and from 2007 to 2010.

He became publicly known as one of the leaders of the 2005 Orange Revolution.

Ukraine Enters Final Russian Gas Push In Bid To Duck IMF Demands

2012-01-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

KIEV Ukraine -- Ukraine is entering a final push in talks with Russia over cheaper natural-gas imports as it seeks to shore up state coffers without making the increases in household fuel costs needed to revive a $15.6 billion bailout

Ukraine must agree on a lower gas price with Russia within a month or bow to International Monetary Fund demands for a 30 percent jump in household tariffs for the fuel, Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tigipko said Jan. 11 amid signs tensions were rising in discussions between the two nations.

Energy and Coal Minister Yuriy Boyko meets officials in Moscow today for talks.

Ukraine’s government, which faces $8.2 billion in debt payments this year, wants to bolster public finances after the current-account deficit widened and reserves dwindled.

While raising household gas tariffs would reduce losses at state energy company NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy, higher heating costs may prove unpopular as President Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling party braces for elections in October.

“To get through the year, the government must agree on a lower gas price, sell assets or do a deal with the IMF,” Barbara Nestor, emerging-market strategist at Commerzbank AG in London, said Jan. 13.

“We expect market pressure to increase on Ukraine.”

Credit-default swaps to insure the country’s debt against non-payment for five years have jumped 63.27 basis points this year to 918.500 points on Jan. 13, the world’s biggest increase, according to data provider CMA.

Ukraine was granted its second IMF bailout in two years in July 2010.

Having disbursed $3.4 billion, the program was frozen last March after the government refused to raise household gas tariffs to trim a budget deficit the Washington-based lender estimates reached 3.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2011.

Instead, Ukraine wants to reduce the price it pays Russia for gas by a third to $250 per 1,000 cubic meters, President Viktor Yanukovych said Dec. 21.

Under the current contract, the price will rise to $416 per 1,000 cubic meters this quarter from $400 in the previous three months, Boyko said Jan. 13.

OAO Gazprom has sought to acquire Ukraine’s pipelines, which carry Russian gas to the European Union, in exchange for cheaper energy supplies, according to Boyko.

Belarus reduced its payments to Russia under a similar deal in November.

“Ukraine won’t consider selling its pipelines,” Boyko said.

“If we find a model that satisfies both sides, we’ll make a deal. Otherwise, we’ll work under the current contract.”

Ukraine’s economy grew about 5 percent in 2011, the fastest pace since 2007, helped by a good harvest and exports, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said Jan. 11.

Growth may slow to 3.9 percent this year, the government forecasts.

The current-account deficit widened to $8.75 billion in the first 11 months of last year compared with $2.13 billion in the same period of 2011 because of increased gas imports and strong demand for foreign equipment, the central bank said Jan. 4.

Gold and foreign-exchange reserves shrank to $30.4 billion at the end of 2011 from $38.2 billion in August as the central bank supported the hryvnia.

The currency slid to 8.0435 per dollar yesterday, its lowest level in almost two years.

Without an IMF deal, “the government will have to continue depleting its limited foreign-currency reserves to meet its external debt obligations,” Liza Ermolenko, an emerging-markets economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said Jan. 13 by e-mail.

“With over $50 billion in short-term external debt to be repaid this year by both the government and private sector and a hefty gas bill, this is hardly a sustainable strategy.”

Ukraine relies on Russia for more than 70 percent of its gas needs.

Should talks fail, it plans to cut 2012 imports to 27 billion cubic meters from 40 billion last year, Boyko said.

That would violate a contract signed after Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine for almost three weeks in January 2009, disrupting deliveries to the EU amid freezing temperatures, Gazprom said Jan. 12.

Yanukovych says that deal is detrimental to its financial health.

A court in Kiev in October sentenced former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who signed the contract with her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, to seven years in prison for abuse of office.
Ukraine may also be able to increase domestic gas and coal production and shift utilities to coal, saving 6 billion cubic meters of gas a year, according to Boyko.

The government has sufficient resources to sustain itself until the parliamentary elections without turning to the IMF or raising gas prices, according to Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States at investment bank Renaissance Capital in Moscow.

“Irrespective of how the negotiations with Russia evolve, the Party of Regions is not yet in a sufficiently dire position to surrender to the IMF’s requirements,” he wrote yesterday in an e-mailed note.

“The government macroeconomic and budget framework is already based on the new high import gas price.”

Support for Yanukovych’s Party of Regions fell to 13.9 percent support in December from 16.6 percent three months earlier and 39.1 percent in April 2010, the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies in Kiev said Dec. 27.

Backing for Tymoshenko’s party rose to 15.8 percent from 13.8 percent. The survey of 2,008 voting-age Ukrainians was conducted Dec. 9-16 and had a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points.

Yanukovych last week ruled out higher household gas prices.

While steps must be taken to address Ukraine’s financial position, selling the pipeline infrastructure may be preferable for the president as voters focus on their own fortunes.

“Economic growth won’t catch up with the gas-price increase,” Alexander Pecherytsyn, head of research at ING Groep NV in Kiev, said Jan. 13 by phone.

“Voters look at their pockets first of all. They don’t care about gas pipelines.”

Global Health Fund Urges Ukraine To Step Up Fight Aagainst HIV/AIDS Epidemic

2012-01-17T10:57:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The head of a global health fund on Monday urged Ukraine to step up its efforts to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Europe’s largest.

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, called on the Ukrainian authorities to expand opiate substitution therapy, ensure HIV/AIDS treatment in prison and increase government funding of anti-AIDS programs.

“This is the region of the world — the only region of the world — where the AIDS epidemic is still growing,” Kazatchkine told reporters in Kiev, adding that other countries have managed to stabilize their epidemics.

The Global Fund is set disburse $86 million for HIV prevention and treatment in Ukraine in 2012-2013, part of a massive $305 million five-year grant.

The fate of the grant came under threat last year due to the government’s failure to ensure an uninterrupted supply of anti-AIDS drugs, but Tetyana Aleksandrina, a government official charged with AIDS prevention vowed that such delays will not happen again.

The United Nations says Ukraine has Europe’s worst AIDS epidemic with 1.3 percent of the population above 15 infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

U.S. Heritage Foundation Urges EU To Commit To Ukraine

2012-01-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON, DC -- Influential American conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation issued a report on U.S. - EU cooperation featuring a chapter on the Eastern partnership focusing mainly on Ukraine.
"Urgently, the EU should re-engage Ukraine by committing itself to ratifying the EU-Ukrainian Association Agreement, which will pave the way for a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement," stated in her report Sally McNamara, Senior Policy Analyst in European Affairs at The Heritage Foundation.

The paper by The Heritage Foundation, the famous publisher of the annual Index of Economic Freedom, provides an in-depth analysis of the current Ukrainian foreign policy.

It notes that Ukrainian government did not want the country "to fall into the Russian sphere of influence".

The author reckons that USD $8 billion discount for Russian gas in exchange for Ukraine's joining the Customs Union "may be attractive to [the President of Ukraine] Yanukovych in the short term, [but] accepting it would represent a long-term disaster for Ukraine - and for the West."

The report discusses EU's Eastern Partnership.

The initiative offers both bilateral and multilateral measures for enhanced cooperation based on the progress made in the European Neighbourhood Policy, according to the official outline of the initiative.

The Heritage Foundation report claims that Russia viewed the Eastern Partnership as a challenge in its sphere of influence from the start, and objected Ukraine's westward tilt.

Emphasizing the importance of the West-oriented Ukraine, Sally McNamara concludes: "It behooves the EU, with U.S. support, to avoid Kiev closing the door on its European aspirations entirely."

As of now, negotiations over the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine are over.

The initialing of the document has been going on for the last several weeks - following the 15th EU-Ukraine summit on December 19, 2011.

At the summit the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych emphasized that the agreed document would become key for European integration of Ukraine.

In 2009 Foreign Policy Research Institute ranked The Heritage Foundation fifth most influential think tank in the country.

The personnel of the organization served, or went on to serve in senior U.S. government positions.

The Heritage Foundation co-hosted a U.S. presidential debate on November 22, 2011.

Ukraine To Cut Russian Gas Imports By 50 Per Cent This Year

2012-01-14T09:25:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine will unilaterally reduce its imports of Russian natural gas by half during 2012, a senior government official said on Wednesday.

The former Soviet republic will consume some 27 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas over the year, said Yury Boiko, Ukraine‘s Minister of Energy, at a Kiev press conference.

"We will be cutting our purchase of gas (from Russia) by half," he said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Responding to a question on how Ukraine could buy substantially less gas from Russia than contracted, Boiko said: "We will buy as much gas as our economy needs. If our (Russian) partners will have questions, they should resolve them in a civilised manner."

"There are issues that we have already agreed on (with Russia), and there are issues that are still not resolved," he said.

Ukraine imports approximately 60 per cent of its natural gas needs from Russia, making the country a major market for the Russian energy corporation Gazprom.

Gazprom chairman Aleksei Miller in a televised meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his company considered the Ukrainian announcement and the potential reduced income worrying.

"Gazprom is concerned," Miller said. "The contracted volume is 52 bcm."

Miller in August appeared to signal Moscow‘s willingness to accept a limited reduction of gas Ukraine must buy from Russia, saying at the time he expected Kiev to purchase 33 bcm of natural gas in 2012, even if it is exceeds Ukrainian needs.

President Medvedev in the Wednesday meeting with Miller said Moscow would try to resolve the dispute with Ukraine by negotiations.

"We will behave in a civilised manner," Medvedev said. "And how else could the Russian side ever act?"

Kiev officials in recent months have repeatedly called for Gazprom to reduce the contracted price and volumes of gas sold Ukraine, citing the worldwide economic slowdown and falling domestic demand for gas.

Russian officials have said the price Ukraine pays for gas is fair, but that Moscow would be willing to renegotiate Ukraine‘s import contract if the Ukrainians agreed to sell portions of their natural gas transportation network to Russia.

Some two-thirds of all Russian gas sold in Europe travels to market via pipelines crossing Ukraine.

Kiev has long opposed the pipelines‘ sale to Gazprom, on grounds of national security.

Disputes between Ukraine and Russia over natural gas pricing and shipment terms have halted most Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe twice, in 2006 and 2009.

Both sides blamed each other for the stand-off.

Ukraine consumed some 54 billion bcm of gas from all sources in 2011, according to news reports.

Daughter Claims Ukraine’s Former PM Is Being Mistreated In Prison

2012-01-14T09:24:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The daughter of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has complained about the medical treatment her mother is receiving in prison.
Tymoshenko is serving a 7-year sentence on charges of abuse of office in a case the West has condemned as politically motivated.

Tymoshenko has been bedridden for weeks at a prison in eastern Ukraine, complaining of severe back pain and accusing authorities of denying her proper medical care.

Yevhenia Tymoshenko said on the inmate’s website Thursday that she fears for her mother’s life, saying medicine she has been given could be harmful.

Tymoshenko says her mother was unconscious for two hours last week after taking an unknown medicine for a cold.

Prison authorities said she merely felt dizzy after taking a shower.

Russia Rejects Ukraine Plan To Cut Gas Import Volume

2012-01-14T09:23:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW, Russia -- Russian company Gazprom on Thursday rejected Ukraine's demand to cut the volume of natural gas it has contracted to import this year, arousing concern about a potential conflict that could disrupt flows of Russian gas to Europe.

"The time for discussion on contract volumes in the new year has passed. And, unfortunately, we must remind our Ukrainian friends again that the terms of gas delivery are determined only by contract, and cannot be changed unilaterally by this or that letter," Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said in emailed comments.

Ukrainian state energy firm Naftogaz issued its own statement insisting it had the right to cut imports.

A debate between Moscow and Kiev over their gas trade relationship has grown increasingly shrill in recent weeks as a deal to cut the financial burden of Russian imports on Kiev has eluded them, driving renewed speculation about a possible gas war.

In the past, disputes between Moscow and Ukraine, across which pipelines take gas exports to Europe, have led to temporary cuts in supplies to the European Union, which is now seeking alternatives to reduce its dependence on Russian gas.

Then, the debate centred largely on price.

Now, Gazprom's Kupriyanov said, it is about volume.

"It seems our Ukrainian partners will not negotiate on the price level for gas in 2012. Apparently it suits them. They will try to agree on volumes for 2013 in the established contractual order," Kupriyanov said.

Ukraine has asked Gazprom to reduce the volumes of gas it sells to the former Soviet republic, whose gas bill last month amounted to $1 billion, an amount the fragile economy can ill afford.

Ukrainian authorities say they will insist on cutting Russian gas imports to 27 billion cubic metres (bcm) this year from an estimated 40 bcm last year.

But Gazprom, Russia's pipeline gas export monopoly, insists this level is too low.

"According to the contract, a change in annual volumes cannot exceed 20 percent. In 2012, as everyone knows, the contractual supply volume stands at 52 bcm and cannot be cut to 27 bcm even in theory," Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said.

POTENTIALLY PROBLEMATIC

Naftogaz, in turn, said in a statement it had asked Gazprom last May to reduce 2012 supplies to 33.75 bcm and could further reduce the volume by 20 percent, yielding the 27 bcm figure.

"Naftogaz states that it has warned Gazprom about cutting gas purchases in 2012 in a timely manner, that is six months before the start of the year, and fully in accordance with the terms of the contract," it said.

Petr Grishin, an analyst at Russian brokerage VTB Capital said in a note the dispute over volumes was "potentially problematic".

"...We saw the first signs that gas relations between Russia and Ukraine might again deteriorate beyond ordinary bargaining and inconsequential muscle flexing to something more material: disagreements over how much Ukraine owes Russia for current deliveries," Grishin said.

Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in months of negotiations on gas prices, which stand at $416 per thousand cubic metres in the first quarter of 2012, according to a Ukrainian government source.

Ukraine considers a fairer price to be $250.

The ownership of Ukraine's pipeline system, through which Russia used to ship 80 percent of its gas exports to Europe before the launch of the Nord Stream pipeline across the Baltic last November, is also a subject of talks.

EU Food-Quality Control Model To Be Adopted In Ukraine

2012-01-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Due to the increasing number of food-poisoning cases, the Ukrainian government has decided to create a model for food quality control according to the standards of the European Union.
Ukraine State Veterinary and Biosecurity Service Head Ivan Bisiuk said: "On the model of the EU states, the veterinary service of Ukraine will be able to fully control food quality and safety from fertilising, feeding animals, monitoring pesticide residues and veterinary drugs in animal products to processing animal and vegetable goods, supplies to consumers, controlling logistics chains and sales on the whole territory of the country."

He noted that the reform of the food industry foresees "the creation of a single authorized body on the basis of the State Veterinary and Biosecurity Service".

He concluded: "However, this does not mean that from now on only veterinarians should control herbal products or dietary and baby food. Specialists from other structures will be transferred to the state service with this purpose."

Also Ukraine has demanded an apology from Russia’s chief sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko for his comments on its new food-quality control system.

Using the experience of “a European micro-state and Caucasian quasi-midget country” is “incorrect and humiliating,” Onishchenko said after Ukraine decided to delegate food-quality monitoring functions to veterinarians, Interfax reported.

Kiev officials have been left guessing what the sanitary chief, often blamed for banning Georgian wine sales in Russia, thought was wrong with European quality standards, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Konstantin Grishchenko tweeted.

Ukrainian Activists Barred From Greeting Jailed Tymoshenko On Orthodox New Year

2012-01-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

KHARKIV, Ukraine -- Some 15 women activists were barred from wishing jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko a happy New Year at the labor camp in eastern Ukraine where she is being held.
The activists brought leaflets and flowers to the Kachaniv labor camp, outside of Kharkiv.

But labor camp officials refused to take any gifts for Tymoshenko because, they said, more investigations of the ex-premier are pending and the investigators' approval is needed before the flowers, poems, and other gifts can be given to her.

January 13 was New Year's Eve according to the old Julian calendar used in Ukraine, Russia, and other Orthodox Christian subjects of the Russian empire until 1918.

The activists say their visit to the labor camp is not a protest but simply a visit to congratulate Tymoshenko on the holiday.

They added that they will pass their gifts to Tymoshenko via parliament deputies who have a right to visit Tymoshenko at the labor camp.

Tymoshenko, 51, was taken without notice from her jail in Kiev to the Kachaniv labor camp two weeks ago.

Tymoshenko was jailed in October for seven years for exceeding her authority in brokering a 2009 gas deal with Russia.

She served as prime minister in 2005 and from 2007 to 2010.

Tymoshenko unsuccessfully ran for president against incumbent Viktor Yanukovych in 2010.

She and her supporters say the case against her is politically motivated.

Tymoshenko's husband, Oleksandr Tymoshenko, was granted political asylum in the Czech Republic last week.
He added that the Ukrainian authorities want to "physically destroy" his wife.

Will 2012 Bring Popular Revolt To Ukraine?

2012-01-14T09:19:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON, DC -- Surveys and polls show there is widespread popular anger, frustration and contempt for the Viktor Yanukovych administration that has managed to anger many different groups in every Ukrainian region.
Imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko (16.3 percent) is more popular than Yanukovych (13.3 percent) whose popularity is waning even in his home region of Donetsk.

Declining standards of living, anger at the November 2010 Tax Code, democratic regression, and growing corruption have contributed to the rapid decline in popularity.

In addition, the mistreatment of Tymoshenko is “harming the authorities’ ratings”.

Added to these problems are perceived attacks on Ukraine’s national identity that fuels a nationalist aspect to protests.

These include Yanukovych annulling the annual Day of Freedom holiday to commemorate the Orange Revolution, the April 2010 “Kharkiv Accords” extending Russia’s Sevastopol naval base for 30 years, Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk’s policies, attempts to make Russian a state language, and pending transfer of gas pipelines to a Russian-dominated consortium.

The Times predicted that 2012 “will be the year of Slavic revolt against authoritarian regimes in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine,” adding “Ukraine will repeat its 2004 Orange Revolution after anger at austerity measures boils over when President Yanukovych’s Party of Regions is accused of stealing parliamentary elections.

The opposition leader Yuliya Tymoshenko will be freed from prison after Mr. Yanukovych is forced to resign, but will fail to win the presidential election”.

The former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, Stepan Havrysh, pointed out “we stand between surrender of key assets and the technical default of the state”.

External borrowing will be difficult and very expensive this year due to poor relations with the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Moody’s predicts Ukraine’s rating in 2012 will experience a significant downgrade.

The paranoia of the authorities at the possibility of mass protests is growing in response to the above factors.

Yanukovych billboards are guarded by the police to stop a growing number of cases of paint thrown at them.

The authorities have responded in five ways that re-introduce Soviet KGB tactics and Soviet political culture by linking dissidents to Western conspiracies and violent nationalists:

1. By making it more difficult to protest using heavy handed police tactics.

State governors and the Tax Administration have sent forms to NGOs to collect extensive data about organizations, leaders and members.

These two structures will “intensify the monitoring of planned protests filed with local authorities.”

There is no doubt among NGO leaders that this data will end up with the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU).

The main objective is to collect intelligence on which NGOs will monitor the elections and the foreign assistance they will receive.

