KIEV, Ukraine -- Once again, nation's reputation takes a hit after arms allegedly end up in an outlaw African nation facing an international arms embargo.
The United Kingdom government is investigating a British arms broker in a sale of light arms originating from Ukraine to an undisclosed country under international embargo. Although no claims have been filed against Ukraine so far, the country is implicated in improper licensing procedures of a foreign company.According to a report released by the British parliament in August, “the Ukrainian State Service for Export Control had licensed the export of light arms from the Soviet stockpile of weapons. The end users on the list included countries for which there are foreign and Commonwealth restrictions on the export of strategic goods.”The arms in question were the famous AK-47 Kalashnikov automatic rifles, and the final destination was reportedly a country on the African continent. The value of the contract, the name of the broker and the country of destination remain undisclosed because the investigation is still ongoing.The parliamentary report expressed great concerns that the “U.K. embassy in Kyiv, the Export Control Organization and HM Revenue & Customs were all unaware of the ongoing deals with British arms brokers that received licenses from Ukrainian State Export Control.”The U.K. embassy did not comment. However, the Ukrainian arms licensing body dismisses the accusations as nonsense and mistranslation.“According to Ukraine’s legislation, we can only grant licenses to Ukrainian companies and so we have been doing. We are talking about mistake in translation here,” said Valeriy Antonenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian State Service for Export Control. He said the verb “to license” in English can mean having permission or a contract for something, not a government-approved paper.When brokering a deal outside their home country, the British mediators still require a license from the U.K. government called Open General Trade Control License (Trade and Transportation: Small Arms and light weapons), according to an expert of Safe World non-governmental organization specializing in research of small arms trade.Each contract is supposed to have an end-user certificate, indicating the buyers and the country of final destination.Paul Holtom, leader of the arms transfers program at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, says it’s not all that simple with the end user certificates. “There have been cases when the end-user certificates have been forged and officials were bribed to sign them,” Holtom said.And even if a proper end-user certificate is used, there is no guarantee that the arms won't go beyond its official destination. “Very often exporting countries lack means and desire to track their weapons after it reached its final buyer. They wash their hands of it,” said Holtom.Light weapons are especially difficult to control, according to Valentyn Badrak, director of the Center for Military Research, Peace and Conversion, a Ukrainian non-government organization.Ukraine is the world’s 10th biggest exporters of weapons, selling about $ 1 billion worth of arms and military equipment, or 1 percent of the world’s total but 10 percent of weapons to Africa. Especially popular are Kalashnikovs inherited from Soviet days, but Ukranian arms are also cheap.Ukraine has been implicated in other questionable arms deals before.One of the most recent blows to Ukraine’s reputation came after MV Faina, a merchant ship, was seized by Somali pirates in 2008. According to the papers, its cargo of 33 T-72 tanks, 73 packages of spare tank parts and 36 packages of RPG-7V shoulder-launched rocket-propelled grenade launchers were destined to Kenya. However, the cargo was labeled with GOSS abbreviation which commonly stands Government of South Sudan, which is currently under United Nations arms embargo.Also, in 2002, the United States accused Ukraine of selling Kolchuga radar systems to Iraq while it faced an international embargo. And, in the 1990s, weapons were delivered to Liberia in defiance of a United Nations embargo.Holtom says many accusations turn out to be false. “Whenever there is a military aircraft from a former Soviet Union country it is automatically assumed that there is something fishy about it,” he said. “But very often cargo is legitimate, at least paper-wise.”
Saturday, 5 September 2009
MV Ariana Crew Despairs After Four Months As High Seas Hostages
The 24 Ukrainians held hostage off the Somali coast since May know what their lives are worth to the sea pirates who kidnapped them: $5 million, price negotiable.
The crew members of the MV Ariana cargo ship also have a good idea what will happen to them if nobody meets the ransom demands of their kidnappers.One of the two female crew members, Larysa Salinska, who suffered a miscarriage in captivity, put it this way in an interview with the Kyiv Post: “I have a feeling that no one needs us, like we are waste material which they can step over as they do their business,” she said indignantly.In an extraordinary telephone call to the ship on Aug. 30, arranged through an intermediary, the Kyiv Post talked to Salinska, as well as the ship’s captain, a third crew member and the leader of the pirates holding the Ariana crew.Their lives are grim, as one would expect from two dozen people held captive for four months. The duration of their imprisonment is perhaps itself a record in the spate of high seas piracy that has taken place off the lawless eastern coast of Africa in recent years. They are believed to be adrift on the Indian Ocean about 100 kilometers from the coastal village of Hobyo, in the Galmudug region of Somalia.Salinska suffered a miscarriage during her sixth month of pregnancy and urgently needed help. But the pirates even showed her little mercy.“I was bleeding like a tap. I thought I would die from bleeding,” Salinska, 39, the ship’s cook, said tearfully. “I was begging on my knees to at least arrange for a conversation with a doctor. He [pirate] allowed two phone calls and said it was my only chance. But no one has even provided for a gynecologist to call me.”The crew members described an unending ordeal of fear, hardship and frustration. They are upset that Ukrainian authorities and the ship’s owner haven’t been able to secure their release. The Greek vessel, sailing under a Maltese flag, was seized north of Madagascar with a cargo of 10,000 tons of soya beans on May 2. It was en route from Brazil to Iran.“President [Victor Yushchenko] promised a commission [to help us], they promised help and nothing at all [has happened]. I have two kids at home, so I must come back alive,” said Salinska, whose husband is with her on the Ariana. (On May 5, a spokesperson for Yushchenko said the president ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to cooperate with nations and international organizations in securing the crew’s freedom.)MV Ariana’s owner, Greek-based All Oceans Shipping, said its representatives were negotiating the crew's release.“It’s not true [that we don’t negotiate]. We talk by phone. In fact, negotiations are going smoothly,” said Captain Spyros Minas, the Athens-based director of the company. Minas said the company has had contact with the crew when the pirates allow it. He also said that, to his knowledge, the two women on board “were OK.”Minas refused to discuss the ransom amount in deference to “the safety of the crew.”However, the seized ship's captain, hostage Genadiy Voronov, was not happy with the negotiations. He thought that All Oceans Shipping offered to pay $820,000, a sum rejected.Voronov described the conditions as atrocious.