It was the sign above the store that made me stop short, one perfect spring day, during a stroll down East Seventh Street: Surma Books & Music. The goods for sale were ceramic eggs, embroidered blouses, religious icons. A few shelves of books and cassette tapes, mostly in Ukrainian.
The sight of it all woke the memory of another sign, another road, another May, 26 years ago.“Apiarist,” said the sign on that street, in Saddle River, N.J.The beekeeper was 91 years old, lord and servant to 700,000 bees. They darted into a tangle of raspberry vines. Their wooden hives were set in the yard. The old man worked barehanded; he said the stings prevented rheumatism. He was spry as a fawn.And his voice, on that spring afternoon in 1983, was fragrant with Ukraine that he left in 1910. After digging coal near Scranton, Pa., he moved to a pocket of the Lower East Side of Manhattan known as Little Ukraine. He opened a shop and stocked it with books and newspapers and things from the old country. Then he kept bees in northern New Jersey.Schoolchildren — not a wandering reporter — were his steady visitors. A class of fifth graders sat on tree stumps, in the shade of a pine grove, and absorbed lore of the bee: the needless terror of the stings, and the flowers the bees pollinate, their combs thick with honey.But, the kids wanted to know, wasn’t he scared? “A beekeeper likes to be with the bees,” he said. “When he hears them buzzing around, he thinks it’s a symphony.”Nearly three decades later, in the shop on Seventh Street, I mention the old beekeeper, Myron Surmach. The man behind the counter nods.“My grandfather,” he says. “He started this store in 1918.”The grandson is Markian Surmach, 47, and he is almost as surprised to be standing in the shop, a few doors east of Third Avenue, as I am to encounter another Surmach in 2009.“I was away for a long time,” he said. “Most of my generation of Ukrainians moved away and assimilated.”When Myron Surmach moved from shopkeeping to beekeeping in the 1950s, he turned the store over to his son, Myron Jr., who had a fine run as impresario of Ukrainian dances and parties and outfitting the flower children of the 1960s. Peasant blouses were in demand. Janis Joplin and Joan Baez and members of the Mamas and the Papas shopped in Surma Books & Music.The grandson, Markian Surmach, whose first language was Ukrainian, lived above the store until he was 6. He left Little Ukraine and New York behind in 1991. “You want to define yourself, apart from the mold,” he said. “I chose to run away.” He started a Web-development business in Denver.Surmach the beekeeper and store founder died in 1991, not quite 99 years old. His son died in 2003, at age 71. Markian has a sister, who was busy raising her children.“If I didn’t come back, the store was going to close,” he said.No place stays the same for 15 years, certainly not in Manhattan. With a few exceptions, Ukrainians have long since drained from the Lower East Side. So have the artists living cheaply. “The homogenization of city life is not unique to New York, or this country,” Mr. Surmach said. “It’s all over the world.”People return to the store around Christmas and Easter, and also after attending services at St. George Ukrainian Church, he says. The older people will glance through the Ukrainian newspapers; younger ones will pick over the crafts, the painted eggs and greetings illustrated with folk scenes by a Surmach aunt.He wrestles with the future. “I started a business of my own with a clean white slate,” he said. “Here, the book is fully written. I’m just trying to write in the margins. I haven’t given up yet. I’m trying to find meaning.”Perhaps, he says, he will bring fresh life to the shop with music. He is offered another memory of his grandfather from 1983: for the visiting schoolchildren, the beekeeper played the bandura, a 55-string lute.“For an old man, this is like family,” Myron Surmach had told the kids. “Everyone, when they get old and lonely, should have a bandura. It is like family because it has all the voices.” He plucked a high note. “These are the children.” Then a richer one: “These are the ladies.”Hearing of this nearly three decades later, the grandson smiled and pointed to a bandura, hanging on the wall. He stood below an old sign, “Honey Sold Here.” The old bee farm is gone, but Surma Books & Music still stocks honey, fields of clover, tangles of raspberry, remembered in a jar.
Sunday 31 May 2009
Ukraine On The Brink
Russia has always had a knack for overshadowing its neighbors - and this time the West, focused on Moscow, is distracted from a crisis in Ukraine. As U.S. President Barack Obama gears up to "reset" Russia relations, Ukraine is in disarray.
The country is teetering between economic collapse, Russian influence, and vague promises of Western support. It will take decisive moves from Washington to help pull Ukraine back from the edge. At the least, Obama should visit ailing Ukraine and prove that good relations with Russia don't meant forgetting the rest of the region.Economic decline is largely to blame for Ukraine's perilous predicament. The country paid heavily for of its massive corporate foreign debt, failure to push through serious economic reform, and unwillingness to clean up a terribly corrupt energy sector.The International Monetary Fund and World Bank forecast an 8 to 9 percent drop in GDP this year, and that might be a conservative estimate; the economy has contracted some 30 percent in the first quarter alone. Ukraine's currency, the hryvnya, has fallen 40 percent against the dollar.Unemployment may reach 10 percent and mass protests are not out of the question -- especially in the troubled east.Finger-pointing among Ukrainian politicians, already a national sport, will only accelerate as the country gears up for January 2010 elections for president (and possibly early parliamentary elections, too). Many, including Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (who has been feuding with President Viktor Yushchenko since the Orange Revolution brought him to power in 2004) are calling for constitutional reform that would strengthen Ukraine's parliament and weaken the presidency.Constitutional reform, important though that may be, is a divisive distraction at a horrible time. What would be more helpful is economic reform, as the IMF recommended as part of its $16.4 billion deal last year.But politicians are desperate for quicker solutions, even ones that may not have Ukraine's long-term interests in mind. Enter Moscow, which has provided loans to the tune of several billion dollars already to Kiev and is interested in buying up more Ukrainian properties and assets.Russia might not be acting out of mere kindness of heart; a campaign to regain its sphere of influence might be at work.If so, it's a campaign with strategic implications. Russia's Black Sea fleet is set to operate in Ukraine's port city of Sevastopol until 2017. In its current economic predicament, Ukraine will be in a weaker position in contentious negotiations with Moscow about whether to renew the arrangement.The same is true as the country rejects Russian nationalist claims that Crimea, internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, really belongs to Russia. Clashes between the two countries over gas delivery to Europe are also likely to continue -- with Russia in a position to apply further pressure on Ukraine, (though Ukraine also needs to pay its bills so that future cutoffs are harder to justify).Why should the international community be concerned about Ukraine's fragility? In a word: location. The country of more than 46 million people is a strategically placed capitalist (albeit fragile) democracy on the fault line between Russia and the European Union.Messy and frustrating as Ukrainian politics may be, the country has been both peaceful and democratic since the Orange Revolution in 2004. The media in Ukraine are freer than ever, and the parliament (the Rada) is no rubber stamp for the executive branch -- more than some of Ukraine's neighbors can say.Ukraine is central to achieving the goal of a Europe that is whole, free, and at peace. It's the right country in the right place. But if the West turns away, gains from the past five years could be lost.Visible U.S. support for Ukraine is critical as the country struggles through the coming months. Obama should avoid boosting one politician over another prior to any elections. A visit to Kiev on the president's scheduled trip to Moscow in July would help, sending a powerful message that America will not seek to improve relations with Russia at all costs, neighbors included.On his trip, Obama must make clear that he seeks better relations with Ukraine and other countries in the region even as he improves ties with Moscow. It's a delicate balancing act, but neither policy can succeed without the other.
Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Five Years On
Ukraine will hold presidential elections in January 2010 that are likely to give the country a new president. Viktor Yushchenko, elected in January 2005 on the crest of the Orange Revolution, has only 3-4 percent support making it impossible for him to win a second term. He would therefore follow Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk who also only served one term in 1991-1994.
The story of how Yushchenko came to power with high domestic and international expectations that he largely failed to fulfill will be a fascinating area for future research by historians, political scientists and sociologists.This article provides an initial overview of the Yushchenko presidency; first considering whether it was part of a ’second wave’ of democratic breakthroughs from 1996-2004 (the ‘first wave’ being in 1989-1991) and then analyzing three factors that facilitated the Orange Revolution.A ‘Second Wave’?Were the democratic breakthroughs and revolutions which occurred between 1996 and 2004 in post-communist states part of a ’second wave’, sweeping Romania (1996), Bulgaria (1997), Slovakia (1998), Croatia and Serbia (1999-2000), Georgia (2003) and finally Ukraine (2004)? This remains an area of debate as the ‘Revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine are, in some senses, fundamentally different to the five earlier cases.Firstly, the offer of EU membership to the first five countries was crucial in bolstering support for the pro-western and pro-democratic opposition, thereby ensuring their victory in elections. In Georgia and Ukraine the EU has never offered membership.Secondly, Ukraine was unique in experiencing a massive Russian covert and overt intervention in the 2004 elections aimed at preventing the election of the opposition candidate Yushchenko. The EU only intervened reluctantly during the Orange Revolution, at the instigation of new members Poland and Lithuania, to facilitate round-table negotiations between the opposition and authorities.Three factors behind the Orange RevolutionScholarly discussions surrounding the phenomenon of democratic revolutions have been overwhelmingly dominated by American political scientists. This has meant that the discussion has focused on the ‘democratic’ nature of these revolutions (e.g. electoral fraud, human rights violations, democratization) to the detriment of two factors that were at work in Ukraine and Georgia: national identity and social populism.Electoral fraud was undoubtedly crucial in acting as the ‘trigger’ that brought large numbers of Ukrainians on to the streets who were not opposition activists (this differentiated the Orange Revolution from the Ukraine Without Kuchma protests in 2000-2001 where it was mainly activists who took to the streets). But democratisation, human rights and electoral fraud are not sufficient to mobilise millions. zation.As seen during Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule in the late 1980s, anti-Soviet mobilization only proved to be strong in the USSR and Central-Eastern Europe when nationalism and democratization fused together, such as in Poland, the Baltic states, Western-Central Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia - but not in Russia outside Moscow, russified Belarus or in Central Asia.In Ukraine, nationalism was boosted by a second factor, anti-elite social populism, which helped to mobilize Ukrainians against the oligarchic regime and authorities and , specifically, candidate, Viktor Yanukovych.The role of national identity and social populism are missing from the discussion on democratic revolutions . Countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) experienced a very different transition to that experienced in the former Soviet outer empire of Central-Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.The USSR was a totalitarian state and empire and these two factors led to what I have described elsewhere as a ‘quadruple transition’ consisting of democratization, creation of a market economy, state-institution building and nation-building. The ‘quadruple transition’ resembles post-colonial transitions found elsewhere in the world.They are more difficult than the dual transitions of democratization and marketization that took place in Latin America and Southern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Central-Eastern Europe in the 1990s -where there was no need to undertake nation and state building in most countries, and which already exhibited elements of a market economy.The 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections were not only a contest about the future direction of Ukraine but also a contest over national identity in a regionally divided country. The ‘pro-Europe’ candidate, Yushchenko, won majorities in the west and centre of the country (which are predominantly Ukrainian-speaking) while the ruling regime’s ‘pro-Russian’ candidate, Yanukovych, won majorities in the east and south (which are predominantly Russian-speaking).The majority of the participants in the Orange Revolution came from Western and Central Ukraine showing the degree to which Ukrainian-speaking national identity and civil society synthesised together. Civic nationalism therefore played a vital role in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.The creation of market economies from the fully ‘command-administrative’ economies found throughout the USSR, contrasts to the transition from ‘goulash (semi-market) communism’ to market economies in Central-Eastern Europe. The economic transition in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere in the CIS produced a small clique of super wealthy oligarchs (many of whom are now in exile in the UK), generated widespread public anger, anti-elite sentiments and a desire for revenge.The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences conducted a yearly survey between 1994 and 2004, asking which element of society was most influential. They found that a majority of Ukrainians believed it to be ‘organised crime’. With Yanukovych put forward as the ruling regime’s candidate, Ukrainian voters in 2004 believed that this was the final leg in the mafia’s take-over of the country. Yanukovych had two criminal convictions and was high in Ukraine’s most powerful Donetsk clan (perceived to be criminal by many).Widespread social anger at a decade of economic transition enabled President Vladimir Putin to turn Russians against liberal democracy by equating the chaos and ‘oligarcisation’ of the 1990s with ‘democracy’ itself. Russians applauded his campaign against oligarchs; only the West protested Mikhail Khodorokovsky’s imprisonment.In Ukraine the democratic opposition channelled social anger against the oligarchs and corrupt ruling elites from the onset of the Kuchmagate crisis in November 2000 (when the president was accused of involvement in the murder of journalist Georgi Gongadze) over the following four years to the Orange Revolution. The main slogan of the Orange Revolution, used repeatedly by Yushchenko at rallies, was not ‘Free Elections!’ but ‘Bandits to Jail!’.Following his election, President Yushchenko has been a persistent critic of Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s ‘populism’ since her first period in government in 2005,but the criticism is unfair because her two governments have merely sought to implement Yushchenko’s 2004 election programme - itself socially populist.The Razumkov Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies think tank developed Yushchenko’s ‘Ten Steps’ election programme (July 2004) and fourteen draft decrees (October-November 2004). The ‘Ten Steps’ and fourteen decrees became the basis for the Tymoshenko government programme approved by parliament in February 2005; the programme’s preamble stated, ‘The government programme is based on, and develops the basis of, the programme of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s ‘Ten Steps towards the People’…’The ‘Ten Steps’ and fourteen draft decrees are replete with social-populist policies. The ‘Ten Steps’ explains that, ‘Social programmes are not a devastation of the budget, but investments in the people, in the country and the nations future’. Yushchenko pledged in Step two that if he is elected, ‘My Action Plan will ensure priority funding of social programmes. The way of finding budgetary money for this purpose is easy: not to steal, not to build luxurious palaces and not to buy expensive automobiles’.Viktor Yushchenko’s 2004 Election ProgrammeTen Steps Towards the People
1. Create 5 million jobs.
2. Ensure priority Funding for Social Programmes.
3. Increase the Budget by Decreasing Taxation.
4. Force the Government to Work for the People and Battle Corruption.
5. Create Safe Living Conditions.
6. Protect Family Values, Respect for Parents and Children’s Rights.
7. Promote Spirituality and Strengthen Moral Values.
8. Promote the Development of the Countryside.
9. Improve Military Capabilities and Respect for the Military.
10. Conduct Foreign Policy that Benefits the Ukrainian People.
14 Draft Decrees
1. Promote Social Defence of Citizens.
2. Take Steps to Ensure the Return of Lost Savings to Citizens.
3. Increase Support for Child Allowance.
4. Establish the Criteria for Analysing the Activities of Heads of Local State Administrations.
5. Reduce the Terms of Military Service
6. Create a System of People’s Control of the Activities of State Authorities.
7. Struggle against Corruption of High Ranking State Officials and Civil Servants in Local Governments.
8. Reduce the Number of Inspections of Businesses and Ease their Registration Process.
9. Withdraw Peacekeeping Troops from the Republic of Iraq.
10. Defend Citizens Rights to Use the Russian Language and other Minority Languages in Ukraine.
11. Ensure the Basis for Good Relations with Russia and Belarus.
12. Ensure the Rights of the Opposition in Ukraine.
13. Adopt First Steps to Ensure Individual Security of Citizens and to Halt Crime.
14. Strengthen Local Government.
Yushchenko’s RecordYushchenko’s support in 2004 came from a cross-section of Ukrainians and grew out of a large number of expectations. Post-Soviet politicians operate in an inherited political culture where they are unaccountable to voters or the judiciary, whilst other politicians ignore their programmes after being elected themselves. Yushchenko’s fatal mistake was to not appreciate the degree to which Ukrainians were changed by the Orange Revolution and that they would not countenance their president ignoring his programme and societal demands for ‘justice’.Of the three factors that facilitated the Orange Revolution -democratic rights, national identity and social populism- Yuschenko has successfully addressed two, but failed with one. He has presided over Ukraine’s democratization in the holding of two free elections and the emergence of a plural media.Ukraine is the only CIS country defined as ‘Free’ by the Freedom House think tank while during the same period Russia has moved in the opposite direction from ‘Partly Free’ to ‘Unfree’. Yushchenko has also energetically devoted himself to national identity questions, such as reviving Ukraine’s historical memory and commemorating the victims of Stalinism and Communism.The 1933 artificial Ukrainian famine has been raised on an international level. Yushchenko’s nation-building drive has led to poor relations with autocratic Russia where Jozef Stalin is being rehabilitated.Yushchenko’s record in dealing with social populist demands has been a failure. He is perceived as having sought to undermine Tymoshenko’s two governments at every opportunity. No ‘Bandits’ went to jail, the elites remain above the law, politicians remain unaccountable, the judiciary and prosecutors office is as corrupt as it was in the pre-Orange era and only one re-nationalisation took place (Kryvorizhstal).The Tymoshenko’s government policy last year of seeking to repay lost Soviet bank deposits (promised in Yushchenko’s second of his fourteen decrees from his 2004 programme) was blocked by the president and denounced as ‘populist’. Ukrainians supported the policy and Tymoshenko’s ratings shot up making her the country’s most popular politician.Yushchenko’s failure to implement his 2004 programme, and his attempts to undermine governments that sought to do so, have brought four years of political crises and pre-term elections. This failure to implement the social and legal components of his 2004 programme, coupled with his association with four years of political instability, have overshadowed Yushchenko’s two contributions to Ukrainian contemporary history as a democratiser and nation-builder.Ukrainian politicians need to appreciate the rules of the game in democracies; namely, that voters will punish them in elections if they ignore their election promises.