2. Through draft laws prepared by the Party of Regions, which emulate Russian legislation that bans external support to political parties and NGOs.

In 2003-2004, the Party of Regions and Communist Party (KPU) tried, but failed, to adopt similar legislation.

3. Targeted arrests and imprisonment of nationalists linking them to “terrorism.”

Nine members of the Tryzub (Trident) nationalist group were sentenced in December 2010, accused of blowing up the monument to Josef Stalin erected in Zaporozhzhia in May of that year.

Three members of Patriot Ukrainy are on trial for allegedly planning to detonate a bomb on Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24, 2010.

4. Official paranoia that Euro-2012 could provide an opportunity for the opposition to receive international attention from anti-regime protests is leading to draft legislation against soccer fans.

Party of Regions faction deputy leader, Vadym Kolesnichenko, has registered a draft law banning shouting at soccer games “xenophobic, racist, anti-semitic” slogans and “hurling placards, banners, flags, including those of a political nature, that harm the dignity of official people.”

This is an obvious reference to a song attacking Yanukovych sung at soccer games since August 2011, and whistling and booing when he has opened stadiums.

The video of the song was watched by more than one million people.

Halyna Coynash, from the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, finds the draft legislation disturbing as it would outlaw “posters, banners and flags of a political nature.”

Coynash argues that “it is difficult to imagine any European Union country imposing a hefty fine or jailing somebody for up to 15 days for holding up a banner accusing the president of political repression and demanding the release of members of the opposition”.

5. The SBU’s powers for investigation into riots have been expanded and a new SBU subdivision for counter-intelligence protection of the state’s interests in information security has been formed.

The subdivision’s responsibilities are so vague they could be used arbitrarily.

This is obvious from the following explanation of “information security:”

“protection from negative psychological-information effects,” “preservation and increase of spiritual, cultural and moral values of the Ukrainian peoples,” “safeguarding of socio-political stability” and threats to “a positive image of Ukraine”.

Critical views of the Tymoshenko case could for example come under the threat of “circulating in the world information realm of distorted, untruthful and biased information that damages Ukraine’s national interests,” because of “external adverse information impact on the public consciousness via the media and also the Internet”.

Ukrainian experts predict there will be protests this year, particularly in response to election fraud.

Vadym Karasiov suggests: “revolution is inevitable. The question is only how will it take place”.

Growing numbers of protests were predicted by experts who attended a Kiev meeting of the Political Club.

Ukraine has never been united in protest actions.

Eastern Ukraine provided few dissidents and did not participate in the democratic movement in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union.

Eastern Ukraine was indifferent to the 2000-2003 anti-Kuchma protests and opposed the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Western-central Ukraine participated in every democratic movement from the late 1950s.

Nevertheless, five wasted years of Yushchenko’s presidency have made them disillusioned and apathetic.

Any mass protests and revolution in Ukraine would depend on when the anger and frustrations of western-central Ukrainians at current developments supersedes their disillusionment with the Orange past.

This could take place during this year’s elections or anytime in the next three years before the 2015 presidential elections.

Ukrainian experts doubt that Yanukovych will be able to stay in power until the 2015 elections, but would an “Orange Revolution-2” be peaceful as he has more to lose if he is out of office than Leonid Kuchma had in 2004?

Ukraine Hotel Deficit Worries UEFA Ahead Of Euro 2012

2012-01-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

INNSBRUCK, Austria -- UEFA remains concerned over the lack of accommodation for fans and media in eastern Ukraine for Euro 2012, an official said Friday.
The Russian-speaking cities of Donetsk and Kharkiv have a deficit of thousands of hotel rooms required by European football's governing body of host cities, said Thomas Giordano, a UEFA spokesman.

"Accommodation in Donetsk and Kharkiv is not up to what we need. There are still hotels being built at the moment, and we are still working hard on finding additional accommodation in neighboring cities," he said at a sports media conference in Innsbruck, Austria.

Kharkiv is hosting three group matches, but Donetsk has five matches in total, including a quarterfinal and a semifinal.

UEFA regulations stipulate upwards of 5,500 hotel rooms for a semifinal venue.

Giordano said several contingency plans, including temporary camp sites, were being examined to deal with the influx of fans.

The continent's premier national team competition is in eight cities across Poland and Ukraine, starting in Warsaw on June 8 and ending with the final in Kiev on July 1.

Bolshoi administration steps into dancer scandal

2012-01-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

The Bolshoi’s administration has stepped into the unfolding scandal over ballet star Nikolai Tsiskaridze's sacking from Russia’s most famous theater.
Anatoly Iksanov, the Bolshoi’s director general, refuted Tsiskaridze’s claim that his dismissal from the position as a ballet instructor was nothing but revenge for his slamming of the results of the highly-publicized six-year renovation of the theater.
“No one is going to fire Nikolai Tsiskaridze, who was, and is, to remain Bolshoi Theatre’s soloist,” Iksanov told the news agency Itar-Tass. The discharge of Tsiskaridze’s pedagogical part-time contract was in order to give a full-time job to an instructor, he added. Regina Nikiforova, 76, who was a Bolshoi ballerina during her time, is to take the position
The scandal broke out when the celebrity dancer claimed the administration of the theater was trying to get rid of him after he shared several outspoken judgments about the theater with journalists.
“The thing is that Bolshoi Theatre director general Mr. Iksanov has been for a long time considered the Bolshoi Theater his own home territory,” Tsiskaridze told Interfax at the beginning of January, shortly after he received a notice about the annulment of his contract.
The famed ballet dancer said that his sacking was also to prevent any public criticism from his other colleagues, “who could possibly feel like criticizing the Bolshoi’s administration in the future.”
Tsiskaridze threatened to take a legal action against the theater If the decision was not revoked, he told Moskovsky Komsomolets. The dancer said terminating his contract was illegal according to the Russian Labor Code as he wasn’t offered to fill the full-time position.
Tsiskaridze was sacked together with Yan Godovsky, another Bolshoi ballet soloist who was a part-time instructor, and the official line is that the theater needs a full-time instructor.
“This season we have to move a whole collection of large-scale shows to the main stage, including ‘Le Corsaire,’ ‘Swan Lake,’ ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ‘Giselle’ and ‘The Pharaoh's Daughter,’” Iksanov said.
Tsiskaridze’s instructor contract is to be discharged on Jan. 17, Iksanov said, and a notification was sent to the dancer on Dec. 15.

Putin launches presidential-bid web site

2012-01-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has launched a website in support of his presidential bid. The web site, www.putin2012.ru, outlines his planned presidential program as well as his biography, experience, interests, upcoming events and people’s opinions section. There is also a virtual suggestions box.

Moscow's hotels most expensive in Europe

2012-01-14T09:12:00.000-08:00

As of November 2011, prices in Moscow’s hotels were the highest in Europe, RIA Novosti reported citing information obtained from the Hotel.info web site. Hotel.info provides booking services for over 210,000 hotels worldwide. The research was conducted in January and announced yesterday. According to the study, prices in Moscow rose 8.35 percent in autumn to reach 7,684 rubles for a room per night. Oslo came second at the equivalent of 7,145 rubles a night.

Old-Russian names making a return

2012-01-14T09:10:00.002-08:00

Old-Russian names made a comeback among Muscovites in 2011, RIA Novosti reported the head of the births, deaths and marriages office as saying on Thursday. Irina Muravyeva said that rare names that previously popped on birth certificates such as Radost, Okeana, Kit and Sammerset Oushen, fell out of fashion in 2011.
“Such names were not used in 2011,” said Muravyeva. “However, in 2011 Old Russian and Norwegian names were used more often. Lyubomira, Radamira, Milalika for girls and Budemir, Luchezar, Bronemir, Svetloyar for boys.”

Index of Economic Freedom says Russia ‘stuck’ at ‘mostly unfree’ level

2012-01-14T09:10:00.001-08:00

The Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal have released their annual Index of Economic Freedom rankings list. Russia’s score remains unchanged at 50.5, making it 144th in the world in the “Mostly Unfree” group together with Italy, Greece, Brazil, China and India.
“Its score is unchanged from last year, with a significant increase in business freedom counterbalanced by a significant deterioration in control of government spending,” read the report. “The Russian government has demonstrated little if any commitment to economic reform in recent years, and the country’s economic freedom score remains stuck at the lower end of the ‘mostly unfree’ category.”

Moscow crime down in 2011 -- mayor

2012-01-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

A downward trend in Moscow’s crime levels in 2011, continues Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin as saying at a ceremony in the Moscow prosecutor's office dedicated to the 290th anniversary of the Prosecutors Office in Russia.
“It is particularly important to continue to reduce the number of serious and grave crimes, which fell last year by 10 percent. Killings declined by 15 percent, armed assault by 13 percent, robberies by 16 percent, burglaries by more than 20 percent,” said the mayor. He added that it was most important to build on the trend.

Killer of Kostroma journalist avoids trial

2012-01-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

he man who killed a Russian journalist in 2001 will not face trial because the statute of limitations for the crime has expired, a police spokesperson said.
The journalist, 32-year-old Elina Voronova, who worked for the Rus television and radio company in the central Russian city of Kostroma, was killed near her home on the night of November 5, 2001.
Voronova was attacked on her way home from the library by a group of minors, one of whom tried to rape her. She was able to fight off that assault but was brutally beaten and ultimately thrown down a well, where her body was found the next day.
An autopsy determined that her death was the result of grievous head injuries and hypothermia.
“The suspect (in the murder) was detained in 2001 but we did not have enough evidence to charge him,” a senior police investigator in Kostroma, Ilyaz Abdurakhmanov, said.
The investigation was suspended. Years later, the case was reopened and a reconstruction of the crime obtained new evidence that compelled the suspect to confess his guilt. However, by that time the statute of limitations had expired.
The suspect's identity has not been disclosed because he was 17 at the time of the crime. However, it is known that he has six other criminal convictions and is currently serving a prison sentence.

Revolution or evolution?

2012-01-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

After a wave of massive protest rallies and promises of more to come, increasing calls for more dialogue between the government and the opposition are testing the Kremlin on its willingness to listen – and to compromise.
Even the Church weighed in over the holidays about the need to protect the country from a new revolution, like the one in 1917 that replaced established religion with Communism.
But Patriarch Kirill’s Christmas Day comments on January 7 (the day Russian Orthodox Christmas is celebrated) sounded more like a call to the Kremlin to move forward rather than a warning to oppositionists. “If the government remains insensitive to the expressions of protest, it is a very bad sign, it is a sign of the failure of the authorities to make adjustments,” the Patriarch said in televised comments.
The comments came after offers of mediation had already been made by Alexei Kudrin, the former finance minister and a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who showed up to speak at the last mass rally on Prospect Sakharova on Dec. 24. And they resonated with calls for “evolution” rather than “revolution” made Thursday in an article for the Guardian penned by presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, a billionaire who is believed to have the Kremlin’s blessing to run.
But the position of the Orthodox Church seems to be a response, in part, to calls made by Putin during his last call in show in December that citizens need better ways of communicating with state officials.
“We think that ordinary people – those who go on meetings, doctors, teachers, should also be able to talk to the authorities and the church will be able to organize this dialogue,” Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin told The Moscow News.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who is the main candidate for the upcoming presidential election, has changed his tough stance on the opposition, promising a possibility of dialogue.
But these signals appear mixed with a distrust of what the oppositionists can offer.
“There should be dialogue but in what form – I will think about it,” the Prime Minister said talking to journalists on December 28. “We have never been against the dialogue with the opposition, but we and I personally are against extremism, any manifestation of extremism would be terminated.”
“They [the opposition] should build up a single platform, in order to make it possible to understand what they want,” Putin said in response to a question on whether he is planning to communicate with oppositionists.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, explained that platforms for dialogue already exist and should be used, suggesting the Public Chamber or the 2020 Strategy. And he downplayed the effectiveness of street protests.
“A dialogue is possible with people who propose some concrete ideas – both within the State Duma or outside it, street protests resemble an army of one soldier. There should be people who have something to say,” Dmitry Peskov told The Moscow News Wednesday by telephone.
“Vladimir Putin has already been openly communicating with social activists and thinkers, but he would never talk to people who are outside the law,” Peskov added.
Indeed, even as authorities encourage dialogue, there are signals that they tolerate the mass rallies grudgingly at best. President Dmitry Medvedev, who earlier proposed a series of measures to liberalize the election process, came out recently with a law to restrict meetings and rallies near the Kremlin, purportedly to preserve the historic value of sites like Vasilyevsky Spusk, Alexandrovsky Sad and Red Square.
Some analysts believe that while some oppositionists for regime change, more moderate forces could be successfully incorporated into the current political system.
“There are types of street opposition that should have their voice in official bodies – we can now see three of them: Westerners (modern intelligentsia), Slavophiles – people who support Russian nationalism but are more [moderate] than [head of the nationalist LDPR Vladimir] Zhirinovsky, and the ecologists – Russia’s ‘green’ party,” Sergei Markov, a senior member of the ruling United Russia party, told The Moscow News.
Markov suggested that the government itself should help form such parties right after the presidential election, in order to make itself more legitimate.
Many in the opposition doubt that the state’s calls for dialogue are sincere.
“In theory the opposition is not against negotiation with the authorities but for now it can’t be done on practice,” Ilya Yashin, one of the leaders of the Solidarnost movement, told The Moscow News. “The authorities haven’t appointed any negotiators to talk to opposition and the Prime Minister Putin seems to ignore the requests of past rallies.”
Eduard Limonov, who was denied registration as a presidential candidate, was even more pessimistic. “Be realistic – there will be no negotiations, authorities consider everything is going along as it should,” he told Yashin during an earlier debate on Ekho Moskvy radio. “Negotiations are usually made under the pressure and for now there is no pressure from opposition. After the third rally any pressure on authorities will be over.”
While some opposition leaders have expressed a willingness for dialogue, others insist on more mass rallies to convey their message.
Liberal opposition leader Vladimir Ryzhkov told media this week that he and his allies would continue organizing mass public rallies with a view of greater political feedback.
The next mass rally is scheduled for February 4, while political analysts expect more protests ahead of the presidential elections and afterwards. Some 89 percent of protesters on Sakharov Avenue have said they would likely turn up again, according to a poll by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center.

Eyes on the ballot

2012-01-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a surprising confession on New Year’s Eve, promising that the present he’d like to place under the fir tree for the holidays would be a fair presidential election in March 2012.
In a gesture intended to show election transparency and boost his legitimacy, the prime minister earlier suggested installing webcams at each of the country’s 96,000 precincts.
But experts are skeptical about the effectiveness of the new initiative – and whether it will turn out to be sincere. “It’s just a nice way to divvy up the 14 billion ruble pie,” Andrei Buzin, department director at Golos, an independent election monitor, told The Moscow News. Buzin, whose organization came under fire from national television during the parliamentary elections, was referring to state funds allocated towards transparency measures at polling stations.
Webcams and transparent ballot boxes were being purchased starting Wednesday in line with pledges by Putin.
Earlier this week Buzin published an analysis in Vedomosti pointing out the main flaws of the current election system.
“I don’t think forgers will do their dirty job in front of webcams,” Buzin wrote.
“There are lots of more convenient places for that, for example, territorial election commissions, where they can just make a new protocol of a lower-level commission.” Buzin emphasized that the main flaw in the elections process is indirect fraud – a lack of competition and the use of government leverage. Most of the members of local election commissions work in government-funded sectors and often face threats of losing their job if they fail to ensure the “right” vote results.
Buzin believes that the only effective way to fight vote fraud is to have enough election observers with full access to monitor what election commission members are doing.
Opposition parties and movements are recruiting monitors, some of whom are even eager to work for free. The leader of the Demokratichesky Vybor (Democratic Choice) movement, Vladimir Milov, expects to cover 3,000 to 5,000 polling stations, while last time his organization had a staff of only 1,000 monitors.
Ilya Yashin, a leader of the Solidarnost movement, told The Moscow News that “monitors are the only effective means for us to control what’s going on at a polling station.”
“You can’t switch [a person] off like a webcam,” Yashin said.
Andrei Buzin agrees. “Unlike a webcam, a monitor can look around and knows of a great deal of fraud schemes.”
But according to Buzin, an observer’s independence is precisely what makes him so unwanted at polling stations, where many were kicked out without any legal basis in the recent elections.
Golos has launched additional training courses for future monitors to teach them to use a camera properly and post their files on the Golos’ Map of Violations portal, from where information can be accessed publicly, Golos CEO Lilia Shibanova told The Moscow News, adding that an increasing number of partners have been joining the project recently.
Buzin has been urging election authorities to ban the practice of kicking out election observers from polling stations. “An amendment on illegal eviction of observers to the Penal Code could save the budget 14 billion rubles because an observer will record everything on his camera at his own expense.”
The expert’s view has been supported by presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, who wrote in his blog that kicking out an election observer should be treated as a crime. The oligarch also welcomed the prime minister’s initiative to equip polling stations with webcams.
The chief of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, believes that vote transparency can be ensured through the use of webcams and transparent ballot boxes, which will be installed at two-thirds of polling stations.
In an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio last week, Churov highlighted that courts do not necessarily need to consider evidence recorded by observers. He also remarked that if an observer’s removal “was not documented, it can’t be considered removal.”
“If a monitor is filming secretly without notifying the election commission chief, it’s a violation,” Churov said.
Lilia Shibanova told The Moscow News that there are no provisions in the law that oblige an observer to notify an election commission chief.
“How does Mr. Churov imagine that? A monitor should ask ‘Would you mind if I film your ballot rigging?’” Shibanova said.
According to Buzin, election legislation makes it possible for certified protocols to be rewritten. “This explains why there are so many cases where the figures stated in the protocols that observers have differ from those of the Central Election Commission. Evidence and common sense notwithstanding, courts refuse to cancel the vote at precincts where this is the case.”
Buzin also stressed that no one has ever been brought to justice for refusing to give an observer a copy of a protocol or for giving a false copy, which is one of the common violations that give courts grounds to dismiss a vote fraud lawsuit. In late December two Moscow district courts ruled that protocol copies presented by observers showing that United Russia had received fewer votes than election authorities claimed were “trial copies,” dismissing the evidence.
According to Buzin, one of the most crucial stages of the vote count process are carried out in separate rooms that observers have no access to at all – and that those are precisely the places where much of the rigging can take place.
So far, the Central Election Commission has ignored Golos’ proposals to improve legislation and the voting system.

Ukraine-Born Demjanjuk Asks Judge To Reconsider Citizenship Bid

2012-01-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

TOLEDO, USA -- Convicted Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk wants a federal judge to reconsider a decision denying his bid to regain his U.S. citizenship.
U.S. District Judge Dan Aaron Polster had rejected the citizenship request just over two weeks ago, saying Demjanjuk lied about where he was during World War II.

Demjanjuk's attorney asked the judge Thursday to reconsider the request, saying he had not seen all the newly discovered documents that could help his cause.

The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was a Soviet Red Army soldier captured by the Germans in 1942.

He was convicted in May by a German court that found he had served as a guard at the Nazis' Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Demjanjuk cannot leave Germany because he has no passport after being stripped of his U.S. citizenship ahead of his deportation to Germany in 2009.

