Dion on Canada’s unwavering support
OTTAWA – Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion visited Ukraine on January 31-February 1, meeting with Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, as well as representatives of civil society, parliamentarians and government officials. Canada’s Department of Global Affairs noted: “Minister Dion reiterated the need for the full respect of Ukraine’s sovereignty and underlined the importance of full implementation of the Minsk agreements, particularly by Russia, to ensure a durable peace in Ukraine. Minister Dion also made it clear that the Canadian government intends to speak clearly, bluntly and directly to Russia about its unacceptable actions in Ukraine. Minister Dion expressed Canada’s strong desire to see Ukraine persevere in its democratic transformation and flourish as a strong and prosperous partner of Canada’s.” According to the department’s release, Minister Dion stated, “I am moved by the resilience and resolve of the Ukrainian people. Canada stands firmly with Ukraine and will continue to support the country’s enduring right to sovereignty, freedom and democracy.” (Ukrainian Canadian Congress)
Pentagon seeks $3.4 B to counter Russia
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon will request $3.4 billion next year for additional troops and training to counter “Russia’s aggression,” a fourfold increase from the current fiscal year that reflects administration and allied worries about Moscow’s intentions in Europe. The figure announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on February 2 is part of a $582.7 billion defense-budget proposal that Mr. Carter said is aimed at five major challenges faced by the U.S. military: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and the extremist Islamic State group. The $3.4 billion would come under a program the White House is calling the European Reassurance Initiative. The defense secretary said the program would bolster the U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe, including more U.S. units rotating into Europe, more training and exercises, more military equipment positioned in allied states, and more infrastructure improvements. “We’re reinforcing our posture in Europe to support our NATO allies in the face of Russia’s aggression,” Mr. Carter said during a speech to the Economic Club of Washington, a private research organization. “We’re taking a strong and balanced approach to deter Russian aggression,” he said. “We haven’t had to worry about this for 25 years, and while I wish it were otherwise, now we do.” Washington and its NATO allies have targeted Russia with several rounds of sanctions following Moscow’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and its backing of separatists fighting Kyiv’s forces in eastern Ukraine. Some NATO allies, particularly the Baltic states and countries such as Poland, have demanded a stronger response from Washington and the alliance, calling for stationing heavy weaponry and tanks, and the more frequent presence of allied military units. In Brussels, NATO’s civilian leadership issued a statement applauding the U.S. defense secretary’s proposed increase in spending in Europe. “This is a clear sign of the enduring commitment by the United States to European security,” Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. “It will be a timely and significant contribution to NATO’s deterrence and collective defense.” (Mike Eckel of RFE/RL, with reporting from AP, Reuters)
Poroshenko sees greater risk of war
BERLIN – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says the risk of open war between Russia and Ukraine is greater now than it was a year ago. In an interview with the German newspaper Bild published on February 3, Mr. Poroshenko said Russia had implemented “not one single point” of the Minsk accords, a ceasefire and peace plan aimed at resolving the war in eastern Ukraine. “Instead, we can see 8,000 Russian soldiers with Russian commanders in our country, new military sites directly along the border, and constant military trainings,” he said. “Russia is investing a lot in these war preparations.” Mr. Poroshenko, met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on February 1. Berlin is growing increasingly suspicious that Russia is trying to cause trouble in Germany to try to weaken Ms. Merkel, who has taken a tough line on Moscow after it annexed Crimea in March 2014.” Now Putin has opened an information war against Germany as well,” Mr. Poroshenko commented. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Bild and Reuters)
Merkel: EU sanctions should continue
BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on the European Union to renew its sanctions against Russia in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin’s support for pro-Russian separatists that are fighting Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine. Ms. Merkel said on February 1 that “sanctions against Russia must stay in place until Russia fully implements the Minsk agreement,” a ceasefire and peace plan aimed at resolving the war in eastern Ukraine. The chancellor made the remarks during a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who also urged the West to maintain sanctions against Russia. He said Russia has recently been sending troops and weapons into eastern Ukraine, threatening the fragile peace deal. (RFE/RL, based on reporting on Reuters and DPA)
Merkel presses Putin on separatists
BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel on February 2 urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to use Moscow’s influence with separatists in eastern Ukraine to help secure progress toward a political solution of the crisis. The chancellor’s office said the two leaders spoke by phone at Mr. Putin’s request. The call came one day after Ms. Merkel met Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Berlin and nearly one year after Germany and France helped to broker the Minsk peace deal for Ukraine. In December, the European Union extended the sanctions through July 31. More than 9,100 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since government forces and Russia-backed separatists began fighting in early 2014. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by AP, AFP and TASS)
