First coronavirus death in Ukraine
Ukraine on March 13 reported its first novel coronavirus death. Authorities said an elderly woman died after being hospitalized a day earlier in the western region of the country, prompting security officials to announce a border closure to foreigners within two days. Later, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada said authorities would be shutting down all air traffic after March 16. Officials were also said to be shutting down most of Ukraine’s 200-plus border crossings, which could deal a blow to the 2 million or so Ukrainians who work as migrant labor elsewhere in Europe. Ukraine has announced three confirmed cases of infection by the new coronavirus. The 71-year-old woman who died of the resulting COVID-19 illness, a resident of the town of Radomyshl in the Zhytomyr region, had reportedly felt unwell after returning from Poland on March 1 but did not initially seek medical care. Ukrainian authorities said the borders would be closed to foreigners for two weeks but that Ukrainian nationals would be allowed back into the country. State media said Ukrainian citizens who have been to any country with an acute outbreak of the virus will be allowed to enter but must comply with special observation procedures. The Healthy Ministry said the woman who died was hospitalized on March 12 after her COVID-19 test came back positive. Her case was the third confirmed coronavirus infection in the country. (RFE/RL)
Subway service suspended in three cities
Ukraine’s government has suspended the operation of subways in three major cities, Kyiv, Dnipro and Kharkiv, as a measure to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Transport officials in Kyiv said on March 17 that the underground transportation operations will be stopped later in the day, but did not give an exact time. Kharkiv Mayor Hennadiy Kernes said that subway operations in the city will be suspended as of 8 p.m. on that day until April 3. In Dnipro, an official with the Transportation Department at the City Council said all public transportation units are working and that any changes in operations will be announced later. The government announced on March 16 that subway operations would be suspended as of March 17, while all rail, air and bus transportation between towns and cities, as well as interregional passenger links will be stopped on March 18. As of March 17, 14 coronavirus cases have been registered in Ukraine, up from seven the previous day. Two deaths have been reported. (RFE/RL)
Ukraine to close border for two weeks
Ukraine will close its borders to foreign nationals for two weeks in 48 hours, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov said on March 13, at a briefing during a break in the NSDC meeting. “Our country will close the borders to foreign citizens in 48 hours. The Foreign Affairs Ministry will now warn all institutions, all countries that Ukraine’s borders will be closed to foreign nationals for two weeks,” Mr. Danilov said. At the same time, he said that during this period only foreigners who work at diplomatic missions and international organizations in Ukraine will be able to get to Ukraine. “Only foreigners working in our diplomatic institutions, relevant international organizations – the U.N., UNICEF – will be able to get to Ukraine in 48 hours. The rest will enter our territory only after communication with our Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Mr. Danilov explained. Ukrainians were advised to limit foreign travel if possible. “All Ukrainian citizens who stay abroad today will be able to return to the country. But those who stay in the countries where the coronavirus is raging today will undergo certain observation procedures,” Mr. Danilov said. (Ukrinform)
Oligarchs asked to help fund virus fight
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on the nation’s wealthiest businessmen to donate funds and equipment to help fight the coronavirus inside the country. Mr. Zelenskyy met with the top business owners at his office in Kyiv on March 16 as the country registered its fifth case of the COVID-19 infection. The president said he told the tycoons that the country needed 500 ambulances and as much as 13 billion hrv ($490 million U.S.) for medicine. “Business should be socially responsible during difficult times for the government. Ukrainians should feel protected when they go to state hospitals. And I insist that you help now,” Mr. Zelenskyy told the businessmen. Ukraine is one of Europe’s poorest countries with an outdated and underfunded health-care system that could be quickly overwhelmed if coronavirus cases spike inside the country. The attendees at the meeting with the president included Rinat Akhmetov, the nation’s wealthiest man, and Ihor Kolomoisky, a billionaire who has business ties with Mr. Zelenskyy and was seen by many as being one of his main backers during his presidential campaign last year. Mr. Akhmetov donated four artificial lung-ventilation devices to the Health Ministry, as well as hazmat suits, thermometers and face masks. Viktor Pinchuk, the billionaire owner of a pipe company, has donated 10 lung-ventilation devices to hospitals in Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine. Messrs. Akhmetov, Kolomoisky, and Pinchuk made their initial wealth by scooping up Ukrainian state assets on the cheap during the turbulent 1990s in a process that many citizens consider to have been unfair. They are among a group of businessmen, known as oligarchs, that control a massive swath of the Ukrainian economy. Several other wealthy businessmen have purchasing used ventilation devices in the United States for delivery to Ukraine. Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of the Alibaba Group, one of China’s largest technology companies, financed the purchase of 1 million coronavirus testing kits for Ukraine at a cost of $80 million, Mr. Zelenskyy said. The testing kits will arrive on March 21 from China, he added. (RFE/RL, with reporting by AFP and Kyiv Post)