Demjanjuk, who is in his 90s, has been in poor health for years and has been in and out of a hospital since his conviction.

Federal authorities had said Demjanjuk, who has denied serving as a guard at any Nazi camp, was trying to cast himself as a victim following his conviction on more than 28,000 counts of accessory to murder.

His lawyers argue that the U.S. government failed to disclose important evidence, including a 1985 secret FBI report uncovered by The Associated Press that indicates the FBI believed a Nazi ID card purportedly showing that he served as a death camp guard was a Soviet-made fake.

Demjanjuk's public defender, Dennis Terez, said in the latest filing that the judge should give him the chance to question the government's claims and ask what caused a retired FBI agent to become suspicious of documents released by the Soviet Union.
The government has submitted an affidavit from former FBI agent Thomas Martin who said the March 4, 1985, report written by him was based on speculation about a Soviet forgery, not any investigation.

From Asylum, Tymoshenko's Husband Calls On World Leaders To Protect Wife

2012-01-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Oleksandr Tymoshenko, the husband of imprisoned former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, has called on world leaders to protect his wife from what he says are the government's efforts to "destroy" her.
In one of his first interviews since being granted asylum in the Czech Republic on January 6, Oleksandr Tymoshenko told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that the government of President Viktor Yanukovych "does not need Yulia Tymoshenko alive."

"Now they are trying to physically destroy her by not providing her with qualified medical care. Even during such a holiday as Christmas, they continue to spread lies that they gave her medical examinations," he said.

"I call on the whole world to understand that the Yanukovych regime does not need Yulia Tymoshenko alive. I call on the world leaders to protect my wife from Yanukovych's regime."

Yulia Tymoshenko, a two-term prime minister and the heroine of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, is in the early months of a seven-year prison sentence for abuse of office concerning a 2009 gas deal with Russia.
A longtime foe of Yanukovych, she was narrowly defeated by him in the 2010 presidential election, and her Batkivshyna (Fatherland) party is poised to mount a challenge to the ruling Party of Regions.

Tymoshenko's conviction on October 11 prompted an outcry from supporters, who have since alleged that she is in ill health and facing torturous conditions, including 24-hour bright lights in her cell in a penal colony in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

Her lawyers have filed a case against Ukraine in the European Court of Human Rights.

Ukraine's State Penitentiary System has said the former prime minister's cell "meets all European requirements and standards of detention."

Tymoshenko's case has been met with condemnation from both Brussels and Washington, where officials say it is politically motivated.

The signing of a landmark cooperation agreement between the European Union and Ukraine has been stalled, with European leaders conditioning progress in part on Tymoshenko's case.

Yanukovych, meanwhile, says he has not exerted pressure on judicial proceedings in the case and says it is up to the courts to decide the former prime minister's fate.
In Prague, Oleksandr Tymoshenko said the West should do more.

"I call on the European countries to impose sanctions against the authorities and their families, in particular the sons of Yanukovych, the top authorities in the Office of the Prosecutor-General, the SBU [security service], judges, and investigators who facilitated the falsification of Yulia Tymoshenko's case," he said.

"World leaders have to finally understand that Yanukovych and democracy are mutually exclusive notions," he added.

"A twice convicted former criminal is forming a totalitarian regime in Ukraine."

Oleksandr Tymoshenko, who, like his wife, is 51, told RFE/RL that he sought asylum in part because he believed that leaving Ukraine would deprive the government of a way to pressure his wife.

"I was forced to leave Ukraine and ask for political asylum in the Czech Republic because of the unprecedented pressure by the authoritarian regime of President Yanukovych," he said.

"The authorities do not shy away from any dirty methods. They were not successful in breaking Yulia Tymoshenko by intimidation, courts, imprisonment, or torture. Therefore, they used even dirtier tricks. They started to persecute me and other members of her family."

"I do not want to give them more leverage to use against the leader of the opposition. For me, political asylum is the only way to reach this goal."
Oleksandr Tymoshenko has been named as a defendant in recently revived criminal cases involving United Energy Systems of Ukraine, a company he and his wife led in the 1990s.

He was charged and held in custody in relation to one of those cases in 2000, but was never convicted.

Citing official pressure, Oleksandr Tymoshenko has severed most of his Ukrainian business ties.

Among other current interests, he holds a stake in the Czech-based firm International Industrial Projects.

He told RFE/RL that he and supporters of his wife plan to establish an NGO in the Czech Republic to monitor and publicize human rights abuses in Ukraine.

He said the organization would be called Batkivshyna -- the same name as his wife's political party -- and would be headed by Yevhenia Tymoshenko, the couple's daughter.

Yevhenia Tymoshenko remains in Ukraine, where she has advocated vocally on her mother's behalf.

Russians Warn Of Food Import Restrictions

2012-01-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Russia warned it will probably restrict imports of agricultural commodities from Ukraine after Kiev indicated it will move towards reforming its food control agency in line with the European Union standards.
The warning, made by the chief of the Russian state consumer protection agency, Gennady Onishchenko, on Sunday comes weeks after Ukraine and the European Union had successfully completed talks over the free trade agreement.

“A serious problem has emerged,” Onishchenko told on Sunday.

“Beginning in May, we will very seriously strengthen supervision [of imports from Uktraine] at the border.”

Onishcheko complained that Ukraine had decided to allow the State Veterinary Service, mostly known from handling and controlling outbreaks of diseases in livestock among other tasks, has been also appointed to supervise quality and safety of food for people across the country.

“This de-facto means that a citizen of Ukraine has been officially defined as an animal,” Onishchenko said, arguing that those are doctors that must control quality of food.

“Food accounts for 70% of health problems.”

Ukraine argued that expanding the duties of the State Veterinary Service was part of the reform that had been aimed at bringing the country closer to EU regulations.

“The creation of the single competent organ on the basis of the State Veterinary Service is anticipated by the reform of the food sector,” Viktor Korzh, a lawmaker from the governing Regions Party and a deputy head of the committee on healthcare in Parliament, said.

“The statement [Onishchenko] is a real provocation.”

Korzh said the expanded state service will have other staffers that will be recruited from healthcare agencies that will effectively supervise the food industry.
“The service will get specialists from other agencies.”

Mykhaylo Chechetov, another pro-government lawmaker, said that Onishchenko’s controversial view is not shared by the president of Russia and by the prime minister of Russia.

“I don’t think that the warning from the official is shared by Russia’s authorities – the president and the prime minister,” Chechetov said.

“So, let’s not put the stupidity of one person into the ranks of the state policy.”

The developments come less than three months that Ukraine and six other countries of the former Soviet Union signed a free trade agreement with Russia.

The agreement, however, excludes three most sensitive commodities for Ukraine, including sugar, crude oil and natural gas, allowing Russia to restrict trade in these commodities.

Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said recently that Russia had promised at some point to lift the restrictions on trade with oil and gas, but gave no other details.

Ukraine has last year refused to joint the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, a deep level of integration that could have derailed free trade talks with the European Union.

In July 2011 Russia imposed restrictions on imports of meat and dairy products from Ukraine, warning that its steel sector may follow the suit.

Tymoshenko Husband Attacks Ukraine Leader From Exile

2012-01-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The husband of Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko said on Tuesday “enormous pressure” and persecution by President Viktor Yanukovich's government forced him to flee to the Czech Republic.
leksander Tymoshenko, 51, who was granted political asylum in the Czech Republic on Jan. 6, said in a statement that by fleeing abroad he had deprived Yanukovich of additional leverage over the opposition.

“The regime in Ukraine has not shied away from using dirty methods.

They were not able to break Yulia Tymoshenko either through intimidation, the courts, imprisonment or torture.

So they resorted to even uglier means.

They began to persecute me and other members of her family,” he said.

Yulia Tymoshenko, a charismatic politician, helped lead the 2004 Orange Revolution street protests which thwarted a first bid for the presidency by Yanukovich.

She went on to serve two terms as prime minister.

But, after Yanukovich made a comeback and beat her in an election for the presidency in Feb. 2010, criminal proceedings were brought against her and other members of the opposition culminating in her prosecution last year.

She was jailed for seven years in October on a charge of exceeding her powers by forcing through a 2009 gas deal with Russia as prime minister which the Yanukovich government says saddled Ukraine with an exorbitant price for gas.

The 51-year-old is now in prison in Kharkiv some 500 km (300 miles) away from the capital Kiev.

Her trial was condemned by the United States and the European Union as politically motivated and the affair has seriously strained Yanukovich's ties with the West.

Oleksander Tymoshenko, who kept a low profile during his wife's roller-coaster political career, is part owner of a business registered in the Czech Republic.

“I do not want to provide Yanukovich with any additional leverage against the opposition and for me political asylum is the only way to achieve this goal,” he said in his statement.

Russian toddler dies in Bryansk pavement collapse

2012-01-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

A toddler in Bryansk in western Russia has died after falling through a hole that opened up as his mother took him for a walk.

The pavement gave way because of a burst hot-water pipe, emergency officials said.

The boy's mother, 26, was pulled alive from the hole by her traffic police officer husband, reports say.

But he was unable to rescue his son, who was thrown from his pushchair and fell into the sewer below.

"The woman managed to grab on to the edge of the collapsed pavement, which saved her life," a Bryansk official was quoted as saying.

Her husband had apparently been on duty in the area on Sunday afternoon and rushed to the scene, climbing down into the hole with the aid of a rope to pull his wife to safety.

Named by Russian media as Tatyana Didenko, she was taken to hospital in shock.
Although remnants of the one-and-a-half-year-old boy's clothing were found by search teams, it was not until late on Monday afternoon that his body was discovered.

The toddler, named by reports as Kirill, was found 6km (3.5mi) from the spot where he disappeared, according to police.

The cause of the pavement collapse is unclear but investigators are looking at problems with the construction of a local sewage plant.

Bryansk regional governor Nikolai Denin told Russia 24 TV that recent mild weather could have caused a pipe to rupture, leading to sand below the pavement being washed away.

Investigators have opened a criminal manslaughter case.

Mr Denin said a large proportion of the city's infrastructure was not in top condition: "We have to start rebuilding things because otherwise this could happen again."

Russian blogger Navalny unmasks 'Kremlin' photo smear

2012-01-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

The Russian blogger leading Russia's vote-rigging protests has accused supporters of Vladimir Putin of seeking to smear him with a fake photo.

Alexei Navalny proved that a picture in a newspaper distributed by Putin supporters was a forgery when he published the original on his blog.

The faked photo shows Mr Navalny alongside fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who lives in London.

Protesters fear the March presidential vote may be rigged to favour Mr Putin.

Currently prime minister, he is standing for re-election after serving two previous terms as president.

Alleged fraud at parliamentary elections in December sparked the biggest anti-government rallies seen in Moscow since Soviet times.

Mr Navalny, a lawyer who campaigns against corruption, was a key speaker at the last rally, on 24 December, which drew an estimated 100,000 people.
Young activists sporting blue rain jackets marked "Vladimir Putin" were spotted handing out newspapers containing the forged photo in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

The photo shows Mr Navalny and Mr Berezovsky standing beside each other, smiling for the camera, with the caption: "Alexei Navalny has never made any secret of the fact that the oligarch Boris Berezovsky gives him money to fight Putin."

Russia has been trying for years to extradite Mr Berezovsky, who was granted political asylum in the UK in 2003. He is wanted on fraud charges, which he denies.

In a blog posting which led with the words "News from [Vladimir] Putin's electoral campaign", Mr Navalny published the original photo, sent to him months earlier by photographer Alexei Yushenkov as a souvenir.

Taken on 25 May in the offices of Russian radio station Moscow Echo, the snap shows the blogger alongside Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian billionaire who has since declared himself a candidate in the March election.
On his own blog, Mr Yushenkov confirmed that the photo had never been published because of its poor quality and he surmised that it had been stolen when Mr Navalny's email account was hacked last year.

Russian bloggers have been posting their own parodies of the fake photo, some of which were published on Mr Navalny's blog.

The photozhabas, as digitally altered images are known in Russian internet slang, show the blogger posing with everyone from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to Bender, the robot in the cartoon Futurama.

In another development, the Urals editor of popular Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty has denied any link to the doctored photograph.

Dmitry Bondarev told the BBC's Russian Service that his publication had no connection to the other paper, which bears the name "Argumenty i Fakty - Urals Digest" and looks similar.

A note on the paper with the fake photo, which is reportedly a special edition praising Mr Putin and trashing the opposition, says that it was compiled by the All-Russia Popular Front - a political coalition launched by Mr Putin in May.

According to Yekaterinburg blogger nuclOid, 80,000 copies were printed.

The East-To-West Pipeline Game

2012-01-07T05:55:00.000-08:00

The early opening of the Nord Stream pipeline is the latest gambit in the geopolitical chess match between Russia and Europe.

Pipelines connect the energy rich with the energy poor, essentially tying them together forever and in the process giving the transited lands a crucial role to play.

In the gas pipeline game being played by Russia, the former Soviet satellite states and Europe, everyone appears set on upping the stakes this winter.

Which explains why the ubiquitous Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister and, as now announced, the certain, again, next President of Russia, officiated on September 6 as the Nord Stream pipeline started pumping “technical gas” (necessary to build pressure) in advance of pumping gas directly from Russia to its German destination via a route that bypasses troublesome former Soviet states like the Ukraine.

The pipeline achieved this feat by being laid offshore and traversing the Baltic Sea.

It is hardly surprising that the Russian premier should take such interest in the project given the fact that foreign gas sales account for about 20 percent of the country’s income.

In Russia, as Steve LeVine noted in Foreign Policy, “control of the flow of hydrocarbons means raw power.”

With Putin, as we have written in From Soviet to Putin and Back, power is the seminal quality.

With European gas consumption expected to grow by a further 50 percent over the next decade, it is set to remain a highly lucrative market for Russia’s most important export and a necessary element of the very real goal coveted by that country: control over Europe.

The early opening of Nord Stream was surprising, and it represents the latest throw of the dice in the pipeline game.
Running under the Baltic past Finland, Sweden and Denmark, Nord Stream achieves two goals in just one play.

First, it eliminates any chance of a repeat of previous years’ interruptions in gas supply to Europe, the result of ongoing market skirmishes between Russia and one of the transit countries – Ukraine.

And, at the same time, the opening of Nord Stream leaves Ukraine – a country without significant energy reserves of its own – even more vulnerable to having its gas supplies cut off this winter.

A spat over prices and an outstanding bill have already seen the Ukrainian government threatening unspecified “consequences” if Russia’s gas prices aren’t lowered.

Alyona Getmanchuk, Director of Kiev’s World Policy Institute, has complained about Gazprom’s policy that ties its contract gas prices to the world oil price.

Given that the impact of U.S. shale gas is keeping gas prices down, Getmanchuk wants to sever the link between world gas and oil prices, much as companies in Germany and Italy are trying to do.

The partnership between Russia’s Gazprom and Germany’s E.ON and BASF-Wintershall anticipates that the 1,220-kilometer Nord Stream pipeline will deliver up to 55 billion cubic meters (just about 2 Tcf) of gas per year to Europe when it reaches capacity in 2013.

This is a sizeable chunk of Russia’s current total exports to both Eastern and Western Europe of 4.5 Tcf.

In a pre-launch television address, Putin spelled out how it would also offer Russia a freer “local” hand in future negotiations, stating, “Gradually, in a calmer manner we are departing from the diktat of the transit states” – a dark allusion to dealings with the Ukraine, in particular.

Not that Ukraine is about to repeat the mistakes of 2006 and 2009.

Talks between Kiev and Moscow may be currently deadlocked, but Ukraine’s President Victor Yanukovych has already rebuffed both an offer to join the Russian-dominated Customs Union and a Gazprom-dangled carrot of an $8 billion discount on its outstanding invoice, the latter amounting to an effective buyout of the Ukrainian national oil and gas company, Naftohaz Ukrainy.

Instead, Yanukovych has threatened to take Russia to “international arbitration” over the terms of its contractual agreement with Gazprom while, at the same time, resuming attempts to buy direct from gas-rich neighbor Turkmenistan, as it did in 2003.

But the plain fact is, in an energy-starved country, Ukraine may not have a lot of choices and could well be facing yet another cold winter of discontent over gas imports from Russia.

And the tangled web of Eurasian pipeline politics doesn’t stop there.

Europe, Nabucco & South Stream

While the EU will no doubt welcome its states avoiding being caught up in the spat between former Soviet allies, an online Nord Stream creates as many political problems as it solves.

Within days of the Nord Stream launch, Russia was back-slamming the EU over its offer to broker talks between energy-rich Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan – which, traditionally, have not enjoyed good relations – with the aim of constructing a trans-Caspian pipeline supplying Turkmen gas to the gas-starved EU-backed southern corridor Nabucco project.

A Caspian-Nabucco pipeline link-up would not only bypass Russian territory but would fulfill Europe’s strategy of diversifying away from its current reliance on Russian gas imports.

Nabucco is thus the chief rival to the other Russian-backed southern corridor pipeline, South Stream, which would provide a direct link with southern Europe via the Black Sea.

South Stream could be pumping gas before 2017 – ahead of Nabucco and precisely why, in May 2011, a Russian Gazprom-led “charm offensive” saw all of South Stream’s operators, including representatives from Germany’s BASF and Italy’s ENI, wining and dining EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger in Brussels.

Leaving aside the murky geopolitics that sees German and Italian companies effectively co-operating in undermining the EU-backed Nabucco project, South Stream could still fall afoul of EU rules that would force Gazprom to open South Stream to independent suppliers.

That’s something Gazprom would be loath to do.

Meanwhile, there is also an intriguing sub-plot for European geopolitics.

While Nord Stream diminished any immediate concerns over gas supply interruptions as a result of tensions between Russia and its former satellite states, the EU energy minister currently wants European governments to give him a mandate to speak with “one voice,” not only in negotiations over the Caspian pipeline link for Nabucco but also its political corollary – the power to block individual EU states from cutting bilateral energy deals without close scrutiny by Brussels.

But a mandate effectively devolving power over national energy security matters to Brussels is likely to test the resolve of leaders in most European capitals, especially Berlin.

A Tangled Geopolitical Web

The Russo-German “special relationship,” as we have noted elsewhere, remains the Grand Narrative underlying Eurasian pipeline politics.

And that means two things.

First, Russia will hold the strong regional hand for years to come.

And second, Germany, for all its EU rhetoric, will, as the involvement of its national companies and former leaders with the Russian-backed Nord and South Stream pipelines reveals, continue to undermine the attainment of a “one voice” EU energy policy.

Moreover, these words concluding our year-ago article, “Turkmen Gas: ‘Anywhere but Europe,’ Urges Russia,” may seem, in light of recent developments, ominously prescient for Caspian geopolitics generally:

A Kremlin security document, approved by President Dmitry Medvedev and published by the Russian Security Council in May 2009 has already sanctioned the use of military force to protect Russia’s post-Soviet return to “energy superpower” status, specifically citing the Caspian as an area of potential conflict.

The invasion of Georgia in 2006 – does anyone really think it was all about South Ossetia? – is powerful testimony that Russia’s foreign policy “tank” is still fuelled by oil, or gas.

