Turkey no longer fears Russian military strength

Russia is no longer seen as a threat to Turkey – but debate rages over whether this is a triumph for Moscow’s diplomacy or a humiliating comedown for the nation’s armed forces.

Ankara has removed Russia from its so-called “Red Book” of potentially hostile states, along with neighbours Greece and Armenia and the Middle East trio of Syria, Iran and Iraq. Meanwhile Israel is added to the hit list after the storm over the summer “Freedom Flotilla” which set sail from Turkey but was blocked from landing in Palestine by Israeli forces.

But it’s Russia’s exclusion which has prompted most conversation.

The official view is that Russia’s active role in trying to mediate the on-going conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan makes Moscow a valuable ally in promoting stability in the volatile trans-Caucasus.

The document highlights warmer relations under the guidance of Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan, which involves closer economic ties as well as concluding the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

And strategists in Ankara conclude that “the threat of communism has finally lifted”.

But a more pragmatic stance offers less cause for Russia to celebrate, according to military analyst Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the Strategic Cultural Foundation.

He suggests Turkey is simply no longer all that concerned about the muscle of its giant historic rival on the other side of the Black Sea.

“Among the expert community it has been assumed that Turkey will remove Russia from the list of potential threats after a comparative analysis of the capabilities of the Russian and Turkish armies,” Areshev said.

“Turkey has a strong military, while the combat capability of the Russian army is in a permanent state of reform, which raises questions.”

Whether the latest signals from Turkey represent growing enthusiasm for Moscow’s interests or dwindling respect for Russia’s military could be less significant than what happens next.

Both countries have a shared interest in gas and oil transit to Europe, with Turkey currently signed up to the Nabucco pipeline scheme which enables the EU to access central Asian resources while bypassing Russia.

If Russia can use improved relationships with Ankara to slow that scheme it will boost the prospects of Gazprom’s treasured South Stream project becoming the market leader in gas transit to the Balkans and beyond.

Meanwhile Russian strategists may hope that they can use a less hostile Turkey as a means of easing tensions with NATO in south-eastern Europe.

The western alliance’s efforts to expand in that region have regularly alarmed Russia, which fears “encirclement” by US and European forces on its western borders, particularly if the likes of Ukraine and Georgia join the NATO club.

Origami Trojan Takes Shape In Russia, Ukraine

A new banking trojan, called Origami, is being used to attack bank customers in Russia and Ukraine, according to Joe Stewart, director of malware research at SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit.
The attacks on Russian and Ukrainian bank customers is a switch for bank trojans, which tend to originate in Russia and Ukraine and attack Western targets.

At the DLP Russian 2010 conference in Moscow this week, Stewart explained that there had been an “unspoken rule” among Russian trojan developers not to infect Russian computers. But times are changing.

Stewart said that the Origami trojan currently has limited distribution, but it is a “highly capable credential-stealing trojan”.

The SecureWorks researcher supplied a “heat map” of Origami trojan infections. Most of the infections were centered around the Russian capital of Moscow and the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, but there were also concentrations in eastern Ukraine, as well as Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, and Germany.

Stewart explained that anti-virus software is only 20% effective against a credential-stealing trojan like Origami. He recommended a “layered defense”, which includes patch management, commercial anti-virus software, network firewall with strict egress policies, web proxy with scanning/blocking capability, network intrusion prevention system (IPS) with malware ruleset, host-based IPS/firewalls, and executable whitelisting.

On the policy side, he recommended more global cooperation against trojans and other cybercrime, including cooperation between law enforcement agencies around the world and between law enforcement and private companies.

Ukraine Defends Arrest Of Belarusian Activists On Drugs Charges

ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine -- Ukrainian authorities have defended the arrests of four well-known Belarusian opposition activists on drug charges
Ihar Koktysh, Tatsyana Koktysh, Vital Tsishchanka, and Artsyom Dubsky were detained in the central Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr on November 3 together with a Ukrainian woman, Iryna Tyutyunnik, at Tyutyunnik's apartment, on suspicion of illegal possession of drugs.

Tyutyunnik phoned the local newspaper "20 Minutes" and told journalists that police entered her apartment, saying they were looking for a wanted criminal.