Rada approves prosecutor general
Ukraine’s Parliament on arc 17 approved President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appointment of Iryna Venediktova as prosecutor general. Ms. Venediktova previously was acting head of the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI), before which she was a member of Parliament from Mr. Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People parliamentary faction. As acting head of the SBI, Ms. Venediktova appointed Oleksandr Babikov as her first deputy. Oleksandr Babikov is a former lawyer for former President Viktor Yanukovych. Mr. Babikov now becomes acting head of the SBI, which is responsible for investigating many of the Maidan cases. On March 5, a majority of national deputies from the Servant of the People and the pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life voted to remove Ruslan Ryaboshapka as prosecutor general. The head of the Servant of the People faction, David Arakhamia, stated at the time that Mr. Ryaboshapka was being removed because of his unwillingness to sign an order of suspicion against the fifth president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko. (Ukrainian Canadian Congress Daily Briefing)
Venediktova had clashed with activists
Iryna Venediktova, 41, who was approved by the Verkhovna Rada on March 17 as Ukraine’s new prosecutor general, is the first woman to head Ukraine’s top prosecutorial office. She’s currently the acting director of the State Bureau of Investigations (DBR), a corruption-fighting agency that lawmakers voted to revamp in December 2019 after the bureau’s then-director was forced out amid questions of conflict of interest. Earlier this month, Ms. Venediktova sued the newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda for republishing an article by the Anti-Corruption Action Center, that alleged her husband was influencing personnel policy at the DBR. She also sued the action center, a non-governmental organization that has been at the heart of efforts to root out the country’s notorious graft problem. Ms. Venediktova replaces Ruslan Ryaboshapka, who had been nominated as prosecutor general by Mr. Zelenskyy. Mr. Ryaboshapka was well-regarded by anti-corruption activists for his efforts to streamline and professionalize the scandal-ridden Prosecutor General’s Office. He was forced out in a no-confidence vote on March 5. Ms. Venediktova reportedly clashed with Mr. Ryaboshapka over an investigation the DBR was conducting into President Zelenskyy’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko. Olena Halushka, director of international relations with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, said Ms. Venediktova’s new position raised doubts about the reform efforts that Mr. Ryaboshapka had undertaken. Ms. Halushka said the new prosecutor general does not have a background in criminal law, and had made several controversial appointments during her brief tenure as head of the DBR. “Given her background and previous activities, as well as the context in which Ryaboshapka was dismissed and she [was] appointed, there are doubts she will be an independent and efficient prosecutor-general,” she told RFE/RL. Mr. Zelenskyy’s shake-up of the government, which included firing his prime minister, worried not only civil society activists, but also Western financial backers. Kyiv has been negotiating a long-delayed $5.5 billion loan program with the International Monetary Fund, which is seen as crucial to economic stability and investor confidence. Public trust in Mr. Zelenskyy has slid sharply since his landslide election in April 2019. His trust ratings dropped to around 50 percent last month from 80 percent in September, according to the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Agricultural exec is now economy minister
The Verkhovna Rada has approved 44-year-old agricultural executive Ihor Petrashko as economy minister. A stable majority of 243 lawmakers voted for Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal’s appointee on March 17, the last day before the legislature went on quarantine amid a snowballing coronavirus outbreak. Mr. Petrashko’s management career has been in large-scale farming, investment banking and consulting. As minister of the economy, trade and agriculture, the politically untested Mr. Petrashko takes control over an economy bracing for a potential economic fallout amid the global coronavirus pandemic. The nation’s currency, the hryvnia, has dipped by 5 percent since early March, and the central bank last week spent more than $1 billion from a $26 billion fund as part of an intervention to prevent devaluation. Mr. Petrashko most recently was the deputy CEO of UkrLandFarming, Ukraine’s largest egg producer and operator of one of the most expansive farmland holdings owned by oligarch Oleh Bakhmatyuk. Mr. Bakhmatyuk is currently residing abroad amid debt problems and investigations into his business dealings, including a bank he owned that is suspected of embezzling nearly $50 million before its license was revoked in 2015. Mr. Petrashko was educated at Lviv National Polytechnical University and also studied abroad at the Tennessee-based Vanderbilt University, graduating in 2001 with a business administration degree. He returned to Lviv to earn a law degree in 2002. He went on to work with Enron Energy Services and GlobalSpec, both U.S.-based companies. In 2004, Mr. Petrashko joined the Moscow office of auditor Ernst & Young and then joined the firm’s Kyiv office in less than a year. Three years later, he started working for the Ukrainian unit of Russian investment bank Troika Dialog as managing director. Between 2012 and 2013, Mr. Petrashko worked for Russian state-owned Sberbank in Ukraine, heading its corporate business department. In April 2013, he was hired as deputy CEO of UkrLandFarming. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
EU slams Russia regarding Crimea