Ukrainian Sailors From Nemo Vessel To Get Visas To Return Home Soon, Says Foreign Ministry

2012-01-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

ANKARA, Turkey -- Ankara has given formal permission to issue visas to six Ukrainian citizens, crewmembers of the Nemo cargo ship, arrested in Turkey.
The issue of the return of the Ukrainians to their homeland is being settled, the press service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported on Thursday.

"According to the information received from the Consulate General of Ukraine in Istanbul, at 1810 on January 5, the Kocaeli port police received official permission from Ankara to issue visas for all six Ukrainian citizens - former members of the crew of the Nemo vessel," the Foreign Ministry said.

The Ukrainian Consulate General is currently settling the issue of accommodating the sailors for the night and their return to Ukraine.

The case is controlled by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the press service reported.

As reported, seven Ukrainian sailors from the Nemo, an Estonian cargo ship that has been under arrest in the Sea of Marmara (Turkey) for a year, went on a hunger strike in a Turkish prison in the town of Derince on January 4, 2012.

The dry cargo ship was arrested by local authorities on January 11, 2011 due to the debt of the ship's bankrupt owner.

The ship was transferred to Swedbank Estonia due to the debtor's loans, but the crew then refused to leave the Nemo without getting salaries.

On December 28, 2011, the sailors left the ship and were placed in a Turkish police department, waiting for the permission to leave the country.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry reported that since December 28, the sailors were in the police department for work with foreigners in the city of Izmit, Kocaeli province.

Officials Defend Tymoshenko Prison Move

2012-01-07T05:53:00.000-08:00

KHARKIV, Ukraine -- The transfer of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from a Kiev penitentiary to one in Kharkiv was lawful, prison officials said Thursday.
Tymoshenko's daughter and defense lawyer, Eugenia Tymoshenko, called the move from the detention center to the penal colony "absolutely outrageous and illegal," ITAR-Tass reported Tuesday.

Eugenia said she was not informed of the move at the time.

Prison officials cited Ukraine's penal code, saying people sentenced to prison are sent to serve their term no later than 10 days after a sentence goes into effect, Interfax reported Thursday.

"Thus, Tymoshenko's transfer from Kiev detention center to the penal colony on Dec. 30, 2011, was made in compliance with the current legislation within the statutory period," prison officials said in a statement.

Several hundred supporters of Yulia Tymoshenko organized a picket outside the Kharkiv penitentiary, carrying national flags, symbols of her party and signage, despite a court ban, ITAR-Tass said.

Defense counsel Serhiy Vlasenko said the former prime minister's health has deteriorated in prison.

"Despite the bravura statements by the Health Ministry, she cannot move unaided, so it is difficult for me to judge what they mean by satisfactory health condition.

Probably, the main task of the Health Ministry's medical commission is to misinform the international community about the health condition of Yulia Tymoshenko," he said outside the prison Thursday.

Yulia Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison Oct. 11 for abuse of office in the 2009 signing of Russian gas contracts.

She was also fined $200 million.

Husband Of Ukraine's Tymoshenko Wins Czech Asylum

2012-01-07T05:52:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The husband of jailed Ukrainian former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been granted political asylum in the Czech Republic.
The news was announced hours after media reports that Oleksander Tymoshenko had requested asylum at the end of last year.

Mr Tymoshenko's wife was jailed for seven years in October for abuse of office at a controversial trial.

Her husband, who has Czech business interests, stood by her in court.

The Czech interior ministry confirmed his request for asylum had been granted on Friday.

Last year, the country granted asylum to Bohdan Danylyshyn, a former economy minister in Tymoshenko's cabinet.

A row ensued in which Ukraine expelled two Czech diplomats for alleged espionage.

Mr Tymoshenko has a stake in the Czech company International Industrial Projects.

His wife was convicted of abuse of power over a gas deal she signed with Russia in 2009.

She accused President Viktor Yanukovych, her political rival since the 2004 Orange Revolution, of orchestrating the case against her.

The EU and others voiced concern that her trial might have been politically motivated.

Tymoshenko was recently moved from custody in the capital Kiev to a prison in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

Ukraine Must Launch Fresh Investigation Into Student Death In Custody

2012-01-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Ukrainian authorities must launch a fresh investigation into the death in custody of a student, Amnesty International said after two police officers suspected of responsibility for his death yesterday walked free following a court hearing in Kiev.
Both officers were only tried on minor negligence charges over the death of 19-year-old Ihor Indilo.

One of them, Sergei Prihodko, was given a five-year suspended sentence, while the other, Sergei Kovalenko, was granted amnesty by the court.

Ihor Indilo died from a fractured skull and internal bleeding in May 2010 after being arrested and interrogated by the two officers in Kiev.

His family suspect Sergei Prihodko inflicted the fatal injury.

“Charging the two police officers with minor negligence when there is strong evidence to suggest that their behaviour resulted in Ihor Indilo’s death shows a shocking disregard for human life,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia.

“The Ukrainian authorities must conduct a thorough investigation and bring charges against the two men that would allow the court to consider whether the officers were, through their actions or failure to act, responsible for Indilo’s death.

"If so, they must be sentenced appropriately.”

Students took to the streets after yesterday’s verdict to protest against police abuse and the Ukrainian authorities’ continued reluctance to deal with it.

In October, President Viktor Yanukovych called on the Prosecutor General to personally review the case after extensive media coverage of the case.

The Prosecutor General publicly criticized the Kiev prosecutor’s office’s handling of the case but did not intervene to ensure the officers were tried under the appropriate charges.

“This case has become a litmus test for the Ukrainian justice system’s ability to seriously deal with allegations of police abuse. Its failure to do so highlights the need for systemic reform,” said John Dalhuisen.

Ihor Indilo was arrested on 16 May 2010 after a disagreement with a security guard at the dormitory where he lived about a missing ID card.

He had been out celebrating on the eve of his 20th birthday.

Police said he was drunk and aggressive when detained, although the security guard has since testified that he was neither.

Off-duty officer Sergei Prihodko detained Ihor Indilo at about 8:15pm and drove him and a friend to Shevchenkivsky police station, where he was interrogated by Prihodko and another officer, Sergei Kovalenko, in the presence of the friend.

Minutes later, an ambulance was called to the interview room because Ihor Indilo was unconscious, although he was not thoroughly examined.

CCTV footage at 9:49pm shows Sergei Prihodko dragging Ihor Indilo into a cell and leaving him on the floor, the ambulance crew having left.

The footage shows the student's condition deteriorating through the night; he staggers and falls in the prison cell, until he ceases moving at around 3:00am.

Police left him unattended in the cell until they discovered his body at 4:51am.

Officers claim they checked his pulse and breathing and that he was still alive, but the CCTV footage shows an officer simply discovering his body, dragging him and then rolling him over.
The following morning Ihor Indilo’s parents were told that he had choked to death but when they saw his body they noticed numerous bruises.

The autopsy also found blood in his stomach, which may have been caused by a blow to the abdomen.

Police then claimed Ihor Indilo died as a result of falling from a 50 cm (20 inches) bench in the cell because he was drunk.

Indilo does not appear drunk in CCTV footage of him entering the police station.

Sergei Prihodko was charged with “abuse of power that results in pain or denigrates a person’s dignity,” in relation to having dragged Indilo across the floor.

Sergei Kovalenko was charged with “neglect of official duty without grave consequences”, in relation to allowing Sergei Prihodko to carry out these actions.

Putin tells of secret christening at Orthodox Christmas

2012-01-07T05:45:00.000-08:00

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended an Orthodox Christmas service on Saturday at the church in his hometown of Saint Petersburg where he said he was secretly christened as a baby in Soviet days.
Both members of the Russian ruling tandem, Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev, attended services for Orthodox Christmas, which is celebrated on the night of January 6 and on January 7, a public holiday.
Putin, who hopes to win a third presidential term in March elections, went to a midnight service in a cathedral in the northwestern city of Saint Petersburg and was shown on television standing in the front row of believers.
After coming out of the cathedral, he told journalists: "This is a special cathedral for me. I was christened here," in comments published on his official website.
He said that his mother and a neighbour took him secretly to be christened, fearing the disapproval of his father, a member of the Communist Party, which promoted atheism as the official state ideology.
Putin was born in 1952, a year before the death of Stalin.
"My father was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was a consistent, strict person. They did this in secret from him -- or at least they thought it was in secret," Putin said in unusually perHe added that funerals for his mother and father were held in the same cathedral.
Putin served as a member of the Soviet KGB secret service, which also frowned on religious beliefs, but has openly talked of his faith since becoming a politician and often meets top church officials.
In a Christmas message released Saturday, Putin called for the Church to continue 'developing constructive cooperation with state and public institutions' in spheres including 'counteracting extremism'.
Medvedev and his wife Svetlana attended a midnight service at the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, led by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.
The Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas and other religious holidays according to the Julian calendar, while other Christian churches have adopted the later Gregorian calendar.sonal comments.

Russian Church head Kirill urges Kremlin policy change

2012-01-07T05:44:00.000-08:00

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has said the Kremlin should heed the recent mass protests over ballot-rigging and adjust its policies.

In a televised message on Orthodox Christmas Day, Patriarch Kirill said it would be a "very bad sign" if the authorities ignored the protesters.

He added that he could not take sides in the election dispute.

However the Church, which counts about 70% of Russians as members, has close links to the Kremlin.

It is unclear whether this is the patriarch's first comment on the election protests which gripped Moscow last month, but Russian commentators said it was unexpected.

The last big rally, on 24 December, drew as many as 100,000 people to central Moscow in the biggest anti-government demonstration since Soviet times.

It was called to protest at the conduct of parliamentary elections on 4 December, which were seen as a test of the electoral system ahead of a presidential election in March that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is contesting. Mr Putin served two terms as Russian president before becoming prime minister.

"The main thing is to translate correctly expressed protests into a policy adjustment," the patriarch said in Saturday's broadcast.

"If the authorities remain insensitive to the expression of protests, it is a very bad sign, a sign of the authorities' inability to adjust themselves."

The Church could not take sides over the elections, he said, because it had members "among both those on the square and those who were being opposed on the square".

Patriarch Kirill congratulated Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when they met at a Christmas Eve service in Moscow's Christ The Saviour Cathedral on Friday night.

Russia exposes true colors of the West

2012-01-01T04:13:00.000-08:00

For the first time in many years, Russia's Foreign Ministry published an extensive report about the state of affairs in the field of human rights in the United States of America, Canada, EU, NATO members and Georgia. The report from the ministry also touched upon Libya, where NATO's incursion has led to the bloody change of power. The document is not flawless. However, it clearly shows that democracy in the West is not as perfect as it is painted.

For a long time the monopoly on the publication of such reports belonged to the United States. The Americans tend to present certain countries as outcasts. Year after year Russia is highlighted in the reports of the State Department. According to them, Russia has issues with the elections, freedom of speech and religious minorities. Something similar is published by the European Union. At one time, Chinese Foreign Ministry published a report on human rights in the United States.

Russian foreign policy was clearly defensive. Russia always had to justify itself, responding to attacks from the West. And then, finally, Russia published a nearly 100-page document describing human rights violations in the United States, Canada, EU and NATO, as well as allied Georgia. The actions of the West during the war in Libya have not been overlooked in the report either. Each region is assigned a separate section.
The largest section is devoted to the U.S. - the country which has declared itself "the standard of democracy." "The situation there is far from the ideals proclaimed by Washington. The main unresolved issue is an odious prison at Guantanamo Bay ... President Obama has legalized indefinite terms without trial... The current administration continues to use most of the methods of social control and interference with the privacy of Americans," the document says.

"There are continued violations of international humanitarian law in armed conflict and during anti-terrorist operations. Chronic systemic problems in the American society are getting more acute, including racial discrimination, xenophobia, overcrowding in jails, unreasonable use of the death penalty ... The U.S. has one of the weakest in the West security systems for workers' rights for Collective Bargaining", stated Russian diplomats.

"The extraterritorial application of the American law does the greatest harm in terms of US-Russian relations. It leads to a violation of fundamental rights and freedoms of Russian citizens, including arbitrary arrests and abductions from third countries (the most obvious examples are the cases of Viktor Bout and K. Yaroshenko)," says the report. The authors also note "a very acute problem of violence against adopted children from Russia in American families."

Further the report lists such things as violation of the rights of prisoners in CIA prisons, the problems with freedom of expression and harassment of employees and the founder of the website WikiLeaks, the death of at least 111,000 Iraqis and 14 thousands of Afghans in the wars unleashed by the United States. There is racial discrimination of blacks and Hispanics, and religious discrimination against American Muslims.

Not everything is well in the U.S. with human rights, freedom of speech and racism, and especially with the wars. Of course, one can parry that in Russia the labor laws are less than perfect, and there are problems with the media, and national relationships are not perfect as well. However, Russia is not instructing the world how to live, and does not throw bombs on other countries. The presence of problems in Russia does not change the fact that the U.S. is far from ideal.

With regard to the European Union, the Russian Foreign Ministry has supported human rights criticism from Human Rights Watch on the rights of immigrants from Asia and Africa and the anti-Muslim rhetoric. "The main conclusion is the overall growth of xenophobia and intolerance in the EU, promotion of far-right rhetoric ... European governments do not try to fight it, but, rather, vice versa, use the trend in domestic purposes," the Russian diplomats said.
According to the AOHR (EU Agency for Fundamental Human Rights - Ed.) in 2009 more than any others the following nationalities were discriminated at work: North Africans in Italy (30 percent), Roma in Greece (29 percent), Roma in the Czech Republic (27 percent), Africans in Malta (27 percent), Africans in Ireland (26 percent), Roma in Hungary (25 percent), Brazilians in Portugal (24 percent), Turks in Denmark (22 percent), Roma in Poland (22 percent)," the report says.

It is important that Russia described the problem that the EU remained silent about for years. They say that they do not have problems with the Muslims or Roma. They do have them, however, and last year they demonstrated it by the shooting in Norway or the influx of refugees from North Africa. Yet, there is another side to the issue: can Muslims or blacks demand the same rights as the indigenous people? Can they pointedly ignore laws and customs accepted in Europe? Would Roma themselves be willing to adapt to a normal society? Therefore, complaints to the authorities of European countries are still excessive.

Sections on Germany, France, Britain and Sweden, report on the growth of xenophobia and the issues of Muslims. Swedes, among other things, are accused of supporting the Chechen rebels. Finland is also mentioned in connection with the endless stories about taking children away from Russian mothers. In the case of Hungary there is a mention of an attempt to revise the results of the Second World War. Poland, Bulgaria and Romania "only" suffer from inadequate legislation.

A separate section is devoted to the Baltic. "The discriminatory policy of the authorities of the Baltic states against the Russian minority living there remains nearly unchanged. Of particular concern is the unresolved problem of mass statelessness in Latvia (nearly 330 thousand "aliens") and Estonia (nearly 100 thousand "aliens") and consequent violation of the rights of Russian-speaking minorities in these countries," stated the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"Reduction of the Russian-language news and cultural and educational space, as well as the persecution of World War II veterans and law enforcement agencies of the former USSR is also observed in Lithuania. Of particular concern is the continuation of the trend to rewrite the history of the Second World War Baltic states," Russian diplomat said.

Problems in Georgia were very clearly outlined in the report. There are a lot of cases when Russian citizens (including ethnic Georgians) fell victims of provocations of local security forces. Attention is drawn to the dispersal of the protests. Particularly highlighted is the largest violation of the rights of national minorities of the country - the Armenian and Azerbaijani.

"Armenian-populated region of Samtskhe-Javakheti (in Armenian Javakheti) is in dire socio-economic situation ... Administrative positions in local government are occupied predominantly by Georgian. The Georgian authorities have deliberately carried out a discriminatory policy against Azerbaijanis. Resettlement of Azerbaijanis in neighboring Azerbaijan is becoming mass in nature," the Russian diplomats stated.
The next section of the report is on Canada. The country was berated for the brutality against the demonstrators, for the oppression of Indians and Eskimos, and lack of security of Canadian citizens abroad. However, there is not a single word in the report about endless military exercises in the Arctic and threats of Canadian authorities to Russia.

The last section is devoted to NATO operations in Libya. "NATO leaders officially deny the facts of civilian deaths as a result of air strikes by coalition forces, indirect victims, which was the reason for the blockade of the western regions of Libya, the destruction of civilian infrastructure," the diplomat said.

Then follows a list of deaths of civilians from NATO attacks and atrocities of Western-backed rebels. The highlights are "extrajudicial execution of the representatives of the former regime and its supporters with the tacit consent of NATO members," numerous cases of "crimes of the former Libyan armed opposition."

The document is not without drawbacks. Thus, it has no foreword or conclusion. Sections on the United States, the Baltic States, Georgia, Libya, and the largest countries in Europe are very detailed. However, the sections of the smaller European countries, as well as the entire EU and Canada raise questions and seem to be rather "raw". The publication of the report seems untimely. During Christmas and New Year holidays even the politicians are not particularly into policy.

However, the first attempt was pretty good. Russia has shown that it will not always have to justify its behavior after publication of the American and European reports. It can provide pre-emptive strikes in its foreign policy. Hopefully, such reports from the Foreign Ministry of Russia will become commonplace and improve with time.

The second deepest metro station in the world opens in St. Petersburg

2012-01-01T04:12:00.000-08:00

A new metro station – Admiralteiskaya – opens in St. Petersburg today. The station, which is located on corner of Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa and Kirpichny Pereulok, is the world’s second deepest as over 100 meters below ground. The station is part of the No. 5 line. The world's deepest metro station is located in Kiev.

A brief summary of the year that was

2012-01-01T04:10:00.000-08:00

The 2011 was anything but uneventful for Russia -- and Moscow saw its fair share of notable events.

The Fourth Rome
The city grew – in the administrative sense, with the official boundaries extended out to the south all the way to the Kaluga region, more than doubling the city’s official size.
The capital’s city dwellers saw changes underfoot as vast swaths of the city center’s footpaths were dug up, with the asphalt removed to be replaced by bricks. Motorists were not spared disruption either as the city installed more than 100 kms of bus lanes and dozens of traffic cameras.
City works were not the only reason for traffic disruptions, however. A major laser show saw unusually large crowds throng Moscow State University causing havoc. The mass event of the year was, nonetheless, the arrival of Virgin Mary’s belt that had been on a countrywide tour, but saw the biggest crowd attendance here in the capital.
Tragedy strikes
The year started off on a tragic note with the Domodedovo airport bombing, which ended up killing 37 people and injuring many more.
The bombing was not the only major disaster to hit the nation, the country’s waterways suffered several sinkings, the worst of which was the sinking of the Bulgaria, which saw 122 people die.
The airways also saw their share of strife, but the crash of the Yak-42 passenger plane struck a special chord with nearly the entire Lokomotiv Yarolslavl hockey team being killed in the disaster.

Business, sports and politics
Businesswise, the event of the year was Russia finally joining the WTO after 18 years, becoming its 154th member.
Russia’s national hockey team saw a double disappointment, failing to make it into the world championships and suffering the indignation of coming third in the Channel One Cup.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s announcement of his bid to return to the presidency could have been the biggest political news of the year, but it was shoved aside when the political scene came truly alive with the Dec. 4 State Duma elections and the nationwide protests that gripped Moscow and the nation after widespread reports of vote rigging emerged.