The story of how Yushchenko came to power with high domestic and international expectations that he largely failed to fulfill will be a fascinating area for future research by historians, political scientists and sociologists.This article provides an initial overview of the Yushchenko presidency; first considering whether it was part of a ’second wave’ of democratic breakthroughs from 1996-2004 (the ‘first wave’ being in 1989-1991) and then analyzing three factors that facilitated the Orange Revolution.A ‘Second Wave’?Were the democratic breakthroughs and revolutions which occurred between 1996 and 2004 in post-communist states part of a ’second wave’, sweeping Romania (1996), Bulgaria (1997), Slovakia (1998), Croatia and Serbia (1999-2000), Georgia (2003) and finally Ukraine (2004)? This remains an area of debate as the ‘Revolutions’ in Georgia and Ukraine are, in some senses, fundamentally different to the five earlier cases.Firstly, the offer of EU membership to the first five countries was crucial in bolstering support for the pro-western and pro-democratic opposition, thereby ensuring their victory in elections. In Georgia and Ukraine the EU has never offered membership.Secondly, Ukraine was unique in experiencing a massive Russian covert and overt intervention in the 2004 elections aimed at preventing the election of the opposition candidate Yushchenko. The EU only intervened reluctantly during the Orange Revolution, at the instigation of new members Poland and Lithuania, to facilitate round-table negotiations between the opposition and authorities.Three factors behind the Orange RevolutionScholarly discussions surrounding the phenomenon of democratic revolutions have been overwhelmingly dominated by American political scientists. This has meant that the discussion has focused on the ‘democratic’ nature of these revolutions (e.g. electoral fraud, human rights violations, democratization) to the detriment of two factors that were at work in Ukraine and Georgia: national identity and social populism.Electoral fraud was undoubtedly crucial in acting as the ‘trigger’ that brought large numbers of Ukrainians on to the streets who were not opposition activists (this differentiated the Orange Revolution from the Ukraine Without Kuchma protests in 2000-2001 where it was mainly activists who took to the streets). But democratisation, human rights and electoral fraud are not sufficient to mobilise millions. zation.As seen during Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule in the late 1980s, anti-Soviet mobilization only proved to be strong in the USSR and Central-Eastern Europe when nationalism and democratization fused together, such as in Poland, the Baltic states, Western-Central Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia - but not in Russia outside Moscow, russified Belarus or in Central Asia.In Ukraine, nationalism was boosted by a second factor, anti-elite social populism, which helped to mobilize Ukrainians against the oligarchic regime and authorities and , specifically, candidate, Viktor Yanukovych.The role of national identity and social populism are missing from the discussion on democratic revolutions . Countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) experienced a very different transition to that experienced in the former Soviet outer empire of Central-Eastern Europe and the Baltic states.The USSR was a totalitarian state and empire and these two factors led to what I have described elsewhere as a ‘quadruple transition’ consisting of democratization, creation of a market economy, state-institution building and nation-building. The ‘quadruple transition’ resembles post-colonial transitions found elsewhere in the world.They are more difficult than the dual transitions of democratization and marketization that took place in Latin America and Southern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Central-Eastern Europe in the 1990s -where there was no need to undertake nation and state building in most countries, and which already exhibited elements of a market economy.The 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections were not only a contest about the future direction of Ukraine but also a contest over national identity in a regionally divided country. The ‘pro-Europe’ candidate, Yushchenko, won majorities in the west and centre of the country (which are predominantly Ukrainian-speaking) while the ruling regime’s ‘pro-Russian’ candidate, Yanukovych, won majorities in the east and south (which are predominantly Russian-speaking).The majority of the participants in the Orange Revolution came from Western and Central Ukraine showing the degree to which Ukrainian-speaking national identity and civil society synthesised together. Civic nationalism therefore played a vital role in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution.The creation of market economies from the fully ‘command-administrative’ economies found throughout the USSR, contrasts to the transition from ‘goulash (semi-market) communism’ to market economies in Central-Eastern Europe. The economic transition in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere in the CIS produced a small clique of super wealthy oligarchs (many of whom are now in exile in the UK), generated widespread public anger, anti-elite sentiments and a desire for revenge.The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences conducted a yearly survey between 1994 and 2004, asking which element of society was most influential. They found that a majority of Ukrainians believed it to be ‘organised crime’. With Yanukovych put forward as the ruling regime’s candidate, Ukrainian voters in 2004 believed that this was the final leg in the mafia’s take-over of the country. Yanukovych had two criminal convictions and was high in Ukraine’s most powerful Donetsk clan (perceived to be criminal by many).Widespread social anger at a decade of economic transition enabled President Vladimir Putin to turn Russians against liberal democracy by equating the chaos and ‘oligarcisation’ of the 1990s with ‘democracy’ itself. Russians applauded his campaign against oligarchs; only the West protested Mikhail Khodorokovsky’s imprisonment.In Ukraine the democratic opposition channelled social anger against the oligarchs and corrupt ruling elites from the onset of the Kuchmagate crisis in November 2000 (when the president was accused of involvement in the murder of journalist Georgi Gongadze) over the following four years to the Orange Revolution. The main slogan of the Orange Revolution, used repeatedly by Yushchenko at rallies, was not ‘Free Elections!’ but ‘Bandits to Jail!’.Following his election, President Yushchenko has been a persistent critic of Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s ‘populism’ since her first period in government in 2005,but the criticism is unfair because her two governments have merely sought to implement Yushchenko’s 2004 election programme - itself socially populist.The Razumkov Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies think tank developed Yushchenko’s ‘Ten Steps’ election programme (July 2004) and fourteen draft decrees (October-November 2004). The ‘Ten Steps’ and fourteen decrees became the basis for the Tymoshenko government programme approved by parliament in February 2005; the programme’s preamble stated, ‘The government programme is based on, and develops the basis of, the programme of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s ‘Ten Steps towards the People’…’The ‘Ten Steps’ and fourteen draft decrees are replete with social-populist policies. The ‘Ten Steps’ explains that, ‘Social programmes are not a devastation of the budget, but investments in the people, in the country and the nations future’. Yushchenko pledged in Step two that if he is elected, ‘My Action Plan will ensure priority funding of social programmes. The way of finding budgetary money for this purpose is easy: not to steal, not to build luxurious palaces and not to buy expensive automobiles’.Viktor Yushchenko’s 2004 Election ProgrammeTen Steps Towards the People
1. Create 5 million jobs.
2. Ensure priority Funding for Social Programmes.
3. Increase the Budget by Decreasing Taxation.
4. Force the Government to Work for the People and Battle Corruption.
5. Create Safe Living Conditions.
6. Protect Family Values, Respect for Parents and Children’s Rights.
7. Promote Spirituality and Strengthen Moral Values.
8. Promote the Development of the Countryside.
9. Improve Military Capabilities and Respect for the Military.
10. Conduct Foreign Policy that Benefits the Ukrainian People.
14 Draft Decrees
1. Promote Social Defence of Citizens.
2. Take Steps to Ensure the Return of Lost Savings to Citizens.
3. Increase Support for Child Allowance.
4. Establish the Criteria for Analysing the Activities of Heads of Local State Administrations.
5. Reduce the Terms of Military Service
6. Create a System of People’s Control of the Activities of State Authorities.
7. Struggle against Corruption of High Ranking State Officials and Civil Servants in Local Governments.
8. Reduce the Number of Inspections of Businesses and Ease their Registration Process.
9. Withdraw Peacekeeping Troops from the Republic of Iraq.
10. Defend Citizens Rights to Use the Russian Language and other Minority Languages in Ukraine.
11. Ensure the Basis for Good Relations with Russia and Belarus.
12. Ensure the Rights of the Opposition in Ukraine.
13. Adopt First Steps to Ensure Individual Security of Citizens and to Halt Crime.
14. Strengthen Local Government.
Yushchenko’s RecordYushchenko’s support in 2004 came from a cross-section of Ukrainians and grew out of a large number of expectations. Post-Soviet politicians operate in an inherited political culture where they are unaccountable to voters or the judiciary, whilst other politicians ignore their programmes after being elected themselves. Yushchenko’s fatal mistake was to not appreciate the degree to which Ukrainians were changed by the Orange Revolution and that they would not countenance their president ignoring his programme and societal demands for ‘justice’.Of the three factors that facilitated the Orange Revolution -democratic rights, national identity and social populism- Yuschenko has successfully addressed two, but failed with one. He has presided over Ukraine’s democratization in the holding of two free elections and the emergence of a plural media.Ukraine is the only CIS country defined as ‘Free’ by the Freedom House think tank while during the same period Russia has moved in the opposite direction from ‘Partly Free’ to ‘Unfree’. Yushchenko has also energetically devoted himself to national identity questions, such as reviving Ukraine’s historical memory and commemorating the victims of Stalinism and Communism.The 1933 artificial Ukrainian famine has been raised on an international level. Yushchenko’s nation-building drive has led to poor relations with autocratic Russia where Jozef Stalin is being rehabilitated.Yushchenko’s record in dealing with social populist demands has been a failure. He is perceived as having sought to undermine Tymoshenko’s two governments at every opportunity. No ‘Bandits’ went to jail, the elites remain above the law, politicians remain unaccountable, the judiciary and prosecutors office is as corrupt as it was in the pre-Orange era and only one re-nationalisation took place (Kryvorizhstal).The Tymoshenko’s government policy last year of seeking to repay lost Soviet bank deposits (promised in Yushchenko’s second of his fourteen decrees from his 2004 programme) was blocked by the president and denounced as ‘populist’. Ukrainians supported the policy and Tymoshenko’s ratings shot up making her the country’s most popular politician.Yushchenko’s failure to implement his 2004 programme, and his attempts to undermine governments that sought to do so, have brought four years of political crises and pre-term elections. This failure to implement the social and legal components of his 2004 programme, coupled with his association with four years of political instability, have overshadowed Yushchenko’s two contributions to Ukrainian contemporary history as a democratiser and nation-builder.Ukrainian politicians need to appreciate the rules of the game in democracies; namely, that voters will punish them in elections if they ignore their election promises.
Gaining Citizenship, Soldier Completes Journey From Ukraine
Alla Tarbox always wanted to be a soldier. But in Lugansk, Ukraine, that thought would forever remain a fantasy, as Ukrainian women are barred from military duty.
"I had to wait for the right time and the right country,” said Tarbox, a specialist in the Oklahoma National Guard. "I wanted to be surrounded by people who believe in the same values and live according to the same principles.”And for Tarbox, the U.S. became that place of hope.Tarbox, 28, received her citizenship documents Thursday in front of about 30 military personnel and civilians at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office after three years of work with the National Guard."We had talked about this for a long time,” Chief Warrant Officer Dan Kendrick said. "I was really proud of her. Everything she did her entire adult life had been focused for this point. She was probably about to explode.”How it all beganTraveling to the U.S. just before her 25th birthday, Tarbox ventured across the country visiting friends she met as an American Peace Corps volunteer. When she arrived in Oklahoma, she felt attached."I settled down and decided this would be my state,” Tarbox said.And Kendrick said Tarbox has been dedicated to her work ever since.Because of her ability to assimilate into the culture and show her intelligence and kind demeanor, Tarbox was given responsibility as a property book technician — taking care of $400 million worth of equipment, doing inventory and cataloging."It’s because of her attitude and intelligence,” Kendrick said. "She’s the super person.”Tarbox said her citizenship creates an open road ahead, as she’s ready to begin officer school and hopes to gain clearance to someday work for the U.S. Secret Service. As a citizen, Tarbox could sponsor relatives — her parents and two stepbrothers live in Ukraine — to immigrate to the U.S. if they choose.Maj. Lindy White, a South Korean native who gained U.S. citizenship in 1988, said she asked Tarbox before the ceremony if she had family members in the country."She said she didn’t, but she does,” White said. "She had a great showing of the National Guard family being here. We’re her family.”Tarbox said she’s excited to potentially deploy overseas — no matter where the destination."I’m fully ready,” Tarbox said. "I’m stationed here since I’m in the Guard but I’d go anywhere our mission brings us.”
"I had to wait for the right time and the right country,” said Tarbox, a specialist in the Oklahoma National Guard. "I wanted to be surrounded by people who believe in the same values and live according to the same principles.”And for Tarbox, the U.S. became that place of hope.Tarbox, 28, received her citizenship documents Thursday in front of about 30 military personnel and civilians at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office after three years of work with the National Guard."We had talked about this for a long time,” Chief Warrant Officer Dan Kendrick said. "I was really proud of her. Everything she did her entire adult life had been focused for this point. She was probably about to explode.”How it all beganTraveling to the U.S. just before her 25th birthday, Tarbox ventured across the country visiting friends she met as an American Peace Corps volunteer. When she arrived in Oklahoma, she felt attached."I settled down and decided this would be my state,” Tarbox said.And Kendrick said Tarbox has been dedicated to her work ever since.Because of her ability to assimilate into the culture and show her intelligence and kind demeanor, Tarbox was given responsibility as a property book technician — taking care of $400 million worth of equipment, doing inventory and cataloging."It’s because of her attitude and intelligence,” Kendrick said. "She’s the super person.”Tarbox said her citizenship creates an open road ahead, as she’s ready to begin officer school and hopes to gain clearance to someday work for the U.S. Secret Service. As a citizen, Tarbox could sponsor relatives — her parents and two stepbrothers live in Ukraine — to immigrate to the U.S. if they choose.Maj. Lindy White, a South Korean native who gained U.S. citizenship in 1988, said she asked Tarbox before the ceremony if she had family members in the country."She said she didn’t, but she does,” White said. "She had a great showing of the National Guard family being here. We’re her family.”Tarbox said she’s excited to potentially deploy overseas — no matter where the destination."I’m fully ready,” Tarbox said. "I’m stationed here since I’m in the Guard but I’d go anywhere our mission brings us.”
Yushchenko Seeks To Revive His Political Fortunes
The resignation of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's chief of staff Viktor Baloga has long been expected. He issued a strongly worded attack on Yushchenko as having failed to implement his 2004 election promises, and therefore had no right to stand for a second term. Moreover, he had lobbied for Yushchenko to support Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych's candidacy.
