Luzhkov will not be forced to appear in court on election results hearings

It seems that Moscow’s ex-mayor Yury Luzhkov will not be dragged to court in handuffs after all, since that he has been removed from the list of interested parties on A Just Russia’s lawsuit after failing to appear at two consecutive court hearings.

“Luzhkov’s expulsion from the list of interested parties has been a complete surprise for us,” A Just Russia representative Alexander Bekhov said.He also noted that the court denied A Just Russia’s petitions on calling in 19 high-placed officials of the old Moscow government as witnesses.

“The court will start examining the lawsuits on merits on Nov. 15, although we have already called for judge Magzhanova’s removal in view of her actions,” Bekhov said.

A Just Russia is demanding the anullment of the 2009 City Duma election because they think Yury Luzhkov, then Moscow mayor, used his official position to rig the election result.

Reactionary rally takes to Moscow's streets

The stark colours of the white, gold and black imperial flag with seek to replace the rainbow stripes of Russia’s gay community at a reactionary rally this Saturday.

Narodny Sobor (The People’s Congregation) is rallying against newly-legalised gay rights marches and promoting its understanding of family values.

The conservative values of the Russian Orthodox Church should help Russia’s population thrive and avoid the negative influence of what they describe as the collapse of Western Civilization.

And marchers have been spurred into action by the recent European court verdict allowing gay pride marches in Moscow.

They said this ruling is one of many which threatens Russia’s moral values – which have already been damaged by malign influences – and needs to be reconsidered by an alternative court.

Several civic movements including veterans, family groups and religious organisations, headed by Narodny Sobor, are ready to stand up for their values.

As usual the main threat to Russia’s future generations is seen from the West, with its unacceptable values of liberty and tolerance.

“We support the idea of creating an alternative European Court that could reconsider the original decision,” Alexander Lapin, head of the Moscow department of Narodny Sobor,said. “We believe it’s wrong that the Constitution puts international legal regulations above national ones. This is the way to impose us to their will.”

However, changing the Russian Constitution is not in the group’s plans – and their planned international court will be explained at Saturday’s rally.

Other issues that worry organisers are the promotion of immorality in the media, sex education in schools, and far too much porn, bad language, booze and tobacco on the nation’s screens.

The second protest against gay marches held in Moscow this week doesn’t seem to bother Nikolay Alexeyev, who won the pro-gay verdict in Strasbourg.

“Let them protest. It’s not going to result in anything. There is the Court decision, that doesn’t allow Russia to adopt any laws prohibiting gay marches. All this is just a PR opportunity for these people,” Alexeyev said.

The gay community has never rallied against its opponents. “I’ve never questioned people’s right to hold meetings against gay-pride marches. Freedom of assembly is one of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution” Alexeyev said.

Watch Out For The Bus: Ukraine's Deputy PM Is Driving

LVIV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's deputy prime minister may have a hard time moonlighting as a chauffeur in another life, after crashing into a police car while driving a bus in the western city of Lviv.
Charged with overseeing the Euro-2012 football championships which Ukraine is organising with Poland, Deputy Prime Minister Boris Kolesnikov arrived in Lviv to examine buses manufactured by a local factory to be used during the matches.

Minutes after taking the wheel for a spin around the area, Kolesnikov hit a police car parked nearby, dragging it some 20 metres (65 feet).

Although the police car was empty and nobody was hurt, a bumper was mangled and a light smashed in the incident.

"What happened?" Kolesnikov asked, in the presence of several reporters.

"Nothing serious, drive on," a factory executive replied.

The chauffeur of the bus, however, was not amused.

"How can anybody drive like that?" he asked. "One must take the size of the bus into account."

Ukraine President to skip traffic in helicopter

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yanukovych isn't letting traffic on the way to the office get him down any more. He's rising above it. Literally.
In the coming months, a helicopter will begin chauffeuring Yanukovych to the center of Kiev from his suburban residence and back.

Yanukovych's chief of staff Serghiy Lyovochkin says the president is doing the capital a favor by unclogging the streets that he currently travels in his motorcade.