General silliness
The battle for the choice of Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics was filled with quirks, but it was the hunt for the Yeti in southern Siberia that would have to take the cake for silly story of the year.

Moscow State University hit by fire

2012-01-01T04:08:00.000-08:00

One of seven Moscow’s famed Stalin-era towers was struck by fire, which broke out in a student dormitory in the Moscow State University’s main building in the early hours of Dec. 30.
Fifteen-hundred people were evacuated, and two people required medical treatment. At least one international student from China, who lived on the floor where the fire started, was admitted to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, Interfax reported.
The fire broke out in one of the residential rooms on the 18th floor in corpus B due to a short circuit or faulty wiring, according to fire-fighters’ preliminary data.
“Notification on the fire was received at 3:17 am, and smoke was coming out of the building’s two windows,” Yevgeny Bobylev, press-service head of Moscow’s branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
Thick smoke which quickly spread through the building made some people think there were several ignition sources there, but fire-fighters are sure there was only one.
The room where the ignition source was located burnt out completely, according to the building’s guard, but the person who resides there wasn’t at present at the time of the accident.
The blaze was extinguished in less than an hour according the Moscow’s Emergency Situations Ministry.
The renowned landmark has already suffered fires before, and in 2006 two people were killed in a fire which broke out early in the morning when people were asleep.
The last fire, which happened in 2009, was less dramatic. The flames spread to just 5 square meters, and the only lose was burnt furniture. No one was hurt.

Quarter of voters would definitely vote for Putin -- poll

2012-01-01T04:07:00.000-08:00

Just over a quarter of Russians said they will vote for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the upcoming presidential election, the results of a new poll released on Thursday revealed. The Obshchestvennoye Mneniye fund’s survey showed that 26 percent of people definitely intended to vote for Putin, 16 percent would most likely vote for him and 10 percent said that it was possible they would vote for him. Thirty-three percent said it was unlikely they would support his candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections.

Warm and snowy New Year’s Eve forecast for Moscow

2012-01-01T04:06:00.000-08:00

The Fobos meteorological bureau is forecasting a “European variant” of weather for New Year’s Eve.
“During the day the temperature will be 0 to -2 degrees [Celsius] and New Year’s night the thermometer will show -1 to -3 degrees,” RIA Novosti quoted a press spokesperson as saying on Thursday. The bureau said it is also expecting heavy snowfalls on New Year’s Eve.

Seven minutes of fireworks for the capital

2012-01-01T04:05:00.000-08:00

New Year’s main firework display is to last seven minutes, the capital’s culture head Sergei Kapkov announced on Friday.
“We have organized a direct broadcast of the president’s address, and then on Vasilevsky Spusk high-altitude fireworks will take place for a duration of seven minutes,” said Kapkov. He added that the official program will finish at 2 am in the center of the city, but will continue in the city’s parks till 3 am.

Red Hot Chili Peppers booked for Abramovich NY party

2012-01-01T04:03:00.000-08:00

Billionaire Roman Abramovich is spending more than 5 million pounds to provide entertainment for some 300 guests at his exclusive New Year’s Eve party on a Caribbean Island. Red Hot Chili Peppers are reportedly headlining the evening’s entertainment bill. The newspaper reported that the event is to be held in an estate previously owned by the Rockerfeller family. The dress code for the party, which is to run from 10 pm to 4 am, is describes as “island chic.

Ukraine On A Perilous Edge

2012-01-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Seven years ago, Ukraine's Orange Revolution inspired hope that the country was moving toward genuine democracy.
Since then, democratic freedoms have been curtailed, the former prime minister and co-leader of the revolution, Yulia Tymoshenko, has been imprisoned, and President Viktor Yanukovych's regime has become internationally isolated. Ukraine is unraveling.

Today, a small group of oligarchs clustered around Yanukovych has captured power.

They manipulate elections, control the media and are shaping the country's institutions to further their own business interests.

Condemnation by the West has had no impact.

Whatever one thinks of Tymoshenko, she was not imprisoned for any ostensible crimes she committed while in power.

She is in prison because she lost that power. This sets a dangerous precedent, for it creates a powerful incentive — winner takes all, loser goes to prison — for ruthlessness.

It is difficult to predict how Tymoshenko's case will play out — whether Yanukovych will succumb to pressure from the European Union and the United States to release her, or to the forces that want to exclude her from politics forever.

Until recently, Ukrainian leaders were accustomed to more efficient means than prison for dealing with inconvenient opponents.

In 2000, for example, journalist Heorhiy Gongadze was kidnapped and beheaded after publishing online reports about high-level government corruption.

Perhaps Tymoshenko did not understand how sharply her country had turned away from democratic norms when she mocked Yanukovych and her opponents during her trial.

Indeed, her first brief imprisonment in 2001 furnished her with political capital and pushed her into the democratic opposition's front ranks.

Perhaps Yanukovych himself did not foresee the consequences of Tymoshenko's arrest, trial and imprisonment.

Some Ukrainian conspiracy theorists maintain that Yanukovych was tricked by skillfully prepared misinformation provided by the officials around him.

With every month that Tymoshenko spends in jail, her martyrdom grows, making it harder for Yanukovych to free her.

Yanukovych has become hostage to a situation that he created — and thus has done nothing to extricate himself from it.

In 2003, then-Russian President Vladimir Putin put himself in an analogous bind with the arrest of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

At the time, Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia and an open critic of the government, so his arrest triggered a storm of international protest.

Like Yanukovych, Putin is under pressure from the West to release his opponent, but the political risk is too great.

Yanukovych's goals are unclear.

He does not respond to European pressure, even though Ukraine would gain political leverage from closer EU ties.

Perhaps he simply dislikes the EU because it applauded his defeat in the Orange Revolution, and because he makes embarrassing gaffes whenever he goes there.

Then again, perhaps he has learned from Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko that the EU has little influence over non-EU countries' internal politics.
At the first positive sign from Belarus, the EU forgives and forgets.

Indeed, even without a positive signal from Ukraine, the European Parliament has recommended that negotiations on an association agreement begin.

Generally, Yanukovych's foreign policy appears reactive.

In 2010, for example, he bowed to Putin's pressure to extend the Russian lease on naval facilities in Crimea to 2042, whereas Tymoshenko and others pointed to the treaty's unconstitutionality.

Yanukovych also undermined Ukraine's geopolitical strength vis-a-vis Russia by rejecting NATO's invitation to join in 2010.

Even if the Kremlin is not happy with the planned EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, it has little reason to worry as long as Yanukovych remains a weak president in a divided country.

Ukraine is thus becoming a dangerous mix of authoritarianism and corrupt capitalism.

In Belarus, an impoverished Lukashenko increasingly resorts to brute force to maintain his rule — breaking up peaceful demonstrations, imprisoning political opponents and terrorizing the intelligentsia.

Compared with him, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is a shining example of good government.

But as Yanukovych and his backers are well aware, Berlusconi is gone, and Lukashenko is not.

Ukraine Gas Transit System Price To Fall Severely In 2012 - Miller

2012-01-01T03:59:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW, Russia -- Ukraine's gas transit system that Kiev presently estimates to cost $20 billion may become significantly cheaper, the head of Russia's gas giant, Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said on Saturday.
During a meeting on Friday with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Miller said that Ukraine had placed the price of its gas transit system at $20 billion and requested an annual $9-billion cut in the price of gas if Moscow and Kiev created a gas transport consortium.

"I don't exclude that Ukraine's so-called last strategic resource, its gas transit system, will severly fall in price next year," Miller told journalists on Saturday in regard to perspective talks with Ukraine in 2012 on the price of gas.

Miller called Ukraine's going price for the gas transit system "significant" taking into account that much money would be needed to invest in the transit system's modernization.

He said modernization of the system would be 2-8 billion euros ($2.6-$10.4 billion).

Ukraine earlier had set its price for the gas transit system much higher at $150-270 billion.

In June 2011, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is presently serving a seven-year prison sentence for abuse of power in signing a gas deal with Russia, set the price of the system at $150 billion, and then in September this year said it was worth $270 billion.

Previous to Tymoshenko's statements in court on the price, Ukraine had place the system at $80-120 billion.

Ukrainian Intellectuals Outraged By "Sadistic Decision" To Send Tymoshenko To Penal Colony

2012-01-01T03:58:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Representatives of Ukraine's intellectual circles have expressed an outrage at a decision of Kiev Court of Appeals to uphold the prison sentence in gas case for former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and a decision to send her to a penal colony.
In particular, prominent Ukrainian writer Lina Kostenko and her daughter, literary critic Oksana Pakhlevska signed a joint statement by intellectuals about the non-recognition of a decision by the Court of Appeals in Kiev.

"The authorities took a sadistic decision to transfer Yulia Tymoshenko from Lukyanivka detention center to a penal colony, which is even more defiant taking into account the fact that it was done on New Year's eve."

"It looks like they are cynically counting on the fact that people in their pre-holiday worries will forget about a person who knows how to be principled and consistent in saying "no" to the mockery of the state and who has to pay for it today through being sent by Tsarist-Stalinist rule to a penal colony," reads the intellectuals' statement published Friday on the Web site of the Tymoshenko-led Batkivschyna party.

Ukraine's intellectuals said they did not recognize "the unjust decision of Kiev Court of Appeals which is controlled by the current president in the case of Yulia Tymoshenko and hoped that it will soon be overturned by the European Court of Human Rights."

The statement was signed by 23 representatives of the intellectual circles.

Those included social activist, Soviet dissident, Hero of Ukraine Ivan Dziuba, President of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy National University Vyacheslav Briukhovetsky, writers Yuriy Andrukhovych, Roman Ivanichuk, Maria Matios, Yuriy Mushketyk, Dmytro Pavlychko, Vasiyl Shkliar and others.

Azerbaijan Buys 95 Missiles From Ukraine

2012-01-01T03:57:00.000-08:00

AKU, Azerbaijan -- Ukraine, which is one of the biggest arms producers in the post-soviet area, exported 2097 various missiles in 2005-2010.
According to the report of UN Register of Conventional Arms, Ukraine took the 2nd place after Russia in exporting various missiles and portable anti-aircraft missiles.

Ukraine exported the above-mentioned weapons to 11 countries.

China takes the 1st place in the list with 953 missiles, US is the 2nd (692 missiles).

Russia is the 3rd (100 missiles), Azerbaijan is the 4th (95 missiles), and Algeria is the 5th (76 missiles).

Besides, during the reporting period Ukraine sold 60 various and portable anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, 54 missiles to the United Kingdom, 50 missiles to Kazakhstan, 18 missiles to Belarus, 14 missiles to Italy, 9 to Slovakia.

During the reporting period Ukraine sold 64 R-27 “air-air” missiles, 3 9R129-1M and “Tochka-U” tactical missile complex, 18 9M36-1 “Strela-3” and 10 9P58M “Strela-3” portable anti-aircraft missile system to Azerbaijan.

Ukraine Asks For $9 Billion Gas Discount From Russia To Form Joint Transit Consortium

2012-01-01T03:56:00.000-08:00

NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia -- Kiev is seeking a $9 billion annual gas discount to reach agreement with Moscow on operating the Ukrainian gas transportation system, Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said on Friday.
At their ongoing gas price talks, Moscow and Kiev have been recently discussing the possibility of creating a joint venture to operate the Ukrainian gas transportation system, a core transit route for Russian natural gas supplies to Europe.

"Our Ukrainian counterparts raised the question of a discount for gas prices during the talks. If we calculate a volume of 40 billion cubic meters, the volume which Ukraine has to buy as part of the terms of the current contract, the discount may be about $9 billion annually," Miller told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine has long been seeking to alter the terms of the 2009 gas deal it signed with Russia.

The deal ties the price of gas to oil prices, which have risen strongly since 2009, boosting Ukraine's gas bill. Kiev insists on reducing both the price and the volume of gas imports.

Miller also said Ukraine estimated the value of its gas transportation system at $20 billion.

"Our Ukrainian friends mentioned the that they value their gas transportation system at $20 billion. It is a big sum taking into account that we will have to spend large amounts on its modernization," Gazprom CEO said, adding that the upgrade might cost from two to eight billion euros.

Putin told Miller the talks to form the consortium should be continued as gas supplies through the Ukrainian gas transportation system will be in demand amid rising gas consumption in Europe.

Moscow initiated the South Stream gas pipeline project to diversify Russian gas routes away from transit countries such as Ukraine.

Russia plans to launch South Stream, intended to carry Russian natural gas to Europe along the Black Sea bed, in 2015.

The pipeline will transport up to 63 billion cubic meters of gas to central and southern Europe.

Putin also ordered faster construction of the pipeline and the start of its underwater section by the end of 2012, not in 2013 as previously planned.

Ukraine Ex-PM Tymoshenko Moved To Jail-Prison Service

2012-01-01T03:55:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of office, has been moved to prison from a detention center where she has been held since early August, the state penitentiary service said on Friday.

he move indicated she was unlikely to go free any time soon despite pressure from the European Union, which considered her trial politically motivated and put off the signing of key agreements with Ukraine because of her sentence.

Tymoshenko is the fiercest opponent of President Viktor Yanukovich, who narrowly beat her in the presidential run-off in February 2010 after losing his earlier bid for the presidency because of the 2004 "Orange Revolution" protests which she led.

A local court sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison in October, saying she had exceeded her powers when forcing through a 2009 gas deal with Russia.

Tymoshenko, who denies any wrongdoing, lost an appeal against the verdict one week ago.

"Tymoshenko has been moved to a prison in the Kharkiv region," the state penitentiary service said in a statement.

The European Union, which had planned to initial agreements on political association and free trade with Ukraine at a summit this month, put off the signing and cited Tymoshenko's case as an example of selective justice in the former Soviet republic.

Yanukovich has refused to intervene and the parliament, dominated by his supporters, has turned down several proposals to remove her alleged offence from the criminal code.

Tymoshenko's lawyers say she hopes that the European Court for Human Rights, where she has filed a case against Ukraine, will exonerate her.

The court said this month it would fast-track the case.

Tymoshenko, 51, has been suffering from back pains in the last few weeks and cannot walk, according to her lawyers who have said she should not be moved from the detention center because of this.

But the penitentiary service said she was fit to move.
"Before departure, Tymoshenko was examined by doctors who stated that her health allowed her to be moved," it said, adding that Tymoshenko travelled in a "comfortable" van.

Five Killed In Donetsk Armed Bank Robbery

2012-01-01T03:52:00.000-08:00

DONETSK, Ukraine -- Five employees of Ukraine’s largest bank, PrivatBank, were killed on Thursday in downtown Donetsk during an armed robbery, with the attackers escaping and fleeing the scene.
The attack, which appears to be the worst strike against a commercial bank in Ukraine’s modern history, is the third armed robbery in Donetsk in just four weeks.

“We are in deep shock over such a cruel crime,” Oleksandr Dubilet, the head PrivatBank, said in a statement issued by the bank.

“It is for the first time in our history that we face such a cruelty.”

Police declined to comment on the attack, but PrivatBank, in a statement issued earlier in the day, said the employees were killed by the attackers in “cold blood.”

“The bank's office in the center of Donetsk was robbed by a group of armed criminals in the afternoon on December 29,” PrivatBank said in a statement.

“The attackers, in cold blood, killed five bank employees who died of gunshot wounds at the scene."

The developments underscore a spectacular failure by police and law enforcement authorities for weeks to contain violence and crime in the city that is known to be the stronghold of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Donetsk, which is tightly controlled by Yanukovych allies, is also the home for Ukraine’s wealthiest person, Rinat Akhmetov, whose businesses, ranging from steel and mining, to telecommunications, and finance, are also based in the city.

Vasyl Farynnyk, the chief of the main investigation department at the Interior Ministry, told Ukrayinski Novyny news agency that a team of investigators from Kiev had been dispatched to Donetsk to help local police with the investigation.

PrivatBank offered a reward of 1 million hryvnias ($123,000) for assistance in uncovering the crime.

"PrivatBank declared December 30 a day of mourning for its employees killed at the hands of bandits,” the bank said.
“PrivatBank will provide overall assistance to Interior Ministry agencies to investigate all of the circumstances of the tragedy."

The latest attack is the third violent attack on a bank in Donetsk over the past four weeks.

The previous attack, on a branch of Credit Agricole, a French banking group’s subsidiary in Ukraine, left three people wounded, with one later dying of the wounds.

The attackers are believed to have stolen 1.5 million hryvnias ($185,000) - in different currencies - from Credit Agricole.

About 11,000 hryvnias ($1,353) were stolen by a group of armed robbers from a commercial bank in Donetsk in early December with no injuries reported.

EU-Ukraine Pact Finalized But Won’t Be Ratified Because Of Former PM Tymoshenko Case

2011-12-21T03:37:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The European Union on Monday balked at signing a landmark cooperation agreement with Ukraine over the jailing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in a move that could push Kiev back into Russia’s orbit as it lobbies Moscow for cheaper gas prices.
EU President Herman van Rompuy said that the long-awaited deal outlining political and economic cooperation between Kiev and Brussels has been finalized, but its signing hinges on Tymoshenko’s fate.

“We want to take steps to sign and ratify the agreement as soon as we can, but this would depend on political circumstances,” van Rompuy said at the end of an EU-Ukraine summit.

“In this regard, a number of recent domestic developments in Ukraine have led to a difficult atmosphere between the European Union and Ukraine.”

“Our strong concern is primarily related to the politically motivated justice in Ukraine and the Tymoshenko case.”

The EU and the United States have strongly condemned the October sentencing of Tymoshenko, now the top opposition leader, to seven years in prison on charges of abuse of office as politically motivated and demanded her release.

Tymoshenko, who became an opposition leader after losing the premiership in 2010, was found guilty of overstepping her authority while negotiating a natural gas import contract with Russian in 2009.

She charges that her longtime foe, President Viktor Yanukovych, has ordered her imprisonment in order to bar her from elections.

Yanukovych has defied Western pressure to release Tymoshenko, saying prosecutors and courts acted independently in her trial.

Moreover, Tymoshenko has been charged and investigated in scores of new criminal cases since her imprisonment and a court ordered her indefinite arrest as part of new probe, even if her current jail term is overturned.

Ukrainian and EU officials had long planned to sign the agreement during Monday’s summit.

Yanukovych expressed hope on Friday that the deal would be signed.

The failure to sign it comes as major disappointment for Yanukovych, who has made membership in the 27-nation bloc a top priority.

Tymoshenko’s jailing has presented the EU with a dilemma.

Some experts believe the bloc should not be partners with a government that throws opposition leaders in jail.

Others say that snubbing Ukraine would push it back under Russia’s influence as Kiev is courting Moscow for cheaper natural gas.

Yanukovych reiterated Monday that Kiev is seeking a lower price and expressed hope that a new deal would be reached soon.

High-level talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials are expected this week.

Von Rompuy also called on Ukraine to implement legal reforms, ensure media and civic freedoms and conduct a clean parliamentary election next year.

