2001: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Ukraine's foreign affairs: a sullied image's effects

For Ukraine, 2001 should have been a year dedicated, first and foremost, to celebrating as the country marked its first decade as an independent state (see separate section on the 10th anniversary celebrations). The celebratory mood was marred, however, by controversy and intrigue surrounding the disapparance of an independent journalist in September 2000 and the appearance of secret recordings that implicated the Ukrainian president and top government officials in the affair.

The controversy known variously as "Gongadzegate" and "Tapegate" greatly influenced Ukraine's foreign affairs in 2001 and affected Ukraine's standing in the international community. The country was all but ostracized in the first half of the year. In fact, no Western leader visited Kyiv in 2001 until the last month of the year, when German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder paid a call after the scandals had quieted and, for all practical purposes, had become dormant.

Officials in Washington showed they were not going to ignore the affair in the first days of the New Year. On January 10 Steven Sestanovich, special assistant to the U.S. secretary of state with responsibility for the former Soviet states, called for "a speedy and transparent investigation" into Heorhii Gongadze's apparent murder.

But the scandal went truly international on January 25 when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) officially condemned the lack of freedom of expression in Ukraine and agreed to organize an independent investigation into certain aspects of the Gongadze affair. While PACE refrained from sanctioning Ukraine for its less than pristine human rights record of late, it voted to take responsibility for an independent analysis of the audiotapes allegedly recorded in the Ukrainian president's office and to give their source political asylum.

The human rights body, which consists of representatives of the parliaments of Europe, also agreed to conduct an independent DNA analysis of the body allegedly belonging to Mr. Gongadze, which was found outside Kyiv in mid-November.

PACE again raised its collective voice regarding Ukraine on April 15 when it voted to recommend to its Committee of Ministers that it should suspend Ukraine's membership. While the action was never taken, the vote came after Hanne Severinsen, a PACE member and rapporteur on Ukraine, charged Kyiv with abuse of human and civil rights.

"It concerns misuse of authority, particularly oppression of freedom of speech and oppression of opposition," Ms. Severinsen told Radio Liberty, underscoring that the president of Ukraine was specifically responsible.

The next day the U.S. State Department announced that the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service had granted political asylum to Myroslava Gongadze, the spouse of the murdered journalist, and their 3-year-old twin daughters, along with Maj. Mykola Melnychenko, the presidential bodyguard who allegedly recorded the president's conversations.

Another international organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists, also leveled criticism, although in a different manner, when on May 3 it named President Leonid Kuchma to its list of the 10 Worst Enemies of the Press for 2001, an annual compilation of world leaders who are responsible for the worst abuses against the news media.

Mr. Kuchma joined such notorious figures as Liberian President Charles Taylor, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In an example of how quickly positions change in the fragile world of international politics, by autumn the Council of Europe had begun tempering its unyielding criticism of the human rights situation in Ukraine and the way the government had mishandled the Gongadze case. On September 27 PACE issued a resolution that continued to criticize Ukraine but at the same time underscored that Ukraine was making progress in meeting human rights objectives and fulfilling promises it had made upon entering the organization in 1995.

The wife of the murdered journalist appeared during one meeting of the PACE autumn session to call for an independent international investigation into the Gongadze case.

The pressure applied by the international community to resolve the murder slowly dissipated, even though as late as November 28 U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual claimed that in the eyes of the United States the Gongadze affair was not over and that Ukraine still had to resolve the case to clear the black mark from its record.

By the time of the visit of German Chancellor Schroeder to Kyiv on December 6, those types of remarks were becoming much less strident. At a press conference at the Mariinsky Palace Mr. Schroeder's reply to a question on Ukraine's human rights was taciturn and even accommodating.

While admitting that, "I don't think things are altogether good," he explained that "things have the possibility of improving." Mr. Schroeder also let it be known that Ukraine's international standing in the eyes of Germany was where it should be. "We not only do not have any problems in our relations, they are very good as well," stated Mr. Schroeder as a satisfied President Kuchma looked on.

While Western leaders were rare in Ukraine in 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin was there several times.

His most important appearance in the country came two days after some 5,000 demonstrators called for Mr. Kuchma's political head in Kyiv. Then Mr. Putin flew into the southern city of Dnipropetrovsk for a previously scheduled meeting with Mr. Kuchma in what many Western media outlets called a move to prop up the faltering Kuchma administration.