“We are not allowed to move around the ship. The whole crew is in one cabin,” Voronov said. “Half of the crew came down with colds and we keep passing them to each other. They [pirates] give us some rotten rice and that’s all we eat here. A couple of kilos a day for 24 people. No fresh water to drink or to wash up.”He said that the ship’s mechanic, Volodymyr Streshniy, was beaten up and “may have had a concussion. He was nauseous, lacked coordination and was generally weak. For two or three days, he could not get up from the deck. He's better now,” Voronov said.Salinska also said water and food were bad. “When you are hungry, you will eat anything – rotten rice or rustic water, but I can’t. The boys eat it though. The water provided is red. We try to filter it through cotton wool or any way we can. It’s a savage life.”Another female on board, Natalia Los, described conditions as “very bad.” Los said the chief pirate sometimes talked to them and reported “that there are no negotiations and that no one cares for us.”The Kyiv Post talked to Muhammed, described by the crew as the pirate’s leader. “There are no negotiations at all. My condition is $5 million and [I will] negotiate,” he said “If not, we will kill the crew. Why not? Without diesel, without food, what can I do for them?”A spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vasyl Kyrylych, described the negotiation process as difficult. There is no provision in the Ukrainian law to empower officials to engage in talks or pay ransom in cases of piracy.Some of the families of the hostages have refused to comment publicly, out of fear that they may damage the chances of freedom for their loved ones.Galyna Fut, whose husband is held captive at Ariana, said their hopes rest with the ship’s owner. “We approached different organizations but no one would help us. The only opportunity to save them is for the ship owner to pay the pirates,” Fut said.A regional anti-piracy envoy in Somalia, Ismail Haji Noor, said he wanted the ship out of his waters. Noor approached the Kyiv Post with the offer for a telephone link to the ship to “help the innocent seamen.”Noor said the government is trying to rid the Somali coast of pirates.“The pirates are small in number. The whole of Somali is not pirates. It’s not in our culture or something we believe in our religion,” he said. “The community is fed up with them because they bring prostitution and alcohol.”Noor said the pirates from the Ariana were from the Habar Gidir clan in the Galmudug territory. As an envoy, he said he would try to secure release of the two women held hostage through the clan elders.The ship’s owner, Minas, questioned Noor’s intentions and said he might actually hinder the delicate talks with the pirates. “We know from other vessels, from previous experiences, that when he is involved in the case, the negotiations take longer,” said Minas.Ariana captain Voronov warned against any military operation to save him and the rest of the crew. He pleaded, however, for Ukrainian government intervention. “The minute they [pirates] see a ship at a distance, they summon us to the deck and keep us at gunpoint,” he said.Prior to Ariana, Somali gunmen hijacked the Ukrainian MV Faina crew of 20 people on Sept. 25, releasing its members on Feb. 4. Their imprisonment ended after a $3.2 million ransom was paid, primarily by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk.
The crew members of the MV Ariana cargo ship also have a good idea what will happen to them if nobody meets the ransom demands of their kidnappers.One of the two female crew members, Larysa Salinska, who suffered a miscarriage in captivity, put it this way in an interview with the Kyiv Post: “I have a feeling that no one needs us, like we are waste material which they can step over as they do their business,” she said indignantly.In an extraordinary telephone call to the ship on Aug. 30, arranged through an intermediary, the Kyiv Post talked to Salinska, as well as the ship’s captain, a third crew member and the leader of the pirates holding the Ariana crew.Their lives are grim, as one would expect from two dozen people held captive for four months. The duration of their imprisonment is perhaps itself a record in the spate of high seas piracy that has taken place off the lawless eastern coast of Africa in recent years. They are believed to be adrift on the Indian Ocean about 100 kilometers from the coastal village of Hobyo, in the Galmudug region of Somalia.Salinska suffered a miscarriage during her sixth month of pregnancy and urgently needed help. But the pirates even showed her little mercy.“I was bleeding like a tap. I thought I would die from bleeding,” Salinska, 39, the ship’s cook, said tearfully. “I was begging on my knees to at least arrange for a conversation with a doctor. He [pirate] allowed two phone calls and said it was my only chance. But no one has even provided for a gynecologist to call me.”The crew members described an unending ordeal of fear, hardship and frustration. They are upset that Ukrainian authorities and the ship’s owner haven’t been able to secure their release. The Greek vessel, sailing under a Maltese flag, was seized north of Madagascar with a cargo of 10,000 tons of soya beans on May 2. It was en route from Brazil to Iran.“President [Victor Yushchenko] promised a commission [to help us], they promised help and nothing at all [has happened]. I have two kids at home, so I must come back alive,” said Salinska, whose husband is with her on the Ariana. (On May 5, a spokesperson for Yushchenko said the president ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to cooperate with nations and international organizations in securing the crew’s freedom.)MV Ariana’s owner, Greek-based All Oceans Shipping, said its representatives were negotiating the crew's release.“It’s not true [that we don’t negotiate]. We talk by phone. In fact, negotiations are going smoothly,” said Captain Spyros Minas, the Athens-based director of the company. Minas said the company has had contact with the crew when the pirates allow it. He also said that, to his knowledge, the two women on board “were OK.”Minas refused to discuss the ransom amount in deference to “the safety of the crew.”However, the seized ship's captain, hostage Genadiy Voronov, was not happy with the negotiations. He thought that All Oceans Shipping offered to pay $820,000, a sum rejected.Voronov described the conditions as atrocious.“We are not allowed to move around the ship. The whole crew is in one cabin,” Voronov said. “Half of the crew came down with colds and we keep passing them to each other. They [pirates] give us some rotten rice and that’s all we eat here. A couple of kilos a day for 24 people. No fresh water to drink or to wash up.”He said that the ship’s mechanic, Volodymyr Streshniy, was beaten up and “may have had a concussion. He was nauseous, lacked coordination and was generally weak. For two or three days, he could not get up from the deck. He's better now,” Voronov said.Salinska also said water and food were bad. “When you are hungry, you will eat anything – rotten rice or rustic water, but I can’t. The boys eat it though. The water provided is red. We try to filter it through cotton wool or any way we can. It’s a savage life.”Another female on board, Natalia Los, described conditions as “very bad.” Los said the chief pirate sometimes talked to them and reported “that there are no negotiations and that no one cares for us.”The Kyiv Post talked to Muhammed, described by the crew as the pirate’s leader. “There are no negotiations at all. My condition is $5 million and [I will] negotiate,” he said “If not, we will kill the crew. Why not? Without diesel, without food, what can I do for them?”A spokesman for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vasyl Kyrylych, described the negotiation process as difficult. There is no provision in the Ukrainian law to empower officials to engage in talks or pay ransom in cases of piracy.Some of the families of the hostages have refused to comment publicly, out of fear that they may damage the chances of freedom for their loved ones.Galyna Fut, whose husband is held captive at Ariana, said their hopes rest with the ship’s owner. “We approached different organizations but no one would help us. The only opportunity to save them is for the ship owner to pay the pirates,” Fut said.A regional anti-piracy envoy in Somalia, Ismail Haji Noor, said he wanted the ship out of his waters. Noor approached the Kyiv Post with the offer for a telephone link to the ship to “help the innocent seamen.”Noor said the government is trying to rid the Somali coast of pirates.“The pirates are small in number. The whole of Somali is not pirates. It’s not in our culture or something we believe in our religion,” he said. “The community is fed up with them because they bring prostitution and alcohol.”Noor said the pirates from the Ariana were from the Habar Gidir clan in the Galmudug territory. As an envoy, he said he would try to secure release of the two women held hostage through the clan elders.The ship’s owner, Minas, questioned Noor’s intentions and said he might actually hinder the delicate talks with the pirates. “We know from other vessels, from previous experiences, that when he is involved in the case, the negotiations take longer,” said Minas.Ariana captain Voronov warned against any military operation to save him and the rest of the crew. He pleaded, however, for Ukrainian government intervention. “The minute they [pirates] see a ship at a distance, they summon us to the deck and keep us at gunpoint,” he said.Prior to Ariana, Somali gunmen hijacked the Ukrainian MV Faina crew of 20 people on Sept. 25, releasing its members on Feb. 4. Their imprisonment ended after a $3.2 million ransom was paid, primarily by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk.