The European Union has slammed Russia for its increasing militarization of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and human rights transgressions six years after its illegal annexation. The bloc said in a statement on March 16 that its 27 members remain committed to “fully implementing” a non-recognition policy, including through the use of sanctions, until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are restored. “The European Union reiterates that it does not recognize and continues to condemn this violation of international law,” said the statement, which was issued on the sixth anniversary of a referendum on Crimea’s status that many consider staged. “It remains a direct challenge to international security, with grave implications for the international legal order that protects the territorial integrity, unity, and sovereignty of all states,” it added. Moscow sent its forces to the Black Sea peninsula, secured control of key buildings and conducted a referendum considered illegitimate by at least 100 countries. The statement said that, in violation of international humanitarian law, Russian citizenship and conscription in the armed forces of the Russian Federation are being imposed on Crimean residents. It also condemned the construction of the Kerch Bridge without Ukraine’s consent and the recent opening of a railway section, calling them “further steps towards a forced integration of the illegally annexed peninsula with Russia, and a further violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The EU also said: “Furthermore, Russian Federation should stop changing the demographic structure of the population by transferring its own civilian population to the peninsula. Russia must also take measures to improve the environmental situation, which has considerably worsened since the illegal annexation.” The EU’s sanctions list, which now consists of 175 individuals and 44 entities, was established after the Russian move and has grown over the following years as Moscow has continued to back militants in eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL)
Crimean Tatars may not participate in exchange
The Crimean Tatars, who are being kept in Russian prisons, may refuse to participate in a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia if they find out that they would be exchanged for “bandits,” the leader of the Crimean Tatar people and a member of the European Solidarity faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Mustafa Dzhemilev, said on the air of the Hromadske Radio on March 10. “The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has passed us the list [of prisoners to be exchanged] for approval. They are planning to exchange people soon at whatever cost. However, we have determined our priorities: those who have the longest terms in prison, for example 17-18 years, and those who have poor health,” Mr. Dzhemilev said. Despite the fact that the lists have been formed, the Russian side is currently not holding any talks regarding possible exchange, he said. “I should say that Russia categorically opposes the release of Crimean Tatars. Secondly, we have rather idea-driven people there. If they find out that they would be exchanged for bandits, they may even refuse,” Mr. Dzhemilev said. In February, Ukraine’s then Foreign Affairs Minister Vadym Prystaiko said preparations were under way for the next exchange of detainees. “We are now preparing the next exchange. We still believe in the possibility of completing the “all for all” exchange in the near future. And this will be a very large and massive exchange, in which, we hope, there will be a place for Crimean Tatars in the overwhelming majority, whom we managed to swap in small amounts latterly,” the minister said. (Interfax-Ukraine)
Protests at presentation on Donbas peace
Ukrainian police said 15 people were arrested on March 12, after a group of right-wing activists disrupted a presentation in Kyiv regarding a possible political settlement in the war in eastern Ukraine. Some were members of National Corps, a nationalist group founded by Andriy Biletsky, who established the controversial Azov volunteer battalion at the start of the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in 2014. They are being investigated for hooliganism and face a maximum prison sentence of four years if found guilty. The event, National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity, was led by Serhiy Syvokho, a former stand-up comedian who is an adviser to the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. Its goal is to end the six-year war, which has killed more than 13,000 people, and bring back the parts of easternmost Donetsk and Luhansk regions that Kyiv doesn’t control back into its fold. When Mr. Syvokho stopped speaking, Serhiy Tamarin, a war veteran and National Corps member, accused the security adviser of betraying Ukraine’s national interests and of wishing to engage in “dialogue with collaborators who invited the enemy” to eastern Ukraine. Mr. Tamarin also accused Mr. Syvokho of describing the conflict as a civil war and criticized him for not mentioning Russia’s alleged role in it. “We are ready to jointly develop a workable policy of reintegration for the Donbas,” Mr. Syvokho said before a dozen National Corps activists pushed him from the podium. Footage taken by RFE/RL show one activist pushing Mr. Syvokho to the floor as he was being shoved from the hall. Mr. Syvokho later blamed the incident on those who profit from the war and said he would continue efforts aimed at a political settlement. “Some people don’t need peace,” Mr. Syvokho said on Facebook. “They want war, because war is business that brings big money. They derailed our presentation, but they won’t stop our steps toward peace.” The National Corps later said it had reported Mr. Syvokho to the Security Service of Ukraine for “treason.” (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, with reporting by AP)