Yushchenko did not support Baloga's strategy to disband parliament, since it lacked a coalition majority (only 40 out of 72 Our Ukraine-People's Self Defense (NUNS) deputies joined the coalition). On May 22 in an interview on Inter television, Yushchenko again reiterated that "his faction" (NUNS) was not a member of the coalition.The constitutional court ruled on May 12 that the presidential elections will be held on January 17, and not in October for which parliament had previously voted. According to the Minister of Justice Mykola Onishchuk, this ruled out the proposal to hold simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections in October. Baloga had attempted to enter parliament in order to secure immunity before the presidential elections.The situation rapidly deteriorated for Baloga on May 12 when a Kyiv court ruled that the deputy head of the Security Service (SBU) Tyberia Durdynets, could be lawfully arrested and his office and home searched. Durdynets was a close ally of Baloga's from his home region of Trans-Carpathia.It is widely believed that Durdynets had acted under the former chief of staff's orders when placing Ukrainian politicians and state officials under surveillance -including the deputy head of the prosecutor's office Renat Kuzmin. The prosecutor's office had instructed the SBU and interior ministry to use force if necessary, to bring Durdynets to justice - he has since fled and has been placed on an Interpol wanted list. Another Baloga loyalist, the SBU deputy head Anatoliy Pavlenko, might also be charged for conducting illegal surveillance operations.Baloga clearly viewed the court order as an indirect attack on himself, and felt betrayed that Yushchenko had not intervened to support "his man," Durdynets. He also warned on local Trans-Carpathian state television on May 17 that if he was the next target, he intended to reveal damaging inside information on Yushchenko.The Ukrainian political consultant Vasyl Baziv, believes that Baloga possesses substantial kompromat on Yushchenko, and that his resignation will have serious repercussions within Ukrainian politics.A presidential secretariat insider told EDM that as chief of staff, Baloga had developed a close relationship with the two rival wings within the Party of Regions: the Donetsk old guard led by the "ideologist" Boris Kolesnikov, a close associate of the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, and the "gas lobby" linked to RosUkrEnergo (RUE) co-owner Dmitriy Firtash.The presidential insider told that since January 2008 "Baloga has been one of the most ardent guardians of RUE interests in its clash with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.In March 2009 an officer from the Main Information Service of the presidential secretariat confirmed that Firtash remained the only oligarch to pay ‘bonuses' to even the minor ranks within the secretariat." The Tymoshenko government also removed RUE from this year's gas contract with Russia.On May 12 Ukrainska Pravda speculated that the first deputy head of the SBU Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, might become the next target in the campaign against Baloga loyalists and Firtash's allies. Khoroshkovsky dispatched SBU Alpha units to carry out a raid against Naftogaz Ukrainy on March 4, which was widely condemned as using the SBU to lobby his private business interests.Khoroshkovsky is believed to maintain a close business relationship with Firtash in the largest Ukrainian television channel Inter, which has strongly promoted Arseniy Yatseniuk as an alternative "orange" candidate to Tymoshenko in the upcoming presidential elections.Baloga felt betrayed by Yushchenko's support for Kyiv governor Vera Ulianchenko's election on May 16 as the head of the People's Union-Our Ukraine (NSNU) - one of nine parties within the NUNS bloc. Ulianchenko replaced Baloga as the chief of staff, indicating that Yushchenko finally decided to support the NSNU as the presidential party of power, rather than Baloga's United Center.Ulianchenko stressed that there is only one pro-presidential party: NUNS. Baloga has had strained relations with Ulianchenko, and attempted to promote the United Center party, which he controls, as the presidential favorite. NSNS activists had sharp differences with Baloga, since his "unpleasant activities" had damaged the party in his efforts to further the United Center.Yushchenko remains convinced that he will revive his political fortunes and enter the second round of voting. On May 21 the pro-Yushchenko PR specialist Myron Wasylyk, suggested: "Yushchenko is in the midst of picking a new team to complete his policy agenda for the last months of his first term.He is looking for a group of political managers who work well together as he begins his most important political journey - reconnecting with the millions of voters who were his electoral base, in the hope of winning re-election in 2010." Yushchenko might be competing against three "orange" candidates - Tymoshenko, Yatseniuk and Anatoliy Grytsenko - within western and central Ukraine in what will be a difficult contest.In contrast, Yanukovych will enter round two, facing little competition within southeastern Ukraine. Some of Yatseniuk's support might also return to Yushchenko by focusing on his two achievements -democratization and nation-building. He has positioned himself in the nationalist and anti-communist, rather than in the centrist niche.Playing on Yushchenko as a Ukrainian nation-builder might re-introduce ethnicity into the election campaign and again risk dividing Ukraine, as happened in the 2004 elections. Meanwhile, a split "orange" vote will permit Baloga's favorite -Yanukovych- to win the election.
Wednesday 27 May 2009
Reclaim Bittsevsky Park
Bittsevsky Park has an image problem. The area should be famous for the miles of golden anemones along the wooded ravines, or the nuthatches and woodpeckers that are so tame they will almost eat from your hand. Instead, the association that springs most readily to most peoples' minds is the "Bittsevsky (or ‘Bitsa') Maniac". Alexander Pichushkin aka "the Chessboard Killer" chose these woods as the setting for most of his gruesome serial killings. It has been said that he claimed he wanted to kill as many people as there were squares on a chessboard. Since he was arrested in 2007, however, it is high time this forest was reclaimed for peaceful recreation.
Today, the park is filling up with joggers and grandmothers pushing prams. The biggest hazard on this meandering north-south trek across the park is the risk of getting lost among the forested slopes and wild flowers. A compass - if you have one - is handy just to make sure you keep going in the same direction.
The huge blue spires of the brand new Church of the Derzhavnaya icon are almost the first thing you see coming out of Chertanovskaya metro station. Before you head for this landmark, you might like to visit the local branch of Mu-Mu or the amusing German-style beer garden behind it. There is nothing in the way of refreshments to be found on the way.
Walk along the side of Chertanovskaya Ulitsa as far as the church and turn right immediately after it into Sumskoi Proyezd. Follow this road, between schools and tower blocks, until, just after block 19, a path leads right to a green-railed bridge with steps. Cross the bridge and follow the path on the far side along the top of a cliff above the Chertanovka River. You soon reach a junction with a mess of construction around it. Turn right under the pipe and immediately left up the bank so that you continue to follow the cliff above the little river. Go on past a bridge, without crossing it, and pick up the more defined track that runs westwards through the woods, still parallel with, but further away from, the ravine.
The track swings left along an avenue, following a smaller stream at the bottom of a steep-sided valley. When the valley becomes shallower and disappears, a tarmac track crosses the path. Turn right along this road and follow it for more than a kilometre through the woods. Soon after passing a sports field, turn left along a path opposite a row of benches and follow it to a T-junction with another track on the edge of a clearing. Turn left and then right around the edge of the clearing, where young trees have been planted. Turn left again, just before a large concrete block, following a path downhill to a little stream with a bridge nearby. Cross over this bridge, turn left along the far bank, passing a second bridge.
From the third bridge, you can take a short cut to the metro by simply turning right towards the houses and left along the road. But a more picturesque route involves crossing back over the bridge and following the path on the far side of the stream again until you reach a final bridge with steps and turn right over it. This leads you past a dog pound out onto a lane. The wooden archway ahead of you is the entrance to a nature trail. If you have any energy left, you might like to follow this lively route, at least as far as the spring and pond about 400 metres from the entrance.
Alternatively, behind the playground on the right is the colourful Bittsevsky market where you could pick up some fruit, veg and pies for a picnic. If you feel that after all that healthy fresh air you deserve something fancier than a picnic, try the Prince restaurant on the far side of the market. Don't be put off by the wedding-hall decor and tables laid for a banquet. When we tramped in, they were happy to ignore our muddy boots and serve up pots of tea with fresh thyme for 50 roubles a head.
Going further along the forest road, past the entrance to the nature trail, you reach the pink house of the Yasenevo Estate on your left. This building has been rebuilt numerous times since the 18th century and is currently undergoing its latest restoration. Turning right next to the house, you pass the Peter and Paul Church, which was built in 1737 to serve the nearby country estate and contains some pleasing frescoes. After the church, turn diagonally right across the small park to reach the metro.
With kids...
This route has been tested by 8- and 11-year-old walkers, but with younger kids, you might want a shorter version.
The 2 ½ kilometre nature trail at (6) is a great introduction to the forest. Numerous bird feeders mean that the area is swarming with squirrels and the little pond by the spring makes a delightful picnic spot.
The path is marked by carved wooden owls whose wings point the way which substantially reduces the risk of getting lost (the owls at one or two junctions have gone AWOL - just turn right and keep following the red and white distance markers).
There are carved figures, wooden playgrounds, little bridges and information boards, which all help to make it more interesting.
The only disadvantage is some noise pollution from the Moscow Ring Road, especially when walking along the southern reaches of the nature trail.
Today, the park is filling up with joggers and grandmothers pushing prams. The biggest hazard on this meandering north-south trek across the park is the risk of getting lost among the forested slopes and wild flowers. A compass - if you have one - is handy just to make sure you keep going in the same direction.
The huge blue spires of the brand new Church of the Derzhavnaya icon are almost the first thing you see coming out of Chertanovskaya metro station. Before you head for this landmark, you might like to visit the local branch of Mu-Mu or the amusing German-style beer garden behind it. There is nothing in the way of refreshments to be found on the way.
Walk along the side of Chertanovskaya Ulitsa as far as the church and turn right immediately after it into Sumskoi Proyezd. Follow this road, between schools and tower blocks, until, just after block 19, a path leads right to a green-railed bridge with steps. Cross the bridge and follow the path on the far side along the top of a cliff above the Chertanovka River. You soon reach a junction with a mess of construction around it. Turn right under the pipe and immediately left up the bank so that you continue to follow the cliff above the little river. Go on past a bridge, without crossing it, and pick up the more defined track that runs westwards through the woods, still parallel with, but further away from, the ravine.
The track swings left along an avenue, following a smaller stream at the bottom of a steep-sided valley. When the valley becomes shallower and disappears, a tarmac track crosses the path. Turn right along this road and follow it for more than a kilometre through the woods. Soon after passing a sports field, turn left along a path opposite a row of benches and follow it to a T-junction with another track on the edge of a clearing. Turn left and then right around the edge of the clearing, where young trees have been planted. Turn left again, just before a large concrete block, following a path downhill to a little stream with a bridge nearby. Cross over this bridge, turn left along the far bank, passing a second bridge.
From the third bridge, you can take a short cut to the metro by simply turning right towards the houses and left along the road. But a more picturesque route involves crossing back over the bridge and following the path on the far side of the stream again until you reach a final bridge with steps and turn right over it. This leads you past a dog pound out onto a lane. The wooden archway ahead of you is the entrance to a nature trail. If you have any energy left, you might like to follow this lively route, at least as far as the spring and pond about 400 metres from the entrance.
Alternatively, behind the playground on the right is the colourful Bittsevsky market where you could pick up some fruit, veg and pies for a picnic. If you feel that after all that healthy fresh air you deserve something fancier than a picnic, try the Prince restaurant on the far side of the market. Don't be put off by the wedding-hall decor and tables laid for a banquet. When we tramped in, they were happy to ignore our muddy boots and serve up pots of tea with fresh thyme for 50 roubles a head.
Going further along the forest road, past the entrance to the nature trail, you reach the pink house of the Yasenevo Estate on your left. This building has been rebuilt numerous times since the 18th century and is currently undergoing its latest restoration. Turning right next to the house, you pass the Peter and Paul Church, which was built in 1737 to serve the nearby country estate and contains some pleasing frescoes. After the church, turn diagonally right across the small park to reach the metro.
With kids...
This route has been tested by 8- and 11-year-old walkers, but with younger kids, you might want a shorter version.
The 2 ½ kilometre nature trail at (6) is a great introduction to the forest. Numerous bird feeders mean that the area is swarming with squirrels and the little pond by the spring makes a delightful picnic spot.
The path is marked by carved wooden owls whose wings point the way which substantially reduces the risk of getting lost (the owls at one or two junctions have gone AWOL - just turn right and keep following the red and white distance markers).
There are carved figures, wooden playgrounds, little bridges and information boards, which all help to make it more interesting.
The only disadvantage is some noise pollution from the Moscow Ring Road, especially when walking along the southern reaches of the nature trail.
Capital prepares to ring the ‘Final Bell’
Moscow's schools ring the final bell of the school year this Friday. Swarms of final-year students will be celebrating the end of their school careers at hundreds of proms being held around town over the weekend.
More than 60,000 graduates from almost 1,500 schools will be taking part in the celebrations, including 5,280 students who will be attending the Medallist's Ball for the top academic achievers.
Besides the more mundane terrestrial functions, some 8,000 intrepid students from 182 schools will be taking to the waters of the Moscow River using a veritable flotilla of 67 cruise boats making 100 journeys from 28 piers.
"Mayor Yury Luzhkov has already instructed the prefects of the city's administrative districts to organise the ‘Last Bell' celebrations at various local sites, as well as assume control of public catering during the celebrations and proms," RIA Novosti quoted a City Hall representative as saying on Wednesday. "City Hall will also be organising medical facilities for the celebrations and Medallist's Ball."
As part of the measures taken to ensure the graduates' safety, city authorities are restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages.
"Taking into account previous years' experience, we plan to ask the authorities to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages on the territory surrounding educational facilities and areas where celebrations are taking place," said First Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky on Monday.
In previous years such restrictions have led to a complete ban on alcohol sales in stores throughout the entire Moscow Central Administrative District.
More than 60,000 graduates from almost 1,500 schools will be taking part in the celebrations, including 5,280 students who will be attending the Medallist's Ball for the top academic achievers.
Besides the more mundane terrestrial functions, some 8,000 intrepid students from 182 schools will be taking to the waters of the Moscow River using a veritable flotilla of 67 cruise boats making 100 journeys from 28 piers.
"Mayor Yury Luzhkov has already instructed the prefects of the city's administrative districts to organise the ‘Last Bell' celebrations at various local sites, as well as assume control of public catering during the celebrations and proms," RIA Novosti quoted a City Hall representative as saying on Wednesday. "City Hall will also be organising medical facilities for the celebrations and Medallist's Ball."
As part of the measures taken to ensure the graduates' safety, city authorities are restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages.
"Taking into account previous years' experience, we plan to ask the authorities to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages on the territory surrounding educational facilities and areas where celebrations are taking place," said First Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky on Monday.
In previous years such restrictions have led to a complete ban on alcohol sales in stores throughout the entire Moscow Central Administrative District.
Norwegian winner wows fans, but not gay activists
Alexander Rybak's Eurovision triumph might have smashed all records, but it was far from a "Fairytale" for Moscow's battered and bruised gay rights lobby.
Just hours before the Minsk-born Norwegian was crowned king of Eurovision, more than 30 protesters were arrested at Vorobyovy Gory, for staging an illegal demonstration.
Across town, the camp extravaganza that is the song contest rolled on, but Rybak's observation that Olimpiisky had hosted Moscow's biggest gay pride event drew an angry response from Nikolai Alexeyev of Gay Russia.
Alexeyev, one of the organisers of Saturday's banned demonstration, was detained overnight in police cells - and was scathing about Rybak's remarks.
"He obviously doesn't understand the real situation here," he said. "It's not a question of trying to do it on the same day - a gay march on any day would be banned and the result will always be the same."
Alexeyev added that he was "disappointed" with the attitude of the Eurovision organisers, who he claims offered no help or support, despite the event's huge popularity with the global gay community.
"These people are totally hypocritical," he said. "They will go home to their democratic countries but they should realise and understand what a shame it was to waste such a terrific opportunity to promote gay rights here in Russia."
Eurovision's PR manager Sietse Bakker was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press, though before the contest he was quoted saying that they were guests in Moscow and had to organise the show in line with local laws.
After the break-up of the rally outside Moscow State University generated international media coverage of the plight of Russia's homosexuals, organisers joked that Mayor Yury Luzhkov's ban had helped their cause.
But tongue-in-cheek suggestions of an award for the mayor - who was reckoned to have bagged the protests about 200 million roubles of free advertising - soon faded.
"The only award he deserves is ‘Homophobe of the Year' - which we give him every year," said Alexeyev. "We would prefer to be able to have a peaceful and legal protest against homophobia in Russia. But instead we have to go on the streets without permission, and risk arrest and violence."
Staff at Mayor Luzhkov's office declined to comment.
On-stage Eurovision was seen as a huge success, with the Olimpiisky's spectacular stage show hailed as the "best ever".
Rybak successfully reprised Dima Bilan's cheeky cherub charm from last year to poll a best-ever 387 points, and his Soviet origins had many Russian commentators claiming a home win despite Anastasia Prikhodko's mid-table finish.
There was controversy in the Caucasus, though, with Georgia staging its own protest show after the song "We don't want to put in" was disqualified, while neighbours Azerbaijan and Armenia became embroiled in a row over voting.
Armenia alleged that Azeri TV tried to stop viewers from voting for Yerevan's song, a claim since denied by the EBU. The two countries are at loggerheads over the Armenian-controlled Azeri province of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Just hours before the Minsk-born Norwegian was crowned king of Eurovision, more than 30 protesters were arrested at Vorobyovy Gory, for staging an illegal demonstration.
Across town, the camp extravaganza that is the song contest rolled on, but Rybak's observation that Olimpiisky had hosted Moscow's biggest gay pride event drew an angry response from Nikolai Alexeyev of Gay Russia.
Alexeyev, one of the organisers of Saturday's banned demonstration, was detained overnight in police cells - and was scathing about Rybak's remarks.
"He obviously doesn't understand the real situation here," he said. "It's not a question of trying to do it on the same day - a gay march on any day would be banned and the result will always be the same."
Alexeyev added that he was "disappointed" with the attitude of the Eurovision organisers, who he claims offered no help or support, despite the event's huge popularity with the global gay community.
"These people are totally hypocritical," he said. "They will go home to their democratic countries but they should realise and understand what a shame it was to waste such a terrific opportunity to promote gay rights here in Russia."
Eurovision's PR manager Sietse Bakker was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press, though before the contest he was quoted saying that they were guests in Moscow and had to organise the show in line with local laws.
After the break-up of the rally outside Moscow State University generated international media coverage of the plight of Russia's homosexuals, organisers joked that Mayor Yury Luzhkov's ban had helped their cause.