Inside A Creepy Global Body Parts Business
HAMBURG, Germany -- The German company Tutogen's business in body parts is as secretive as it is lucrative. It extracts bones from corpses in Ukraine to manufacture medical products, as part of a global market worth billions that is centered in the United States.
Anatoly Korzhak, a pensioner and former engineer, died in Kiev on August 5, 2004. His body was picked up at 2 a.m. and taken to the forensic medicine institute in the Ukrainian capital. That same night, Korzhak's daughter, Lena Krat, received a telephone call and was asked to come to the institute as soon as possible the following morning, where she was told she would receive further information.It was the first time Krat was confronted with the death of a close relative. "I was so upset that I couldn't think clearly," she recalls. When she arrived at the institute in the morning, a man there said something to her about skin transplants. He was an employee of a Ukrainian company that works hand-in-hand with forensic medicine experts. She said to the man: "Leave me alone. I don't understand what you're talking about, and I don't want to listen to you."But the employee was persistent and eventually gave her a form to sign. He told her that if she consented to skin removal, she would be helping pediatric burn victims who needed transplants. Krat signed the form. "It was as if I had been hypnotized," she says.But now Krat, a mother of two young girls, has learned from SPIEGEL that the Ukrainian company in question sends the body parts to a German company, Tutogen Medical GmbH, which in turn apparently supplies large numbers of such parts to the American tissue market.In addition to strips of skin, tendons, bones and cartilage are removed from the bodies. "This shocks me," says Krat. "If I had known that so much is cut out, I would never have given my consent."A Lucrative Industry The incident in the Ukrainian capital is part of the secretive daily routine of a little-known but highly lucrative branch of the medical industry, in which companies use corpses to make medical spare parts. In doing so, they reuse almost everything the human body has to offer: bones, cartilage, tendons, muscle fascia, skin, corneas, pericardial sacs and heart valves. In the jargon of the profession, all of this is referred to as tissue.Bones and tendons, the parts that interest Tutogen the most, are subjected to complex processing. The company degreases and cleans bones, cuts, saws or mills them into the desired shapes, then sterilizes, packages and sells the finished product in more than 40 countries around the world. With a prescription, it is even possible to order Tutogen's products through online pharmacies.The market for tissue products is still small in Germany. When it comes to bones, for example, experts estimate that only about 30,000 transplants a year are used in hospitals nationwide, mainly for use in bone reconstruction for hip surgery and in spinal column surgery.It's a completely different story in the United States. According to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, more than a million bone parts are used in transplants every year. In no other country is it possible to make so much money with body parts. If a body were disassembled into its individual parts, then processed and sold, the total proceeds could amount to $250,000 (€176,000). For a single corpse! The US tissue industry generates total revenues of about $1 billion a year, says journalist Martina Keller, a co-author of this article and the author of the German book, "Cannibalized: The Human Corpse as a Resource."Legal and Ethical QuestionsThis raises the question of just how legal the process of obtaining raw materials is. And are bone products made from corpses even medically necessary? According to Klaus-Peter Günther, president of the German Society of Orthopedics and Orthopedic Surgery, they are often "not the first choice" in operations. "For us, the gold standard is still tissue taken directly from the patient in question."Alternatives are only an option, says Günther, when the material from the patient's body is insufficient. Those alternatives include animal bones and artificial replacement parts made of ceramic material, for example -- or human donor bones.Many hospitals collect and reuse bone fragments removed from patients who have received artificial hips. "For this reason," says Günther, "we have not had to resort to dead donors so far."In the United States, doctors have fewer qualms about using body parts from corpses than their German counterparts -- in such areas as spinal surgery, sports injuries and cosmetic surgery. For instance, doctors used pulverized skin particles to enhance lips and smooth out wrinkles.Should corpses be butchered to make cosmetic procedures possible? Ingrid Schneider is against the practice. For the past 15 years the Hamburg political scientist, a former member of the Investigative Commission on Law and Ethics in Modern Medicine in the German parliament, has been involved in the subject of recycling body substances. Schneider argues that the body is not a source of raw materials that can be sold at will. Given such concerns, it is not surprising that many people are deeply opposed to allowing the body of a family member to be reused, even for medical purposes.Even if it is unrealistic to expect that all commercialization of the body could be ruled out in modern medicine, says Schneider, it is important to set boundaries. For that reason, she insists that human tissue ought to be used sparingly -- that is, only when such use is medically necessary and clearly superior to other forms of treatment.The conviction that the body is much more than an object has also shaped the policies of the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Parliament and the European Council, the EU's body representing the leaders and ministers of the 27-member bloc. All of these bodies condemn the practice of trading in human body parts to turn a profit.In Germany, the country's organ transplant act regulates the removal of tissue. Only those who have consented to organ and tissue harvesting are considered as donors. If a person dies and is not already a donor, his or her closest relatives can consent to donation. Paragraph 17 of the transplant act explicitly states: "Trading in organs or tissue intended for use in the medical treatment of others is prohibited." Physicians who remove tissue can only be paid suitable compensation for their efforts. The law calls for prison sentences of up to five years for violation of the trading prohibition.Part 2: A Booming Tissue MarketTutogen paid its Ukrainian partners a fixed price for each body part. In January 2002, the company paid €42.90 for a complete femur, €42.90 for a humerus and €13.30 to €16.40 for a pericardial sac, depending on its size. Graduated prices were also arranged with the Ukrainians. Take, for example, the removal of patellar tendons with bone segments, known as "bond-tendon-bone," or BTB. When coroners supplied less than 40 BTBs on-site, Tutogen paid €14.30 apiece. For larger numbers of BTBs, the price went up: to €23 apiece for 40 or more BTBs and to €26.10 for 60 or more. For a coroner, who makes about €200 ($287) a month in Ukraine, such graduated prices must have been an incentive to remove as much body material as possible.Thousands of pages of internal memos, faxes, supply lists and documents from the years 2000 to 2004, which SPIEGEL has obtained, suggest that not only did Tutogen process the Ukrainian body parts itself, but it also supplied the US tissue market.Florida-based RTI Biologics, one of the US market leaders in the industry, generated $147 million in sales in 2008. The company describes itself as the "leading provider of sterile biological implants for surgeries around the world."To that end, RTI acquired Tutogen Medical, Inc., the American parent company of the German company Tutogen Medical GmbH, last year. The