“The key to strengthening our relations is in the hands of the Ukrainian authorities,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said at a joint press conference at the end of the summit.

Law On Land Market May Damage Ukraine's Investment Climate, Says Expert

2011-12-21T03:36:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The law on the land market, which was passed in first reading by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, on December 9, 2011, might negatively affect the investment climate in Ukraine and form a caste of speculators on the land market, President of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club Association Alex Lissitsa has told a press conference hosted by Interfax-Ukraine on December 16.

"In my opinion, the bill that was passed last week can be described only as 'cheap populism.' We don't understand where our agrarian policy is moving and where will we find ourselves on some ten years," he said.

The expert stressed that the bill that prohibits sale of farming land to legal entities, restricts sales of farming land to 100 hectares, and limits leasing of land to 6,000 hectares in one district and not more than 5% of farming land on one region will have negative effect for development of the country's agroindustrial segment.

Lissitsa said that significant investments, both foreign and domestic, have been made in Ukraine's economy over the recent five years.

In particular, direct foreign investments in the agrarian segment in 2004-2010 amounted to $834 million.

"It's very difficult to understand whether these investments will be directed to the agrarian segment in the next five or six years. We know perfectly well that the state does not have funds for the agrarian segment, unlike the European Union [which invests EUR 52 billion]," he said.

In addition, according to Lissitsa, the current version of the bill on the land market may lead to the formation of "a caste of speculators" on the land market.

He noted that this version of the bill contains a provision under which only those people who submitted declarations on incomes earlier will have the right to buy 100 hectares of land.

"This means that owners of homestead land plots or private economies, who never submitted declarations on incomes, will be unable to buy land. As a result, a caste of speculators will appear that will buy 100 hectares of land and lease it to big agrarian companies," he said.

As reported, the Verkhovna Rada, passed in first reading a bill on the land market on December 9, 2011 and prolonged the moratorium on the sale of land until January 1, 2013.

Authorities Find Ukrainian Activists Allegedly Kidnapped, Terrorized In Belarus

2011-12-21T03:34:00.002-08:00

MINSK, Belarus -- Belarusian police have located three female activists from the Ukrainian women's rights group, FEMEN, who say they were abducted and terrorized by security forces after they staged one of their signature topless protests against the regime of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Minsk on Monday.
Belarusian service reports that the women, who were found in the Yelsk district of the country's southeastern Gomel oblast, were taken to a local hospital for medical examinations.

They are now said to be at a local police station.

A correspondent for the Belarusian state news agency BelaPan reported that doctors observed bruises on the women's hands and other parts of their body.

The women told journalists at the scene that on the evening of their protest, December 19, they were at a Minsk bus station when six men abducted them and brought them to a forest far from the capital.

They repeated details about their ordeal that FEMEN's leader, Anna Hutsol, had told RFE/RL earlier in the day from Kiev.

"They are alive but not in good health. They are very scared. They were detained by the KGB yesterday. They drove them around in a car all night, then brought them to the woods, poured oil on them, threatened to set them on fire, threatened them with a knife, cut their hair with a knife, videotaped everything, and then left them in the woods."

Hustol identified the three women as Alexandra Nemchinova, Oksana Shachko, and Inna Shevchenko and said the KGB seized their documents.

Aleksei Emelyanenko, a spokesperson the Ukrainian Embassy in Minsk, told RFE/RL that the women's identities could not immediately be confirmed.

"We hope to be able to return them to Ukraine soon and from our side, we will continue to follow their situation," he said.

Earlier in the day, Kiev sent its embassy consul in Minsk to the region to investigate the story.

He later met with the activists.

RFE/RL's Belarusian service spoke to people in Byaki, the village where the women were found.

They said the women told them that after being terrorized in the woods, their captors had brought them to the nearby border with Ukraine and ordered them to cross it.

The women instead made their way to the village, where a local resident took them in.

A man who gave his name as Yuri told RFE/RL that he had lent the activists his mobile phone so they could reach Hutsol.

The Belarusian authorities have not publicly commented on the women's allegations.

But earlier today, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Dikusarov told RFE/RL that officials in Minsk said no one had detained the activists and the women had left the city voluntarily.

FEMEN, which claims to have hundreds of members and thousands of supporters, formed in 2008 to protest discrimination against women in what the group describes as Ukraine's patriarchal post-Soviet society.

Its members' signature strategy of protesting topless has earned the group admiration and ridicule, and no shortage of headlines.

The group's agenda has expanded from protesting domestic inequalities to championing international causes.

In June, FEMEN activists wore hijabs, the traditional Muslim headscarf, but nothing on top, at a protest in front of Kiev's Saudi Arabian Embassy over Riyadh's ban on women drivers.

They've also stopped traffic in Zurich and caused a stir at the Vatican.

Earlier this month, FEMEN attempted to stage a protest in Moscow before Russia's parliamentary elections, but were quickly overpowered by security guards.

On Monday, the one-year anniversary of Belarus's disputed presidential election, the activists gathered in front of the KGB headquarters in Minsk to express solidarity with the demonstrators, politicians, and journalists who were detained in the ensuing protests and government crackdown.

Bare-chested and wearing fake Lukashenka-style moustaches, the women held placards that read, "Freedom to Political Prisoners" and "Long Live Belarus," a mantra of the protest movement.

One FEMEN member painted a red star on her stomach and partially shaved her head in imitation of Lukashenka's receding hairline.

Several journalists were arrested while attempting to cover the group's demonstration.

While FEMEN's activities are largely tolerated in Ukraine, all signs of dissent are quickly quashed under the Lukashenka regime.

To intimidate activists and protesters, security forces have used tactics similar to what FEMEN says happened to its three members.

Ukrainian human rights activist Yevhen Zakharov told RFE/RL that if the group's claims are confirmed, those responsible must be held accountable.

"If this information is confirmed and it is in fact torture [used against FEMEN activists in Belarus], then Ukraine should demand the punishment of the law-enforcement officers responsible for it. If that is not done, then measures of diplomatic pressure should be taken against Belarus. In my view, this cannot be left without a response," he said.

Hutsol, meanwhile, pledged to take matters into her own hands if necessary.

"We'll do everything to have the Belarusian ambassador to Ukraine deported from here," she said from Kiev. "If he doesn't leave tomorrow, we'll take him to the woods ourselves and shave his head."

Topless Protest Group Claims Belarus Police Abuse

2011-12-21T03:34:00.001-08:00

MINSK, Belarus -- A Ukrainian organization of topless women activists says three of its members were abducted by security officers during a protest against Belarus authoritarian president, beaten, humiliated and left naked in a forest.

The group, called FEMEN, is widely known in Ukraine and neighboring countries for its demonstrations in which women bare their breasts to draw attention to an array of causes.

A statement on FEMEN's website Tuesday says the three were seized by agents of the Belarusian KGB at Minsk's train station on Monday evening, several hours after they held a protest against President Alexander Lukashenko.

FEMEN said they were blindfolded and driven in a bus to the Gomel region, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) southeast of the capital.

There, they were taken to a forest, beaten and forced to undress, doused with oil and threatened with being set on fire.

Their captors hacked off their hair with knives and turned them loose in the woods, the group said.

The women were able to walk from the forest to a nearby village, the statement said.

"They were able to telephone and told me they were in awful condition, barely alive," the group's leader Anna Gutsol told The Associated Press.

A spokesman for the KGB, Alexander Antanovich, declined to comment on the allegation.

The three had bared their breasts on the steps of the KGB headquarters in Minsk on Monday in a demonstration against Lukashenko on the first anniversary of his re-election.

Agents quickly broke up that demonstration and arrested several journalists and FEMEN's Australian videographer Kitti Green, but the three activists were able to flee, FEMEN said.

It said Green was deported to Lithuania.

Lukashenko has repressed opposition and independent media since becoming leader of the former Soviet republic in 1994.

In December 2010 elections, he was declared winner of a new term, but tens of thousands of protesters assembled to denounce alleged vote fraud.

Police harshly broke up that demonstration and arrested around 700 people, some of whom remain in jail including two of the candidates who opposed Lukashenko.

Ukraine Is Still Searching For An Identity

2011-12-21T03:32:00.000-08:00

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Ukrainians had a number of reasons to celebrate this year. They commemorated the twentieth anniversary of their country’s independence — declared by parliament in August 1991 — and its first manifestation of universal suffrage when in December of that same year roughly 90 percent of the population backed the parliament’s declaration.

Ukrainians had high hopes for a democratic and prosperous future.

However, two decades on, the direction their country will take is still far from clear.

While many observers would like to attribute this stagnation to ineffective politicians or the population’s flawed mentality, the roots of Ukraine’s problems run deeper.

The source of Ukraine’s problems lies in the country’s Soviet legacy and the consequent lack of a national narrative and identity.

This explains the chaotic nature of Ukrainian politics as well as the population’s alienation from the state.

Politicians are seemingly the only beneficiaries of the status quo, as it grants them virtual immunity to rob their own country.

Ukrainian independence happened by and large by default.

Few observers would argue that it was the result of popular desire or a long-term struggle on behalf of the nation’s elite.

Ukraine’s leadership — largely former communist party members — had to bring the country out of a massive economic downturn while simultaneously building the state and its institutions.

In effect, they had to build the ship while it was sailing.

Issues of national identity were therefore largely ignored in the 1990s.

It was difficult to find a unifying narrative for a population that had been brought together within the same borders for the first time in history and that comprised numerous different cultural, linguistic, and religious backgrounds as well as diverging historical outlooks.

There were subsequent efforts to forge a Ukrainian national identity based on language and culture.

This started with a process of “silent Ukrainianization” during Leonid Kuchma’s second presidency — from 1999 to 2005 — when the Ukrainian language began to play a more prominent role in education and the public sector.

It proceeded with “imposed Ukrainianization” during Viktor Yuschenko’s presidency from 2005 to 2010.

This process, however, was not well received in certain parts of the country.

While many eastern and southern Ukrainians did not object to western Ukrainian language and culture, they did not want these to be imposed upon them.

The current president, Viktor Yanukovych, is therefore making concerted efforts to reverse both the subtle and harsher policies of his predecessors.

Despite numerous declarations to the contrary, Ukraine’s elite has little vision for the country’s future.

No single politician or political party has yet suggested a narrative capable of unifying all Ukrainians.

Even the Euro 2012 European Football Championship, which was touted as an opportunity to unite the nation, has resulted in little more than oligarchs across Ukraine replenishing their coffers courtesy of the state.

Political parties still prefer to identify with either eastern or western Ukraine, with no single party drawing strong support across the country.

Parties continue to exploit divisions between east and west, or Ukrainian and Russian speakers, and still rely on pro-Western or pro-Russian rhetoric during elections.

Politicians fight for power to ensure their own personal enrichment, while Ukrainians are left to fend for themselves.

The population’s view of their country’s future is no clearer.

The situation in Ukraine differs significantly from that in Poland.

In the 1990s, Poles wanted to embrace democracy and the market economy and to reintegrate with Europe, which they saw as their traditional home.

Ukrainians lack a similar sense of purpose as a nation.

They are ambitious and want to be a strong nation, but in reality they are disappointed and disillusioned after twenty years of independence.

Ukrainians are still in favor of independent statehood.

According to the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, if a referendum were to be held this year, 83 percent of Ukrainians would support independence.

This support has fluctuated over the years, yet it has never dropped below 50 percent.

Moreover, these fluctuations should be attributed to the public’s disillusionment with Ukraine’s politics rather than skepticism toward the meaning and value of the country’s statehood.

Few Ukrainians have any faith in the institutions of their government.

According to the Razumkov Centre, a Kiev-based think tank, only 6.5 percent of Ukrainians fully support their government.

Ten percent support the president, 5.3 percent support the parliament, while a paltry 4.2 percent support the judiciary.

Alarmingly, only 2.2 percent of those interviewed trust the political parties in Ukraine.

Nor do many Ukrainians believe in their own power.

Prior to the presidential elections in 2010, nearly 85 percent of voters felt disenchanted with those in office and nearly 60 percent had little faith that the election would bring positive change.

Additionally, nearly 50 percent of Ukrainian voters believed that their participation in elections would have no impact on government policies or the future of the country.

There is still a gap between western and eastern Ukraine.

However, this gap does not pose a significant threat to the country’s statehood.

While there are still differences between the eastern and western, and central and southern, regions of the country, there are also a number of shared traits.

According to the Sofia Centre, an independent think tank in Kiev, Ukrainians are individualistic, preferring to distance themselves from society.

As in Soviet times, they have little trust in their fellow citizens and prefer to rely on kinship and friendship networks.

By and large the kitchen remains the primary forum for Ukrainians to express their patriotism and discuss their problems — involvement in the public sphere of politics is comparatively rare.

Although Ukrainians still look to the state to provide public goods and services, if and when the state fails, they are used to ignoring or giving in to corruption to satisfy their needs.

With politicians serving their own interests and the population fighting for survival, Ukraine has nowhere to go but down without a change.

The issue of a national narrative and national identity, therefore, becomes more vital.

While uniting Ukraine around language, culture, or history may prove to be elusive, focusing on building a political nation could provide a solution.

The basis for this alternative is already in place.

Ukrainians from Donetsk to Lviv to Simferopol, and to Kiev have already identified themselves as holders of Ukrainian passports.

The Orange Revolution brought Ukrainians to life as a nation.

However, the mistakes of that moment in the country’s history should not be repeated.

Relying on a single politician to sort out all of Ukraine’s problems is no longer an option.

The same goes for external support.

The West cannot help Ukraine and its people find direction and purpose.

Nation-building cannot be imposed through a top-down process, nor can it be brought about by spontaneous grassroots movements or a popular revolt.

A society-wide discussion is needed to establish the parameters of any future political nation.

The building of such a nation is a prerequisite for building a multicultural, multiethnic, and otherwise diverse Ukraine.

The question of who will lead this grand debate and reach out to the disillusioned Ukrainian population, though, remains unanswered.

Ukraine's Political Priority Still Unclear After Summit With EU

2011-12-21T03:29:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine on Monday hosted the 15th annual summit with European Union (EU) leaders aiming at deepening cooperation.
he political situation, economic relations, mobility issues and regional and international relations were decided as priority topics on the agenda.

But the main issue for Kiev was signing an Association Agreement (AA) -- the deal that was to take Ukraine a step closer to membership of the 27-nation bloc.
Ukraine's EU bid, which was repeatedly declared by the authorities, has been shaken after the conference.

The delegates to the summit did not as planned sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, which includes arrangements for a free trade area and a roadmap for abolishing the visa regime for Ukrainian citizens due to unresolved political issues.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy told the summit that EU was concerned about the politicization of Ukraine's court systems, and the lack of freedom of speech and assembly.

Though EU hopes to carry out steps toward signing the association agreement as quickly as possible, but this, he said will depend on political circumstances in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, for his part, was tolerant after the meeting, saying that Ukraine was satisfied with the results of the forum.

He added that that Ukraine would continue comprehensive transformations in the country, and confirmed that both parties agreed to speed up preparation of the text of the Agreement for initialing.
he deepening relations between the EU and Ukraine is in the interests of both parties.

For Ukraine, it is advantageous from an economic point of view, as well as political one.

The European Union market is the largest in the world.

It covers 27 countries with more than 500 million consumers with an average annual income of about $40,000 U. S. dollars.

This is a good foreign outlet for Ukrainian goods. Ukraine is already in Europe geographically, therefore, the visa-free regime will be very useful for tourists from Ukraine.

In addition, partnership with such a strong player in the international arena will bring political dividends to Ukraine.

These factors together will raise the prestige of Yanukovych and the ruling Party of Regions, before the Parliament elections in October 2012.

At the same time, Ukraine is a big and geo-strategically important state for Europe.

Brussels wants Kiev to become its strategic partner to increase its influence in Eastern Europe.

Ukraine attaches great importance to its European identity, especially those Ukrainians living in Western regions.

According to a poll conducted by the Kiev-based International Institute of Sociology in October, 33 percent of Ukrainians want to enter the EU.

But at the same time, there are more pro-Russian citizens in Ukraine.

Forty-five percent of Ukrainians support joining the Russian-led Customs Union.

There is no doubt that all of them will support Ukraine entering the Eurasian Union, if it is created.

After the Association Agreement signing was delayed on Monday, Ukraine seems to be more interested in economic integration with Russia rather than with the European Union, which constantly creates new requirements for Ukraine.

After the controversial outcome of the summit, Russia is likely to try to strengthen its cooperation with Kiev, because Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sees Ukraine as a crucial part of his plan to reintegrate former Soviet republics into a new Eurasian union that would rival the EU.

Moscow is seeking to allure Ukraine into the Eurasian Union with cheaper gas and other financial benefits, which is very important for Kiev.

Modifying the unfavorable gas deals of 2009 is in Ukraine's priority interest.

In addition, Moscow is not as critical as the EU in the so-called "freedom questions."

It is always very hard to make political forecasts, but most likely frustration at the EU summit will push Ukraine towards Moscow.

Where this will eventually lead remains to be seen.

However, one thing is for sure: the side that would be the first to understand the political importance of Ukraine and propose Kiev a really advantageous cooperation will benefit.

Bonuses still to be had for Russia’s workers

2011-12-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

Many employees will receive bonuses this year despite a grim economic outlook, says a study commissioned from the Headhunter staffing agency.

The company surveyed 2,300 personnel, 150 HR directors and heads of companies as part of the study. The decision to pay bonuses had already been taken by 41 percent of companies, of which 22 percent were planning to pay bonuses to all their staff members and 19 percent only to those “who were particularly successful at work,” . Thirteen percent said only management would be receiving an extra payment.

The situation concerning bonuses has returned to pre-crisis levels,” quoted the head of Headhunter, Yury Virovets, as saying on Friday. “For the first time since the crisis businesses have started to notice a shortage of workers and companies are trying in any way hold onto people, including via bonuses.”

Last year, 30 percent of companies surveyed paid bonuses, 19 percent only paid outstanding workers and 16 percent gave bonuses only to management. Twenty-seven percent did not paying any bonuses at all, compared with 25 percent this year.

Superjob.ru conducted a similar survey in November. Results from the 1,600 people surveyed indicated that 16 percent of companies were planning on paying bonuses to all their employees, while a further 24 percent were planning on paying bonuses to selected workers. All the results match last year’s figures.

Headhunter’s survey also looked into the size of the bonuses. One-third of bonuses paid were an extra month’s wages, 22 percent paid from one to three months’ wages in the form of a bonus and 5 percent paid more than three month’s wages. The remainder was undetermined.

The financial situation has, nonetheless, led to uncertainty. Forty-seven percent of workers surveyed by Headhunter said that they did not know yet whether they would be receiving anything extra this year.

“This is a big problem for employers -- they are stretching out till the end of the year the announcement about annual bonuses," said Virovets. He added that waiting until the very last moment was problematic: "Such a state of suspense, degenerates into alarm and eventually pushes the worker to seek a more transparent company."

Major Moscow road closed before New Year’s rush

2011-12-18T06:41:00.002-08:00

Moscow authorities started a major reconstruction of one of the city’s busiest roads Novoryazanskoye Shosse right before New Year’s peak traffic flows.