But tongue-in-cheek suggestions of an award for the mayor - who was reckoned to have bagged the protests about 200 million roubles of free advertising - soon faded.
"The only award he deserves is ‘Homophobe of the Year' - which we give him every year," said Alexeyev. "We would prefer to be able to have a peaceful and legal protest against homophobia in Russia. But instead we have to go on the streets without permission, and risk arrest and violence."
Staff at Mayor Luzhkov's office declined to comment.
On-stage Eurovision was seen as a huge success, with the Olimpiisky's spectacular stage show hailed as the "best ever".
Rybak successfully reprised Dima Bilan's cheeky cherub charm from last year to poll a best-ever 387 points, and his Soviet origins had many Russian commentators claiming a home win despite Anastasia Prikhodko's mid-table finish.
There was controversy in the Caucasus, though, with Georgia staging its own protest show after the song "We don't want to put in" was disqualified, while neighbours Azerbaijan and Armenia became embroiled in a row over voting.
Armenia alleged that Azeri TV tried to stop viewers from voting for Yerevan's song, a claim since denied by the EBU. The two countries are at loggerheads over the Armenian-controlled Azeri province of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ukraine Discusses Oil Supply With Libya
TRIPOLI, Lybia -- Visiting Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko called on Monday for energy cooperation with Libya saying her country needed to diversify its energy sources to reduce dependence on Russia.
Our independence (toward Russia) would be greater if we were energy-independent and if we diversified our supply sources," Tymoshenko said after talks with Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmoudi."So far we we dependent 100 percent on only one source (Russia)," she said.Tymoshenko suggested that Libya build an oil refinery in the Ukrainian port of Odessa as well as petrol stations in the former Soviet republic "to distribute its (oil) production in Ukraine and Europe."Tymoshenko, whose remarks were translated into Arabic, also said her country was ready to provide Libya with the means to stock and transport four million tonnes of wheat a year.She likewise suggested aeronautic cooperation between Ukraine and Libya, and added that 17 accords were ready to be signed at a meeting in her country.Mahmoudi, meanwhile, said Libya wanted to cooperate with Ukraine in civilian nuclear energy. "Libya has several offers for civilian nuclear cooperation but we prefer to do it with Ukraine," he said.
Our independence (toward Russia) would be greater if we were energy-independent and if we diversified our supply sources," Tymoshenko said after talks with Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmoudi."So far we we dependent 100 percent on only one source (Russia)," she said.Tymoshenko suggested that Libya build an oil refinery in the Ukrainian port of Odessa as well as petrol stations in the former Soviet republic "to distribute its (oil) production in Ukraine and Europe."Tymoshenko, whose remarks were translated into Arabic, also said her country was ready to provide Libya with the means to stock and transport four million tonnes of wheat a year.She likewise suggested aeronautic cooperation between Ukraine and Libya, and added that 17 accords were ready to be signed at a meeting in her country.Mahmoudi, meanwhile, said Libya wanted to cooperate with Ukraine in civilian nuclear energy. "Libya has several offers for civilian nuclear cooperation but we prefer to do it with Ukraine," he said.
Ukraine Accuses Moscow Of Genocide Over 1932 Famine That Killed Millions
KIEV, Ukraine -- Bitter enmity between Ukraine and Russia could be rekindled after the Kiev authorities launched a criminal investigation into a devastating famine that claimed millions of lives, stating it was an More than 70 years since the famine struck Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union, the country's prosecution service believes it has enough evidence to begin criminal proceedings.A statement issued by Ukraine's security service, the SBU, said that through murder, the forcible collectivisation of agriculture, dispossession, deportation and confiscation, the Soviet authorities had "aimed at organising hunger to kill the Ukrainian people as an ethnic group".It went on: "The Stalinist regime wanted to create living conditions that would result in the total physical elimination of ethnic Ukrainians."Although estimates of how many people died in what Ukrainians call the Holodomor, which ravaged the nation in 1932 and 1933, conservative estimates have put the death toll at more than seven million.Ukraine has long maintained that Stalin wanted to wipe out the Ukrainian people, because of their questionable loyalty to the Soviet Union and their stubborn adherence to age-old farming practices that stood in his way of the plan to destroy private agriculture.In the early 1930s, Stalin launched a brutal campaign of collectivisation and requisition across Ukraine that few historians dispute turned a natural famine into a human tragedy of massive proportions. Eye-witness accounts from the time speak of whole villages being obliterated by starvation and disease, and people resorting to cannibalism to stay alive. Often, the authorities prevented survivors fleeing the famine-stricken regions in fear that if news got out, it would damage the credibility of Stalin's regime and policies.The Ukrainian government has waged a long campaign in the international arena to have the famine classified as genocide, while some Ukrainian nationalists argue that Russia, as the successor to the Soviet Union, should now be held responsible.However, the Russian government disputes the genocide claim, pointing out that famine and starvation struck other regions of the Soviet Union at the same time. It also argues that so far no evidence, such as a paper trail, clearly stating that the Kremlin wished to starve Ukraine has ever come to light.With Ukraine and Russia at odds over links to the West and energy, Kiev's genocide claims have assumed a political dimension. Some in Russia consider Ukraine's willingness to open old wounds as evidence of its determination to antagonise Moscow and seek sympathy in the West.Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has charged Ukraine's pro-western president, Viktor Yushchenko with exploiting the famine for "instantaneous political goals", while General Vasily Khristoforov, head of the registration and archives department at Russia's federal security service, dismissed the Holodomor as a "Ukrainian invention".Ukraine's decision to push ahead with a criminal investigation could fall under the scrutiny of a new Russian commission, appointed by Mr Medvedev last week and charged with guarding against "the falsification of history at the expense of Russian interests".But opposition to the inquiry also comes from within Ukraine, with some politicians questioning the sense of investigating events of 70-plus years ago."From the legal point of view, what the security service is doing is absurd," said Gennady Moskal, a member of parliament. "Who will criminal charges be brought against? Maybe against a cemetery? Who can be brought to justice? If a person was 18 years old in 1933, then how old are they now when criminal proceedings are beginning?"act of genocide orchestrated by Moscow.
Viktor Yushchenko Refuses To Dismiss Defense Minister Yuri Yekhanurov
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said he would not ask the Verkhovna Rada for dismissing Defense Minister Yuri Yekhanurov.
“No, I will not do that,” the president told a Tuesday press conference in the Zhitomir region.In his opinion, the related request of Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko aimed “to destabilize the executive authorities and to seize full control.”“This is nothing but politics,” the president said. “This is the policy aimed to destroy efficient authorities and the pre-election intrigues.”Yushchenko said he had read a report of the Main Auditing Department concerning the activity of the Defense Ministry and dismissed as unfounded corruption charges against Yekhanurov. “I have ordered the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the problem, as corruption claims are being increasingly made by those who are guilty themselves,” he said.Timoshenko asked the president to dismiss the defense minister on May 25. Main Auditing Department head Nikolai Sivulsky accused the Defense Ministry of inappropriate control over the use of land belonging to the ministry on May 20. He also affirmed violations in the catering of servicemen.Yekhanurov said that the Defense Ministry did not sell any land during his ministerial office. The corruption accusations “are a comedy,” he said.
“No, I will not do that,” the president told a Tuesday press conference in the Zhitomir region.In his opinion, the related request of Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko aimed “to destabilize the executive authorities and to seize full control.”“This is nothing but politics,” the president said. “This is the policy aimed to destroy efficient authorities and the pre-election intrigues.”Yushchenko said he had read a report of the Main Auditing Department concerning the activity of the Defense Ministry and dismissed as unfounded corruption charges against Yekhanurov. “I have ordered the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the problem, as corruption claims are being increasingly made by those who are guilty themselves,” he said.Timoshenko asked the president to dismiss the defense minister on May 25. Main Auditing Department head Nikolai Sivulsky accused the Defense Ministry of inappropriate control over the use of land belonging to the ministry on May 20. He also affirmed violations in the catering of servicemen.Yekhanurov said that the Defense Ministry did not sell any land during his ministerial office. The corruption accusations “are a comedy,” he said.
Ukrainian Teenager's Death Blamed On Illegal Vaccine
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian prosecutors have ordered a senior health official detained on suspicion of illegally importing millions of doses of a vaccine that they charge caused a teenager's death, officials said Wednesday.
United Nations agencies have concluded that the 17-year-old boy's death in May 2008 was caused by a bacterial infection unrelated to the U.N.-certified vaccine for measles and rubella he had just received.But his death still led to widespread fears over immunization and caused health officials to terminate a campaign to revaccinate 9 million Ukrainians for measles and rubella.Dr. Fedir Lapiy, an expert in infectious diseases based in Kiev, has said that the Ukrainian government, plagued by infighting between various political groups, has mismanaged the crisis. Lapiy says that some officials have used the investigation to discredit their political opponents instead of conducting a thorough probe.Prosecutors have accused former Deputy Health Minister Mykola Prodanchuk of importing the vaccine without properly registering it here, which they say eventually led to the boy's death. They have provided no details on how the vaccine is alleged to have killed the boy.Yuriy Boychenko, spokesman for the Prosecutor General's office, told The Associated Press Wednesday that a Kiev court issued a search warrant for Prodanchuk after he failed to show up for questioning. Prodanchuk must be detained while a court decides whether he should be held in custody pending the investigation, Boychenko said.Prodanchuk, who resigned shortly after the teenager's death, has maintained his innocence. His lawyer, Mykola Shupenya, told the AP that he was in a hospital with an unspecified lung condition and could not appear in court.UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency, declined to comment. The World Health Organization reiterated that officials believe the vaccine was not responsible for the boy's death.Experts say termination of the vaccination campaign and the widespread refusals of vaccination could lead to major disease outbreaks in this France-sized country of 46 million and potentially spread to its European neighbors.
United Nations agencies have concluded that the 17-year-old boy's death in May 2008 was caused by a bacterial infection unrelated to the U.N.-certified vaccine for measles and rubella he had just received.But his death still led to widespread fears over immunization and caused health officials to terminate a campaign to revaccinate 9 million Ukrainians for measles and rubella.Dr. Fedir Lapiy, an expert in infectious diseases based in Kiev, has said that the Ukrainian government, plagued by infighting between various political groups, has mismanaged the crisis. Lapiy says that some officials have used the investigation to discredit their political opponents instead of conducting a thorough probe.Prosecutors have accused former Deputy Health Minister Mykola Prodanchuk of importing the vaccine without properly registering it here, which they say eventually led to the boy's death. They have provided no details on how the vaccine is alleged to have killed the boy.Yuriy Boychenko, spokesman for the Prosecutor General's office, told The Associated Press Wednesday that a Kiev court issued a search warrant for Prodanchuk after he failed to show up for questioning. Prodanchuk must be detained while a court decides whether he should be held in custody pending the investigation, Boychenko said.Prodanchuk, who resigned shortly after the teenager's death, has maintained his innocence. His lawyer, Mykola Shupenya, told the AP that he was in a hospital with an unspecified lung condition and could not appear in court.UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency, declined to comment. The World Health Organization reiterated that officials believe the vaccine was not responsible for the boy's death.Experts say termination of the vaccination campaign and the widespread refusals of vaccination could lead to major disease outbreaks in this France-sized country of 46 million and potentially spread to its European neighbors.
Monday 25 May 2009
Life in Khabarovsk
Months since the economic crisis hit, open any paper and you will see stories about unemployment on the rise, construction projects being halted and factories struggling to stay alive while being choked by debt incurred during better times.
Several thousand kilometers away from Moscow, only 20 kilometres from the Chinese border, the Khabarovsk region is also feeling the effects, but local officials insist the area is weathering the storm better than most.
Ahead of Friday's EU-Russia summit here, construction workers were busily repairing the road from the airport to central Khabarovsk. But cosmetic repairs aside, there does seem to be a lot of building going on. Khabarovsk's skyline is dotted with cranes, building affluent high-rise residential towers in the center, and enormous apartment blocks in the outskirts of town. The atmosphere is far from bleak, and traces of the construction boom from better times are still evident. Although people in Moscow have gotten used to people from the regions endlessly flocking to the capital, the regional government denies there is any mass exodus from the city; in point of fact, the number of residents is growing.
In a meeting with foreign journalists last week, Viktor Ishayev, President Dmitry Medvedev's envoy to the Far East Federal District and a former Khabarovsk governor, said that the place has its attractions - average pay is over 20,000 roubles per month, 20 per cent higher than the national average.
Affordable housing is a matter the regional government is taking seriously: "We are helping young people - young families," Ishayev said. "Forty percent of newly constructed housing has been allocated for affordable housing for young families - but mind you, we are helping families here, not the construction companies."
Officials acknowledge, however, that the region's remote location and its underdeveloped infrastructure present huge logistical challenges.
Unemployment is as familiar here as it is anywhere else. Official unemployment in the region stands at 4 per cent, or 33,000 of its inhabitants. In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, an industrial city 400 kilometres upriver, Amurmetal, a steel processing plant, was mulling laying off one-quarter of its workforce until September, even despite promises of state support during a visit last week by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Viktor Koryakin, an official with the Khabarovsk region coalition of labour unions, says the government is coping with the problem: "Of course, there are hard-hit areas - such as metal processing plants - since demand has dropped. But we keep construction companies busy with infrastructure projects such as road building, and are also looking towards our neighboring regions, Primoriye and Amur, as a potential market, and are cooperating with them to see if we can send them our surplus products."
Natalia Zubarevich, director of regional programmes at the Independent Institute of Social Policy, said by telephone that Khabarovsk was relatively well off compared to some other cities. "Ishayev, who ruled the region for almost two decades, is a governor of the old Soviet order - he kept the region tightly controlled, and accomplished much, keeping order and a decent appearance as he saw fit."
That city appears relatively spick and span, and has become a sort of educational hub in the Far East. Evidently, much effort is being put into healthcare as well, with a new maternity hospital built, and a state-of-the-art cardiology centre under construction. Much of the funding came from the federal budget.
Ishayev said that the region's prospects were limited, since too much of its economy relies on the export of raw materials. "We should be exporting value-added materials," he said. "For example - we have good trade relations with China, but we sell them raw materials, and they sell the completed products back to us. This is not correct. But it's a difficult cycle to get out of."
"The region has one good taxpayer - Sukhoi in Komsomolsk-on-Amur - but they don't always have steady orders to keep them busy and affluent," said Zubarevich.
Indeed, despite the much-touted Superjet-100 orders on the books, 50 of the plant's 640 workers may be laid off this year. "There's a big ‘shadow economy' in the region," said Zubarevich. "Forests are being sold to China, and the fishing industry, too, although it is not large, it is also a ‘shadow economy'. Such businesses don't bring in any taxes for the region."
EU talks to focus on security
RIA Novosti
KHABAROVSK - President Dmitry Medvedev will focus on energy and security issues at the Russian-EU summit in Khabarovsk, starting Friday, in the light of Russia's recent gas dispute with Ukraine and last year's war between Russia and Georgia. On Thursday at an informal dinner Medvedev met the EU delegation, led by EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
Medvedev "will be interested in the EU's position, and plans for collective and individual action from our European partners, on the continuing threat to Europe resulting from our difficult relations with Ukraine in the gas sphere," presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters on Wednesday
"We want to convey our concerns over the continuing danger of the agreements reached with the Ukrainian prime minister being broken off," he said.
Earlier this week, Ukraine's president called the natural gas contracts signed with Russia earlier this year "unprofessional", and said they are likely to be reviewed in the near future, as Ukraine is unable to meet its obligations under the current terms.
On the Georgia issue, Prikhodko said Russia would object to some EU members' support for President Mikhail Saakashvili. Moscow has refused to negotiate with Saakashvili since last year's war.
"There are things we need to ask them: what will happen with this long-term, blind support for Saakashvili? What do they think about this? All the more considering that the opposition movement in Georgia has clearly demonstrated the level of mistrust of his policies, both domestic and foreign," he said.
"Is the EU ready take responsibility for its foreign policy, or will it only ask us about Iran, and other problems? And on this issue, is Europe ready to apply the same standards to such inadmissible acts?"
He said that Russia wants serious discussion rather than confrontation with the EU.
Several thousand kilometers away from Moscow, only 20 kilometres from the Chinese border, the Khabarovsk region is also feeling the effects, but local officials insist the area is weathering the storm better than most.
Ahead of Friday's EU-Russia summit here, construction workers were busily repairing the road from the airport to central Khabarovsk. But cosmetic repairs aside, there does seem to be a lot of building going on. Khabarovsk's skyline is dotted with cranes, building affluent high-rise residential towers in the center, and enormous apartment blocks in the outskirts of town. The atmosphere is far from bleak, and traces of the construction boom from better times are still evident. Although people in Moscow have gotten used to people from the regions endlessly flocking to the capital, the regional government denies there is any mass exodus from the city; in point of fact, the number of residents is growing.