acquisition was good news for RTI shareholders, because of Tutogen's large international donor network, says CEO Brian Hutchison. Put differently, Tutogen is a company that knows the ins and outs of gaining access to as many body parts as possible.The body parts from Ukraine are shipped by air to Frankfurt or Nuremberg. From there, they are taken to Tutogen headquarters in Neunkirchen am Brand, a town of 8,000 people in northern Bavaria.Tutogen's facilities in Neunkirchen, just a few kilometers north of Nuremberg, comprise several low, warehouse-like buildings, where about 140 employees work. All in all, it is an inconspicuous place for visitors who fly in regularly from Ukraine and the United States.Company President Karl Koschatzky refused to respond to requests for an interview, and the company declined to answer a list of questions sent to its offices.The Middleman Tutogen uses a middleman to organize its deliveries from Ukraine. Dr. Igor Aleshenko, a coroner by training, manages the company's relationships with the various local forensic medicine institutes. He has been working for Tutogen in Ukraine for about 10 years.In that time, Aleshenko has become a wealthy man, and he now divides his time between his two residences, one in Kiev and one in Moscow. In 2002, Tutogen described Aleshenko as a "cost-intensive person." He too was unavailable for an interview in Kiev, nor did he respond to written questions.In Ukraine, Aleshenko is far more than Tutogen's local contact. He is the director of Bioimplant, a company that manages tissue removal. Because of its close ties to the Ukrainian Health Ministry, Bioimplant is practically immune to intrusive government inspections of bone shipments crossing the border.Ukrainians are kept somewhat in the dark when it comes to Bioimplant's true business dealings. According to the company's Web site, its "primary activity" is the "production of bio-implants" for use in Ukrainian patients. But what does Bioimplant really do?Kiev, on a summer's day in 2009. Anyone seeking to pay a visit to Bioimplant's headquarters would be inclined to head to the company's official address at Patrice Lumumba Street 4/6, an office building with a number of tenants -- where Bioimplant doesn't even have its own mailbox.A guard and a doorman greet visitors and send them to the fourth floor, where Bioimplant's offices are supposedly located. Room 305 is in a long hallway of closed doors. There is not even a sign to identify the room as being associated with Bioimplant. A young man in a pinstriped suit opens the door. He says that he hasn't been working for Bioimplant for very long, and that most of his work consists of photocopying.According to the young man, the company leases three rooms in the office complex, but Dr. Aleshenko is not in today. Tutogen brochures and packets of sterilized corpse bones are stacked in the next room. Instead of the expected production facility, the offices are nothing but a distribution site.Tutogen developed its business relationship with Aleshenko about 10 years ago. During a trip to Tutogen headquarters in the Bavarian countryside in November 2001, Aleshenko met with Koschatzky at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Erlangen, near Nuremberg. The minutes of the meeting contain a list of "new pathologies" working for Tutogen in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Zhytomyr.Aleshenko had apparently brought along a wish list to the meeting, and his German business partners were eager to comply. According to the minutes, "TTG (Tutogen) agreed to provide 5,000 deutsche marks for investment costs in Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine). Dr. Aleshenko will send us the necessary payment instructions."Unkosher Discussions Some of the issues discussed at the meeting were less than kosher. For instance, the minutes state, "TTG is testing whether depilation of the corpse prior to skin removal could alleviate the hair problem (perhaps using the hot wax or cold wax method)."A list of "pathologies currently providing (parts)," dated November 2001, already included abbreviations for 15 facilities in Ukraine. In the 2000-2001 fiscal year alone, 1,152 bodies in Ukraine were used to provide tissue for Tutogen.But it still wasn't enough for the company, which needed more institutions to cooperate and more donors and more bone parts to supply a booming tissue market.According to an internal planning document dated June 17, 2002 (the file is titled "Raw Tissue Requirements"), Tutogen needed the following parts for the coming fiscal year:* 2,920 shafts of the femur,* 3,000 iliac crests,* 1,190 patellar tendons,* 3,750 kneecaps,* 10,200 femoral muscle fascia (or fascia lata),* 50 cranial bones,* 70 Achilles tendons.Aleshenko, who Tutogen apparently paid directly for the tissue parts, is believed to have funneled part of the money to coroners in Dnipropetrovsk, Kiev, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian cities. According to an internal list of "paid incoming goods," Tutogen's Ukrainian partner received roughly €350,000 between January and August 2001.The investment must have paid off. Online pharmacies charge between €367 and €854, depending on the size, for a Tutoplast Spongiosa Block (Bone Substance). According to the price lists used at the time, the Ukrainians received between €23 and €26.10 for the original body part, again depending on the size. Even if Tutogen were paying twice as much for the raw material today, it would still be a bargain.Part 3: Tissue and Organ HarvestingNot surprisingly, Tutogen could afford to be generous to its Ukrainian partners. That generosity included large quantities of equipment the company routinely sent to its hardworking coroners.According to the internal documents, in the 2000-2001 fiscal year Tutogen shipped 6,000 scalpels, 2,600 pairs of sterile gloves, 500 surgical gowns, 15 hacksaw blades for autopsies and many other items to Ukraine -- at a total cost of €40,000 in "donor expenses without tissue," as the Tutogen bookkeepers noted fastidiously. Tutogen paid its Ukrainian partners roughly €500,000 for the body parts during the same period.The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently lists 20 facilities in Ukraine that are authorized to supply body parts for the US market. But no matter which of these facilities one clicks on in the FDA database, all share the same contact information: the telephone number of Tutogen Medical GmbH in northern Bavaria.One of the facilities on the list is the forensic medicine institute in Krivoy Rog, an industrial city in southeastern Ukraine, with a population of about 700,000. According to the FDA database, the Krivoy Rog site is authorized to supply bones, cartilage, fascia, ligaments, pericardial sacs, sclera (the white of the eye), skin and tendons.Tissue and Organ Harvesting The whitewashed, Spartan structure housing the forensic medicine institute is on the edge of the hospital grounds. Frosted glass windowpanes behind latticed windows discourage prying eyes. Visitors immediately notice the cloying odor of death upon entering the building. The director of the institute is unavailable, even though his car is parked on the hospital grounds. A doctor wearing a denim jacket assumes the task of getting rid of anyone inquiring about the institute's collaboration with the German company.Instead, he tells the reporters to contact the district attorney's office and points to a sign above the door, which reads: "No Admittance without Authorization." Does that include Tutogen, the reporters ask? "No, Tutogen is not unauthorized here," the man says, indicating that the conversation is over.The former director of the city's forensic medicine department, Vladimir Bondarenko, is slightly more forthcoming. A retiree, he meets with visitors at a street café. Tissue harvesting began at his department about 10 years ago, says Bondarenko."It was illegal," he says. "The family members should have been told about what