The two sides signed 16 assorted bilateral documents on closer economic and trade relations, the most important of which were deals on the joint development of military and space technology, including cooperation in research and development of joint missile production. The two countries also agreed to support each other in the modernization and upgrading of heavy machinery factories, many of which are directly connected to the military-industrial sector.

Finally, in a controversial agreement, Ukraine decided to reconnect to Russia's electric grid, which would give the energy-starved country access to Russian electricity generation.

While expressing satisfaction with the agreements, Mr. Putin also underscored that he had not taken advantage of Mr. Kuchma's shaky political situation in getting the accords. The day before the Dnipropetrovsk meeting he explained the situation between Moscow and Kyiv: "Leonid Kuchma is the legally elected president of Ukraine. We will cooperate with him. We are not going to suspend our cooperation, as Russia has the right to count on a certain stability in relations with its partners."

The agreements reached during the Russian president's visit in many respects were but mere tiles in a mosaic of new cooperation between Kyiv and Moscow laid over the course of 2001 in political, military and economic relations - all part of a new foreign relations doctrine Ukraine had announced at the beginning of the year.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Anatolii Zlenko officially presented the new approach in a major policy address on February 4. He said Ukraine was moving into a more mature stage of its diplomatic relations and would place an accent on developing its "European characteristics" and promulgating the country's economic interests in its diplomatic efforts as "ambassadors of Ukrainian business."

He acknowledged, however, that a new pragmatic chapter in relations with Russia had opened and that bilateral cooperation had taken on a "realistic and practical meaning." He underscored that a policy of close-knit relations with Russia was not mutually exclusive with Ukraine's new pro-European policy.

On January 18-20 high-ranking defense officials of both countries met in Kyiv and presented one aspect of the new attitude when they put aside what had been undercurrents of competitiveness and mistrust to sign a 52-point agreement on cooperation in the next year, including an increase in cooperation in the Black Sea region and in technology modernization.

The agreement produced all sorts of international and domestic concerns - not the least of which was a fear by the West that the two countries would now pool their resources in new weapons production.

The military accord raised the hairs of Western leaders when Ukraine's Minister of Defense Oleksander Kuzmuk told reporters that the agreement would not only mark the beginning of closer cooperation between the two military forces, but also between the military-industrial establishments of the two countries in "the creation of new sorts of arms and production."

A Ukrainian Ministry of Defense spokesman tempered those remarks a few days later when he said the cooperation initially would be only in the realm of technology modernization.

The two sides also agreed on a controversial joint naval force in Sevastopol, which would have responsibility for navigational command-control over sea traffic into and out of the port of Sevastopol and would oversee search and rescue operations in the area. Some Ukrainian politicians thought the agreement ceded too much control over Sevastopol's waters to Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

And yet another point of concern arose when The Financial Times reported that Kyiv had given Moscow veto rights over international military exercises on Ukraine's territory. A Ukrainian military official refuted that assertion, while giving assurances that Ukraine discusses the details of international military exercises on its territory, including U.S.-sponsored Peace Shield and Sea Breeze maneuvers, only with the countries involved.

Ukraine-Russia economic relations attained a new level of visibility on May 10 when President Putin announced that he had named former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, one of the most powerful figures in Russian politics and business over the past decade, as the new ambassador to Ukraine and his special envoy on economic and trade relations.

In announcing the move, President Putin said: "We would have difficulty finding a person who better knows the state of bilateral relations between the two countries."

The business tycoon, who once headed the Russian natural gas monolith Gazprom and whose wife, it turned out, is Ukrainian, said that his top responsibility at the outset would be to resolve energy problems between the two countries.

However, many critics of the move in Ukraine feared the appointment of a person of such stature and influence - and a personal friend of President Kuchma - was the beginning of Moscow's policy of strong economic influence over Ukraine. Some even called the move "the appointment of a new prime minister for Ukraine by President Putin."

Mr. Chernomyrdin, as it turned out, did not become the new energy tsar of Ukraine. In fact, four days after Mr. Putin made his controversial appointment, Kyiv announced that it had signed a deal with Turkmenistan that would give Ukraine a second major source of natural gas and leave it far less dependent on Russia. During a state visit by Turkmenistan's president, Saparmurat Niyazov, to the Ukrainian capital, the two sides agreed on a deal that would bring 250 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas to Ukraine between 2002 and 2006 at $42 per thousand cubic meters.