In a meeting with foreign journalists last week, Viktor Ishayev, President Dmitry Medvedev's envoy to the Far East Federal District and a former Khabarovsk governor, said that the place has its attractions - average pay is over 20,000 roubles per month, 20 per cent higher than the national average.
Affordable housing is a matter the regional government is taking seriously: "We are helping young people - young families," Ishayev said. "Forty percent of newly constructed housing has been allocated for affordable housing for young families - but mind you, we are helping families here, not the construction companies."
Officials acknowledge, however, that the region's remote location and its underdeveloped infrastructure present huge logistical challenges.
Unemployment is as familiar here as it is anywhere else. Official unemployment in the region stands at 4 per cent, or 33,000 of its inhabitants. In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, an industrial city 400 kilometres upriver, Amurmetal, a steel processing plant, was mulling laying off one-quarter of its workforce until September, even despite promises of state support during a visit last week by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Viktor Koryakin, an official with the Khabarovsk region coalition of labour unions, says the government is coping with the problem: "Of course, there are hard-hit areas - such as metal processing plants - since demand has dropped. But we keep construction companies busy with infrastructure projects such as road building, and are also looking towards our neighboring regions, Primoriye and Amur, as a potential market, and are cooperating with them to see if we can send them our surplus products."
Natalia Zubarevich, director of regional programmes at the Independent Institute of Social Policy, said by telephone that Khabarovsk was relatively well off compared to some other cities. "Ishayev, who ruled the region for almost two decades, is a governor of the old Soviet order - he kept the region tightly controlled, and accomplished much, keeping order and a decent appearance as he saw fit."
That city appears relatively spick and span, and has become a sort of educational hub in the Far East. Evidently, much effort is being put into healthcare as well, with a new maternity hospital built, and a state-of-the-art cardiology centre under construction. Much of the funding came from the federal budget.
Ishayev said that the region's prospects were limited, since too much of its economy relies on the export of raw materials. "We should be exporting value-added materials," he said. "For example - we have good trade relations with China, but we sell them raw materials, and they sell the completed products back to us. This is not correct. But it's a difficult cycle to get out of."
"The region has one good taxpayer - Sukhoi in Komsomolsk-on-Amur - but they don't always have steady orders to keep them busy and affluent," said Zubarevich.
Indeed, despite the much-touted Superjet-100 orders on the books, 50 of the plant's 640 workers may be laid off this year. "There's a big ‘shadow economy' in the region," said Zubarevich. "Forests are being sold to China, and the fishing industry, too, although it is not large, it is also a ‘shadow economy'. Such businesses don't bring in any taxes for the region."
EU talks to focus on security
RIA Novosti
KHABAROVSK - President Dmitry Medvedev will focus on energy and security issues at the Russian-EU summit in Khabarovsk, starting Friday, in the light of Russia's recent gas dispute with Ukraine and last year's war between Russia and Georgia. On Thursday at an informal dinner Medvedev met the EU delegation, led by EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
Medvedev "will be interested in the EU's position, and plans for collective and individual action from our European partners, on the continuing threat to Europe resulting from our difficult relations with Ukraine in the gas sphere," presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters on Wednesday
"We want to convey our concerns over the continuing danger of the agreements reached with the Ukrainian prime minister being broken off," he said.
Earlier this week, Ukraine's president called the natural gas contracts signed with Russia earlier this year "unprofessional", and said they are likely to be reviewed in the near future, as Ukraine is unable to meet its obligations under the current terms.
On the Georgia issue, Prikhodko said Russia would object to some EU members' support for President Mikhail Saakashvili. Moscow has refused to negotiate with Saakashvili since last year's war.
"There are things we need to ask them: what will happen with this long-term, blind support for Saakashvili? What do they think about this? All the more considering that the opposition movement in Georgia has clearly demonstrated the level of mistrust of his policies, both domestic and foreign," he said.
"Is the EU ready take responsibility for its foreign policy, or will it only ask us about Iran, and other problems? And on this issue, is Europe ready to apply the same standards to such inadmissible acts?"
He said that Russia wants serious discussion rather than confrontation with the EU.
Ukraine Says Romania One Of Its Potential Enemies
KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian Defence Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov lashed out at Romania and Russia in a television show, accusing both countries of making territorial claims on Ukraine, according to reports published by ‘Romania libera’ and ‘Ziua’ on Saturday.
Yekhanurov, who is close to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, said Romania is a potential enemy of Ukraine, as Bucharest politicians frequently question the legality of the current borders of the Ukrainian state, Similarly, Russia questions the statute of Crimea, he said.“Sometimes, even the highest leaders of Romania resort to this kind of statements, recently saying that they do not recognize the border with the Republic of Moldova. These kinds of statements are dangerous, Yekhanurov said. His comments referred to President Traian Basescu’s recent statement that the signing of a border treaty with Moldova would be ‘useless’ as it would mean accepting the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.The comment has triggered an angry response from Chisinau, but also from Moscow.Yekhanurov moved on the say that Russia is also a great danger to Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “There are questions about Crimea and you know very well that after the August 2008 conflict in the Caucasus, everybody realized that there is a regional security problem here,” he said.The minister underlined however that Ukraine must have friendly relationships with all its neighbours, but must be strong enough “so that nobody ever thinks of attacking their neighbours”.Kiev has repeatedly accused Bucharest of leading a systematically aggressive policy towards its northern neighbour, slamming Romanian plans to grant mass-citizenship to Ukrainians living in Cernauti and Odessa and to ‘brutally’ assimilate the Ukrainian minority in Romania, according to daily ‘Ziua’.Earlier this month, Yushchenko said he was worried about Romania’s plans to grant passports to Ukrainians and asked that the issue be analysed by the European Commission. Recently, Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk accused Romania of being guilty for all bilateral conflicts, starting from Bystroye to the expulsion of two Ukrainian diplomats this year, in the wake of an espionage scandal that also involved Kiev.The diplomats were expelled after it was revealed that a Romanian non-commissioned officer was selling classified military information to a Bulgarian spy, who was then re-selling the intelligence to a third party, possibly Ukraine.A military analyst quoted by ‘Romania libera’, Cornel Codita, said that Ukraine’s reaction was triggered by President Basescu’s statements, which generate the perception that Romania is a hostile country because it makes various territorial claims.A specialist in ex-Soviet area issues, Armand Grosu, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that “Ukraine only notices the fact that Romania is an enemy because there are almost evident territorial claims: because it won’t sign the border treaty with Moldova and because it suggests that Ukrainians and Moldovans could swap territories.”Grosu said that the Ukrainian defence minister’s statements were also triggered by “Romania’s incoherent policies”, in spite of the fact it has always supported Ukraine’s accession to NATO.
Yekhanurov, who is close to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, said Romania is a potential enemy of Ukraine, as Bucharest politicians frequently question the legality of the current borders of the Ukrainian state, Similarly, Russia questions the statute of Crimea, he said.“Sometimes, even the highest leaders of Romania resort to this kind of statements, recently saying that they do not recognize the border with the Republic of Moldova. These kinds of statements are dangerous, Yekhanurov said. His comments referred to President Traian Basescu’s recent statement that the signing of a border treaty with Moldova would be ‘useless’ as it would mean accepting the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact.The comment has triggered an angry response from Chisinau, but also from Moscow.Yekhanurov moved on the say that Russia is also a great danger to Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “There are questions about Crimea and you know very well that after the August 2008 conflict in the Caucasus, everybody realized that there is a regional security problem here,” he said.The minister underlined however that Ukraine must have friendly relationships with all its neighbours, but must be strong enough “so that nobody ever thinks of attacking their neighbours”.Kiev has repeatedly accused Bucharest of leading a systematically aggressive policy towards its northern neighbour, slamming Romanian plans to grant mass-citizenship to Ukrainians living in Cernauti and Odessa and to ‘brutally’ assimilate the Ukrainian minority in Romania, according to daily ‘Ziua’.Earlier this month, Yushchenko said he was worried about Romania’s plans to grant passports to Ukrainians and asked that the issue be analysed by the European Commission. Recently, Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk accused Romania of being guilty for all bilateral conflicts, starting from Bystroye to the expulsion of two Ukrainian diplomats this year, in the wake of an espionage scandal that also involved Kiev.The diplomats were expelled after it was revealed that a Romanian non-commissioned officer was selling classified military information to a Bulgarian spy, who was then re-selling the intelligence to a third party, possibly Ukraine.A military analyst quoted by ‘Romania libera’, Cornel Codita, said that Ukraine’s reaction was triggered by President Basescu’s statements, which generate the perception that Romania is a hostile country because it makes various territorial claims.A specialist in ex-Soviet area issues, Armand Grosu, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that “Ukraine only notices the fact that Romania is an enemy because there are almost evident territorial claims: because it won’t sign the border treaty with Moldova and because it suggests that Ukrainians and Moldovans could swap territories.”Grosu said that the Ukrainian defence minister’s statements were also triggered by “Romania’s incoherent policies”, in spite of the fact it has always supported Ukraine’s accession to NATO.
Russia-EU Summit Ends With Differences Over Energy
KHABAROVSK, Russia -- A tense summit meeting between Russia and the European Union has failed to provide assurances Europe will not face another mid-winter gas cutoff. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has also warned that stronger European ties with former Soviet republics shouldMeeting in the city of Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East, Russian and EU leaders failed to bridge differences that block assurances of reliable gas supplies to Europe. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said his country has no problem supplying the fuel or honoring its delivery commitments to Europe.He blamed the continent's recent energy disruptions on the inability of Ukraine to pay for its own supplies. About 20 percent of Europe's supply of natural gas comes from Russia through Ukrainian pipelines.Mr. Medvedev says assurances should be provided by those who pay for the gas, and there is room here for cooperation. The Russian leader notes that if Ukraine has the money, fine, though he expresses doubt that it does.Russia Prepared to Help UkraineHe says partners in such circumstances help their partners. President Medvedev said Russia is prepared to help Ukraine, but wants a considerable part of this work to be assumed by the European Union and countries interested in reliable and secure energy cooperation.Russia is also seeking to replace the so-called Energy Charter Treaty, a 1990's agreement on integration of European and former Soviet energy sectors. Moscow signed, but did not ratify the treaty, which would provide foreign commercial access to Russian pipelines.The European Union does not want the Charter scrapped, but EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Russia has put forth interesting suggestions."We could consider those proposals in the process of revision of the Energy Charter Treaty," he said.Moscow Suspicious of EU Partnership ProgramMoscow is also suspicious of the EU's Eastern Partnership Program with several former Soviet republics. President Medvedev warned in Khabarovsk that the outreach program should not turn into an anti-Russian coalition.He says what concerns Russia is that in some countries, the European Partnership is seen as a partnership against Russia. The Kremlin leader says he does not have in mind EU leadership nor any of the partners at the table [in Khabarovsk], but rather other countries.The Partnership Program is designed to enhance Europe's relationship with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.Positive Comments About SummitDespite tensions at the summit, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said the summit increased mutual trust between the EU and Russia. The Czech Republic holds the EU's rotating presidency.The venue chosen by Russia, the city of Khabarovsk, is near China, about 8,000 kilometers east of Brussels. President Medvedev made a point on Thursday of noting EU leaders would understand how great Russia is by having to fly so far. not turn into an anti-Russian coalition.
Putin Warns Outsiders Over Ukraine
MOSCOW – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned the West on Sunday not to meddle in relations between Russia and Ukraine, according to remarks cited by state-run news agencies.After laying a wreath at the grave of Anton Denikin, who fought against the Red Army after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and is now cast by the Kremlin as a patriot, Putin urged journalists to read Denikin's diaries, RIA-Novosti and ITAR-Tass reported."He has a discussion there about Big Russia and Little Russia — Ukraine," they quoted Putin as saying. "He says that nobody should be permitted to interfere in relations between us, they have always been the business of Russia itself."Portions of present-day Ukraine were part of pre-Revolutionary Russia and were sometimes called "Little Russia" or "Lesser Russia," while the bulk of the country was known as "Great Russia." Many Ukrainians find the terms offensive and misleading.Putin's remarks came as the dominant Russian Orthodox Church called for Slavic unity amid celebrations honoring Saints Cyril and Methodius, considered founding fathers of a common Slavic culture.But the comments could anger Ukrainians and increase their wariness about Moscow's intentions toward the former Soviet republic.Ukraine has been independent since 1991, when the Russian-dominated Soviet Union collapsed. But Putin's remarks seemed to suggest that Moscow's close historical ties with Ukraine means gives it a measure of influence that other countries cannot claim.The remarks come amid competition between Russia and the West for influence in Ukraine.Russian officials have said they are determined to keep Ukraine out of NATO. For some Ukrainians, Russia's war last year against pro-Western Georgia was a chilling suggestion of how far Moscow is willing to go.Russian nationalists want to regain the Crimean Peninsula, which was made part of Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. There is tension between Russia and Ukraine over Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which Ukrainian leaders have said they will evict from the Crimean port of Sevastopol when the current lease runs out in 2017.Denikin, who died in exile in the United States in 1947, was reburied in 2005 in the cemetery Moscow's historic Donskoy Monastery.Putin's visit to his grave was a reflection of how the prime minister, a longtime KGB officer who was president from 2000-2008, has celebrated individuals and images from both the Soviet era and czarist times in a drive to instill pride in Russians.
Sunday 24 May 2009
Yatsenyuk's Three Possible Roads To Ukraine's Presidency
KIEV, Ukraine -- Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a former parliament speaker and foreign minister of Ukraine, turned 35 on May 22, clearing the way for him to run as a candidate in the January 2010 presidential elections. Now it is time for him to begin considering his campaign tactics, and he faces three choices.
One option is to agree to receive a poisoned chalice from the unpopular President Viktor Yushchenko by being tipped as his successor. This would mean an agreement under which Yushchenko would not run (because, with under 3 percent support, according to recent polls, he has little chance of winning) or, alternatively, he would run but would not campaign against Yatsenyuk.The Yushchenko camp's near-pathological dislike of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko does not mean that Tymoshenko would not continue to remain prime minister in the event of her not being elected president. Ukraine's constitution does not insist on new parliamentary coalitions or a new government following a presidential election. By supporting Yatsenyuk and Party of Regions head Viktor Yanukovych, the presidential secretariat might prevent Tymoshenko's election as president, but it would still likely have to continue contending with her as prime minister.Yushchenko ally and RosUkrEnergo co-owner Dmytro Firtash is providing media access through Ukraine's popular Inter television channel, as is Viktor Pinchuk (who has admitted financing Yatsenyuk) through ICTV, STB, and Novyi Kanal. Ukrainian analysts have long noticed a close association between Firtash and Yatsenyuk , whose popularity is described as a "television project."In the 2002 elections, Pinchuk supported another TV project -- the Winter Crop Generation party (KOP) -- to take votes away from Yushchenko's Our Ukraine. Another young challenger, former Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, has seen his support stagnate, in part because of his more limited access to television.Orange 'Dream Team'A second option for Yatsenyuk would be -- as deputy parliament speaker and Tymoshenko bloc member Mykola Tomenko has proposed -- to negotiate a deal with Tymoshenko. The aim would be to prevent an inter-Orange conflict between the two leading Orange candidates (Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk ) that could facilitate Yanukovych's election victory.Yatsenyuk has ruled out any deals, but this could change if he does not make it into a second round of presidential voting and Tymoshenko seeks an endorsement from him in the second round.Tomenko points out that Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk are competing for the same Orange voters in western and central Ukraine, whereas Yanukovych has no powerful electoral competitors in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Communist Party (KPU) leader Piotr Symonenko will never mount a serious challenge to Yanukovych.Tomenko rightly believes that it would be better for Yatsenyuk and Tymoshenko to negotiate a deal before the election by agreeing to divide the presidency and government between them depending on who enters and wins the second round. They could agree, for example, that if Tymoshenko wins the second round, she would appoint Yatsenyuk prime minister. On the other hand, if Yatsenyuk wins, he would keep Tymoshenko on as prime minister.Together, Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk could create an unbeatable "dream team" that could be potentially a powerful coalition in support of the change and reforms that Ukrainians were promised in the Orange Revolution. This dream team could be bolstered by Hryhoriy Nemyria as foreign minister, Anatoliy Hrytsenko as National Security and Defense Council secretary, and a Hrytsenko protege as defense minister. Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration would be assisted by the fact that this would be the first Ukrainian government that had three English-speakers: Yatsenyuk, Nemyria, and Hrytsenko.Yatsenyuk's third choice would be to reject Yushchenko's poisoned chalice, refuse to do a deal with Tymoshenko, and instead campaign independently. This path would be the most difficult, as every presidential candidate needs financial and media resources.This strategy would be unlikely to give Yatsenyuk a good election result that he could then use to negotiate a position for himself. Hrytsenko will be competing with Yatsenyuk for third place in the presidential elections and Yatsenyuk's support has plateaued at 12-14 percent, mostly Our Ukraine voters disillusioned with Yushchenko.Taking A StandIn addition to his flat ratings, Yatsenyuk faces four other challenges.First, as Ukrainian media have increasingly noted, Yatsenyuk has been conspicuous in not stating what he stands for. A former Yushchenko supporter said, "Yushchenko may be an airhead, but at least he has some views, while Yatsenyuk seems to have none." In an election campaign, he will have to state what he stands for.Secondly, his new Front for Change party has no regional structures, so Yatsenyuk will be reliant on state-administrative resources provided by regional governors. These might be available in some regions, but not everywhere as Tymoshenko's Fatherland and Yanukovych's Party of Regions have the most developed party structures in Ukraine. Viktor Baloga was a staunch opponent of Tymoshenko (and therefore saw in Yatsenyuk a way to block her election), but his replacement as presidential chief of staff is likely to be less so inclined.Third, support for nationalism is growing, as Ukrainians are disillusioned with establishment politicians and fearful of the global economic crisis. The populist-nationalist Svoboda swept the March 18 Ternopil elections. Yatsenyuk's ethnic origins could be used by political "technologists" resorting to "black" public relations, or dirty tricks.Fourth, Yatsenyuk can no longer count on public support by standing above intra-elite squabbling, which has been one of two reasons (the other being the "television project") for his dramatic rise in popularity. An anti-Tymoshenko strategy would be negative, not positive, which would dent his ability to pursue the analogy of a "Ukrainian Obama."At this point, it is impossible to predict which of the three main candidates will win Ukraine's presidential election. And that is a good thing -- Ukraine is definitely not Russia.