was happening with the bodies," but they had no idea. "When the deceased is lying in the coffin, the family members see nothing but the face. What they don't see is that the bones of the legs or arms have been removed."The Ukrainian tissue transplant act includes a provision stating that family members must consent to tissue donation if the deceased did not already do so while alive. However, there are indications that this was often not the case. Ukrainian authorities in Krivoy Rog and several other cities are conducting investigations into suspected illegal tissue and organ harvesting.The case of the deceased father of Kiev resident Lena Krat, for example, was examined in connection with an investigation identified by the file number 50-3793, begun on Jan. 4, 2005. The investigation included all incidents that took place between May and September 2004. The names of 10 deceased persons are listed in the files. Their family members stated that they "did not consent to the removal of anatomical material."According to the court order authorizing the proceedings, "family members were deceived, in that they were told that only a small part of the deceased would be removed, such as a bone or tissue fragment. In actual fact, almost all bones and tissue were removed. ... All of the material is taken to Germany."A Legal Twist Despite the evidence, the Kiev district attorney's office closed the proceedings in July 2005, "for lack of a statutory offense." Curiously, the document states, as grounds for dropping the case, that the Bioimplant employees had not violated the transplant act, because they had not transplanted material from corpses, but had merely removed it so that it could be processed into "bio-implants." As a result of this legal twist, the recycling of corpses has been allowed to continue to this day.Kiev, the forensic medicine institute on Orangery Street: A long, brick building, from which doctors wearing light-green aprons occasionally emerge to smoke cigarettes outside the front door. Family members stand next to the entrance, waiting for the release of their dead relatives. There is a display of coffins and wreaths in front of a funeral parlor across the street.Vladimir Yurchenko is the director of the institute. He points to the room where bodies are processed for Tutogen. It is on the ground floor and sealed off to outsiders. Why? "Because that's what the US health authorities require," says Yurchenko.Kiev's senior forensic pathologist explains the process. Bioimplant obtains the relatives' consent, and company employees also come to the institute to harvest the body parts. Yurchenko's staff members assist in the process, for which they receive additional compensation. Once bones and other parts have been removed, wooden sticks are inserted into the body so that it retains its shape until the funeral.The harvested bones, tendons and pieces of cartilage are stored in zinc-plated metal boxes in a refrigerated room in the basement. "The tissue parts are brought up once every few weeks, when a truck comes and takes them away," says Yurchenko. Karl Koschatzky, the secretive Tutogen executive from Bavarian, also turns up occasionally.Part 4: 'A Source of Raw Materials'According to Yurchenko, about 8,000 corpses a year are delivered to the forensic medicine department. Of that number, more than 5,000 are potential bone donors, but family members only consent to harvesting from about 150 bodies. If the two facilities in the capital already provide parts from about 150 bodies each, as Yurchenko says, and if a total of 20 facilities in Ukraine are registered with the FDA -- and, therefore, are collaborating with Tutogen -- it can be assumed that the German company obtains its body parts from large numbers of Ukrainian corpses. "All we are for the rich countries is a source of raw materials," says Yurchenko.In May 2004, Tutogen signed a five-year contract with Bioimplant, which describes the process as follows: The Ukrainians transfer harvested tissue to Tutogen in Germany to have it processed into products. But this processing is costly. How does the Ukrainian company pay for the expensive processing? The answer is deceptively simple: with the bones, from Ukrainian corpses, that have been processed into products in Germany. This is the currency accepted by both parties to the arrangement.What the agreement does not state is that the Germans were not producing products for Bioimplant, but were ordering substantial amounts of raw material from the Ukrainians every month.At times, much larger numbers of body parts from Ukraine and other countries were arriving in Neunkirchen than Tutogen could even process. A document titled "Inventory, Raw Material Storage 1," dated March 2000, reveals the scope of this excess material. According to this inventory document, Tutogen warehouses already contained 688 patellar tendons, 1,831 kneecaps, 1,848 fibula, 2,114 fascia and 1,196 foot bones, or a total of more than 20,000 body parts.In June 2002, Tutogen employees wrote the following comments in the minutes of a meeting: "Warehouse problems. More tissue than necessary continues to be delivered. Solutions are needed to address this problem."The company documents also include references to the kinds of solutions Tutogen had in mind. According to an internal memo dated April 2002, a Ms. R. noted "that there is no longer any storage capacity in the deep freezers. Efforts must be stepped up to ship tissue to the USA."According to a document dated June 2002, which lists the "Raw Tissue Requirements for USA Needs," the US partners required the following monthly supply:* 119 iliac crests,* 667 pieces of fascia lata,* 267 kneecaps,* 243 shafts of the femur.Did Tutogen Break the Law?Apparently, the deliveries to the United States were not only sent to the parent company in Florida, Tutogen Medical Inc., which could have been explained as a way of shifting the problem within the company, but also to RTI, the company's US competitor at the time.In a table detailing a shipment from Lugansk in Ukraine, delivered on Dec. 7, 2001, a sum of €62,000 is quoted, but the recipient is identified as "TM/RTI."If Tutogen was indeed shipping unprocessed tissue to the United States, this could constitute an act of engaging in illegal tissue trade, provided a profit was generated as a result.In a memo dated April 4, 2002, a Tutogen employee issued the following cautionary statement: "We should avoid shipping unprocessed raw material to TMUS (Tutogen USA), so as not to create the impression of engaging in the tissue trade."The German Institute for Cell and Tissue Replacement, another major bone producer, categorically rejects such practices. Director Hans-Joachim Mönig insists that "obtaining raw tissue from one country and passing it on to third parties is against the law. In our view, this constitutes the crime of trading in tissue."To date, its collaboration with Aleshenko and the Kiev Health Ministry has worked exceedingly well for Tutogen. All investigations against Tutogen's Ukrainian partners in Krivoy Rog, Kiev and Dnipropetrovsk have been suspended.But that could change. Last year, the public prosecutor's office in Krivoy Rog launched a new investigation.Once again, forensic medicine employees, as the public prosecutor's office states in response to SPIEGEL's inquiry, are suspected of "having used coercion and fraud to obtain the consent of family members for the removal of tissue and other anatomical material for purposes of transplantation." Seventeen family members of the deceased have already testified.On Jan. 9, 2009, the district attorney's office submitted the case to the relevant district court, where the case is still underway.Lena Krat, the Kiev woman who was persuaded to release her father's body for tissue harvesting in 2004, would be pleased to see those responsible finally brought to justice. "Those people are truly guilty," she says, "and I am outraged that these terrible things are still taking place."