The reconstruction practically blocked the road and limited it to two lanes, Vesti-Moskva reported.

Due to the road works, traffic has been gridlocked on Ural federal road, in the Moscow region towns of Lyubertsy, Dzerzhinsky and Kotelniki.

The reconstruction is set to last for two years.

The traffic is set to get much worse with many Moscow region residents coming into Moscow during the New Year’s rush.

Traffic police offered alternate routes, but drivers are complaining that they are too long and inconvenient.

Putin may face 'vote fraud' questions at annual Q&A

2011-12-18T06:41:00.001-08:00

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin holds his annual Q&A session with the nation on Thursday amid public anger over alleged vote fraud on behalf of his United Russia party.

The Q&A session will begin at noon Moscow time (8:00 am GMT) and will be broadcast live on state television and radio stations.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has said that the prime minister will answer "real questions from real people" during the live session.

Peskov also said public figures who have “their own civil stance and opinion, which may not always coincide with that of the government,” will be present at the Q&A session.

Last weekend saw the largest anti-government protests in Russia for almost two decades, as thousands marched to demand new parliamentary polls. Putin has said the protests were encouraged by the United States, in particular U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A new mass rally is due to take place in Moscow on Dec. 24.

Both Russian and international observers reported numerous violations during the Dec. 4 polls, including ballot-staffing and other fraud cases. United Russia was declared to have won the elections with almost half of the vote.

President Dmitry Medvedev has pledged that allegations of electoral fraud will be investigated.

This will be Putin’s tenth live Q&A session since 2001, when he first answered questions on air. Last year, it took the premier a record 4.5 hours to answer a total of 90 questions, 31 of which he selected himself.

Russians have been invited to submit their questions for the session via the internet and text messages. Phone calls will also be taken during the broadcast.

Boxer Weighs Into Kiev Politics

2011-12-18T06:38:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- He is the heavyweight champion of the world, but the fight for Ukraine’s future may turn out to be the toughest contest of Vitali Klitschko’s career.

“It is a big challenge to build European and democratic standards here in Ukraine,” Mr Klitschko said in an interview .

“But I know that if you don’t fight you won’t win. If it is necessary for me to quit my boxing career to win this fight for Ukraine’s future, I will do it.”

The towering fighter may look awkward shaking hands with the likes of Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. But he might just have the right balance of brawn, brain and backing from voters to succeed in the ring of Ukrainian politics.

“Of course, people know me first as a boxer,” Mr Klitschko told “[But] is there a school that produces politicians? Anyone who has the honest desire to do good for their people and country can and should be a politician.”

Most Ukrainians desperately want reform that would combat widespread corruption and bring higher living standards.

They see the promise of closer relations with the European Union as a step in that direction.

But the ever more authoritarian and kleptocratic nature of the country under President Viktor Yanukovich is putting EU integration and the nation’s fragile democracy at risk.

At an EU summit on Monday, talks on a broad framework for relations with Ukraine that encompasses a trade deal are likely to be overshadowed by dismay at the opposition’s treatment.

For these reasons, Mr Klitschko’s Udar (Punch) party is expected to enter Ukraine’s national parliament for the first time after elections next autumn.

“When a leading opposition figure lands in prison, it smells like dictatorship,” Mr Klitschko said, referring to the seven-year jail sentence handed to Mr Yanukovich’s main rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, in October.

Vitali, 40, is the elder brother of 35-year-old Wladimir Klitschko.

The two have in recent years dominated heavyweight boxing and between them hold all the main boxing belts in their weight class.

They are respected at home and recognised abroad, often acting as informal ambassadors for their country.

They command a big following in Germany, having trained and boxed there for more than a decade.

But Vitali is not your typical slugger.

He has a PhD in sports science, is softly spoken and witty.

He speaks English, German, Ukrainian and Russian fluently.

“I am drawn to politics because, although Ukraine has vast potential, it has struggled to break free of massive cronyism and corruption under existing politicians, to establish a vibrant democracy where any citizen has a fair chance to prosper,” he said.

As in boxing, where he patiently waits to unleash a big punch that has knocked out some of the world’s strongest men, Mr Klitschko said he knew how to pace himself in politics.

He entered public service soon after Ukraine’s 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution, which he and his brother supported.

In Kiev’s city council he leads a dozen lawmakers who consistently stand up against corruption.

His party holds about 400 seats on the councils of other Ukrainian cities.

Mr Klitschko has his eyes on winning Kiev’s next mayoral election, and his chances are considered good.

The key quality for a politician, according to Mr Klitschko, is “morality”. That is a view that strikes a chord with 46 million Ukrainian citizens who have long lost trust in mainstream politicians.

“Many are sitting and waiting for something to change, not doing anything and losing hope. I want to show the way and get results,” he said.

Asked if he would run for president, Mr Klitschko said his focus now was on defending Ukraine’s democracy and EU membership hopes.

Many of Ukraine’s politicians talked of European values but lived in ways that contradicted them, he said.

“In spending much time abroad during my sports career in Europe and the US, I have seen and experienced the values and living standards that exist there. My countrymen deserve to live this way too.”

EU Stalls Ukraine Trade Deal Over Tymoshenko Treatment

2011-12-18T06:37:00.000-08:00

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union will not formalise any deal it reaches with Ukraine at a summit on Monday, EU diplomats said on Friday, even as the country’s president expressed confidence that an agreement would in fact be signed.

At stake for Ukraine is an association agreement, a broad framework for relations that encompasses a free trade deal with the EU.

But this appears likely to be derailed by the EU’s dismay at the treatment of opposition figures in Ukraine, including jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

EU diplomats said it remained unclear if the text of the agreement would be concluded, and EU ambassadors had agreed at a meeting on Thursday they would not initial the deal even if it were finalised.

The two sides had concluded an integral text for the agreement but were still haggling over a clause in the preamble of the deal, said one EU official.

Ukraine wants this to confirm its identity as a European country and thus its eligibility for eventual EU membership, the EU diplomats said.

However, the EU wanted to see evidence of improvement in Ukraine’s treatment of political opponents.

“We have seen...a number of shortcomings throughout the whole cycle of the judicial process,” said one of the EU officials.

“It’s a systematic problem for which Yulia Tymoshenko has become a symbol.”

Any deal would still need to be ratified by parliaments of all the 27 EU states and the European Parliament before if could be implemented, a process that at the best of times can take many months.

However, President Viktor Yanukovich said Monday’s summit marked the culmination of four years negotiations and he expected it to be a success.

“We are geared up for the signing of the agreement on association with the European Union, which has recognized Ukraine’s right to become a full-fledged member of the European community,” he told the diplomatic community in Kiev on Friday.

Earlier this year, the two sides had looked to Monday’s summit to showcase the agreement.

But the EU side has recently been offering an ambiguous construction merely “noting the importance Ukraine attaches to its European identity”.

“We will have to see if Ukraine can accept that,” one diplomat said.

“If they do, the initialling can be done, but not during the summit, because we do not want to make it look like business as usual. The initialling could take place some days afterwards and before the year-end, but the pre-requisite is an agreement on the preamble.”

Progress needed

Diplomats said Ukraine would have to show clear progress in political reform and its treatment of opponents for all member states to agree to ratification.

“For our government we do not want to ratify, or sign, unless there is change in Ukraine’s internal politics,” one EU diplomat said.

Diplomats said a joint statement from the summit simply acknowledging the talks had been formally concluded may be the best that can come from the summit — but this would be tantamount to a diplomatic failure.

And it would come despite the fact Tymoshenko and her daughter have called for the process of concluding and signing the agreement to go ahead.

On Wednesday, her daughter Yevgenia, told Reuters the EU should sign, but impose sanctions on Ukrainian leaders.

Tymoshenko was jailed for seven years in October on charges of abuse of office.

She called the verdict a “lynching” by Yanukovich, her old political enemy, and the EU said it was politically motivated.

Her family and defence counsel say her health in prison is deteriorating and she is suffering skin problems and serious back pain requiring treatment and physiotherapy.

Is Ukraine Heading East?

2011-12-18T06:36:00.001-08:00

MOSCOW, Russia -- On the eve of an EU-Ukraine summit on December 19, Ukraine’s relations with Brussels are deteriorating.

EU officials have warned that the detention of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is damaging Kiev’s hopes of signing an Association Agreement by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is considering relinquishing a 50%-share of its pipelines to Russia for cheaper gas.

David Marples looks at the possible political direction Ukraine is headed for in 2012.

As Ukraine’s relationship with the EU continues to flounder over human rights issues, the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the lengthy detention of former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko, there are signs that the government is prepared to flout existing laws to gain closer association with Gazprom and the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

The consequences could be not only the loss of links with the European Energy Community (EEC) but also the undermining of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

On December 4, Russia’s Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov announced that the new gas agreement between the two states would have the status of an international agreement, rather than a business arrangement between the two responsible companies, Gazprom and Naftohaz.

The evident tolerance of the EU for the abuses of power in Kiev is, perhaps, even more important for the ruling party’s survival. Ukraine has not been subject to the kind sanctions the EU has applied in Belarus.

Russia is evidently responding to the EU’s plans for closer integration with Ukraine and greater transparency in the transit of gas from Russia to Western Europe.

Analyst Maksim Alinov argues that the results of the inter-state agreement proposed by the Russian ambassador would override current Ukrainian laws, which make it illegal to transfer Ukraine’s transit system to Russian control.

A similar sale to Gazprom occurred recently in Belarus.

In the Ukrainian weekly, Zerkalo Nedeli, Alinov writes that the flouting of the agreement in place would also give Russia significant influence over the internal economic and political situation in Ukraine.

In the same paper, analyst, Maksim Honchar, goes further, maintaining that Kiev’s apparent reversal of policy on the EEC would violate Article 7 of a 2010 legislation, which stipulates that Ukraine’s oil, gas, and electricity networks should operate in accordance with EU rules.

In his view this indicates a willingness to surrender national interests, which would be an even more serious threat to Ukraine’s pro-European policy than the imprisonment of Tymoshenko.

It would also strengthen considerably the position of Gazprom, a monopolist enterprise that seeks to deploy energy as an instrument of political control.

Honchar predicts that Ukraine could acquire cheap gas but at the price of gradually losing its sovereignty and the Association Agreement with the EU.

This, Honchar believes, would lead to an inevitable defensive alliance with Russia.

Meanwhile, the EU continues to demand the release of Tymoshenko as a prequel to the initializing of the Association Agreement, though with diminishing hopes and growing frustration.

Ukraine’s leaders are posing serious threats to the sovereignty of Ukraine, relinquishing hard-won rights for the immediate prospect of cheap gas and permitting a much more powerful role for Russian agencies like Gazprom to step in and purchase Naftohaz.

Wilfred Martens, President of the European People’s Party, stated that Ukraine, like Poland, could be an important EU player, and that without it, the EU project could not be complete.

He insisted, however, that as a prerequisite to the start of the process leading to the Agreement, Ukraine’s Party of Regions must release Tymoshenko, Lutsenko, and other political prisoners.

Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Hryshchenko has demurred, stating that Tymoshenko could not be used as a bargaining chip in trade relations and that her situation was a matter for the Ukrainian Judiciary.

He recently wrote, in the Ukrainian paper, Unian, that to do so would be tantamount to indicating that the latter is not an independent body.

Although Ukraine’s leadership faces several serious economic problems and recently, for a second time, rejected the IMF’s demand to raise energy prices, it does not seem to be facing a serious threat from the opposition.

Indeed, the political situation seems relatively unaffected by the Tymoshenko saga.

Analyst Kost Bondarenko maintains that the population has lost interest in the struggle between Tymoshenko and the ruling elite, while Vadim Karasev considers that the apparent lack of public sympathy for Tymoshenko reflects the general perception of her as a former representative of the political establishment.

This has proven to be a positive sign for the authorities and shows that the arrest of Tymoshenko has not affected ratings for the president and The Party of Regions.

Ratings polls show that Yanukovych remains the leading individual politician with ratings between 17.4 and 20.7%, whereas the ratings of Tymoshenko, the only serious contender, range from 13 to 14.1%.

Yatsenyuk in third place has, at most, 9.9% support. In short, with Tymoshenko out of the picture, there is no longer a serious contender from the opposition.

The ruling party seems to be calculating each step in a cynical fashion, taking action and then monitoring the response.

Vadim Karasev points out that the leadership thinks the release of Tymoshenko would be seen as a sign of weakness.

Ukrainian leaders are closely watching political events in Russia, where the rise of oppositional activities could have a domino effect in Ukraine.

Ratings polls show that Yanukovych remains the leading individual politician with ratings between 17.4 and 20.7%, whereas the ratings of Tymoshenko, the only serious contender, range from 13 to 14.1%.

Yatsenyuk in third place has, at most, 9.9% support.

In short, with Tymoshenko out of the picture, there is no longer a serious contender from the opposition.

The ruling party may also consider that in 2011 popularity might have been expected to drop because of the introduction of unpopular measures such as pension and taxation codes.

The party can expect even better fortune in the New Year, not least because Ukraine will host the UEFA Championship, Euro-2012.

The evident tolerance of the EU for the abuses of power in Kiev is, perhaps, even more important for the ruling party’s survival.

Ukraine has not been subject to the kind sanctions the EU has applied in Belarus.

Ukraine has moved rapidly from one of the most democratic of post-Soviet states to a position well down the scale.

At the same time the corruption that has long pervaded the Ukrainian economy has not diminished.

In a foreign policy report for the Brookings Institute, Former US ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer observed that the United States is preoccupied with other issues and unlikely to engage with Ukraine at the highest level until after the 2012 presidential election.

Thus Yanukovych and The Party of Regions effectively have carte blanche to continue their current path.

The EEC agreement appears to have been jettisoned.

For the second time since the January 2010 election (the first being the Kharkiv Accords on the Black Sea Fleet), Ukraine’s leaders are posing serious threats to the sovereignty of Ukraine, relinquishing hard-won rights for the immediate prospect of cheap gas and permitting a much more powerful role for Russian agencies like Gazprom to step in and purchase Naftohaz.

The next logical stage would be for Ukraine to join the Customs Union (with Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus).

Only a year ago that would have been unthinkable, but it is now a serious possibility.

Gazprom: No New Year's Gifts For Ukraine

2011-12-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Ukraine has long been seeking to alter the terms of the 2009 gas deal it signed with Russia.

The deal ties the price of gas to oil prices, which have risen strongly since 2009, boosting Ukraine's gas bill.

The contract says Ukraine must import no less than 33 billion cubic metres of gas from Russia, but Kiev is insisting on reducing both the price and the volume of gas imports.

Ukrainian Premier Mykola Azarov has stated that Kiev is ready to pay $400 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas if it fails to agree with Moscow on better terms for gas supplies.

"If we have to pay $400 for gas, we will pay it – we have no other choice," Azarov told reporters in Kiev on 13 December.

The government cannot delay the drafting of the 2012 national budget any longer, because it has to be adopted by the New Year, he said.

Azarov added that Ukraine-Russia negotiations had been going on in Moscow for two days.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced earlier last week, however, that "no New Year's presents" should be expected in bilateral talks on the reduction of the price for Russian natural gas.

Kommersant reported on 13 December that Gazprom might lower the gas price for Ukraine to $210-220 per 1,000 cubic metres if Kiev sold part of its gas transportation system to Moscow.

A similar scheme was adopted by the gas monopolist in early December, when it announced that it took control of Beltransgaz as part of a revised energy deal with Belarus.

The Ukraine- Russia deal would exclude European participation.

Miller met Ukrainian Energy Minister Yury Boiko on 12 December, Gazprom said in a statement.

Joint control of the transit pipelines, which carry Russian gas to Europe through the territory of the former Soviet republic, is seen as a way to preclude their use as a bargaining chip in price conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, which depends on Russia for almost all of its gas.

Direct European participation in a pipeline deal had appeared possible.

Azarov said earlier that they had discussed a 40-40 division of control between Russia and Ukraine, with a European entity as a third party.

Russia annually pumps around 100 billion cubic metres of gas to European countries via Ukraine, which makes up 80% of its total gas supplies to Europe.

Meanwhile, Naftogaz Deputy CEO Vadym Chuprun was quoted as saying by the press that Ukraine needs guarantees from Russia and the EU regarding gas transit across Ukrainian territory.

"It is impossible to preserve and maintain our gas transport system without Russian gas. Our national property - Ukraine's gas transport system - must be preserved, so it needs guaranteed volumes of gas. We need guarantees from Russia and from the European Union," Chuprun said, adding that it was possible to use the Ukrainian gas transport system in full with the trilateral participation of Ukraine, Russia and Europe.

"It can be used only at the trilateral level, with Russia being a supplier, Ukraine a transit country, and the European Union as a consumer, on such a solid basis," Chuprun said.

He added that the construction of gas pipelines bypassing Ukraine - Nord Stream and South Stream - posed a direct threat to Ukraine's transit potential.

"We are surprised that European officials have not responded to [the construction of South Stream or Nord Stream. And silence is a sign of consent. This is a serious signal to Ukraine. This is a direct threat to Ukraine's gas-transport system."

Chuprun said that the Ukrainian gas transport system had a unique potential and that it was economically more profitable than the construction of pipelines bypassing Ukraine.

"The cost of [the construction of ] South Stream is $27 billion. For the sake of momentary gain, in order to get lower gas prices, certain EU countries forget that in five years they will have to pay for this," he concluded.

No Association Deal Expected At EU Summit

2011-12-18T06:34:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine and the European Union will probably not initial a political association agreement at their Kiev summit on December 19, Leonid Kozhara, a lawmaker from the governing Regions Party, said Thursday, citing an undisclosed communication from Brussels.

The development would be a major setback for Ukraine’s declared policy of European integration and may potentially tilt the country towards greater cooperation with Russia.

“That’s true: the association agreement will not be initialed at the summit,” Kozhara said in an interview with Channel 5.

“Today we have received such information. Not even today, it existed before.”

Relations between Ukraine and the EU strained after Kiev has refused to release opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, who was arrested in August and sentenced in October to seven years in prison for abuse of office.

The EU said the arrest and the sentencing had been politically motivated and aimed against the opposition leader.

President Viktor Yanukovych on Thursday confirmed that the issue of Tymoshenko had been the main problem in relations between Ukraine and the EU.

“One of the issues that remain to be hot on agenda is the issue of former prime minister Tymoshenko,” Yanukovych said at a press conference in Kiev.

Ukraine and the EU were in talks for almost five years over the free trade agreement and the political association agreements, and both had been basically agreed upon except for the Tymoshenko issue.

Yanukovych said Thursday that Ukraine still hoped to achieve a “positive decision” at the summit in Kiev that would lead to singing of both agreements.

But not only the authorities refused to release Tymoshenko from jail, they moved last week to “re-arrest” her at a special court session from within her jail cell on other charges.

This makes her release impossible before the summit even if she wins an appeal against the seven-year verdict given her in October.

The “re-arrest” of Tymoshenko was sought by the security service SBU investigators and was based on the charges dating back more than 15 years ago.