Instead of checking the identity of her guests, however, they searched the apartment and found a packet of green powder which Tyutyunnik says was planted.

When two correspondents from "20 Minutes" arrived at the apartment, police took away their cameras and tape recorder by force.

But Ukrainian Interior Ministry spokesman Dmytro Andreyev told journalists in Kyiv on November 4 that police had acted on information that people in the apartment were involved in illegal drugs consumption and distribution.

He said police "conducted a search in an apartment in the city of Zhytomyr and found a packet with 10 grams of a substance that resembled marijuana."

Everyone in the apartment at the time of the search was arrested, Andreyev said. He said the search was conducted as a part of an investigation into illegal drug-trafficking in the region.

Ukraine Defends Arrest Of Belarusian Activists On Drugs Charges

ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine -- Ukrainian authorities have defended the arrests of four well-known Belarusian opposition activists on drug charges
Ihar Koktysh, Tatsyana Koktysh, Vital Tsishchanka, and Artsyom Dubsky were detained in the central Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr on November 3 together with a Ukrainian woman, Iryna Tyutyunnik, at Tyutyunnik's apartment, on suspicion of illegal possession of drugs.

Tyutyunnik phoned the local newspaper "20 Minutes" and told journalists that police entered her apartment, saying they were looking for a wanted criminal.

Instead of checking the identity of her guests, however, they searched the apartment and found a packet of green powder which Tyutyunnik says was planted.

When two correspondents from "20 Minutes" arrived at the apartment, police took away their cameras and tape recorder by force.

But Ukrainian Interior Ministry spokesman Dmytro Andreyev told journalists in Kyiv on November 4 that police had acted on information that people in the apartment were involved in illegal drugs consumption and distribution.

He said police "conducted a search in an apartment in the city of Zhytomyr and found a packet with 10 grams of a substance that resembled marijuana."

Everyone in the apartment at the time of the search was arrested, Andreyev said. He said the search was conducted as a part of an investigation into illegal drug-trafficking in the region.

Ukraine Defends Arrest Of Belarusian Activists On Drugs Charges

ZHYTOMYR, Ukraine -- Ukrainian authorities have defended the arrests of four well-known Belarusian opposition activists on drug charges
Ihar Koktysh, Tatsyana Koktysh, Vital Tsishchanka, and Artsyom Dubsky were detained in the central Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr on November 3 together with a Ukrainian woman, Iryna Tyutyunnik, at Tyutyunnik's apartment, on suspicion of illegal possession of drugs.

Tyutyunnik phoned the local newspaper "20 Minutes" and told journalists that police entered her apartment, saying they were looking for a wanted criminal.

Instead of checking the identity of her guests, however, they searched the apartment and found a packet of green powder which Tyutyunnik says was planted.

When two correspondents from "20 Minutes" arrived at the apartment, police took away their cameras and tape recorder by force.

But Ukrainian Interior Ministry spokesman Dmytro Andreyev told journalists in Kyiv on November 4 that police had acted on information that people in the apartment were involved in illegal drugs consumption and distribution.

He said police "conducted a search in an apartment in the city of Zhytomyr and found a packet with 10 grams of a substance that resembled marijuana."

Everyone in the apartment at the time of the search was arrested, Andreyev said. He said the search was conducted as a part of an investigation into illegal drug-trafficking in the region.

Ukraine's Government Vows To Put End To Pirate Soft In State Agencies

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's government is going to install licensed software onto all of the state agencies' computers within the next six months, Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Borys Kolesnikov said in time of a meeting with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Friday.
"The first task we have set for the local offices of the corporation is complete legalization of the software used in the state agencies," the website of the Ukrainian government quoted Kolesnikov as saying.

The move will be of advantage not only to Microsoft but also to Ukraine from the perspective of investment and modernization, Ballmer said.

Q&A With Ukraine's Viktor Yushchenko

KIEV, Ukraine -- Last week Ukrainians voted in local elections that many considered a test of the country’s commitment to democracy.
It was the first balloting since President Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-backed antagonist of the 2004 Orange Revolution, ousted the pro-Western revolution’s leader, then-president Viktor Yushchenko, roughly a year ago.