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev Changes Tack Over Ukraine
MOSCOW, Russia -- The economic crisis didn’t have the effect on Russia that the West was anticipating. Instead of compliance, they’ve shown more aggression.
Rather than being scattered around the world, Russia’s now focused on strengthening its position as an independent centre of gravity. In other words, it’s expanding its markets and political influence into adjacent territories.The about turn of replacing World Trade Organisation membership with a customs union that surprised so many people, the new push to turn the Collective Security Treaty Organisation into a functioning military alliance, and moving closer to Turkey are all elements of one strategy. The new approach toward Ukraine proclaimed by President Dmitry Medvedev last week is in the same vein.Many people think Russia is getting involved in the Ukrainian election campaign, which will go into full swing right after the holiday season winds down. And it’s likely that’s exactly what’s happening. But Russia’s hand will be different from the one it played in 2004.Openly betting on a particular candidate ended in such confusion five years ago that the Kremlin would have to be masochistic to try it again. Now Russia’s position is formulated on a much broader scale. No matter who wins in January – and the Kremlin doesn’t believe in the reincarnation of Viktor Yushchenko – the new president must immediately take into account the long list of framework conditions set forth by Moscow.It seems that Medvedev’s address has brought an end to the previous approach, under which the goal was to treat relations between Russia and Ukraine like those of any two “ordinary” foreign countries.In reality, that was never the case, but no senior political leaders were willing to say publicly that Kiev was for Moscow – or that Moscow was for Kiev – something more than simply an external partner.The recent visit to Ukraine by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church showed that there’s a new public figure in Russia whose political weight and diplomatic skills surpass those of the secular authorities.Patriarch Kirill combines tact and civility with a firmness of his ideological positions, and his address to worshippers calling for unity and reconciliation is a demonstration of the “soft”, nonstate power that Moscow has long been criticised for lacking.That impression only became stronger when, a day after Medvedev’s address, the patriarch’s press service published thankyou letters to the people he met in Ukraine, including Yushchenko. Kirill noted that “despite all of the difficulties, Ukraine is successfully consolidating its statehood”. His letter to the president concludes: “May God’s blessing be with the people of beautiful Ukraine, with its leaders and military, and with all of us.”At first glance, the patriarch’s remarks sharply contrast with those of Medvedev, who said Ukrainian weapons were used to kill Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. In reality there’s no contradiction, since the authors of the two addresses to the Ukrainian president are speaking from entirely different positions.For Medvedev, Yushchenko is an unpleasant – it’s not being hidden anymore – counterpart; for Kirill, he’s a member of the faith, who needs to be put back on the true path if he strays from it.What they have in common is that both Russian leaders – spiritual and secular – are saying they intend to hold a dialogue with their neighbour outside the typical political channels. The patriarch addresses his congregation, which by definition should not be divided by citizenship or state loyalties.Medvedev appeals directly to the Ukrainians, letting them know that the conversation with their political elite has become unproductive. In fact, the symbolic meaning of not sending a new Russian ambassador to Kiev also ties into this desire to reduce official dialogue to a purely technical level.In their nearly 18 years of independence, Ukraine and Russia still haven’t found a stable form of coexistence. They’ve tried everything from imitating brotherhood and relying on corrupt schemes to petty alienation and indirect military and political confrontation.Yet their overlapping interests – from culture and history to economics and security – are extremely tangled. Passions are tearing through the cloth of all of these types of relations and sparking crises for all of Europe, as happened, for example, in January.Both countries are in the process of nation-building within borders that they never before occupied. That determines an awful lot. And there’s a temptation for Russia to make use of the still unsettled configuration of the post-Soviet space, particularly when it involves land with a disputed history.Additionally, Ukraine is trying to stake out a permanent claim as part of the non-Russian world, even as its internal political environment remains unstable. This psychological interdependence has made pragmatic ties impossible, at the very least for now.The Russian authorities’ attempts to build ties with Ukraine from below, making use of its resources there, is generally understandable since the country is lacking an accountable and consolidated elite. But this clever plan can only work if the Russian strategists accurately estimate Ukrainian society’s sympathies toward Russia.It’s no secret that the policy, maintained during Yushchenko’s presidency, of a sharp break from Moscow and everything Russian has been unpopular with a portion – and likely not a small one – of the Ukrainian people. It’s not clear, however, that those same people are therefore willing to forego their national sovereignty, which many of them have become used to over the years.Of course, the Kremlin would most likely be satisfied if public opinion forced the Ukrainian authorities to move toward a policy of compromise on the most important issues for Moscow… security and energy. But by resorting to “Great Game” tactics, Russia should expect a similar response.It’s easy for Kiev to turn the situation into the claim “our country’s in danger”, with all of the resulting internal and external consequences. Yushchenko is still to decide how to proceed. And that’s when we’ll know whether Russia’s evaluation of the situation in Ukrainian society – and its wager on a direct appeal – was correct