Predictably, Gazprom reacted negatively to the deal with a company spokesperson stating that Turkmenistan would not be a reliable partner and that Kyiv still had to resolve the problem of getting the gas to Ukraine through Russian territory.

Russian President Putin made another visit to Ukraine on July 28, as relations between him and President Kuchma deepened, to jointly open a restored Orthodox cathedral with President Kuchma in Khersonesos, the site of an ancient Greek colony on the southern tip of the Crimea Peninsula just outside Sevastopol, where it is said Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great was baptized in the 10th century.

The meeting was the second in a week between the two presidents, who had met in Sochi, Russia, only days before. That prompted a question as to why the two were meeting so often lately, to which the Russian president replied: "We shall be meeting even more often."

The next day the two leaders were in Sevastopol, which both the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian naval forces call home, to mark Russia's Navy Day. The celebrations ended in controversy when Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov emphasized prior to his departure from Sevastopol that the city and the entire Crimean Peninsula are Russian territory and should be part of Russia proper.

Ambassador Chernomyrdin issued a critical response to Mr. Luzhkov's statement a few days later in which he called the Moscow mayor's words a violation of law.

Mr. Putin again visited Ukraine for the 10th anniversary celebrations of Ukrainian independence. He attended a gala concert with the Ukrainian president and watched a military parade in Kyiv from a reviewing stand on Independence Square, along with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski.

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv hit a temporary snag after a TU-154 Russian airliner traveling from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk on October 4 mysteriously exploded and went down over the Black Sea a short distance from the Georgian coast. The initial theory, possible in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the U.S. less than a month before, was that terrorists were responsible for the downing of the airliner.

At the time, Ukrainian Air Defense Forces were conducting live-fire exercises off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula. Even the earliest reports of what happened to the commercial airliner with 78 people on aboard suggested the Ukrainian military was involved. Several hours after the downing, the United States announced that its space satellites had seen an errant missile head from the Crimean peninsula towards the ill-fated plane.

Initially, Ukraine vehemently denied the possibility that one of the missiles it had fired could have gone 250 kilometers off course to hit the airliner. During a specially called press conference on October 8, Ukrainian military leaders made every effort to show that the test missiles used during live-fire exercises from the firing range off the Crimean coast had all been destroyed. They based their argument on the fact that the missiles were programmed to self-destruct when the radio signal from their intended target ceased.

Although the Ukrainian military summarily rejected any complicity in the tragedy, President Kuchma said he would acknowledge the findings of the Russian commission investigating the matter. He also said that, for the time being, he would not accept the resignation of Minister of Defense Kuzmuk, who had offered it twice in the immediate days following the incident.

As the investigation proceeded and after fragments from an S-200 military rocket were found in the Black Sea along with the remains of the TU-154, Russian officials began to suspect that Ukraine was involved. Testing done on scraps of the plane showed that holes found in the plane's fuselage matched the fragment pattern an S-200 missile makes when it explodes and pierces an object.

It took Ukraine a while to come around to full admission that it was responsible for the tragedy. While Prime Minister Anatolii Kinakh said as soon as two days after the incident that the possibility of Ukraine's involvement could not be ruled out during the investigation, the first tangible sign that Ukraine's stance was changing occurred on March 13 when Gen. Kuzmuk admitted during an unexpected press conference that evidence pointed toward Ukraine.

"We do not know the cause of this tragedy today, but we know that we are involved," said the minister of defense.

Yet, some in government continued to hem and haw. Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Yevhen Marchuk continued to maintain as late as October 22, after a special meeting of the Russian investigative commission in Sochi, that while all indications pointed to Ukraine, a final decision should be withheld until all the evidence was in. At about the same time Russian President Putin said Ukraine should now admit it was responsible for the disaster.

President Kuchma ended the matter for all practical purposes when he went on national television on October 24 to acknowledge Ukraine's full liability and to offer apologies to Israelis and Russians affected by the tragedy. He also announced that he had accepted the resignation of Gen. Kuzmuk and several other high-ranking military officials involved in the test exercises.

As the year ended, the several feathers that had been ruffled in Russian-Ukrainian relations over the TU-154 incident were gently smoothed, and the two sides even finally agreed to a delimitation of their common 1,925-kilometer border - a thorny problem that had taken nearly four years to resolve at the negotiating table. A final border agreement will be drawn up after the equally pesky task of delimiting the water boundary between the two countries is completed.

