Kyiv probes evidence about Manafort
NEW YORK – Handwritten ledgers found in Kyiv seem to link Paul Manafort, who is currently the chairman of U.S. mogul Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, to more than $12 million in undisclosed cash payments during his tenure as an adviser to the government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The New York Times reported on August 14 that the ledgers are being investigated by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau as possible evidence of widespread corruption inside the Yanukovych government. The ledgers mention Mr. Manafort’s name 22 times and seem to document payments totaling $12.7 million between 2007 and 2012. Mr. Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014 amid massive public demonstrations. The Kyiv documents also seem to tie Mr. Manafort to a partnership with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and the questionable purchase of Ukrainian cable television assets for some $18 million. Mr. Manafort declined to be interviewed for The New York Times story, but his lawyer said Mr. Manafort had not received “any such cash payments.” The lawyer also denied that Mr. Manafort approved of or participated in any illegal activities. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by The New York Times)
Manafort tied to foreign lobbying
WASHINGTON – The Associated Press reports that political consultant Paul Manafort, the chairman of Republican candidate Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential campaign, may have helped former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government funnel millions of dollars to U.S. lobbyists in a way that obscured the source of the funding. In an August 17 report based on interviews with unnamed current and former employees of the Podesta Group lobbying firm, the AP said that Manafort and associate Rick Gates moved the money through a non-profit organization called the European Center for a Modern Ukraine in 2012, when they were paid consultants to the Yanukovych government. That center was closely tied to Mr. Yanukovych’s administration and his Party of Regions. According to the AP, Messrs. Manafort and Gates funneled at least $2.2 million through the center to U.S. lobbying firms to “advocate positions generally in line with those of Yanukovych’s government.” The work included lobbying the U.S. Congress to reject a resolution condemning the jailing of Mr. Yanukovych’s main political rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. That resolution was adopted in November 2013. Mr. Gates told AP that the two men connected the European Center with the lobbying firms and occasionally consulted with those firms. He said the actions were lawful and did not violate the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act. Podesta Group employee John Ward Anderson told the AP, “I was never given any reason to believe [Gates] was a Party of Regions consultant.” He noted, “My assumption was that he was working for the [European Center], as were we.” (RFE/RL, with reporting by AP)
Pyatt: Ukraine will overcome difficulties
KYIV – The U.S. envoy in Kyiv says Ukrainians will overcome their current difficulties of armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, corruption and financial problems because they have survived so many major crises in recent years. “I think having survived 2014 – the invasion of Crimea, the [deadly] shootings on the Maidan, the collapse of the hryvnia and the financial system – Ukraine can survive anything if it got through 2014,” U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt told RFE/RL in an interview on August 17. Mr. Pyatt, who will leave his post in the coming days to take the U.S. ambassador’s post in Greece, said he considers those crises in 2014 and the following years to be “the most difficult years” for Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He said the United States had played “an important role in helping the Ukrainian people to take control once again of their own democracy.” He noted: “I think one of my regrets is that the [Ukrainian] government, the [Ukrainian] presidency, were not able to move more quickly against the cancer of corruption,” He added that the battle against corruption was “one of the major challenges that still stands before Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.” Mr. Pyatt, 52, praised the role of the Ukraine’s new corruption-fighting institutions, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and a special anti-corruption prosecutor. He said the difficult job of changing attitudes in society to help prevent corrupt practices “should have begun 25 years ago, and I think I regret that perhaps I could have played a more assertive role earlier on these issues.” Mr. Pyatt has been ambassador in Ukraine since 2013 and was an active supporter of the Euro-Maidan protests in Kyiv that ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Kyiv accuses Russia of provocations
KYIV – Kyiv accused Russia of seeking to provoke an escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, saying Moscow has bolstered separatist forces in the region with fresh deliveries of ammunition and military hardware. The assertion came as tensions between Moscow and Kyiv continued to rise after Russia claimed that Ukraine had tried to send “saboteurs” into Crimea to carry out “terrorist” attacks against infrastructure on the Russian-annexed peninsula – an allegation Kyiv says is “preposterous.” Russia’s Defense Ministry on August 12 announced the deployment of S-400 air-defense missile systems – which Moscow has touted as state-of-the art weapons – in Crimea. The military had pledged last month to deploy the system on the peninsula. And Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev raised the prospect of severing diplomatic relations with Kyiv in order to “sober up” Ukraine. “I would not want that to happen, but if there is no other option left to impact the situation, the president [Vladimir Putin] could make such a decision,” Mr. Medvedev said in response to a question. He noted that diplomatic ties between Russia and Georgia were cut off when they fought a brief war in 2008. Russia’s accusation of a Ukrainian plot to destabilize Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in March 2014, added to tension following weeks of increased fighting between government forces and the Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Each side is blaming the other for the increased tension. Ukraine’s military intelligence service, which has categorically denied Russia’s claims, alleged on August 12 that Russia was planning “large-scale provocative actions through the contact line in Ukraine’s east” – a reference to the line separating government and separatist forces. Russia “will then accuse Ukraine of not complying” with the Minsk agreement, a Western-brokered peace deal for eastern Ukraine. The accusation came a day after President Petro Poroshenko put Ukraine’s forces on the highest alert level in both eastern Ukraine and along the administrative boundary between mainland Ukraine and Crimea. The Foreign Affairs Ministry in Kyiv on August 12 demanded that Russia give monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) access to Crimea as well as greater access to separatist-held areas in eastern Ukraine, saying that Moscow is obliged to do so under existing agreements. It also called for monitors from the International Red Cross and the United Nations’ human rights monitoring mission to be given access to Ukrainian detainees who are in the custody of Russian authorities. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Volodymyr Yelchenko, charged on August 11 that some 40,000 Russian troops are now amassed in Crimea and along Russia’s border with eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL, with reporting by AFP, Reuters, AP, TASS and Interfax)