Yushchenko lost the presidency in the first round, claiming only about 5 percent of the vote.

NEWSWEEK contributor William Schreiber spoke with Yushchenko about the recent elections, his legacy, and Ukraine’s strategic relationship with Russia.

Were last week’s elections fair?

The law allows a one-party monopoly of election commissions. It doesn’t allow the reversal of election results or the recognition of results as invalid. With such laws, can fraud take place? Obviously. But excuse me for revealing our messy kitchen.

Was Yanukovych the better choice for advocates of resetting U.S.-Russian relations?

The politics that have won today in Ukraine are not in anyone’s best interest. These are not even the kind of politics that make Russia more stable. Ukraine can play a greater role in this region only when it achieves European freedoms, democracy, and a clear security policy.

Is Ukraine closer to EU integration today than it was before the Orange Revolution?

It depends on whether European leaders are ready not only to stand up for their values but also to ensure their expansion on the continent. Internally, of course, I’m pessimistic. During recent years the government has carried out economic and social reforms weakly.

You recently took personal responsibility for your loss in 2010. You said a single person lost, not millions of Ukrainians. What did you mean by that?

What happened a year ago [Yanukovych’s election] was not a failure from the point of view of democracy as an ideology. The majority of society didn’t vote for him. The majority of people neither share his system of values nor approve of his policy.

And that is why I can’t claim that society lost — no. Its direction is still democratic and pro-Ukrainian. This was not a failure of values that happened a year ago.

This was a lesson God gave us so that we’ll have better self-realization. So I declared that if someone wants to talk about failure, let it be my personal failure.

Do you have any regrets?

Working with [former prime minister Yulia] Tymoshenko. Her politics destroyed this country’s democratic expectations. Her behavior in government was more befitting a showman, not a prime minister.

Tymoshenko has emerged as leader of the opposition. Is she important for Ukraine today?

[Russia’s] biggest dream is to have a Yanukovych government and Tymoshenko as the main opposition. This is Moscow’s best-case scenario. Their politics are identical. Power and fame—those are the only things these two serve.

Is your political career over?

I’m not interested in who I will be. I was twice elected head of the National Bank. I have been a prime minister and a president. For one person, that’s probably enough. I can tell my kids that I devoted everything to my nation.

What will history books say about the Orange Revolution?

The last five years have brought rights and freedoms to the Ukrainian public: freedom of speech and identity. That can’t be erased. We started to be proud that we are Ukrainians.

Before that we were confused whether we were Russia or a separate country. Our strivings were so universally human, they carried such high standards, that the whole world came to know about us.

The Orange Revolution was the continuation of independence. I think that in time people may see my presidency and the Orange Revolution in this light.

Ukrainian Appeals To Anti-Semitism In Election Win

KIEV, Ukraine -- A surprise showing by an extreme-right nationalist party in the Ukraine's local elections has put the party and its leader - and its anti-Semitic rhetoric - into the national spotlight
Svoboda (Freedom), which until recently had been relegated to Ukraine's political fringe, handily won in three of the country's western-most provinces in Sunday's vote, preliminary tallies show.

Local elections held in the former Soviet republic propelled Svoboda to surprise victories in Ukraine's Lviv, Ternopil and Ivano- Frankivsk regions.

Svoboda, whose campaign program emphasized Ukrainian patriotism and resistance to the Kremlin, captured between 30 and 34 per cent of the popular vote in the three districts, according to a survey by the Research and Branding Group.

By contrast, its closest rivals obtained between 10 and 13 per cent in each local contest.

Svoboda also tripled its popularity in Ukraine's central and northern regions, as compared with the results of the 2010 presidential elections, according to mostly complete official ballot counts.

Oleh Tyahnybok, 41 and a former surgeon, is Svoboda's charismatic leader. His oratory, with its unique mix of erudition, pithy peasant wit and passion, stands out in Ukraine's political arena.

Tyahnybok calls himself a patriot fighting for his country. His opponents call him a racist and neo-Nazi.

'That's baseless lies, Svoboda is for equal rights for all Ukrainians,' an angry Tyahnybok said during a pre-election television talk show. 'Anyone who is for an independent Ukraine is our ally.'