One option is to agree to receive a poisoned chalice from the unpopular President Viktor Yushchenko by being tipped as his successor. This would mean an agreement under which Yushchenko would not run (because, with under 3 percent support, according to recent polls, he has little chance of winning) or, alternatively, he would run but would not campaign against Yatsenyuk.The Yushchenko camp's near-pathological dislike of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko does not mean that Tymoshenko would not continue to remain prime minister in the event of her not being elected president. Ukraine's constitution does not insist on new parliamentary coalitions or a new government following a presidential election. By supporting Yatsenyuk and Party of Regions head Viktor Yanukovych, the presidential secretariat might prevent Tymoshenko's election as president, but it would still likely have to continue contending with her as prime minister.Yushchenko ally and RosUkrEnergo co-owner Dmytro Firtash is providing media access through Ukraine's popular Inter television channel, as is Viktor Pinchuk (who has admitted financing Yatsenyuk) through ICTV, STB, and Novyi Kanal. Ukrainian analysts have long noticed a close association between Firtash and Yatsenyuk , whose popularity is described as a "television project."In the 2002 elections, Pinchuk supported another TV project -- the Winter Crop Generation party (KOP) -- to take votes away from Yushchenko's Our Ukraine. Another young challenger, former Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko, has seen his support stagnate, in part because of his more limited access to television.Orange 'Dream Team'A second option for Yatsenyuk would be -- as deputy parliament speaker and Tymoshenko bloc member Mykola Tomenko has proposed -- to negotiate a deal with Tymoshenko. The aim would be to prevent an inter-Orange conflict between the two leading Orange candidates (Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk ) that could facilitate Yanukovych's election victory.Yatsenyuk has ruled out any deals, but this could change if he does not make it into a second round of presidential voting and Tymoshenko seeks an endorsement from him in the second round.Tomenko points out that Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk are competing for the same Orange voters in western and central Ukraine, whereas Yanukovych has no powerful electoral competitors in the eastern and southern parts of the country. Communist Party (KPU) leader Piotr Symonenko will never mount a serious challenge to Yanukovych.Tomenko rightly believes that it would be better for Yatsenyuk and Tymoshenko to negotiate a deal before the election by agreeing to divide the presidency and government between them depending on who enters and wins the second round. They could agree, for example, that if Tymoshenko wins the second round, she would appoint Yatsenyuk prime minister. On the other hand, if Yatsenyuk wins, he would keep Tymoshenko on as prime minister.Together, Tymoshenko and Yatsenyuk could create an unbeatable "dream team" that could be potentially a powerful coalition in support of the change and reforms that Ukrainians were promised in the Orange Revolution. This dream team could be bolstered by Hryhoriy Nemyria as foreign minister, Anatoliy Hrytsenko as National Security and Defense Council secretary, and a Hrytsenko protege as defense minister. Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration would be assisted by the fact that this would be the first Ukrainian government that had three English-speakers: Yatsenyuk, Nemyria, and Hrytsenko.Yatsenyuk's third choice would be to reject Yushchenko's poisoned chalice, refuse to do a deal with Tymoshenko, and instead campaign independently. This path would be the most difficult, as every presidential candidate needs financial and media resources.This strategy would be unlikely to give Yatsenyuk a good election result that he could then use to negotiate a position for himself. Hrytsenko will be competing with Yatsenyuk for third place in the presidential elections and Yatsenyuk's support has plateaued at 12-14 percent, mostly Our Ukraine voters disillusioned with Yushchenko.Taking A StandIn addition to his flat ratings, Yatsenyuk faces four other challenges.First, as Ukrainian media have increasingly noted, Yatsenyuk has been conspicuous in not stating what he stands for. A former Yushchenko supporter said, "Yushchenko may be an airhead, but at least he has some views, while Yatsenyuk seems to have none." In an election campaign, he will have to state what he stands for.Secondly, his new Front for Change party has no regional structures, so Yatsenyuk will be reliant on state-administrative resources provided by regional governors. These might be available in some regions, but not everywhere as Tymoshenko's Fatherland and Yanukovych's Party of Regions have the most developed party structures in Ukraine. Viktor Baloga was a staunch opponent of Tymoshenko (and therefore saw in Yatsenyuk a way to block her election), but his replacement as presidential chief of staff is likely to be less so inclined.Third, support for nationalism is growing, as Ukrainians are disillusioned with establishment politicians and fearful of the global economic crisis. The populist-nationalist Svoboda swept the March 18 Ternopil elections. Yatsenyuk's ethnic origins could be used by political "technologists" resorting to "black" public relations, or dirty tricks.Fourth, Yatsenyuk can no longer count on public support by standing above intra-elite squabbling, which has been one of two reasons (the other being the "television project") for his dramatic rise in popularity. An anti-Tymoshenko strategy would be negative, not positive, which would dent his ability to pursue the analogy of a "Ukrainian Obama."At this point, it is impossible to predict which of the three main candidates will win Ukraine's presidential election. And that is a good thing -- Ukraine is definitely not Russia.
Russia Offers Ukraine 5-Year Advance Payment For Gas Transit
ASTANA, Kazakhstan -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed on Friday that Russia pay Ukraine five years in advance for natural gas transit, to help Kiev buy gas to fill its underground storage facilities and ensure uninterrupted supplies to Europe.
The announcement came amid fears of a new disruption in Russia's Europe-bound gas supplies via Ukraine, as the country, suffering a severe recession, needs to buy some 19.5 billion cubic meters at a cost of over $4 billion.Speaking after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko, Putin said: "We propose advance payment for transit of our gas to European consumers."He said that supply stability is currently under threat due to "the upcoming elections in Ukraine and the possible reorganization of its gas pipeline network."The premiers are in Kazakhstan for a meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States heads of government.Putin said that disputes concerning transit and supplies of natural gas cannot be resolved until the Ukrainian leadership reaches a common position."I am asking the peoples of both countries to take note of this. Under such conditions and with such high risks it is unlikely that we will be able to solve our problems under this setup. We need a consolidated position from the Ukrainian leadership."The gas contracts with Russia are one of a range of issues over which Ukraine's president and prime minister have clashed.Earlier this week, President Viktor Yushchenko said the contracts signed with Russia at the start of the year are likely to be reviewed in the near future, as Ukraine is unable to meet its obligations under the current terms.Putin also said that Russia is ready to take part in financing the process of filling Ukraine's underground gas storage facilities."Russia is ready to contribute its share... The size of this share should be determined in the course of negotiations," he said.Russian energy giant Gazprom suspended gas deliveries to Ukraine on January 1 over non-payment and the sides' failure to reach a new gas deal. A week later, Gazprom accused Ukraine of stealing gas intended for EU consumers, and cut off supplies to the European Union via the country, prompting two weeks of gas shortfalls across much of Eastern Europe.The standoff was resolved after negotiations between premiers Putin and Tymoshenko resulted in the signing of a new gas agreement for 2009-2019 on January 19.Under the terms of the new gas deal, Ukraine will pay Russia European market prices - set at $450 per 1,000 cu m for the first quarter - with a 20% discount in 2009, while transit fees fixed under a previous agreement remain unchanged. Yushchenko has repeatedly criticized the deal.
The announcement came amid fears of a new disruption in Russia's Europe-bound gas supplies via Ukraine, as the country, suffering a severe recession, needs to buy some 19.5 billion cubic meters at a cost of over $4 billion.Speaking after talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko, Putin said: "We propose advance payment for transit of our gas to European consumers."He said that supply stability is currently under threat due to "the upcoming elections in Ukraine and the possible reorganization of its gas pipeline network."The premiers are in Kazakhstan for a meeting of Commonwealth of Independent States heads of government.Putin said that disputes concerning transit and supplies of natural gas cannot be resolved until the Ukrainian leadership reaches a common position."I am asking the peoples of both countries to take note of this. Under such conditions and with such high risks it is unlikely that we will be able to solve our problems under this setup. We need a consolidated position from the Ukrainian leadership."The gas contracts with Russia are one of a range of issues over which Ukraine's president and prime minister have clashed.Earlier this week, President Viktor Yushchenko said the contracts signed with Russia at the start of the year are likely to be reviewed in the near future, as Ukraine is unable to meet its obligations under the current terms.Putin also said that Russia is ready to take part in financing the process of filling Ukraine's underground gas storage facilities."Russia is ready to contribute its share... The size of this share should be determined in the course of negotiations," he said.Russian energy giant Gazprom suspended gas deliveries to Ukraine on January 1 over non-payment and the sides' failure to reach a new gas deal. A week later, Gazprom accused Ukraine of stealing gas intended for EU consumers, and cut off supplies to the European Union via the country, prompting two weeks of gas shortfalls across much of Eastern Europe.The standoff was resolved after negotiations between premiers Putin and Tymoshenko resulted in the signing of a new gas agreement for 2009-2019 on January 19.Under the terms of the new gas deal, Ukraine will pay Russia European market prices - set at $450 per 1,000 cu m for the first quarter - with a 20% discount in 2009, while transit fees fixed under a previous agreement remain unchanged. Yushchenko has repeatedly criticized the deal.
Seven Churchgoers Die In Ukraine Road Accident
LVIV, Ukraine -- Seven Ukrainian churchgoers died and seventeen were injured in a Sunday road accident, police officials said. The victims had been en route to worship at the Krehovsky monastery in western Lviv province, said Svetlana Dobrovolska, a police spokeswoman, according to a Channel 5 television report.
The Orthodox Christian pilgrims' minibus collided head on with a lorry in the early morning hours, after the lorry driver fell asleep, according to the report.It was not clear from initial reports whether the lorry driver was among the injured. Survivors were being treated at local hospitals.Ukraine's road system is among Europe's most dangerous. Analysts say poor road conditions, corrupt police unwilling to enforce traffic law, and overuse of some road sections are all contributing causes.
The Orthodox Christian pilgrims' minibus collided head on with a lorry in the early morning hours, after the lorry driver fell asleep, according to the report.It was not clear from initial reports whether the lorry driver was among the injured. Survivors were being treated at local hospitals.Ukraine's road system is among Europe's most dangerous. Analysts say poor road conditions, corrupt police unwilling to enforce traffic law, and overuse of some road sections are all contributing causes.
Saturday 23 May 2009
Norway nervous of Russian courts
Vladimir Putin has offered the support of the Russian authorities to resolve a dispute between Norway's Telenor, mobile operator VimpelCom and the Alfa Group.
The Russian and Norwegian shareholders in VimpelCom have being at loggerheads since Telenor, which holds 29.9 per cent of Rusisa's second-biggest mobile phone operator, blocked a bid for a Ukrainian mobile network - clashing with fellow shareholder Alfa.
Now Putin, who insists the Russian government is completely neutral in a dispute which has seen Telenor ordered to pay $1.728 billion to VimpelCom, has offered to help out.
But his olive branch has had a sceptical response in Norway. An editorial in the country's Aftenposten newspaper hinted at foul play by the Russians.
"It is obvious the dispute must be settled in the courts," the paper writes, echoing Putin's own comments. "But the courts must also be ‘completely neutral'."
Norway fears that Russia's designation of telecommunications as ‘strategically important', coupled with President Medvedev's well-publicised critiques of Russian justice, mean that it will be difficult for Telenor's side of the story to get a fair hearing from Russian judges.
Put a cork in it
Elitny wines are losing favour in Russia as belt-tightening forces bon viveurs to pop the cork on the plonk.
Decanter.com reports a mini-French revolution rippling through the wine world, with some importers lamenting a 50 per cent drop in sales.
But the crisis may be driving people to drink more - but buy cheaper. Kirill Drozdov of Vinoteca Grand Cru said: "They are buying less Montrachet and more Pouilly Fuisse."
Winning the sack race
Russian Railways, or RZD, and GAZ carmakers have taken their place in a global hall of shame of companies which fired the most workers due to the economic crisis.
Figures in Russia's Trud daily paper show 54,000 RZD staff reached the end of the line, making their bosses the third most trigger-happy in the world. Troubled oligarch Oleg Deripaska wielded the fifth-biggest axe worldwide, sharing his woes with 6,667 employees at GAZ as profits stalled.
No to protectionism
EFTA members are due to start talks on a free trade agreement with Russia later this year, according to tax-news.com. Four EFTA nations, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) highlighted the need to prevent protectionism during the financial crisis as they prepared for negotiations this autumn. Similar talks with Ukraine are already underway.
Raging bulls
Top of the class
Troika Dialog was Russia's best local investment bank last year, according to Emeafinance magazine. In the mag's awards for banks in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS, Troika was praised for retaining its independence.
Firesale suits BlackRock
Investors BlackRock Inc is leading the charge to snap up undervalued Russian stocks which it claims are "priced for bankruptcy". Managers there believe Russia is the best-value emerging economy and have been investing heavily in banks and commodity producers, expecting strong yields when the global economy recovers, Bloomberg reports.
Toxic assets
Milking the crisis
A Siberian farmer has given up three of his calves in a bid to beat the bailiffs, RIA Novosti reports. With debt collectors in the Kemerovo region going hell for leather after his 250,000 rouble debt, the 40-year-old man offered three five-month-old calves, worth around 5,600 roubles each. Local bailiffs are collecting a small menagerie, having earlier seized a pedigree cat and a thoroughbred horse.
Trading deficit
Dmitry Medvedev is "not pleased" after Russia's bilateral trade dropped by around a third in the economic crisis, AFP reports. Speaking to Russian officials in Khabarovsk ahead of the EU summit, he said: "With some partners it's a bit more, with others a bit less. Of course, this statistic does not please us." More than half of Russia's trade last year was with EU states, while Far Eastern cities like Khabarovsk enjoy close links with nearby China - something Moscow wishes to develop further with a joint Sino-Russian recovery plan.
Loss warning
Russia's biggest lender, Sberbank, warned it could post a loss this year, according to Kommersant.
The Russian and Norwegian shareholders in VimpelCom have being at loggerheads since Telenor, which holds 29.9 per cent of Rusisa's second-biggest mobile phone operator, blocked a bid for a Ukrainian mobile network - clashing with fellow shareholder Alfa.
Now Putin, who insists the Russian government is completely neutral in a dispute which has seen Telenor ordered to pay $1.728 billion to VimpelCom, has offered to help out.
But his olive branch has had a sceptical response in Norway. An editorial in the country's Aftenposten newspaper hinted at foul play by the Russians.
"It is obvious the dispute must be settled in the courts," the paper writes, echoing Putin's own comments. "But the courts must also be ‘completely neutral'."
Norway fears that Russia's designation of telecommunications as ‘strategically important', coupled with President Medvedev's well-publicised critiques of Russian justice, mean that it will be difficult for Telenor's side of the story to get a fair hearing from Russian judges.
Put a cork in it
Elitny wines are losing favour in Russia as belt-tightening forces bon viveurs to pop the cork on the plonk.