Savchenko verdict expected this month
OTTAWA – Nadiya Savchenko’s attorney Ilya Novikov stated that he believes a verdict will be announced in Russia’s illegal trial of the Ukrainian pilot by the end of February. The BBC’s Ukraine service reported that Mr. Novikov said the defense would likely complete presenting its case next week. Lt. Savchenko was serving in eastern Ukraine, when abducted by Kremlin-backed terrorists in June 2014 and taken to Russia, where she has been illegally detained and imprisoned since that time. Russia has ignored repeated calls from the international community for the immediate release of Ms. Savchenko, who was elected to the Ukrainian Parliament and is a member of Ukraine’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. (Ukrainian Canadian Congress)
UOC-KP under attack in Crimea
KYIV – The Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) is being forced out of the Cathedral of Ss. Volodymyr and Olga in Symferopol. At a press conference in Kyiv on January 28, Archbishop Kliment of Crimea and Symferopol warned that the Church is facing dissolution and destruction as the second anniversary approaches of Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. According to Archbishop Yevstratiy Zorya, it is only the fear of international scandal that prevents Russia from totally driving the Church out of Crimea. He stressed that the Church does not recognize Russia’s annexation, and will not re-register under Russian legislation. The question of registration has, as was warned back in October 2014, become one of the means by which the occupation regime is bringing all faiths, except the Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate, under serious pressure. Up until the end of 2015, religious communities were still able to use documents under Ukrainian law to sign agreements with the electricity and water authorities. This will now be impossible, and it is likely that the new restrictions will force many remaining churches to close. The situation with re-registration is also likely to be critical for many religious communities. Russian legislation is more restrictive than Ukrainian with respect to believers, imposing far more onerous demands on bodies wishing to function as a legal entity. One of the requirements is that the religious organization adds words to its association papers affirming that Crimea is part of Russia, which many are not prepared to do. The lack of such registration means that the communities will lose the right to use and dispose of their churches, mosques, places of worship or other buildings, and will face numerous other restrictions. (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group)
Humanitarian activist missing in Donetsk
DONETSK – Ukrainian humanitarian activist Maryna Cherenkova has reportedly been detained by separatist security forces in the eastern city of Donetsk. Activists with the Responsible Citizens group reported on social media on January 30 that Ms. Cherenkova sent a late-night text message that said simply, “I have been taken by MGB,” referring to the separatists’ “security ministry.” She has not been heard from since. The activists said police told them they do not have Cherenkova. Since the conflict between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists began, Ms. Cherenkova has been active in securing humanitarian relief for civilians in the Donetsk conflict zone. Journalist Oliver Carroll posted on his Twitter feed that Ms. Cherenkova is “a larger than life character” who has “been at the forefront of [the] humanitarian effort in Donetsk.” She has been “arguably as important as any international [organization],” he added. (RFE/RL)
Kyiv criticizes French documentary
PRAGUE – The film “Ukraine: The Masks of the Revolution” tells the “real” story of the Euro-Maidan protests. At least that’s what filmmaker Paul Moreira claims. In a nutshell, according to Mr. Moreira, it was right-wing extremists who ousted Viktor Yanukovych during the 2013-2014 Euro-Maidan demonstrations, not the tens of thousands of ordinary and peaceful Ukrainians who took to the streets day after day. The West is complicit as well, turning a blind eye to the extremists’ crimes, including deadly violence in the southern city of Odesa in May 2014. If that sounds familiar, it should. It’s essentially the narrative that the Kremlin and its followers have been spinning – that is, blood-lusting neo-Nazi Ukrainians preying on unsuspecting Russian-speakers and other vulnerable minorities. On its Facebook page, the Embassy of Ukraine in France said the film, which was to air on the French Canal Plus television channel on February 1, is “not only dishonest, but completely disrespectful to our compatriots murdered in the heart of Kyiv while defending the democratic aspirations of their country.” The embassy did not demand Canal Plus pull the film, as has been reported by RT, but says the channel “would be well-advised to reconsider the dissemination of the film.” In an opinion piece on January 29 in The Kyiv Post, Halya Coynash, a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, pans the film as bad propaganda, filled with “manipulative reporting and outright lies.” (Tony Wesolowsky of RFE/RL)
U.S. Treasury Department on Putin
OTTAWA – Adam Szubin, U.S. Treasury Department acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told BBC’s “Panorama” program that Russian President Vladimir Putin has secretly been amassing personal wealth through corruption. Mr. Szubin stated: “We’ve seen him enriching his friends, his close allies and marginalizing those who he doesn’t view as friends using state assets. Whether that’s Russia’s energy wealth, whether it’s other state contracts, he directs those to whom he believes will serve him and excludes those who don’t. To me, that is a picture of corruption …He supposedly draws a state salary of something like $110,000 a year… That is not an accurate statement of the man’s wealth, and he has longtime training and practices in terms of how to mask his actual wealth.” (Ukrainian Canadian Congress)