Svoboda's grassroots are in old Galicia, a rugged region formerly belonging to Austria-Hungary and Poland. Unlike the rest of Ukraine, it came under Russian control only after World War II.

Tyahnybok quit medicine in 1996 and entered parliament in 2002 as a member of the Our Ukraine political party, headed by former president Viktor Yushchenko.

Our Ukraine, like Svoboda, supports market reforms and closer relations between Ukraine and Western Europe. But Tyahnybok's rhetoric has stirred up controversy.

Yushchenko expelled Tyahnybok from Our Ukraine in 2005 over a televised Tyahnybok diatribe in which he praised Ukrainian partisans who fought 'Ruskies, the Krauts, Jewishness and other unclean elements.'

He called on the Yushchenko government to strike fear into the 'Russky-Kike mafia' purportedly running Ukraine.

Yushchenko's political star has waned badly since then, and Our Ukraine managed to capture only 2.3 per cent of the national vote in the Sunday vote.

Outside Ukraine's western region, where Svoboda achieved outright victories, the party drew 5.1 per cent of ballots cast nationwide, making it Ukraine's fifth-most popular political party, according to a GfK exit poll.

'A couple of years ago, Tyahnybok's men were regarded as a marginal group...Today, they are a really influential force,' wrote Ukrainian political commentator Konstantin Dymov in an article titled 'The Nazification of Galicia.'

The Svoboda party platform, which criticizes oligarchs and tycoons, makes some commonplace proposals directed at the middle class, along with nationalist criticism of Russia.

The party calls for farm assistance, cracking down on corruption and a foreign policy that puts 'Russia and Ukraine on equal terms...rather than like the Tsar to his slave.'

Tyahnybok's sure feel for his electorate, and its dissatisfaction with Ukraine's Russia-leaning government, was in full evidence on May 27 in Lviv, when thousands of angry demonstrators turned out to hurl catcalls and insults at President Viktor Yanukovych's vehicle convoy.

Tyahanybok fired up the crowd with an angry speech attacking the president and his administration. Later in the day students put on a humorous street play featuring Yanukovych as a bewildered prison convict - a nasty reference to assault and robbery sentences Ukraine's president served in his youth.

One actor, playing the part of a stereotypical Orthodox Jew complete with wire glasses and Yiddish accent, obsequiously promised to rewrite Ukraine's history books: 'That's right your worship, there never were any Ukrainians. And their language - it's not a language, it's just Russian with a Polish accent!'

Alexander Lebedev's Empire Suffers Another Blow With Hotel Raid In Ukraine

MOSCOW, Russia -- Alexander Lebedev, the Russian owner of Britain's Independent and London Evening Standard newspapers, suffered another bruising blow to his business empire today after police carried out a raid on his luxury hotel in Ukraine.
Dozens of tax officers burst into the More resort in Alushta, on Crimea's south-eastern coast, early yesterday. They seized documents and computers. Officials from Ukraine's SBU security service swarmed over the hotel today.

The raid came 48 hours after masked, gun-toting special forces stormed Lebedev's National Reserve Bank in Moscow.

Russian police said the search on Tuesday was connected to a criminal investigation into employees from another bank.

Lebedev today told the Guardian it had been a bad week. But he said he would not bow to forces within Russia's murky power structure who were apparently hellbent on making him flee.

"I'm still here [in Russia]. I live here," Lebedev said. He added that he had spent the past three days trying to "decipher" the blunt "psychological" message sent by the bank raid. "In the worst-case scenario the message is: 'Get out of Russia.'"

Lebedev said that when detectives burst in, he was in the bank's underground swimming pool. "I frankly thought they had come to arrest me," he said, adding: "I decided to keep swimming, thinking I would enjoy the pool for the last time."

Lebedev, a billionaire who co-owns the airline Aeroflot and the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said it would be wrong to link the two investigations against him in Russia and Ukraine. Nor would it be correct to blame Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, he said.

Instead, he pointed to Ukraine's president, Viktor Yanukovych, a close ally of the Kremlin. He said Yanukovych had ordered in the tax police after taking offence at an article in this week's Evening Standard.