Police close off entire avenues for that.

The move may anger ordinary Ukrainians who accuse the government of corruption and wasting state funds, especially if Prime Minister Mykola Azarov also gets a chopper, as Lyovochkin said might be the case.

Lyovochkin refused to say how much the presidential helicopter would cost.

Old-School Mayor Battles Ukraine's Ruling Party

ODESSA, Ukraine -- The incumbent mayor of the Black Sea port of Odessa faces the political battle of his life this weekend in an election showdown against Ukraine's pro-Russian president.
Polls show mayor Eduard Hurvits is on track to obtain 13 per cent of the popular vote on Sunday, with the candidate nominated and heavily financed by Ukraine's ruling Party of Regions, Aleksy Kostusev, likely to gather in some 32 per cent.

Despite long odds, Eduard Hurvits says he may yet still win. If not, he vows to go down swinging against President Viktor Yanukovych, the Party of Regions head.

'I am a patriot, and these people will destroy Odessa,' Hurvits said in an interview with the German Press Agency dpa. 'I will fight to the end for my city.'

Hurvits, 62, is one of Ukraine's few surviving old-school regional politicians. He entered high politics in the early 1990s and has managed to hang on right up through the present, without having to rely on the support of any of the country's major political parties.

Mayors and city councils in Ukraine's heavily industrial Russian-speaking east and south answer, overwhelmingly, to Yanukovych's Party of Regions.

Elected officials in the more rural and Ukrainian-speaking north and west are, as a rule, loyal to one or more of the country's opposition parties.

Odessa, a multicultural city proud of its Yiddish-tinted dialect of Russian, and with a long-established tradition of ignoring the capital's orders if they interfere with local commerce, is an exception, rejecting both camps to remain loyal only to itself.

Hurvits has been the leading cheerleader of Odessan independence over the years, stymieing central government efforts to gain control over Odessa customs duty revenues. He has even bypassed Ukraine's Foreign Ministry to advance trade links between Odessa and neighbouring states.

One recent row between Kiev and Odessa is over the central authorities' plan to ship 8,500 tons of state-owned hazardous chemicals to England via a railroad line running through the centre of the city. Odessa's city hall's has flatly refused to let the train cars through.

With one week left before the mayoral election in Odessa, Party of Regions billboards and television spots outnumber those of other candidates by roughly three to one. The Regions ads hammer a simple theme: For years Hurvits has embezzled city funds, associated with organized crime, and done little for average Odessans.

Hurvits denies all accusations of wrongdoing and argues Yanukovych and Regions are unhappy with Odessa's traditions of independence and freedom.

Kostusev, a former economics minister, laid out the Party of Regions plan at a recent Odessa railroad managers' meeting.

'My goal is to give, finally, our beloved city the professional government it deserves, a leadership that will work to the public good,' he said. 'Enough of old-boy politics and inside deals!'

Railroad staff applauded politely, although some in the auditorium back rows chatted on mobile phones during a subsequent question-and -answer session. But if some Odessans are lukewarm towards Kostusev, others say that Hurvits 14 years in office should be enough for any man.

Hurvits devoted most of his last Saturday before elections to making stump speeches next to apartment buildings in a working-class neighbourhood and meeting with hundreds of low-income fellow Odessans.

He braved a barrage of unpleasant questions.

'Why is my electricity cut off all the time?' shouted a sailor.

'Can't you do something about cars driving through our courtyard to get around traffic jams?' demanded a housewife.

'How am I supposed to live on a pension of 90 dollars? My utility bill alone is more than that!' complained a pensioner.

Twice groups of potential voters surrounded Hurvits and his three bodyguards to register loud and irate complaints.

'I understand them, they're frustrated, things are difficult, the government doesn't have much money,' a visibly tired Hurvits said later.

'I don't know what I will do if I lose this election,' he said. 'I just don't know.'

Harper Accused Of Exaggerating Ukrainian Genocide's Death Toll

KIEV, Ukraine -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being accused of exaggerating this week the extent of the 1932-33 famine that was declared a genocide by Canada's Parliament two years ago.
Harper indicated on both days of his first-ever journey to Ukraine that "almost" 10 million people died in what is known as the Holodomor — or "death by starvation."