Decanter.com reports a mini-French revolution rippling through the wine world, with some importers lamenting a 50 per cent drop in sales.
But the crisis may be driving people to drink more - but buy cheaper. Kirill Drozdov of Vinoteca Grand Cru said: "They are buying less Montrachet and more Pouilly Fuisse."
Winning the sack race
Russian Railways, or RZD, and GAZ carmakers have taken their place in a global hall of shame of companies which fired the most workers due to the economic crisis.
Figures in Russia's Trud daily paper show 54,000 RZD staff reached the end of the line, making their bosses the third most trigger-happy in the world. Troubled oligarch Oleg Deripaska wielded the fifth-biggest axe worldwide, sharing his woes with 6,667 employees at GAZ as profits stalled.
No to protectionism
EFTA members are due to start talks on a free trade agreement with Russia later this year, according to tax-news.com. Four EFTA nations, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) highlighted the need to prevent protectionism during the financial crisis as they prepared for negotiations this autumn. Similar talks with Ukraine are already underway.
Raging bulls
Top of the class
Troika Dialog was Russia's best local investment bank last year, according to Emeafinance magazine. In the mag's awards for banks in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS, Troika was praised for retaining its independence.
Firesale suits BlackRock
Investors BlackRock Inc is leading the charge to snap up undervalued Russian stocks which it claims are "priced for bankruptcy". Managers there believe Russia is the best-value emerging economy and have been investing heavily in banks and commodity producers, expecting strong yields when the global economy recovers, Bloomberg reports.
Toxic assets
Milking the crisis
A Siberian farmer has given up three of his calves in a bid to beat the bailiffs, RIA Novosti reports. With debt collectors in the Kemerovo region going hell for leather after his 250,000 rouble debt, the 40-year-old man offered three five-month-old calves, worth around 5,600 roubles each. Local bailiffs are collecting a small menagerie, having earlier seized a pedigree cat and a thoroughbred horse.
Trading deficit
Dmitry Medvedev is "not pleased" after Russia's bilateral trade dropped by around a third in the economic crisis, AFP reports. Speaking to Russian officials in Khabarovsk ahead of the EU summit, he said: "With some partners it's a bit more, with others a bit less. Of course, this statistic does not please us." More than half of Russia's trade last year was with EU states, while Far Eastern cities like Khabarovsk enjoy close links with nearby China - something Moscow wishes to develop further with a joint Sino-Russian recovery plan.
Loss warning
Russia's biggest lender, Sberbank, warned it could post a loss this year, according to Kommersant.
Oil price props up economy
Oil has hit a six-month high of $62 a barrel, despite weak demand and poor economic fundamentals, driving the Russian exchanges to new highs. Some reversal of this trend is expected but a strong price is likely to be sustained into the medium term providing support to the economy and markets.
"The combination of refinery outages, fresh violence in Nigeria and a relatively supportive weekly report from the EIA cemented a bullish scenario for oil yesterday," Ivan Ivanchenko, VTB's head of strategy, wrote in a research note on Thursday.
Oil remains the most important factor for Russian markets and its rise has helped the RTS become the second-best performing market this year, rising 63 per cent since January 11. Despite industrial production falling 16.9 per cent year-on-year in April and the economy remaining in recession, $60 oil has increased positive sentiment towards Russia.
"It means there are no serious imbalances in the Russian economy," said Roland Nash, chief strategist at Renaissance Capital. "With $60 oil there is no crisis in Russia."
However, the reopening of the Flint Hills refinery in Texas following a fire caused the price of Brent crude to slip on Thursday and this was subsequently reflected in on the MICEX and RTS. The EIA reported that U.S. oil refineries were only working at 81.8 per cent of capacity and lack of demand remains a concern for Russia.
"Despite the very strong resilience of oil in the face of still falling demand, the outlook over the summer months is for price weakness," Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib, wrote in an e-mail. "OPEC compliance is slipping, inventory levels are very high and still rising, and both OPEC and the IEA have again cut 2009 demand forecast."
In the next couple of weeks there is likely to be some correction but with the federal budget drafted for $41 a barrel, the economy and markets remain buoyed by the oil price.
"For now, we expect the market to consolidate below recent highs ahead of the long holiday weekend in the US and Britain, with key support at $56 on both markets," Ivanchenko said.
Stockpiles of oil have fallen in the last two weeks but supply is rising and an extra 1 million barrels per day is expected from Saudi Arabia. Mid-term oil prices should be positive for Russia, finding stability around or above $60, providing that the world economy and demand recovers.
"A very strong oil price is also a danger for Russia," said Nash. "The current oil price is great to push through reforms."
Higher oil prices have also helped strengthen the rouble to its strongest point since January 15, as of mid-afternoon Thursday, as people appeared prepared to hold on to roubles in a more stable economy.
"The combination of refinery outages, fresh violence in Nigeria and a relatively supportive weekly report from the EIA cemented a bullish scenario for oil yesterday," Ivan Ivanchenko, VTB's head of strategy, wrote in a research note on Thursday.
Oil remains the most important factor for Russian markets and its rise has helped the RTS become the second-best performing market this year, rising 63 per cent since January 11. Despite industrial production falling 16.9 per cent year-on-year in April and the economy remaining in recession, $60 oil has increased positive sentiment towards Russia.
"It means there are no serious imbalances in the Russian economy," said Roland Nash, chief strategist at Renaissance Capital. "With $60 oil there is no crisis in Russia."
However, the reopening of the Flint Hills refinery in Texas following a fire caused the price of Brent crude to slip on Thursday and this was subsequently reflected in on the MICEX and RTS. The EIA reported that U.S. oil refineries were only working at 81.8 per cent of capacity and lack of demand remains a concern for Russia.
"Despite the very strong resilience of oil in the face of still falling demand, the outlook over the summer months is for price weakness," Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib, wrote in an e-mail. "OPEC compliance is slipping, inventory levels are very high and still rising, and both OPEC and the IEA have again cut 2009 demand forecast."
In the next couple of weeks there is likely to be some correction but with the federal budget drafted for $41 a barrel, the economy and markets remain buoyed by the oil price.
"For now, we expect the market to consolidate below recent highs ahead of the long holiday weekend in the US and Britain, with key support at $56 on both markets," Ivanchenko said.
Stockpiles of oil have fallen in the last two weeks but supply is rising and an extra 1 million barrels per day is expected from Saudi Arabia. Mid-term oil prices should be positive for Russia, finding stability around or above $60, providing that the world economy and demand recovers.
"A very strong oil price is also a danger for Russia," said Nash. "The current oil price is great to push through reforms."
Higher oil prices have also helped strengthen the rouble to its strongest point since January 15, as of mid-afternoon Thursday, as people appeared prepared to hold on to roubles in a more stable economy.
Problems in the pipeline
The new Great Game in energy politics - the race between Gazprom's South Stream pipeline project and the European Union's planned Nabucco route - is escalating as countries are increasingly being pushed to take sides.
In the latest developments, Italy's Eni agreed to double South Stream's capacity and Gazprom offered to buy Azeri gas in a deal that would be a major blow for Nabucco, while a tentative EU-backed deal to pump gas from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq faltered after Baghdad vetoed the plan.
The $8 billion deal with Kurdistan could have seen Nabucco pumping gas by 2014, a full year before Russia's rival South Stream project.
Alexander Medvedev, deputy CEO of Gazprom, told Bloomberg television that it could buy all the gas from the Shah Deniz-2 field, which many had previously thought would be used for Nabucco. However, the reasons for the Russian monopolist's interest in Azeri gas remain unclear as it would be unlikely to make a profit on the Caspian Sea field.
"We believe that Gazprom would buy this gas with the main aim of providing trouble-free gas supply to Europe," said Natalya Milchakova, senior oil and gas analyst at financial company Otkritie. "Nevertheless, we do not rule out that the government, as Gazprom's controlling shareholder, could force the company to adopt such a decision in order to offset the potentially competing Nabucco project."
Gazprom is losing around 20 per cent of its income on gas from Central Asia as it is paying more than the export price to Europe and has also had to cut back on highly profitable domestic production due to the decrease in demand.
"Azeri gas is too expensive to be sold domestically, so it can only be re-exported," Mikhail Korchemkin, managing director of East European Gas Research, wrote in an e-mail. "To re-export Azeri gas, Gazprom needs to cut down exports of Russian gas, the main source of its profit."
Gazprom has denied that the offer is connected with Nabucco, stating that it is a long-term plan to increase the reliability of its deliveries and diversifying its export portfolio.
"Russia and Azerbaijan are connected already with a developed gas-transport infrastructure," Gazprom's press office wrote on Thursday in an e-mailed response to questions. "The contract negotiations about purchasing Azerbaijani gas are a logical step not connected with the project Nabucco and directed towards the development of bilateral cooperation in the field of power."
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, or Socar, is due to meet officials this month to discuss deals with Russia. Currently it only exports gas to its neighbours and both Nabucco and Gazprom could give it more options.
"With Moscow we are negotiating this issue but I don't know how it will be able to transport gas from Shah Deniz and I don't think a big amount of that gas is able to be transported by Russia," said Vafa Guluzadeh, a longtime former national security advisor under Azerbaijan's late president, Heydar Aliyev, the father of current president Ilham Aliyev. "Azerbaijan wants to have many exits for the gas."
In the longer term, Azerbaijan is looking to improve its relations with Europe and is likely to play a part in Nabucco. However, it also wants to remain on good terms with Russia and therefore some compromise would need to be agreed.
"If I was the decision-maker in oil and gas resources, I would sell all oil and gas resources through Nabucco," said Guluzadeh. "But we are on the [Russian] border and that is why we are taking into consideration that the appeasement of aggressors may be the only way."
Buying gas to limit the amount available from Azerbaijan would cause problems for Nabucco and some suggest that even with the participation of Shah Deniz, the pipeline may not be viable as the field wouldn't be able to export more than 10-11 billion cubic metres of gas per day.
"It supplies gas to Georgia under a long-term contract, and opportunities for additional gas exports are limited," said Milchakova. "We assume that the owners of the Nabucco pipeline would prefer to see some Middle Eastern countries as key gas suppliers, rather than Azerbaijan or another gas producer from the CIS."
While Azerbaijan and Central Asia remain a priority for the EU project, because they will at least be used as transit countries, the deal with Kurdistan would have provided enough gas to fill the pipeline.
"It's an important and promising development for the acquisition of a huge volume of natural gas for Turkey and for Europe via Nabucco," Nabucco managing director Reinhard Mitschek told Reuters.
Kurdish gas could have made Nabucco operational by 2014, a full year before Russia's rival South Stream project, but the Iraqi central government has overturned the deal.
The Middle East's on-going political strife has the potential to disrupt Europe's Nabucco deadlines.
"Nabucco has actually had Central Asian [gas] from the former Soviet Union in mind primarily," Pavel Sorokin, oil and gas analyst at Unicredit, wrote in an e-mail. "However, Iran/Iraq gas can indeed be used as well, but the political instability in the region can be a problem in terms of attracting investors and providing security, which would virtually render Nabucco's main reasoning (security and diversification of import routes into Europe) useless."
Despite the problems Nabucco faces, Guluzadeh said he expected it to go ahead and Azerbaijan to be involved. However, he claimed that Russia and Gazprom could raise tensions in the region to maintain their dominance in the energy market.
"Russia is trying to become a superpower in energy and dictate to Europe," said Guluzadeh. "But the Europeans are not stupid, they understand and that is why I think Nabucco will go ahead and succeed but the Russians will do their best to stop it."
Gazprom's South Stream was also sped up after Russia agreed deals with Italy, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria and is set to be completed by 2015, but Slovenia or Romania would still need to sign up. Although it is in competition with Nabucco, both projects could be successful and would ease consumer worries after the tensions with Ukraine in January.
"If both pipelines are built, it may be a problem utilizing their full capacity (provided the route through Ukraine also remains in operation), as demand in Europe may not grow as fast," Sorokin said.
In the latest developments, Italy's Eni agreed to double South Stream's capacity and Gazprom offered to buy Azeri gas in a deal that would be a major blow for Nabucco, while a tentative EU-backed deal to pump gas from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq faltered after Baghdad vetoed the plan.
The $8 billion deal with Kurdistan could have seen Nabucco pumping gas by 2014, a full year before Russia's rival South Stream project.
Alexander Medvedev, deputy CEO of Gazprom, told Bloomberg television that it could buy all the gas from the Shah Deniz-2 field, which many had previously thought would be used for Nabucco. However, the reasons for the Russian monopolist's interest in Azeri gas remain unclear as it would be unlikely to make a profit on the Caspian Sea field.
"We believe that Gazprom would buy this gas with the main aim of providing trouble-free gas supply to Europe," said Natalya Milchakova, senior oil and gas analyst at financial company Otkritie. "Nevertheless, we do not rule out that the government, as Gazprom's controlling shareholder, could force the company to adopt such a decision in order to offset the potentially competing Nabucco project."
Gazprom is losing around 20 per cent of its income on gas from Central Asia as it is paying more than the export price to Europe and has also had to cut back on highly profitable domestic production due to the decrease in demand.
"Azeri gas is too expensive to be sold domestically, so it can only be re-exported," Mikhail Korchemkin, managing director of East European Gas Research, wrote in an e-mail. "To re-export Azeri gas, Gazprom needs to cut down exports of Russian gas, the main source of its profit."
Gazprom has denied that the offer is connected with Nabucco, stating that it is a long-term plan to increase the reliability of its deliveries and diversifying its export portfolio.
"Russia and Azerbaijan are connected already with a developed gas-transport infrastructure," Gazprom's press office wrote on Thursday in an e-mailed response to questions. "The contract negotiations about purchasing Azerbaijani gas are a logical step not connected with the project Nabucco and directed towards the development of bilateral cooperation in the field of power."
The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, or Socar, is due to meet officials this month to discuss deals with Russia. Currently it only exports gas to its neighbours and both Nabucco and Gazprom could give it more options.
"With Moscow we are negotiating this issue but I don't know how it will be able to transport gas from Shah Deniz and I don't think a big amount of that gas is able to be transported by Russia," said Vafa Guluzadeh, a longtime former national security advisor under Azerbaijan's late president, Heydar Aliyev, the father of current president Ilham Aliyev. "Azerbaijan wants to have many exits for the gas."
In the longer term, Azerbaijan is looking to improve its relations with Europe and is likely to play a part in Nabucco. However, it also wants to remain on good terms with Russia and therefore some compromise would need to be agreed.
"If I was the decision-maker in oil and gas resources, I would sell all oil and gas resources through Nabucco," said Guluzadeh. "But we are on the [Russian] border and that is why we are taking into consideration that the appeasement of aggressors may be the only way."
Buying gas to limit the amount available from Azerbaijan would cause problems for Nabucco and some suggest that even with the participation of Shah Deniz, the pipeline may not be viable as the field wouldn't be able to export more than 10-11 billion cubic metres of gas per day.
"It supplies gas to Georgia under a long-term contract, and opportunities for additional gas exports are limited," said Milchakova. "We assume that the owners of the Nabucco pipeline would prefer to see some Middle Eastern countries as key gas suppliers, rather than Azerbaijan or another gas producer from the CIS."
While Azerbaijan and Central Asia remain a priority for the EU project, because they will at least be used as transit countries, the deal with Kurdistan would have provided enough gas to fill the pipeline.
"It's an important and promising development for the acquisition of a huge volume of natural gas for Turkey and for Europe via Nabucco," Nabucco managing director Reinhard Mitschek told Reuters.
Kurdish gas could have made Nabucco operational by 2014, a full year before Russia's rival South Stream project, but the Iraqi central government has overturned the deal.
The Middle East's on-going political strife has the potential to disrupt Europe's Nabucco deadlines.
"Nabucco has actually had Central Asian [gas] from the former Soviet Union in mind primarily," Pavel Sorokin, oil and gas analyst at Unicredit, wrote in an e-mail. "However, Iran/Iraq gas can indeed be used as well, but the political instability in the region can be a problem in terms of attracting investors and providing security, which would virtually render Nabucco's main reasoning (security and diversification of import routes into Europe) useless."
Despite the problems Nabucco faces, Guluzadeh said he expected it to go ahead and Azerbaijan to be involved. However, he claimed that Russia and Gazprom could raise tensions in the region to maintain their dominance in the energy market.
"Russia is trying to become a superpower in energy and dictate to Europe," said Guluzadeh. "But the Europeans are not stupid, they understand and that is why I think Nabucco will go ahead and succeed but the Russians will do their best to stop it."
Gazprom's South Stream was also sped up after Russia agreed deals with Italy, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria and is set to be completed by 2015, but Slovenia or Romania would still need to sign up. Although it is in competition with Nabucco, both projects could be successful and would ease consumer worries after the tensions with Ukraine in January.