The story, which appeared with no byline on Tuesday, recalled how during Ukraine's election campaign Yanukovych had hailed the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov as "a great Ukrainian poet". Ukraine's leader had committed a "Dubya-like gaffe", the Standard wrote.

Lebedev said he had nothing to do with the article. "He [Yanukovych] thinks I was preparing the article myself. He thinks a publisher like myself has influence on British newspapers."

It appeared just before Yanukovych was to travel to London, compounding what the president perceived as a deliberate slight, Lebedev said. The tycoon consistently denies exerting any influence on his British newspapers.

He went on: "Yanukovych doesn't know what the world is. He's not very educated. I don't think he really understands what life is in Moscow, Paris or London."

One Ukrainian diplomat today dismissed Lebedev's claims as "ridiculous", adding: "The Standard is hardly the FT, the Guardian or the Wall Street Journal." He said: "Lebedev co-operates with the governments of Ukraine and Russia. He's in Russia's political elite rather than out."

Asked if further attacks on his Russian interests would have a negative impact on his British newspaper titles, Lebedev replied: "I hope not." But he conceded that he was now in a vulnerable position. "The worst-case scenario is somebody decides to crash it [his business]," he said.

Lebedev's seaside complex in Alushta includes a hotel, holiday villas, a pool, a spa and a narrow rocky beach, set among steep cliffs and attractive subtropical gardens of palm trees and pines. The resort is the biggest in Crimea and one of the largest in Europe. It employs 1,500 people.

Today Lebedev said he had invested $100m in the complex, and was one of the region's biggest taxpayers. He added that he would close down the hotel on Monday, plunging locals into unemployment, if the tax authorities continued their campaign.

He also alleged that Yanukovych was trying to seize the Hotel Ukraine in Kiev.

Lebedev is a co-investor with the Ukrainian government in the hotel, and has spent $40m on its renovation. The development has been mired in legal battles.

Lebedev is one of the largest foreign investors in Ukraine, with assets including a bank and an insurance company. He spent ¤10m renovating the country's Chekhov theatre, which hosts an annual Chekhov festival, and has been visited by Sir Tom Stoppard, Kevin Spacey and John Malkovich.

Profile: Viktor Chernomyrdin, Former Russian PM

MOSCOW, Russia -- Viktor Chernomyrdin, who died age 72 on Wednesday, led the Russian government from 1992 to 1998, and was responsible for both the successes and failures of the economic reforms of the time.
He turned the Soviet Gas Ministry into Gazprom, an energy company which has become a powerful lever of Russian foreign policy.

Russians remember Mr Chernomyrdin for his colourful language, which was perhaps not always as correct as a politician's should be, but more often than not it was accurate.

Perhaps the best known of his many notable quotes was used in reference to Russia's financial reforms. He said: "We wanted the best, but it turned out as it always does."

His popularity with Russians was highlighted on Wednesday when his name (written in Cyrillic) was one of the main topics being talked about on the Twitter social networking service. It is one of the rare occasions that a word in the Cyrillic script has made it onto Twitter's list of global trends.

Mr Chernomyrdin's first major political post was as deputy minister responsible for the Soviet gas industry. In 1985 he became minister, and in 1989 he became the head of Gazprom. He remained close to Gazprom in subsequent years.

In 1992, the then Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, appointed Mr Chernomyrdin as prime minister. At the time, Mr Yeltsin had been under pressure from the Communist opposition to replace the free-market liberal prime minister Yegor Gaidar.

However, Mr Chernomyrdin, who had been a member of the Communist Party, did not alter the course of Mr Gaidar's economic reforms.

Mr Chernomyrdin led the government through the first Chechen war. In the summer of 1995, Chechen rebels seized hostages at a hospital in the city of Budennovsk.

Mr Chernomyrdin led the negotiations with the rebel leader, Shamil Basayev, and is remembered for one particular phone call to Mr Basayev, during which he shouted down the telephone: "Shamil Basayev, you must talk louder!"

In 1996, Mr Yeltsin was re-elected president and Mr Chernomyrdin continued in his role as prime minister, and even became acting president for a few hours in September that year when Mr Yeltsin had an operation.
In March 1998, Mr Yeltsin, who was being seen less and less frequently in public, unexpectedly relieved Mr Chernomyrdin of his position.