The court session at bedside of Tymoshenko’s jail cell stunned many politicians and some alleged that the SBU may have been working to undermine the Ukraine-EU summit in order to change the country’s foreign policy towards Russia.

EU commissioner Stefan Fuele, the bloc's point man on Ukraine, was in Kiev on Tuesday to voice “serious concern” to Yanukovych over the jailing of Tymoshenko.

"I informed her about the EUs concerns regarding this process and assured her that we would continue to follow closely her appeal and would insist upon the need for her to benefit from of all her rights to defend herself in a fair process," Fuele said.

But the concerns expressed by the senior EU official did not stop the Ukrainian authorities from making just another controversial move against Tymoshenko, underscoring the lack of the rule of law and potentially undermining the summit.

Without her will, an undisclosed camera crew assisted by the authorities, filmed Tymoshenko lying in her jail cell bed and posted the controversial video on YouTube on Wednesday.

The leader of the camera crew introduced himself to Tymoshenko as the “colonel of SBU,” before he ordered the crew to continue shooting the video even as Tymoshenko had vehemently objected.

“I spoke with the Yulia Volodymyrivna today on this issue,” Serhiy Vlasenko, the leader of Tymoshenko’s defense team, said.

“She said the person had introduced himself as the colonel of SBU, and against her will they had started to film.”

Maryna Ostapenko, a spokeswoman at the SBU, on Thursday denied involvement of SBU agents in the filming of the video.

Weapons exports up by $1 billion

2011-12-10T05:53:00.000-08:00

Russia’s weapons export via the state Rosoboronexport enterprise grew by about $1 billion to reach $9.7 billion,citing Viktor Komardin, Rosoboronexport representative at the Lima-2011 weapons expo in Malaysia. He added that last year Rosoboronexport signed contracts worth $9.5 billion and “this year we will sign more.” He added that the enterprise’s portfolio of orders amounted to $36 billion.

Russia faces nationwide vote protests

2011-12-10T05:51:00.000-08:00

Voters took to the streets Saturday across Russia to protest elections they charge were rigged in favor of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, a mass demonstration of public anger not seen in years and a critical test for the country’s leadership.

The rolling, nationwide demonstrations came a day after Russian election authorities announced the final official results of legislative elections of December 4, giving United Russia 238 seats in the 450-seat State Duma with just under 50 percent of the popular vote.

Around 1,000 people rallied in the southern Siberian city of Barnaul while smaller crowds numbering in the hundreds turned out in the cities of Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok, Chita and Khabarovsk in eastern Russia, RIA Novosti correspondents reported from those cities.

The largest crowd however was expected in Moscow, where city officials gave permission for several demonstrations including one by those angry over the results of the elections for up to 30,000 people. A demonstration was also planned for Russia's second largest city of St. Petersburg.

As of 2:30 p.m. Moscow time (10:30 GMT), according to police reports, 15,000 of the expected 30,000 protesters have so far gathered at the venue in downtown Moscow.

Security was tight in the Russian capital, where several hundred people had gathered on a square near the Kremlin and planned to make their way to a different location further from the center of the city where the largest demonstration was to take place.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said ahead of the demonstrations that all Russians had the right to assemble and express their political views publicly, but warned that security forces would use “all legal methods” to maintain law and order.

The December 4 vote polarized Russian society, with Putin and supporters describing the outcome as a “real” reflection of the mood in the country while others – both Russian political activists and international observers – saying the vote was slanted in United Russia’s favor.

Although United Russia won nearly half the popular vote, the election was a huge setback for the “party of power” and Putin directly accused the United States of seeking to stir up trouble in Russian politics after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the conduct of the vote.

"People in our country don't want the situation in Russia to develop like it did in Kyrgyzstan and, not so long ago, in Ukraine," Putin said Thursday. "Nobody wants chaos."

He was referring to popular uprisings, referred to in Russia as “color revolutions,” that led to the downfall of leaders in both former Soviet republics and another, Georgia, which he did not mention.

Meanwhile, the Communist Party announced in a statement posted on its website Saturday that it does not recognize the results of the elections in many Russian regions, including the North Caucasus republics and the largest cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, citing massive violations there.

“We consider the vote illegitimate from the moral and political points of view,” the party’s presidium said in the statement.

Another political party, the liberal Yabloko party, separately vowed to contest the results of the December 4 elections in court.

Disgruntlement over the polls saw some 5,000 protesters rally in central Moscow on Monday. Demonstrations continued across Russia, although on a smaller scale, for the next two evenings.

Some 1,000 people have so far been detained in protests, police said, including influential blogger and opposition activist Alexei Navalny.

Navalny, along with another opposition leader, Ilya Yashin, was jailed for 15 days on Tuesday as a result of their participation in Monday’s unsanctioned protest.

The protests have been largely ignored by state-run televisions channels, which chose instead to broadcast images of United Russia supporters parading near the Kremlin. Demonstrations have been organized via Facebook and Vkontakte, a popular internet social networking site. Vkontakte’s founder, Pavel Durov, said this week he had refused a request by the security services to deactivate accounts belonging to opposition groups.

Are post-poll protests a Russian Spring?

2011-12-10T05:31:00.000-08:00

Are we witnessing a Russian Spring this winter? This is the question my US and European colleagues have been asking me over and over again in recent days.

I am not certain that developments in Russia will mirror those in the Arab world but one thing is certain - what we witnessed on 4 December was a return of live politics to Russia, a politics that everyone thought was comatose.

For a second day running, in Moscow and St Petersburg, we have witnessed the kind of pro-democracy rallies that the cities had not seen since the rough and tumble of the early 1990s. And, although the outcome is far from clear, a few things are already coming into focus.

This election turned out to be a de-facto referendum on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party and on his decade in power.

Even if we believe the official results to be without doubt - which they are definitely not - a very serious signal has been sent to the country's ruling class.

December's vote can be seen as a kind of "ground zero" for Russia's presidential elections, scheduled for March 2012.

Mr Putin is widely expected to be elected to his third term in power, but the Duma election has a cast a shadow.

If, in spring, Mr Putin goes into a kind of mock battle similar to those of most of the previous elections, he will lose even more credibility.

He could have gambled - opening the field to genuine competition and following a kind of Putin 2.0 strategy, a move his aides predict will happen eventually. However, if he does, he will have to opt for general liberalisation as opposed to cosmetic liberalisation, and be prepared to face a barrage of criticism.

Knowing the Russian leader, this is a very unlikely scenario. Mr Putin, it seems, will either have to crack down hard on dissent or face growing dissatisfaction among the masses and an increasing disappointment with his ability to control the situation from within the ruling class.

There are a few other new developments too. This was the final election in which state-controlled still TV has still played a decisive role. Internet penetration in Russia has already grown massively but, by 2016, when the next voting cycle starts, as much as 75% or 80% of voters will have online access.

And, although 80% or 90% of users surf the web in search of celebrity gossip, dating or bargains, politically-minded citizens now have a free platform to engage in debates and organise themselves.

Unmasking the vote-rigging would have been impossible without smartphones, Facebook and Twitter.

Online activism made offline self-organisation not only possible, but effective.

This is why it is possible that the government will attempt to introduce restrictive legislation around the internet - a development to watch in 2012.

This was also the first Russian election in which the country's nascent middle class - the self-sufficient, English-speaking, iPad-juggling 30-somethings - really went out to vote.

This is the generation which benefited from the oil boom of Mr Putin's presidency between 2000 and 2008.

But economic crisis, political stagnation and corruption has turned them against the regime.

These people are a minority, but an increasingly influential one in the big cities, which is where real politics happens in Russia.

These people are the future of Russia and the Kremlin has lost them, irrevocably.

While this may not be a Russian Spring quite yet, Russia's ruling class has been engulfed by a crisis of legitimacy and I cannot see it ending any time soon.

Russia poll protests and the last days of Soviet rule

2011-12-10T05:24:00.000-08:00

Since Russia's parliamentary elections last weekend, thousands of anti-government protesters have taken to the streets in Moscow to accuse Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party of rigging.

On 23 August 1989, two million Soviet citizens linked arms and formed a human chain - it stretched 640km (400 miles) from Estonia, through Latvia and into Lithuania.

The Baltic Chain was an astonishing act of defiance to Soviet rule. It was clear the three Baltic republics wanted out of the USSR.

A few days later I arrived in Moscow with a group of British students. As part of our Russian studies, we were going to be spending a year in the USSR.

It was an exhilarating time. Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform) were opening up what had been a tightly closed society, but at the same time the economy was collapsing. We were even given ration cards for buying sugar.

Having seen the Baltic Chain on television, I remember wondering could this be the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union? I soon dismissed the thought.

Everyone I talked to - Russian friends, teachers at the language institute - they all believed that yes, the USSR had its problems, but it was not in danger of disappearing. After all, it was a superpower.

Just two years later, communist hard-liners in Moscow botched their clumsy coup and 500,000 protesters took to the streets of Moscow and the empire collapsed.

I was back in the Russian capital on Christmas Day 1991, as the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin - to mark the official end of the USSR. The largest state on the planet had collapsed like a house of cards.

Putin's Russia is not Soviet Russia, but there is something oddly familiar about what is happening here today. A political system which had considered itself as solid as rock has begun to show cracks.

When Vladimir Putin came to power more than a decade ago, Russia was weak. So on the ruins of 70 years of communism and 10 years of wild capitalism, Mr Putin began to build his system. He called it "the vertical of power".

It was a pyramid - with an all-powerful Putin at the top, and everyone down below following orders.

This, he believed, was what Russia needed to ensure stability. Soon the state was back in control.

The powerful oligarchs had either fled abroad or pledged their loyalty or in the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky been put in jail.

The main TV channels had all been brought to heel. And Mr Putin's party, United Russia, had become the dominant force in what was widely seen as a rubber-stamp parliament.

The Kremlin spoke about "managed democracy". Opposition parties could take part in elections, but only those parties which the Kremlin saw as no real threat.

Vocal opponents of Mr Putin were pushed to the fringes, their parties denied registration. Anti-Putin street protests did happen, but they were tiny, and often ended in protesters being arrested. Vladimir Putin seemed in complete control.

Until last weekend's parliamentary elections.

Even in this system of "managed democracy", Mr Putin's party took a drubbing at the polls - officially it lost more than 70 seats. And that amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging across the country.

Online the blogopshere was bursting with talk of election fraud, from ballot-box stuffing to so-called "carousel voting" - people being driven from polling station to polling station to vote several times for the party of power.

There has been a surge of public anger - and the internet has been instrumental in channelling that and bringing protesters onto the streets.

Moscow this week has seen some of the largest anti-government demonstrations in years - a strange mixture of Russian nationalists and liberals calling for the election results to be annulled and for a fresh ballot.

At one protest on Tuesday I spoke to a student called Maria. Along with the crowd she was chanting "Russia without Putin".

It was the first time Maria had ever come out to protest against the countries' leader. "I'm tired of our government," Maria told me. "I'm tired of Putin. I want change."

Which is why this week I keep thinking about the Baltic Chain. And about what happened to the Soviet Union.

And I have been asking myself the same question I asked more than 20 years ago. Under pressure from the people, could the current system fall apart? How strong really is the vertical of power?

It may not be as strong as its architect would like to think.

This week I went along to a pro-Putin rally near Red Square. It came across as unspontaneous and unconvincing.

One of the crowd, a teenager called Sergei, said he and his friends had been bussed in specially from Samara - more than 800km (500 miles) away.

"But no one has told me anything,' Sergei admitted. "I've got no idea why I'm here.'

Uncertain World: Destructive Soviet Nostalgia

2011-12-10T04:32:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW, Russia -- Twenty years ago, on December 8, 1991, the leaders of the Soviet Union's Slavic republics – Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia – signed an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union.

Formally, they claimed the right to dissolve it because these three republics established it in 1922.

Many analysts still dispute the legitimacy of this deal, but that does not change anything.

By December 1991, the Soviet Union had de facto ceased to function, as power already belonged to its constituent republics.

The 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union evoked more lively debates than the tenth or 15th anniversaries.

This seems paradoxical – with the passage of time, emotions generally subside, giving way to more sober and unbiased analysis, all the more so since the Soviet past is no longer a functional tool capable of creating something new.

This anniversary brought into stark relief the divisions between Russia and the other former Soviet republics.

In Russia, people remember the collapse with mixed emotions.

Some feel sorrow and nostalgia, others feel joy and schadenfreude, but everyone perceives it as a loss.

The other republics, which are still called “newly independent states,” celebrate it as their birth, that is to say as something gained.

This conceptual difference existed before, but now it is acquiring a special meaning for Russia.

The fixation on collapse – an exclusively destructive act – is setting the tune for national development.

Luckily, Russia has never had strong revanchist attitudes, but it is still suffering from an inferiority complex in its current borders, although it is perfectly clear that nobody wants to restore the USSR.

Sorrow over the end of the Soviet Union primarily reflects the absence of a conceptual replacement for the former socio-political formation.

The ideological anti-communist revolution of the early 1990s, designed to discredit the Soviet model to the world once and for all, quickly came to a halt.

First, nobody found convincing and consistent arguments, without internal contradictions, that could be patiently and professionally introduced into the public consciousness.

Painting a picture of the horrible, totalitarian past was not as easy as it first seemed.

It was impossible to ignore the achievements of the Soviet era without putting oneself in a vulnerable position.

To this day, pro-Soviet demagogy easily prevails over anti-Soviet rhetoric.

Second, some manifestations of “real democracy” have been so repulsive that many have started looking at “real socialism” through rose-colored glasses.

Finally, the political class took up a completely different matter – trying to convert the credit of public trust into power and property for itself.

The reforms of the 1990s, primarily privatization, reached their real, as opposed to stated, goal, and returning to the Soviet economic model and politics became impossible.

Yet, the exploitation of nostalgic feelings for Soviet life became widespread – having started under Boris Yeltsin it flourished and became systemic under Vladimir Putin.

The collapse of the Soviet Union will remain in the center of public debate until it is replaced by a more meaningful subject.

And there are no signs of this replacement so far.

Modern Russia finds it hard to deal with anything related to “values,” which makes it unreasonable to hope for the formation of any ideological platform.

It is possible to artificially maintain interest in the Soviet Union for a long time, but in this case the public debate will be increasingly divorced from real politics and goals.

With the passage of time, the Soviet past will become increasingly distorted as in a crooked mirror, engendering a more counterproductive and inadequate public response.

For all the differences from other republics (and Russia is still the official successor of the USSR and remains an empire structurally), Russia will still have to traverse their path to some extent.

The next stage involves acquiring a non-Soviet and non-post-Soviet identity, that is, to accomplish the task that other union republics have resolved – each in its own way.

Lamenting the loss over and over again is not just useless but counterproductive, all the more so since it is difficult to get out of the trap – the same elite that longs for the “real country” (its second generation) consists of the same people that once condemned it to extinction.

After all, it was the Russian Federation that played the decisive role in the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Popular fronts in the Baltic states or Ukrainian nationalists would have never achieved their goals if the Russian democrats had not backed them.

The sooner Russia views itself as a self-sufficient and fully-fledged state rather than a fragment of “something real,” the greater the chance it will be able to channel the nation’s energy into a constructive endeavor.

Ukraine Loses Fight Against Corruption

2011-12-10T04:30:00.000-08:00

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has detained a fire inspector for soliciting a $44,000 bribe from a company which was involved in the construction of a new stadium for the Euro-2012 soccer championship in Kiev.

Just two days later, State Employment Service chief, Volodymyr Halytsky, and several of his subordinates were detained on suspicion of corruption.

Cash and valuables totaling $7.5 million were confiscated during a search of their offices and homes.

The two arrests have been the most recent manifestations of the scale of Kleptocracy in Ukraine.

Viktor Yanukovych, on his election as president in February 2010, like all his predecessors, proclaimed the fight against corruption as one of his priorities.

However, he has failed to improve the situation.

Corruption permeates all walks of life, from highway policemen who openly solicit bribes for speeding to government officials who thrive on kickbacks.

The case of Halytsky is special because it shows how the corrupt system works at the very top.

Under Yanukovych, people connected to three or four of the strongest groups in the government can steal with impunity, the daily Segodnya which is linked to the ruling Party of Regions reported on November 29, quoting its sources.

Halytsky, who apparently did not belong to any of these groups, had been warned that he could face problems but he just could not stop, according to the sources.

Since 2003 Halytsky had chaired the Employment Service, which pays unemployment benefits and finances companies to create jobs, with a break immediately after the “Orange Revolution” in 2005-2006.

Thus, he worked in this position in all the governments under three Ukrainian presidents.

During this period, the service’s social protection system was transformed into a system of organized plunder, according to the weekly Zerkalo Nedeli.

Funds earmarked for retraining the unemployed have been routinely stolen.

Funds disappeared last year that were intended to help Ukrainians launch their own businesses after losing their jobs, and it has been virtually impossible for companies to qualify for compensation for creating jobs without kickbacks.

Halytsky has been charged with embezzling money from a fund which was set up to help companies create jobs for former coal miners.

The companies in question reportedly had to pay 15 percent to 20 percent kickbacks.

The newspaper alleged that Halytsky paid protection money to people’s deputies from the Popular Party which is part of the ruling coalition and is chaired by Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn.

Several former top officials have been arrested and jailed for corruption since Yanukovych’s election as president.

Many of them are his political rivals, like former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, which raises legitimate doubts about their guilt both in Ukraine and internationally.

At the same time, several officials who served under Yanukovych have also been punished for corruption. Last October, former Deputy Environment Minister, Bohdan Presner, was jailed for nine years.

Last November, the former chief price inspector, Tetyana Rud, was sentenced to five years in jail.

The chairman of the state commission for financial markets, Vasyl Volha, has been in custody awaiting a court verdict since last July, when he was arrested on suspicion of bribery.

There is a perception in Ukrainian society that these arrests appear to be only the tip of the iceberg and that many officials linked to the very top go unpunished.

For example, it is still not clear who owns the estate in a natural reserve area near Kiev, where Yanukovych established his multi-million dollar residence.

Chornomornaftohaz, a subsidiary of the state-owned oil and gas company Naftohaz Ukrainy, reportedly overpaid millions of dollars for an oil rig to an obscure company registered in Latvia which had won an apparently fake tender, while Energy Minister, Volodymyr Boyko, asked the SBU to find out who was behind the reports about the deal.

A survey conducted by the International Finance Corporation last year revealed chilling figures: an average Ukrainian company spends some ten percent of its annual turnover on corruption, and the share of those businesses which used unofficial ways of solving problems with state officials rose from 35 percent in 2008 to 46 percent in 2010.

Unsurprisingly, Ukraine slipped 18 positions in the Corruption Perceptions Index for 2011, which was released by Transparency International on December 1.

Ukraine now shares position 152 out of 183 with Tajikistan.

This is the lowest position for the country ever, and Ukraine is lower on the list than all of its peers in the Central and Eastern Europe region including Russia.

It scored only 2.3 on a scale of zero to 10 with zero indicating the highest level of corruption, down from 2.4 last year.

At the same time, Ukraine has failed to establish an independent anti-corruption body by the December 1 deadline, which was set by the European Union.

This has been one of the EU’s requirements for visa liberalization.