Rather than being scattered around the world, Russia’s now focused on strengthening its position as an independent centre of gravity. In other words, it’s expanding its markets and political influence into adjacent territories.The about turn of replacing World Trade Organisation membership with a customs union that surprised so many people, the new push to turn the Collective Security Treaty Organisation into a functioning military alliance, and moving closer to Turkey are all elements of one strategy. The new approach toward Ukraine proclaimed by President Dmitry Medvedev last week is in the same vein.Many people think Russia is getting involved in the Ukrainian election campaign, which will go into full swing right after the holiday season winds down. And it’s likely that’s exactly what’s happening. But Russia’s hand will be different from the one it played in 2004.Openly betting on a particular candidate ended in such confusion five years ago that the Kremlin would have to be masochistic to try it again. Now Russia’s position is formulated on a much broader scale. No matter who wins in January – and the Kremlin doesn’t believe in the reincarnation of Viktor Yushchenko – the new president must immediately take into account the long list of framework conditions set forth by Moscow.It seems that Medvedev’s address has brought an end to the previous approach, under which the goal was to treat relations between Russia and Ukraine like those of any two “ordinary” foreign countries.In reality, that was never the case, but no senior political leaders were willing to say publicly that Kiev was for Moscow – or that Moscow was for Kiev – something more than simply an external partner.The recent visit to Ukraine by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church showed that there’s a new public figure in Russia whose political weight and diplomatic skills surpass those of the secular authorities.Patriarch Kirill combines tact and civility with a firmness of his ideological positions, and his address to worshippers calling for unity and reconciliation is a demonstration of the “soft”, nonstate power that Moscow has long been criticised for lacking.That impression only became stronger when, a day after Medvedev’s address, the patriarch’s press service published thankyou letters to the people he met in Ukraine, including Yushchenko. Kirill noted that “despite all of the difficulties, Ukraine is successfully consolidating its statehood”. His letter to the president concludes: “May God’s blessing be with the people of beautiful Ukraine, with its leaders and military, and with all of us.”At first glance, the patriarch’s remarks sharply contrast with those of Medvedev, who said Ukrainian weapons were used to kill Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. In reality there’s no contradiction, since the authors of the two addresses to the Ukrainian president are speaking from entirely different positions.For Medvedev, Yushchenko is an unpleasant – it’s not being hidden anymore – counterpart; for Kirill, he’s a member of the faith, who needs to be put back on the true path if he strays from it.What they have in common is that both Russian leaders – spiritual and secular – are saying they intend to hold a dialogue with their neighbour outside the typical political channels. The patriarch addresses his congregation, which by definition should not be divided by citizenship or state loyalties.Medvedev appeals directly to the Ukrainians, letting them know that the conversation with their political elite has become unproductive. In fact, the symbolic meaning of not sending a new Russian ambassador to Kiev also ties into this desire to reduce official dialogue to a purely technical level.In their nearly 18 years of independence, Ukraine and Russia still haven’t found a stable form of coexistence. They’ve tried everything from imitating brotherhood and relying on corrupt schemes to petty alienation and indirect military and political confrontation.Yet their overlapping interests – from culture and history to economics and security – are extremely tangled. Passions are tearing through the cloth of all of these types of relations and sparking crises for all of Europe, as happened, for example, in January.Both countries are in the process of nation-building within borders that they never before occupied. That determines an awful lot. And there’s a temptation for Russia to make use of the still unsettled configuration of the post-Soviet space, particularly when it involves land with a disputed history.Additionally, Ukraine is trying to stake out a permanent claim as part of the non-Russian world, even as its internal political environment remains unstable. This psychological interdependence has made pragmatic ties impossible, at the very least for now.The Russian authorities’ attempts to build ties with Ukraine from below, making use of its resources there, is generally understandable since the country is lacking an accountable and consolidated elite. But this clever plan can only work if the Russian strategists accurately estimate Ukrainian society’s sympathies toward Russia.It’s no secret that the policy, maintained during Yushchenko’s presidency, of a sharp break from Moscow and everything Russian has been unpopular with a portion – and likely not a small one – of the Ukrainian people. It’s not clear, however, that those same people are therefore willing to forego their national sovereignty, which many of them have become used to over the years.Of course, the Kremlin would most likely be satisfied if public opinion forced the Ukrainian authorities to move toward a policy of compromise on the most important issues for Moscow… security and energy. But by resorting to “Great Game” tactics, Russia should expect a similar response.It’s easy for Kiev to turn the situation into the claim “our country’s in danger”, with all of the resulting internal and external consequences. Yushchenko is still to decide how to proceed. And that’s when we’ll know whether Russia’s evaluation of the situation in Ukrainian society – and its wager on a direct appeal – was correct
Ukraine, Russia PMs Resolve Gas Dispute: Tymoshenko
SOPOT, Poland -- Russia and Ukraine have resolved a long standing dispute over natural gas supplies, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said on Tuesday after meeting her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Rows over gas supplies have dominated Russia's relations with Ukraine over recent years, leading last winter to the longest interruption to European Union supplies for decades."We have removed all of the gas problems," Tymoshenko said after talks in Sopot, a resort on the Baltic coast in northern Poland."We feel that all the crisis-like occurrences in this sphere have gone."Russia supplies a quarter of the European Union's gas and most of this goes through pipelines across Ukraine. The clashes over Ukraine's imports of Russian gas have repeatedly led to disruption of transit flows to Europe.The relationship between former Kremlin chief Putin and Tymoshenko, the most popular Ukrainian politician now holding office, is also being closely watched ahead of Ukraine's January 17 presidential election."Our meeting was very important for Ukraine," Tymoshenko said with a smile. "Our next meeting will take place in October and we plan it in Ukraine. I invite you and your team."Tymoshenko's warmer ties with Russia over recent months have provoked speculation that Moscow may be backing her in the election to gain influence over the former Soviet republic."We have again gone over the volumes of Russian gas consumed by Ukraine with Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) and the Russian prime minister's position is very important... that Ukraine will pay for all the gas it consumes."The statement, although not confirmed by Putin, means Russia has agreed to scrap an earlier clause under which Ukraine would be fined if it consumed less gas than agreed in January, when the two sides settled their dispute over volumes and gas prices.Kiev has long argued that it needs less gas because of a steep economic downturn.Putin said he was glad to see Tymoshenko again and added that they talked about energy and aviation."We remain the biggest partners in the sphere of the economy and we always have something to speak about," said Putin."Traditionally, attention is focused on energy but besides this, there are other areas of our cooperation," Putin said.