Lavrov, Steinmeier discuss Ukraine
YEKATERINBURG, Russia – Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov and German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier held talks in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg that focused primarily on Ukraine and Syria. Speaking to reporters after the August 15 meeting, the two ministers affirmed their support for the Minsk process aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Lavrov said Moscow is prepared to provide “irrefutable” evidence of an alleged plan by Kyiv to launch sabotage attacks in Crimea, the Ukrainian region that Moscow annexed in 2014. Moscow does not plan to sever diplomatic relations with Ukraine over the incident, saying that doing so would be “an extreme measure,” Mr. Lavrov added. Ukraine has denied any involvement in or knowledge of such a sabotage plot. Mr. Steinmeier said the worsening situation in Ukraine in recent weeks is “worrisome” and called on both Moscow and Kyiv to investigate the alleged sabotage plot. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Interfax and Reuters)
Asylum granted to Kremlin critic
KYIV – A Russian opposition activist who was the first person charged under a strict new law restricting protests has received political asylum in Ukraine. Vladimir Ionov, 76, told Ukraine’s Hromadske Radio on August 15 that his asylum request – filed after Russian authorities charged him with attending more than two unauthorized public protests during one six-month period – had been accepted. Under legislation enacted in Russia in 2014, such activity is punishable by up to five years in prison. Rights activists call the new law a menacing tool to crack down on dissent. Mr. Ionov did not show up at his trial in December, and media reports at the time said he fled to Ukraine. Another Russian opposition activist, Ildar Dadin, was sentenced to three years in jail on December 7; he was the first person to be convicted under the new legislation. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by nv.ua and hromadskeradio.org)
Pro-Ukraine activist refused early release
MOSCOW – A court in Russia has refused to grant early release on parole to a Russian activist in the southern region of Krasnodar who was jailed on charges of propagating extremism and separatism via the Internet. Darya Polyudova was sentenced to two years in a minimum-security penal colony in December 2015, becoming the first person in Russia convicted under a law criminalizing calls for separatism on the Internet that came into force in May 2014. Ms. Polyudova’s mother, Tatyana Polyudova, wrote on Facebook that a court in the city of Novorossiysk did not provide any reasons for its August 10 decision. Ms. Polyudova was indicted in 2014 after she criticized Moscow online for its support of Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine’s east, where fighting between government forces and the separatists has killed more than 9,500 people since April 2014. The Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center has added Ms. Polyudova to its list of political prisoners in Russia. (RFE/RL’s Russian Service)
Crimean Tatar forced into psych clinic
SYMFEROPOL, Ukraine – A court in Russia-annexed Crimea has ruled that a noted Crimean Tatar activist, Ilmi Umerov, must be placed in a psychiatric clinic for examination. The Kyiv District Court in Symferopol on August 11 approved the motion by investigators. Umerov’s lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, said that the court’s ruling will be appealed. Mr. Umerov, 59, former deputy chairman of Crimean Tatars’ self-governing body – the Mejlis – was charged with separatism in May after he made public statements against the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea by Russia. Mr. Umerov was allowed to stay home during investigations into his case. The Moscow-based Memorial human rights center has called the case against Mr. Umerov “illegal and politically motivated.” The majority of Crimea’s indigenous people, Crimean Tatars, opposed the peninsula’s annexation by Moscow in March 2014. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by UNIAN and Interfax)
Uzbek accused of fighting with separatists
PRAGUE – Authorities in Ukraine say they have detained an Uzbek citizen believed to have been fighting alongside Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk. A spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office told RFE/RL on August 16 that Aleksandr Brykin, 20, an ethnic-Russian native of Tashkent, had confessed to joining pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk in December 2014 and serving in a separatist military unit there until May 2015. Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk has killed more than 9,500 people since April 2014.There have been numerous reports that many volunteers and mercenaries from former Soviet republics are fighting on both sides of the conflict. (RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service)
Prosecutors refuse to indict library director
MOSCOW – The prosecutor’s office in Moscow has refused to indict Ukrainian Literature Library Director Natalya Sharina, who was facing charges of extremism and embezzlement. Ms. Sharina’s lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, said on August 15 that the prosecutor’s office had returned the case to investigators, adding that no reason for the action was provided. Ms. Sharina was detained in October and charged with inciting extremism and ethnic hatred because the library’s collection allegedly included books by Ukrainian ultranationalist author Dmytro Korchynsky, whose works are banned in Russia. She was placed under house arrest. In April, investigators charged Ms. Sharina with misallocating library funds, allegedly because she used library funds to pay for her legal defense in another extremism case against her that was dismissed in 2013. Attorney Pavlov said the authorities had “trumped up” new charges after realizing their initial case against his client was too weak. Ms. Sharina has rejected all the allegations, saying they are politically motivated. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Interfax and rapsinews.ru)