Soviet-era monument torn down
DNIPROPETROVSK – A crowd in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk tore down a statue of Soviet-era leader Hryhoriy Petrovsky on January 29. Petrovsky, who led the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1920s and 1930s, is seen as one of the architects of the Holodomor that killed millions of Ukrainians. The statue was one of the last major Soviet monuments remaining in the region. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Ukraine bank lowers growth forecast
KYIV – Ukraine’s central bank has more than halved its 2016 growth forecast as the cash-strapped country battles crises ranging from a fall in commodity prices to a new trade embargo by Russia. The National Bank of Ukraine said on January 28 that several unfavorable factors beyond the country’s control forced the downward revision of its growth forecast from 2.4 percent to 1.1 percent. The central bank had made the 2.4 percent growth prediction in late November. Earlier in January, Moscow expanded its embargo on Ukrainian products and restricted their movement across its territory to other markets in response to Kyiv’s decision to approve a free-trade and political association pact with the European Union. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by AFP and UNIAN)
“New Silk Road” bypasses Russia
KYIV – Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers reported that a pilot train on the “New Silk Road” arrived in China on the Ukraine-Georgia-Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan-China route, bypassing Russia following Russia’s ban on the transit of Ukrainian goods through its territory. Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk stated “Our trading partners have clearly demonstrated their desire in collaboration with Ukraine to build a new transit route. …We managed to reach accord and launched this experimental train to make Russia understand that the economic and transit blockade of Ukraine would fail. …It has failed.” (Ukrainian Canadian Congress)
EU court strikes down some sanctions
BRUSSELS – A European Union court has ruled that the bloc was wrong to freeze the assets of five close associates of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The ruling on January 28 by the EU’s General Court concerns former Ukrainian Prime Ministers Mykola Azarov and Serhiy Abruzov, Mr. Azarov’s son Oleksii, former Energy Minister Edward Stavytskyi and businessman Serhiy Klyuyev. The EU in March 2014 placed the five on a blacklist of individuals suspected of stealing Ukrainian public funds before Mr. Yanukovych was brought down by street protests. The EU’s General Court said on January 28 that the five were included on the blacklist based solely on a letter from the Ukrainian Procurator General’s Office. But the letter dated from March 2014 “provides no details concerning the matters specifically alleged against the five Ukrainians or the nature of their responsibility,” the Luxembourg-based judges argued. The ruling can be appealed within two months before the European Court of Justice. (RFE/RL)
Ukrainian hacker pleads guilty
NEWARK, N.J. – A Ukrainian computer hacker accused of trying to frame a prominent cybersecurity expert has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., to using more than 13,000 computers to steal log-in and credit-card data. U.S. prosecutors said January 20 that Sergei Vovnenko faces a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison and may face additional prison time. Prosecutors said Mr. Vovnenko, whose aliases included “Flycracker,” “Centurion” and “Darklife,” was part of an international conspiracy to hack into computers belonging to individuals and companies between September 2010 and August 2012. They said Mr. Vovnenko admitted to operating a “botnet” that used more than 13,000 computers that had been infected with malware to gain unauthorized access. The group then used malware known as “Zeus” to steal banking information from and record keystrokes of people using infected computers. Mr. Vovnenko was detained by Italian authorities following his June 13, 2014, arrest and had fought extradition. At the time of the extradition, Brian Krebs, a well-known cybersecurity blogger, wrote that Mr. Vovnenko had been behind a 2013 plot to have heroin sent to Mr. Krebs’ Virginia home, and then tell police when the drugs arrived. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters and AP)
Ukrainian police fine PM’s wife
KYIV – Traffic police in Kyiv have fined Terezia Yatsenyuk, the wife of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, for talking on a mobile phone while driving. Media reports in Ukraine say police fined the prime minister’s wife in downtown Kyiv on January 27. She reportedly paid 425 hrv ($17). The police officer who fined Ms. Yatsenyuk refused to speak to journalists about the case. The case is attracting media attention because police across most former Soviet republics avoid stopping cars or issuing fines to cars driven by relatives of senior government officials. In Ukraine, the police forces have been undergoing reforms. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Ukraine.shafaqna.com and Ua.racurs.ua)
Citizenship for foreigners in Ukraine’s forces
KYIV – Lawmakers in Kyiv have approved draft legislation simplifying the process for foreigners to obtain Ukrainian citizenship if they have served in Ukraine’s army. The bill, adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on January 28, says foreign nationals in the Ukrainian army are eligible to obtain Ukrainian citizenship in three years instead of the normal five years. They also are not required to obtain a residence permit before applying for the citizenship. The bill must be signed by President Petro Poroshenko to become law. In November 2015, the president signed a law that made it legal for foreigners to serve in Ukraine’s military. Many volunteers from other countries have joined Ukraine’s armed forces and volunteer brigades since early 2014 when conflict broke out between government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by UNIAN and Interfax)