Critics, while stressing that the death toll of the famine caused by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's policies is massive and remains one of history's great crimes against humanity, said the true figure is roughly a third of Harper's.

"I find it regrettable that Stephen Harper and other leading Western politicians are continuing to use such exaggerated figures for Ukrainian famine mortality," University of Melbourne historian and demographer Stephen Wheatcroft told Postmedia News in an email.

"There is absolutely no basis for accepting a figure of 10 million Ukrainians dying as a result of the famine of 1932-33. No reputable demographer accepts this," stated Wheatcroft, who puts the figure at around 3.5 million.

"None of the Ukrainian, Russian or Western historians, who are experts in this area, who have looked at the detailed evidence and have an ability to understand numbers, would support such a figure."

Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said Friday "nobody" can be sure how many died.

"To minimize this act of genocide by claiming exaggeration is quite sad because there are a number of published estimates," Soudas wrote in an email.

Harper made two references to the famine while in Ukraine.

"Some 10 million people, up to 10 million people, and we'll never know the numbers for sure, (were) killed, and killed through the deliberate plans of their own government," he said at the joint news conference in the capital city of Kyiv while sitting next to President Viktor Yanukovych.

On Tuesday, Harper raised it again while speaking to students at a small Catholic university in Lviv, in Ukraine's nationalist heartland.

"Now as you know almost as many — or you may know — almost as many Ukrainians died in the Holodomor during the 1930s as there were Canadians alive at that time," he told them.

During the time of the famine there were approximately 10.6 million Canadians, according to Statistics Canada.

Ukrainian Canadian Congress president Paul Grod sent out a statement after Tuesday's event that actually exaggerated Harper's claim.

"Harper emphasized the genocidal nature of the Holodomor and commented that more people were killed during that horror than were alive in Canada at that time," Grod wrote.

Grod referred Postmedia News to University of Quebec historian Roman Serbyn, who in the introduction to a 2008 essay referred to estimates ranging from three to 10 million. But attempts to reach Serbyn were unsuccessful.

Yale University historian Timothy Snyder said most "scholarly estimates" range from 2.5 to four million. He estimates that 3.3 million ethnic Ukrainians died in the entire Soviet Union during the 1932-33 famine.

Snyder, author of the newly published book Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, said he found Harper's estimate "surprising" given that a January report commissioned by the previous Ukrainian government concluded there were 3.9 million deaths.

University of Alberta historian John-Paul Himka wrote in a 2008 academic journal that the 10 million figure is arrived at only by including the children who would have been born if not for the famine.

The true victims of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's brutal policies, should be "unsullied by falsehood" and inflated figures not be used as a "political tool," Himka argued.

"I find it disrespectful to the dead that people use their deaths in a ploy to gain the moral capital of victimhood. To this end, they inflate the numbers."

Is Ukraine Moving Back Into Russia's Embrace?

KIEV, Ukraine -- When hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to protest an allegedly fraudulent presidential election in 2004, the resulting revote was supposed to herald a new era of democracy in the former Soviet republic.
Six years after the Orange Revolution, the object of all that public rage, Viktor Yanukovych, is in power, using heavy-handed tactics that he insists are crucial to getting the country's government and economy under control. But critics fear he is reversing Ukraine's path to democracy and turning the nation back toward Russia.

Ukraine, a nation of 46 million wedged between Russia and the European Union, was trumpeted as a beacon of democracy in a region of authoritarian leaders when demonstrations against Yanukovych's 2004 victory forced another election, which went to pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko.

But Yushchenko's term was widely considered a failure, marked by his inability to overhaul the country's suffocating bureaucracy and overregulated economy or to tackle endemic corruption. Any potential progress was also hampered by constant squabbles with his former Orange ally, then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

At this year's election in February, Yanukovych — once tagged a Russian stooge — scored a stunning victory to become Ukraine's fourth President. He pledged to bring an end to political wrangling, stabilize the country's wobbly economy and repair relations with Russia while seeking European integration.