The TU-154 incident was in the news again when Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres visited Ukraine on December 26 for talks with Ukraine's leaders on bilateral relations and how they were affected by the downing of the Russian airliner. The consensus was that Ukrainian-Israeli relations had suffered no permanent damage as a result of the accident, which killed scores of Israeli citizens. Mr. Peres said he was satisfied with Ukraine's honest efforts to resolve outstanding issues and to compensate families of the victims of the aircraft disaster.

Another point of dispute between Moscow and Kyiv, the problem of Ukraine's natural gas trade with Russia and its never-ending debt for the much-needed commodity, also seemed to be resolved in 2001, just as Ambassador Chernomyrdin had promised it would when he became Russia's official emissary to Kyiv.

Prime Ministers Kinakh of Ukraine and Mikhail Kasianov of Russia met on October 4 to find common ground on the commercial portion of Ukraine's debt to Russia for natural gas consumption. They agreed that private companies, most notably the quasi-public Naftohaz Ukrainy, could reimburse Russia's natural gas monopoly for its accrued debt of $1.4 billion over the course of 12 years at an interest rate pegged to the rate of inflation plus 1 percent. The two sides also agreed on a three-year grace period before the payments were to begin.

That document, plus a Russian agreement to help finance two Ukrainian reactors, one outside the city of Khmelnytskyi, the other near Rivne, along with accords on a joint aircraft retrofitting project and on new import quotas for Ukrainian pipe products, made for a grand time when President Kuchma traveled to Moscow for celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

There Mr. Kuchma applauded closer ties between his country and Russia during the last year and agreed to cooperate with CIS countries in the fight against terrorism.

While the CIS has proven a weak tool for resolving regional problems, and even though Ukraine remains an associate member with active involvement only in the Council of Heads of State and the Council of Heads of Government, the Ukrainian president said he believes the CIS has a future. "While problems within the CIS remain 10 years later, everybody here agrees that it is still needed," explained Mr. Kuchma.

Ironically or not, 10th anniversary celebrations of the referendum that upheld Ukrainian independence in Kyiv - which were held the day after Mr. Kuchma returned from Moscow - were much more restrained and humble affairs.

A week later Chancellor Schroeder was in Kyiv to visit Mr. Kuchma and reaffirm close relations between Germany and Ukraine, a visit at least partly prompted by Ukraine's support for the war against terrorism the West was waging in Afghanistan.

While most European Union states avoided Ukraine this year, a delegation from the European Commission, led by Romano Prodi and including the organization's External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten, traveled to Kyiv for a one-day briefing on February 14, a day after Mr. Putin left. Mr. Patten said the EU delegation discussed Ukrainian economic reform with their hosts and touched on human rights issues and the Gongadze affair, but denied that the reason for the trip was to review the accords signed between Russia and Ukraine.

Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, visited Ukraine just under six months later and said the EU would do everything within its powers to improve the country's ties with the European community. He met with both President Kuchma and Prime Minister Kinakh to lay the groundwork for the EU-Ukraine summit scheduled for Yalta in September.

He praised Kyiv for restructuring its debt with the Paris Club of creditor nations and improving its standing with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Mr. Solana said he believed "the country is moving in the direction of positive reforms," while acknowledging that "there is still a long way to go." He also said the European Union would consider Ukraine's request to participate in strategic air forces.

The EU-Ukraine summit of September 10-11 was the third such event to take place, but the first one held in Ukraine. It called on the two sides to begin moving from plans and ideas to practical cooperation. Signing several documents, the two sides agreed to work toward Ukraine's membership in the World Trade Organization, to resolve issues involved with illegal international migration and to settle visa and border issues related to eventual EU expansion to Ukraine's western border.

The final memorandum also expressed expectations that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development would finally come around to extending Ukraine credit for the completion of nuclear reactors at Khmelnytskyi and Rivne, which it had been awaiting for nearly six years as the EBRD developed its conditions.

The major requirement had been fulfilled the previous December when Ukraine mothballed the last functioning nuclear reactor at Chornobyl. But when the EBRD began to pressure Kyiv with further requirements as 2001 proceeded, especially the need to triple electricity rates, President Kuchma said enough was enough. He announced on November 29, while at the CIS summit in Moscow, that Ukraine had rejected the proposed $1.5 billion line of credit from the EBRD for completion of the two Ukrainian nuclear reactors and had turned to Russia to obtain the needed financing.