But in the spring of 1999, Mr Chernomyrdin was in demand again during the Kosovo conflict. He was appointed Mr Yeltsin's special envoy and he mediated between Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the West.

Diplomats generally agreed that Mr Chernomyrdin played a successful role, by persuading Mr Milosevic to withdraw his troops from Kosovo, a move which ended Nato's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

In 2001, the then president, Vladimir Putin, appointed Mr Chernomyrdin Russian ambassador to Ukraine. It turned out to be an important role, as 80% of Russian gas exports flow through Ukraine.

There were repeated spats between the two countries over the gas exports. Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004, which the Kremlin saw as a threat, also led to a distinct cooling in relations between the neighbours.

In 2009, Mr Chernomyrdin left his post in Ukraine and in the months before he died, he worked as an advisor to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on economic ties with former Soviet countries.

He will be buried at Moscow's famous Novodevichy cemetery, which is the final resting place for many of Russia's best-known and most respected historical figures.

Ukraine Must Stop Harassment Of Trade Union Activist

KIEV, Ukraine -- Amnesty International has urged Ukraine authorities to stop the harassment of a trade union activist who remains in hiding after a court ordered him to undergo a forced psychiatric examination.
A court in Vinnytsya, south west Ukraine on 29 October granted the order for an examination after prosecutors argued that Andrei Bondarenko has an "excessive awareness of his own and others' rights and [an] his uncontrollable readiness to defend these rights in unrealistic ways."

Andrei Bondarenko has no record of mental illness and has already undergone three psychiatric examinations to prove his sanity. The most recent examination took place in October.

The court ruling against Andrei Bondarenko comes in the wake of a number of recent cases in which activists have been assaulted and harassed in the last few months.

"There is a very real concern that Andrei Bondarenko will be subjected to a forced psychiatric examination because of his legitimate trade union and human rights activities," said Heather McGill Amnesty International's expert on Ukraine.

"Any examination should be conducted outside of the Vinnytsya region by an officially recognized psychiatrist to ensure impartiality. Andrei Bondarenko should not be subjected to any treatment until he has exhausted all legal channels."

Andrei Bondarenko has campaigned for the rights of employees in Vinnytsya region since 2006. His work has often exposed the unlawful and irresponsible behaviour of local officials.

In August 2010 he founded an NGO called Movement for a Corruption Free Vinnytsya Region Prosecutor's Office.

Andrei Bondarenko also appears to have angered the authorities with his work in defence of the rights of sugar factory workers. These seasonal workers are employed for only a few months a year after the sugar beet harvest and are frequently not paid.

Many of these factories are officially owned by shadow companies, although in fact the real owners are influential local people many of them high up in the local administration.

Andrei Bondarenko started a campaign of taking the shadow companies to court to demand payment of wages. According to one prosecutor's statement, he started 80 such cases in 2008 alone.

The trade unionist was not present at his trail on Friday and was represented by two civil defenders and a lawyer, who was ordered out of the court by a panel of judges.

The recent harassment of other activists points to a worsening climate for human rights in the Ukraine.

On 15 October, police in Vinnytsya searched the house and office of Dmytro Groysman, the chair of Vinnytsya Human Rights Group, which supports asylum-seekers and campaigns against torture.

Police questioned staff about their work, and confiscated over 300 items, including UNHCR files, computer discs, memory sticks and a laptop.

Andrei Fedosov, the chair of a mental disability rights organization, Uzer, was assaulted by unknown men in May, after receiving threatening phone calls in April.

Police took no action. In July he was detained for a day in relation to a crime allegedly committed 10 years ago when he was 15 years old.

"All these activists appear to have been targeted because of their legitimate work. The Ukrainian authorities must ensure that human rights defenders can carry out their activities unhindered and protect them against any violence, threats and retaliation," said Heather McGill.

Ukraine Ditches Controversial Dubbing Regulations

MOSCOW, Russia -- The lifting of controversial dubbing regulations in Ukraine is likely to benefit Russian distributors.
Earlier this week, Ukraine's culture and tourism minister, Mikhail Kulinyaka, told reporters in Kiev that a regulation requiring that all movies slated for a theatrical release in the country, should be either dubbed or subtitled into Ukrainian, is no longer in force.