"If both pipelines are built, it may be a problem utilizing their full capacity (provided the route through Ukraine also remains in operation), as demand in Europe may not grow as fast," Sorokin said.
Getting by in Khabarovsk
Months since the economic crisis hit, open any paper and you will see stories about unemployment on the rise, construction projects being halted and factories struggling to stay alive while being choked by debt incurred during better times.
Several thousand kilometers away from Moscow, only 20 kilometres from the Chinese border, the Khabarovsk region is also feeling the effects, but local officials insist the area is weathering the storm better than most.
Ahead of Friday's EU-Russia summit here, construction workers were busily repairing the road from the airport to central Khabarovsk. But cosmetic repairs aside, there does seem to be a lot of building going on. Khabarovsk's skyline is dotted with cranes, building affluent high-rise residential towers in the center, and enormous apartment blocks in the outskirts of town. The atmosphere is far from bleak, and traces of the construction boom from better times are still evident. Although people in Moscow have gotten used to people from the regions endlessly flocking to the capital, the regional government denies there is any mass exodus from the city; in point of fact, the number of residents is growing.
In a meeting with foreign journalists last week, Viktor Ishayev, President Dmitry Medvedev's envoy to the Far East Federal District and a former Khabarovsk governor, said that the place has its attractions - average pay is over 20,000 roubles per month, 20 per cent higher than the national average.
Affordable housing is a matter the regional government is taking seriously: "We are helping young people - young families," Ishayev said. "Forty percent of newly constructed housing has been allocated for affordable housing for young families - but mind you, we are helping families here, not the construction companies."
Officials acknowledge, however, that the region's remote location and its underdeveloped infrastructure present huge logistical challenges.
Unemployment is as familiar here as it is anywhere else. Official unemployment in the region stands at 4 per cent, or 33,000 of its inhabitants. In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, an industrial city 400 kilometres upriver, Amurmetal, a steel processing plant, was mulling laying off one-quarter of its workforce until September, even despite promises of state support during a visit last week by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Viktor Koryakin, an official with the Khabarovsk region coalition of labour unions, says the government is coping with the problem: "Of course, there are hard-hit areas - such as metal processing plants - since demand has dropped. But we keep construction companies busy with infrastructure projects such as road building, and are also looking towards our neighboring regions, Primoriye and Amur, as a potential market, and are cooperating with them to see if we can send them our surplus products."
Natalia Zubarevich, director of regional programmes at the Independent Institute of Social Policy, said by telephone that Khabarovsk was relatively well off compared to some other cities. "Ishayev, who ruled the region for almost two decades, is a governor of the old Soviet order - he kept the region tightly controlled, and accomplished much, keeping order and a decent appearance as he saw fit."
That city appears relatively spick and span, and has become a sort of educational hub in the Far East. Evidently, much effort is being put into healthcare as well, with a new maternity hospital built, and a state-of-the-art cardiology centre under construction. Much of the funding came from the federal budget.
Ishayev said that the region's prospects were limited, since too much of its economy relies on the export of raw materials. "We should be exporting value-added materials," he said. "For example - we have good trade relations with China, but we sell them raw materials, and they sell the completed products back to us. This is not correct. But it's a difficult cycle to get out of."
"The region has one good taxpayer - Sukhoi in Komsomolsk-on-Amur - but they don't always have steady orders to keep them busy and affluent," said Zubarevich.
Indeed, despite the much-touted Superjet-100 orders on the books, 50 of the plant's 640 workers may be laid off this year. "There's a big ‘shadow economy' in the region," said Zubarevich. "Forests are being sold to China, and the fishing industry, too, although it is not large, it is also a ‘shadow economy'. Such businesses don't bring in any taxes for the region."
EU talks to focus on security
RIA Novosti
KHABAROVSK - President Dmitry Medvedev will focus on energy and security issues at the Russian-EU summit in Khabarovsk, starting Friday, in the light of Russia's recent gas dispute with Ukraine and last year's war between Russia and Georgia. On Thursday at an informal dinner Medvedev met the EU delegation, led by EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
Medvedev "will be interested in the EU's position, and plans for collective and individual action from our European partners, on the continuing threat to Europe resulting from our difficult relations with Ukraine in the gas sphere," presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters on Wednesday
"We want to convey our concerns over the continuing danger of the agreements reached with the Ukrainian prime minister being broken off," he said.
Earlier this week, Ukraine's president called the natural gas contracts signed with Russia earlier this year "unprofessional", and said they are likely to be reviewed in the near future, as Ukraine is unable to meet its obligations under the current terms.
On the Georgia issue, Prikhodko said Russia would object to some EU members' support for President Mikhail Saakashvili. Moscow has refused to negotiate with Saakashvili since last year's war.
"There are things we need to ask them: what will happen with this long-term, blind support for Saakashvili? What do they think about this? All the more considering that the opposition movement in Georgia has clearly demonstrated the level of mistrust of his policies, both domestic and foreign," he said.
"Is the EU ready take responsibility for its foreign policy, or will it only ask us about Iran, and other problems? And on this issue, is Europe ready to apply the same standards to such inadmissible acts?"
He said that Russia wants serious discussion rather than confrontation with the EU
Several thousand kilometers away from Moscow, only 20 kilometres from the Chinese border, the Khabarovsk region is also feeling the effects, but local officials insist the area is weathering the storm better than most.
Ahead of Friday's EU-Russia summit here, construction workers were busily repairing the road from the airport to central Khabarovsk. But cosmetic repairs aside, there does seem to be a lot of building going on. Khabarovsk's skyline is dotted with cranes, building affluent high-rise residential towers in the center, and enormous apartment blocks in the outskirts of town. The atmosphere is far from bleak, and traces of the construction boom from better times are still evident. Although people in Moscow have gotten used to people from the regions endlessly flocking to the capital, the regional government denies there is any mass exodus from the city; in point of fact, the number of residents is growing.
In a meeting with foreign journalists last week, Viktor Ishayev, President Dmitry Medvedev's envoy to the Far East Federal District and a former Khabarovsk governor, said that the place has its attractions - average pay is over 20,000 roubles per month, 20 per cent higher than the national average.
Affordable housing is a matter the regional government is taking seriously: "We are helping young people - young families," Ishayev said. "Forty percent of newly constructed housing has been allocated for affordable housing for young families - but mind you, we are helping families here, not the construction companies."
Officials acknowledge, however, that the region's remote location and its underdeveloped infrastructure present huge logistical challenges.
Unemployment is as familiar here as it is anywhere else. Official unemployment in the region stands at 4 per cent, or 33,000 of its inhabitants. In Komsomolsk-on-Amur, an industrial city 400 kilometres upriver, Amurmetal, a steel processing plant, was mulling laying off one-quarter of its workforce until September, even despite promises of state support during a visit last week by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Viktor Koryakin, an official with the Khabarovsk region coalition of labour unions, says the government is coping with the problem: "Of course, there are hard-hit areas - such as metal processing plants - since demand has dropped. But we keep construction companies busy with infrastructure projects such as road building, and are also looking towards our neighboring regions, Primoriye and Amur, as a potential market, and are cooperating with them to see if we can send them our surplus products."
Natalia Zubarevich, director of regional programmes at the Independent Institute of Social Policy, said by telephone that Khabarovsk was relatively well off compared to some other cities. "Ishayev, who ruled the region for almost two decades, is a governor of the old Soviet order - he kept the region tightly controlled, and accomplished much, keeping order and a decent appearance as he saw fit."
That city appears relatively spick and span, and has become a sort of educational hub in the Far East. Evidently, much effort is being put into healthcare as well, with a new maternity hospital built, and a state-of-the-art cardiology centre under construction. Much of the funding came from the federal budget.
Ishayev said that the region's prospects were limited, since too much of its economy relies on the export of raw materials. "We should be exporting value-added materials," he said. "For example - we have good trade relations with China, but we sell them raw materials, and they sell the completed products back to us. This is not correct. But it's a difficult cycle to get out of."
"The region has one good taxpayer - Sukhoi in Komsomolsk-on-Amur - but they don't always have steady orders to keep them busy and affluent," said Zubarevich.
Indeed, despite the much-touted Superjet-100 orders on the books, 50 of the plant's 640 workers may be laid off this year. "There's a big ‘shadow economy' in the region," said Zubarevich. "Forests are being sold to China, and the fishing industry, too, although it is not large, it is also a ‘shadow economy'. Such businesses don't bring in any taxes for the region."
EU talks to focus on security
RIA Novosti
KHABAROVSK - President Dmitry Medvedev will focus on energy and security issues at the Russian-EU summit in Khabarovsk, starting Friday, in the light of Russia's recent gas dispute with Ukraine and last year's war between Russia and Georgia. On Thursday at an informal dinner Medvedev met the EU delegation, led by EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, Czech President Vaclav Klaus, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency and the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
Medvedev "will be interested in the EU's position, and plans for collective and individual action from our European partners, on the continuing threat to Europe resulting from our difficult relations with Ukraine in the gas sphere," presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters on Wednesday
"We want to convey our concerns over the continuing danger of the agreements reached with the Ukrainian prime minister being broken off," he said.
Earlier this week, Ukraine's president called the natural gas contracts signed with Russia earlier this year "unprofessional", and said they are likely to be reviewed in the near future, as Ukraine is unable to meet its obligations under the current terms.
On the Georgia issue, Prikhodko said Russia would object to some EU members' support for President Mikhail Saakashvili. Moscow has refused to negotiate with Saakashvili since last year's war.
"There are things we need to ask them: what will happen with this long-term, blind support for Saakashvili? What do they think about this? All the more considering that the opposition movement in Georgia has clearly demonstrated the level of mistrust of his policies, both domestic and foreign," he said.
"Is the EU ready take responsibility for its foreign policy, or will it only ask us about Iran, and other problems? And on this issue, is Europe ready to apply the same standards to such inadmissible acts?"
He said that Russia wants serious discussion rather than confrontation with the EU
Commission to defend Russia’s view of history
Amid increasingly vocal calls to criminalise interpretations of World War II history that question the role of the Soviet Union, President Dmitry Medvedev has set up a commission to investigate and analyse attempts to "falsify history against the interests of Russia."
In a video blog posted on his web site, Medvedev called attempts at falsification "more and more harsh, depraved and aggressive."
The commission has raised eyebrows by appearing to throw support behind statements by Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu that denying Russia's victory in the war should be illegal.
The decision also comes on the back of proposed bill that could make "distorting the verdicts of the Nuremburg Trials... to rehabilitate Nazism" or even "calling the actions of Allied countries a crime" a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison - five if the perpetrator used mass media, according to a text of the bill cited by Kommersant.
But senior officials say that the commission and the legislation are separate, although they agree they are moving in the same direction.
A source in the presidential press service said the commission "does not punish, but gathers information." Moreover, he warned that the punitive legislation was not a done deal. "There are many opinions, but it's too early to speak of the actual document."
Headed by Sergei Naryshkin, the commission will be made up of 28 "experts," including top officials from the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service. One member, Konstantin Zatulin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, is working on legislation that will stipulate responsibility for denying the results of the Nuremburg Trials, but stressed that the committee was a separate measure with its own origins.
"These are two different things," he said in a telephone interview. "I remember first discussing this idea with Naryshkin before Medvedev became president, when Naryshkin was still a deputy prime minister."
Both the legislation and the commission are seen as targeting foreign attempts - particularly from former Soviet republics such as Latvia and Ukraine - to question the Soviet Union's role in World War II. Asked if the wording of the bill would make it a crime to talk about alleged wartime atrocities of Soviet troops, Valery Ryazansky, a senior United Russia official and one of the authors of the bill, said, "If the country is suddenly called an occupier - that should be punished. You can talk about crimes of individual people, of course. But calling the actions of the Red Army a crime - yes, that should be punished."
A source in the Kremlin press service said he could not comment on the bill because it was still being prepared. He stressed, however, that the commission had an entirely different agenda.
"Because there are a lot of precedents when accepted history has been interpreted differently by various countries according to their particular interests - such as glorifying fascism, or reinterpreting Holodomor [the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s, which Ukrainian officials have described as genocide], if we want to talk about local things - we believe that it's necessary to at least try to understand the attempts. That is why the commission will deal first and foremost with information gathering and analysis, and then make recommendations to the president. Whether he accepts those recommendations or not is up to him."
Russia is at odds with former Soviet republics about how to interpret the events of the war, with accusations coming from both sides. A Soviet World War II veteran has accused Latvia this week of falsification after being convicted of war crimes associated with his resistance group that fought against Nazi Germany, RIA Novosti reports. Latvia has accused Russia of occupying its country during World War II.
Boris Belenkin, a research director at Memorial, a society that tracks Soviet-era repression and campaigns for human rights today, says the commission shows little promise and could make his job more difficult.
"It could be a form of pressure for regional educators, archivists, and officials to put a special spin on history and make archival information less accessible," Belenkin said. "I doubt it will be a signal for people in Moscow, but people in the regions will see this as reverberating with Soviet-era rhetoric, which is familiar and customary for them," he said.
Vladimir Pribylovsky, an analyst with the Panorama think tank, said that the idea for the commission probably came not Medvedev, but from hawks in the administration or from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The commission has "all the typical traits of Soviet-era prejudices," said Pribylovsky. "Many in the elites have psychologically inherited those prejudices. Perhaps Medvedev was trying to appease those who think he is not patriotic enough
In a video blog posted on his web site, Medvedev called attempts at falsification "more and more harsh, depraved and aggressive."
The commission has raised eyebrows by appearing to throw support behind statements by Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu that denying Russia's victory in the war should be illegal.
The decision also comes on the back of proposed bill that could make "distorting the verdicts of the Nuremburg Trials... to rehabilitate Nazism" or even "calling the actions of Allied countries a crime" a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison - five if the perpetrator used mass media, according to a text of the bill cited by Kommersant.
But senior officials say that the commission and the legislation are separate, although they agree they are moving in the same direction.
A source in the presidential press service said the commission "does not punish, but gathers information." Moreover, he warned that the punitive legislation was not a done deal. "There are many opinions, but it's too early to speak of the actual document."
Headed by Sergei Naryshkin, the commission will be made up of 28 "experts," including top officials from the Federal Security Service and the Foreign Intelligence Service. One member, Konstantin Zatulin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, is working on legislation that will stipulate responsibility for denying the results of the Nuremburg Trials, but stressed that the committee was a separate measure with its own origins.
"These are two different things," he said in a telephone interview. "I remember first discussing this idea with Naryshkin before Medvedev became president, when Naryshkin was still a deputy prime minister."
Both the legislation and the commission are seen as targeting foreign attempts - particularly from former Soviet republics such as Latvia and Ukraine - to question the Soviet Union's role in World War II. Asked if the wording of the bill would make it a crime to talk about alleged wartime atrocities of Soviet troops, Valery Ryazansky, a senior United Russia official and one of the authors of the bill, said, "If the country is suddenly called an occupier - that should be punished. You can talk about crimes of individual people, of course. But calling the actions of the Red Army a crime - yes, that should be punished."
A source in the Kremlin press service said he could not comment on the bill because it was still being prepared. He stressed, however, that the commission had an entirely different agenda.
"Because there are a lot of precedents when accepted history has been interpreted differently by various countries according to their particular interests - such as glorifying fascism, or reinterpreting Holodomor [the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s, which Ukrainian officials have described as genocide], if we want to talk about local things - we believe that it's necessary to at least try to understand the attempts. That is why the commission will deal first and foremost with information gathering and analysis, and then make recommendations to the president. Whether he accepts those recommendations or not is up to him."
Russia is at odds with former Soviet republics about how to interpret the events of the war, with accusations coming from both sides. A Soviet World War II veteran has accused Latvia this week of falsification after being convicted of war crimes associated with his resistance group that fought against Nazi Germany, RIA Novosti reports. Latvia has accused Russia of occupying its country during World War II.
Boris Belenkin, a research director at Memorial, a society that tracks Soviet-era repression and campaigns for human rights today, says the commission shows little promise and could make his job more difficult.
"It could be a form of pressure for regional educators, archivists, and officials to put a special spin on history and make archival information less accessible," Belenkin said. "I doubt it will be a signal for people in Moscow, but people in the regions will see this as reverberating with Soviet-era rhetoric, which is familiar and customary for them," he said.
Vladimir Pribylovsky, an analyst with the Panorama think tank, said that the idea for the commission probably came not Medvedev, but from hawks in the administration or from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The commission has "all the typical traits of Soviet-era prejudices," said Pribylovsky. "Many in the elites have psychologically inherited those prejudices. Perhaps Medvedev was trying to appease those who think he is not patriotic enough
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