Mr. Kuchma explained that he was dissatisfied with ever-changing demands placed before the country by the EBRD and the European Union's Euroatom agency. During a press conference he called the final terms offered by the EBRD unacceptable.

"Ukraine will never agree to these conditions, as they would be eternal servitude for the country," said Mr. Kuchma, who added that Moscow could now take part in the project "on any terms it likes."

While still experiencing problems with European organizations, nothing of the kind could be said of Ukraine's relationship with GUUAM, an organization it helped found. Members of GUUAM, a loosely knit association of the states of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, officially signed a historic charter in Yalta on June 7, creating the first supranational body in the region to which Russia did not belong.

Ukraine's President Kuchma, who initiated the concept and has worked hardest to bring it to fruition, said the group's main objective should be to coordinate joint economic cooperation and trade development. The original idea came from an effort to develop an international transportation corridor along the route of the legendary Silk Road, that once connected Asia with Europe.

One setback for Mr. Kuchma at the GUUAM summit was the delay in instituting a free trade zone among the member-states, something Mr. Kuchma had promoted. Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov said at the concluding press conference that more time was needed to coordinate the mechanisms for freeing trade in the region.

Ukraine was active in 2001 also in the United Nations, where it occupied a chair for a second and final year on the organization's Security Council as a non-permanent member.

Most notably, it called for a special emergency session of the Security Council on the day of the September 11 attack, which for security reasons was held outside the international organization's headquarters - at Ukraine's Mission to the U.N. The meeting resulted in the coordination of a U.N. response to the attack and a declaration by the Security Council.

During its two years as a part of the Security Council, Ukraine had led the effort to reform the U.N. body, including granting the Central European region another seat.

Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Minister Zlenko reasserted that goal during his address to the U.N. General Assembly on November 18. "We will consistently advocate the need to improve the Security Council's methods of work and to enlarge its membership. As a Central European nation Ukraine will actively lobby for an additional seat on the council for the region," Mr. Zlenko stated.

Canada, a strategic partner and one of the first to formally exchange diplomatic notes with Ukraine when it did so on January 27, 1992, sent its foreign minister to Kyiv as the year ended - another sign that the West was reinvigorating its relations with Ukraine - to commemorate a decade of cooperation. Foreign Minister John Manley visited Kyiv on December 5 and met with Foreign Affairs Minister Zlenko and President Kuchma. The purpose of the trip, as Mr. Zlenko explained, was to enhance the special partnership between the two countries

"We've jointly come to the conclusion that the year 2002, the 10th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Canada, will mark a new stage in the further development of special relations," explained Mr. Zlenko, who emphasized the already close cultural relations between the two countries as a result of a large Ukrainian ethnic population that has existed in Canada for much of its 125 years of independence.

Mr. Manley said Ukraine must not be left behind Russia in the process of obtaining membership in the World Trade Organization and that Canada would continue to support its effort to gain membership. He emphasized, however, that Ukraine still had to complete more economic reforms and fulfill other conditions for entry.

Ukraine's relations with China showed warming in 2001 after Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Kyiv on July 20-21. He enlisted Ukraine's support for his country's opposition to the U.S. missile defense shield plans and preservation of the ABM treaty in a joint declaration of friendship and cooperation signed by the two sides. Presidents Jiang and Kuchma discussed a wide variety of issues in the political, social and economic realms, and agreed on an extradition treaty and an accord on cooperation in tourism.

Ukrainian experts noted that it was not a coincidence that Mr. Jiang made his visit - one stop on his tour of former Soviet republics - at the same time the United States was pressuring its partners to support the new missile defense shield.

U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice stopped in Ukraine four days after the Chinese president's departure on her way to Russia. During meetings with President Kuchma and Prime Minister Kinakh in Kyiv, Dr. Rice praised Ukraine's recent economic achievements.

"I know that you have had a difficult time shepherding through the economic reforms that you are undertaking here in Ukraine," said Dr. Rice. "I am here to encourage you on behalf of President [George W.] Bush to continue to push forward all these reforms."