The regulation, which came into effect in early 2008, created a lot of controversy, especially in Ukraine's predominantly Russian-speaking eastern part, hitting those distributors which until then used Russian-language film copies.

A few theaters even went on strike, protesting against the regulation, and there were reports about some theaters going out of business.

Now, Russian distributors operating in Ukraine will be able to save costs by again using Russian-language film copies.

"There is a lot of Russian interest in the country, and what this is all about is re-distribution of revenues," Ukrainian television producer Igor Kondratyuk told Ukraine.

Life Under Yanukovich

ODESSA, Ukraine -- Strong nerves and a loaded gun are important attributes for a mayor of Odessa, and Eduard Gurvits has both. It is 1am on November 1st. Local elections have taken place across Ukraine.
Reports of ballot-box stuffing are already coming in, but other than the odd raised eyebrow and the occasional outburst, the veteran boss of this picturesque Black Sea port remains calm.

After having been on the end of a couple of assassination attempts in the 1990s and a few stolen elections here and there, Mr Gurvits is a hard man to surprise. “They used to shoot us. Now they are just trying to cheat us,” he says.

As the voting in Odessa had drawn to a close, two trucks had mysteriously appeared in the courtyard of the election-commission building, apparently to store the bags of ballots. But the half-dozen young, thuggish-looking men who said they were “furniture handlers” hired to shift the ballot bags hardly inspired confidence.

As TheEconomist went to press the election results in Odessa, and many other regions, were yet to be declared (or decided by Kiev). Mr Gurvits and his main opponent both declared victory.

Ukraine’s opposition parties issued a joint statement saying that the local elections were not free and certainly less fair than the presidential election won by Viktor Yanukovich early this year.

The list of complaints is long and colourful. It includes allegations of clone parties, refusal to register candidates, and physical violence and intimidation. International observers were unimpressed; EU and American officials criticised the elections.

The Odessa campaign was certainly grubby. Alexi Kostusev, Mr Gurvits’s main rival, who enjoyed the backing of Ukraine’s prime minister and a regional governor, directed anti-Semitic remarks against the mayor and his family. “Look at his long fingers, his strange eyes, his pointed ears, and you will realise what forces he represents,” he said.

The time of independent mayors is over, Mr Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions said in the run-up to the elections. Now everyone has to be part of a vertical power structure, from the president down to local mayors.

Yet the local elections were as much about Mr Yanukovich dividing the spoils of his presidential victory among his supporters as they were about consolidating power. There has been plenty of time for that already. In fact, tightening his grip on power has been one of the main features of Mr Yanukovich’s first year in office.

Constitutional changes forced through by the president give him powers that exceed those enjoyed by Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s president before the 2004 Orange revolution. Changes to the election law blatantly favour the president’s party.

Mr Yanukovich’s aides say he needs to consolidate power inside his own party to push through economic reforms, such as cutting red tape and passing a new tax code. It is certainly true that the Party of the Regions is hardly a disciplined political unit.

Rivalry between competing factions, each with its own business interests, makes it all but impossible to co-ordinate reform efforts. To overcome the dangers of sabotage from within the government, the administration plans to appoint a number of special “commissars”, selected by McKinsey, a consultancy, to see through planned reforms.

The government also says it is determined to fight corruption. Yet so far the law has been applied solely to Mr Yanukovich’s opponents. Supporters of the president allege that the previous government developed a number of staggeringly corrupt schemes.

The trouble, says Yulia Mostovaya, the editor of Zerkalo Nedeli, an independent weekly, is that although their operators may have changed, many of these schemes have stayed in place.

On the face of it, some of Mr Yanukovich’s steps mirror those of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s former president and current prime minister. But unlike Russia, Ukraine does not have enough resources to carry on without reform.

“Yanukovich needs to win over small and medium-sized businessmen,” says a senior adviser to the president. “Economic reforms are the only way for him to stay on for a second term.”

The danger is that if Mr Yanukovich fails to see them through, the temptation to hold on to power by repressive means may be hard to resist. As the Orange revolution showed, this would only push the country into deeper crisis.