Rows over gas supplies have dominated Russia's relations with Ukraine over recent years, leading last winter to the longest interruption to European Union supplies for decades."We have removed all of the gas problems," Tymoshenko said after talks in Sopot, a resort on the Baltic coast in northern Poland."We feel that all the crisis-like occurrences in this sphere have gone."Russia supplies a quarter of the European Union's gas and most of this goes through pipelines across Ukraine. The clashes over Ukraine's imports of Russian gas have repeatedly led to disruption of transit flows to Europe.The relationship between former Kremlin chief Putin and Tymoshenko, the most popular Ukrainian politician now holding office, is also being closely watched ahead of Ukraine's January 17 presidential election."Our meeting was very important for Ukraine," Tymoshenko said with a smile. "Our next meeting will take place in October and we plan it in Ukraine. I invite you and your team."Tymoshenko's warmer ties with Russia over recent months have provoked speculation that Moscow may be backing her in the election to gain influence over the former Soviet republic."We have again gone over the volumes of Russian gas consumed by Ukraine with Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) and the Russian prime minister's position is very important... that Ukraine will pay for all the gas it consumes."The statement, although not confirmed by Putin, means Russia has agreed to scrap an earlier clause under which Ukraine would be fined if it consumed less gas than agreed in January, when the two sides settled their dispute over volumes and gas prices.Kiev has long argued that it needs less gas because of a steep economic downturn.Putin said he was glad to see Tymoshenko again and added that they talked about energy and aviation."We remain the biggest partners in the sphere of the economy and we always have something to speak about," said Putin."Traditionally, attention is focused on energy but besides this, there are other areas of our cooperation," Putin said.
Beyonce Opens $400 Million Stadium In Ukraine
DONETSK, Ukraine -- Shakhtar Donetsk have officially opened their new stadium, the Donbass Arena. The ground has a capacity of 50,000 and will be a key component of the Euro 2012 Championships, hosted jointly by Ukraine and Poland.
The last decade has seen Shakhtar establish themselves as one of Ukraine's strongest teams as they have also emerged as a force around Europe, with much of that success taking place in the club's RSK Olympisky Stadium.The Donbass Arena is named after the local region, which is the coal mining heartland of Ukraine and the people of Donetsk certainly seem to have taken to the impressive new landmark on their doorstep.The stadium has a five star rating from UEFA, meaning it will be able to host European Cup and Champions League finals.Construction started in 2006 and has cost approximately $400 million. However, none of this would have been possible without the help of Rinat Akhmetov. The Ukrainian multi-billionaire is the president of Shakhtar Donetsk and the man who financed the construction of the arena.“I was in Paris in March 1999 to see Ukraine play France and I had a dream that one day I would be able to build one of the best stadiums in Europe for our supporters,” Rinat Akhmetov said.To commemorate the unveiling of the new stadium an opening ceremony was held, and money was certainly not an issue.American signer Beyonce performed, while a lot of work went into some excellently choreographed routines.The greatest moment in Shakhtar’s history certainly wasn't forgotten either – the UEFA Cup was paraded around the arena, which was packed to capacity. The fans hope there will be a number of exciting European nights ahead in this new fantastic stadium.
The last decade has seen Shakhtar establish themselves as one of Ukraine's strongest teams as they have also emerged as a force around Europe, with much of that success taking place in the club's RSK Olympisky Stadium.The Donbass Arena is named after the local region, which is the coal mining heartland of Ukraine and the people of Donetsk certainly seem to have taken to the impressive new landmark on their doorstep.The stadium has a five star rating from UEFA, meaning it will be able to host European Cup and Champions League finals.Construction started in 2006 and has cost approximately $400 million. However, none of this would have been possible without the help of Rinat Akhmetov. The Ukrainian multi-billionaire is the president of Shakhtar Donetsk and the man who financed the construction of the arena.“I was in Paris in March 1999 to see Ukraine play France and I had a dream that one day I would be able to build one of the best stadiums in Europe for our supporters,” Rinat Akhmetov said.To commemorate the unveiling of the new stadium an opening ceremony was held, and money was certainly not an issue.American signer Beyonce performed, while a lot of work went into some excellently choreographed routines.The greatest moment in Shakhtar’s history certainly wasn't forgotten either – the UEFA Cup was paraded around the arena, which was packed to capacity. The fans hope there will be a number of exciting European nights ahead in this new fantastic stadium.
Putin, Tymoshenko To Discuss Russia-Ukraine Ties In Poland
MOSCOW, Russia -- Russia's prime minister will discuss bilateral ties between Moscow and Kiev with his Ukrainian counterpart during a working visit to Poland, a senior Russian government official has said.
On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin will attend international events in Gdansk to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. The Russian premier will also meet with his counterparts from Poland, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovenia and Croatia."After talks with Polish premier [Donald Tusk], the Russian PM will meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. A host of issues, including natural gas, developments in Ukraine, bilateral ties and practical aspects of cooperation will be discussed," Yury Ushakov, a deputy government chief of staff, said.Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been strained in recent years by natural gas disputes, Ukraine's desire to join NATO, and interpretations of the Soviet-era famine in Ukraine.Tymoshenko signaled earlier this month that Ukraine plans to buy twice as less gas in 2010, 25 billion cubic meters, than was stipulated in the 2009-2019 contract signed by the two countries' state-owned gas giants, Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz.Russia, which supplies around one quarter of Europe's gas, briefly shut down supplies via Ukraine's pipeline system at the start of the year during a dispute over Kiev's debt for supplies.Ukraine transits around 80% of Russia's Europe-bound gas.
On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin will attend international events in Gdansk to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. The Russian premier will also meet with his counterparts from Poland, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovenia and Croatia."After talks with Polish premier [Donald Tusk], the Russian PM will meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. A host of issues, including natural gas, developments in Ukraine, bilateral ties and practical aspects of cooperation will be discussed," Yury Ushakov, a deputy government chief of staff, said.Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been strained in recent years by natural gas disputes, Ukraine's desire to join NATO, and interpretations of the Soviet-era famine in Ukraine.Tymoshenko signaled earlier this month that Ukraine plans to buy twice as less gas in 2010, 25 billion cubic meters, than was stipulated in the 2009-2019 contract signed by the two countries' state-owned gas giants, Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz.Russia, which supplies around one quarter of Europe's gas, briefly shut down supplies via Ukraine's pipeline system at the start of the year during a dispute over Kiev's debt for supplies.Ukraine transits around 80% of Russia's Europe-bound gas.
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