Dr. Rice said Ukraine needed to proceed with a "transparent" investigation into the death of Mr. Gongadze, the missing Internet journalist, and to conclude free and fair parliamentary elections in March 2002, which she said "would make a tremendous difference in Ukraine's standing in the world, to the investment climate here and toward building a European vision that we all have for Ukraine."

The U.S. Security Council chief also called on Ukraine to halt arms supplies to Macedonia so as not to cause escalation of military conflict in the Balkan region.

The visit by Dr. Rice, the highest-ranking U.S. official to travel to Ukraine in 2001, was a part of continuing bilateral strategic relations between Washington and Kyiv, which also included FBI assistance in the Gongadze case (see section on the Gongadze case), as well as the continued extension of financial aid and expert advice.

Part of that assistance has been directed at supporting Ukraine's effort to rid itself of its nuclear arsenal, a seven-year-long process that culminated in 2001 with the dismantling of the last TU-160 bombers and the destruction of the last SS-24 ICBM missile silos. Both projects were part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.

The last TU-160 strategic bomber was de-commissioned at Pryluky Air Base on February 3, when a U.S.-made Caterpillar excavator fitted with a giant scissor-like tool snipped the nose cone and the tail of the last functioning TU-160 in Ukraine - during its time one of the most feared pieces in the Soviet military arsenal.

On October 30 came the end of another chapter of the Cold War, when the Bechtel Corp., in cooperation with the Ukrainian military, destroyed the last SS-24 ICBM missile silo located just outside the city of Pervomaisk in the Mykolaiv Oblast. The missiles had been removed from their silos earlier.

The United States also showed its support for a decision by the Verkhovna Rada to undertake radical land reform and the approval of a new Land Code on October 25 by announcing six days later that it would allot $14.5 million to Ukraine to hasten the process of land privatization and defray some of the costs. The money is expected to help about 1.8 million Ukrainians receive land certificates within a 24 to 27-month period.

However, not all was completely rosy in U.S.-Ukraine relations, particularly in the area of intellectual rights and audio/video recording piracy in Ukraine, an unresolved point of friction for several years that came to a head in 2001. In September Washington demanded that Ukraine do more to stop illegal piracy of music CDs and computer software or face U.S. sanctions in November if new laws weren't enacted. Washington then delayed the trade penalties by a month when it became apparent that new legislation was imminent.

Ukraine had been slowly moving to curb the bootleg market in high-tech audio technology for nearly a year, but the Parliament had been dragging its feet on new legislation, partly because of fears that their own bootlegged products would merely be replaced with Russian materials and partly because the political left did not feel a need to respond to U.S. demands.

A bill on the matter was voted down by the Verkhovna Rada on November 22, resulting in renewed threats from the U.S. to begin sanctions on December 1. The deadline was pushed back to December 12 after a version of a new bill passed initial review in the Parliament on November 29. After the Parliament failed, twice, to approve the bill on December 20, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced that trade sanctions would be imposed on January 23, 2002.

During 2001 the United States continued to support the Kharkiv Initiative, a project developed to support the Kharkiv region after Ukraine agreed in 1999 not to supply Iran with large turbines for a nuclear power plant. The U.S. continued to promote business exchanges and support for local entrepreneurial activity.

The United States also supplied relief to the Transcarpathian region after floods devastated the area early in the spring.

Ukraine responded to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. by giving its full support to a global war against terrorism and becoming part of the alliance. President Kuchma, while indicating Ukrainian soldiers would not take part in ground action in Afghanistan after the suffering the Ukrainian SSR's soldiers endured during the Soviet-Afghan War, did, however, give permission for limited U.S. access to Ukrainian air space for transport of cargo.

Ukrainian citizens also expressed deep sympathy and support for the thousands who perished and for those who survived the World Trade Center and the Pentagon calamities by placing scores, if not hundreds, of flowers, bouquets and handwritten greetings before the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv in the days immediately following the tragedy.

The show of support continued with a requiem concert at the National Opera House in Kyiv held in accordance with Ukrainian tradition on the 40th day since the tragedy (October 22) and attended by U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual. The Odesa Philharmonic, conducted by American Earle Hobart, performed. Then on December 11, the 90th day since the terrorist act, the U.S. Embassy sponsored a memorial service at St. Alexander's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Kyiv that was attended by representatives of the international diplomatic community, Ukrainian government officials and Ukrainian citizens.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 6, 2002, No. 1, Vol. LXX

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