Since his triumph in a vote widely acknowledged as free and fair, Yanukovych has been quick to stamp his authority. In the past seven months, he has consolidated power by installing a loyal government, appointing allies to key posts in state structures like the state security service (formerly known as the KGB), and, earlier this month, he welcomed a constitutional-court ruling that handed him even more sway, including the power to hire and fire the government at will.

"Ukraine and society is tired of life in those conditions ... [which] resulted in economic collapse and poverty," Yanukovych said.

He has pledged to use these new powers to push through much needed overhauls. To be sure, his main achievement so far has been to stabilize the economy, which suffered a catastrophic 15% plunge in 2009. He has also put an end to destructive infighting, which in turn has sped up decision making.

But opponents claim he is also undermining the democratic gains of recent years, monopolizing power, clamping down on the opposition and curbing press freedoms. They accuse him of getting too cozy with Moscow and attempting to follow the pattern of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who crushed his opponents and muzzled the media during his two terms as the country's President.

"[Yanukovych's] political culture is to grab more and more power," Hryhoriy Nemyria, a top aide to Tymoshenko, tells TIME. "He is mimicking Russia."

In the months since Yanukovych took office, a number of former senior officials from Tymoshenko's government have been put in detention or under investigation on charges of corruption and abuse of office. The former Prime Minister says the charges are trumped up; the government counters that it's fighting graft.

Journalists complain of their managers cutting reports that may be critical of the administration, while media monitors say press coverage of Ukraine's government is becoming more deferential. As a result, the country has dropped 42 places to 131 on Reporters Without Borders' annual press-freedom index, which was released on Oct. 20.

But while many analysts see ominous signs that Yanukovych is heading down an authoritarian path, others suggest things aren't so clear-cut, pointing out that the President these days cannot ignore Ukraine's newly active civil society.

"It's not a steamroller; he's responsive to criticism," says Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. "He's aware of the potential of society, which was the lesson of the Orange Revolution."

There's no denying, however, that Yanukovych has swung his country toward its former Soviet overlord. Since taking office, he has declared Ukraine a nonaligned country, putting an end to longstanding efforts to join NATO — a goal of all of his predecessors that had enjoyed mixed popular support and irked Moscow.

In April, he signed a controversial deal to extend the stay of Russia's Black Sea fleet on Ukrainian territory until 2042 in return for cheaper gas supplies. Yanukovych says the previous administration's failures forced him into the gas trade-off to keep Ukraine's crucial steel mills and chemical plants pumping.

Strong leadership and good relations with Russia bring much needed stability, he says, but European integration remains the main strategic goal.

Critics, however, claim the President's commitment to Europe is illusory and say that he has given the Kremlin too much too quickly, edging Ukraine toward the point of no return. "Russia views the Black Sea fleet deal as an appetizer," Oleh Rybachuk, Yushchenko's former chief of staff, tells TIME.

"They are now trying to get the maximum, which for Russia means total control." Now Moscow is pushing hard for further integration, including mergers of the countries' nuclear-energy, aircraft-building and, most crucially, gas industries.

The West, one of the most vocal celebrants of Ukrainian democracy's victory over Russian-backed authoritarianism in 2004, has been more subdued in its reaction to criticisms against Yanukovych.

Senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have only gently nudged him on press freedoms, leaving some opposition leaders and civic activists to worry that the U.S. is trying to preserve friendly relations with Russia by treading lightly in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Europe, beset with its own internal troubles, professes satisfaction at the stability of Ukraine's current government after years of infighting. "Ukraine is seeing a period of political stability, based on a strong parliamentary majority," said Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, after meeting Yanukovych in September. "This enables Ukraine to move forward with important reforms."

Yanukovych is adamant that he doesn't have to choose between the West and Russia. But right now he is negotiating with the E.U. on a deep free-trade agreement at the same time that Russia is pushing him for more industry tie-ups. Soon it could become clearer where Ukraine's President has decided to put most of his chips.