Rocket attacks in the east marked the beginning of 2015 for Ukraine. Twelve civilians were killed and 11 were wounded by a missile fired by Russian-backed militants that hit a bus in the town of Volnovakha, 35 kilometers southwest of Donetsk, on January 13.
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At the Minsk summit (front row, from left) are: French President Francois Hollande, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who hosted the meeting. Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen in the background.
President Petro Poroshenko stated: “This is a disaster and a tragedy for Ukraine. This is more evidence after the MH17 plane, after the many civilian casualties – it is a crime that terrorists from the so-called DNR and LNR [Donetsk and Luhansk peoples’ republics] have severely violated my peace plan, which was approved and supported by the European Council and the European Union.”
It was yet more evidence also that the ceasefire agreed to in Minsk in September of 2014 was being violated almost daily. As of the beginning of 2015, it was noted that over 4,700 people had been killed and more than 10,000 injured in the fighting in Ukraine’s east that began in April 2014.
At year’s end, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that there were now more than 28,000 casualties in Ukraine since the war began, including more than 9,000 killed. In addition to the dead and wounded, more than 1.5 million were internally displaced as a result of the conflict.
Our Kyiv correspondent, Zenon Zawada reported that pro-Russian rebels in the Donbas, backed by the Russian military, on January 13 launched their biggest military campaign against Ukrainian forces since the September 5 Minsk II ceasefire protocols, staging hundreds of attacks in a fierce attempt to take control of the territory of the ruined Donetsk airport. Besides the aforementioned Volnovakha attack, a January 19 explosion near a Kharkiv courthouse injured 14, four of them seriously, and a bridge was blown up the next day in the Zaporizhia region as a cargo train crossed it. The Russian government intended its military-terror campaign to boost its negotiating position with the Europeans and Ukrainians in talks to resolve the Donbas war, said Volodymyr Fesenko, the director of the Penta Center for Applied Political Research in Kyiv.
Soon afterwards, news came that the Donetsk airport was completely destroyed and was no longer suitable for defense. Thus a decision was made to withdraw Ukrainian servicemen from the new terminal, reported Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO). The Ministry of Defense reported the most difficult situation was towards Debaltseve, where Kremlin-backed terrorists continued shelling Ukrainian positions. Towards Mariupol, militants repeatedly shelled Ukrainian positions. Several media outlets showed video footage of Kremlin-backed forces parading captured Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk.
Also at the beginning of the year, on January 12, Interpol issued wanted person alerts for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, and two of their associates on charges of embezzlement and misappropriation. The Ukrainian government had submitted an alert request as early as March 2014 for Mr. Yanukovych for abuse of power and murder charges. Yet Interpol revealed that it didn’t respond because the request wasn’t compliant with its rules and regulations. Interpol’s decision came criticism was mounting of the current government’s failure to successfully criminally prosecute those who ordered and committed the shootings and killings in the winter of 2014 of Euro-Maidan activists. More than 100 were killed, and more than 1,000 were injured or missing. All the key Yanukovych administration officials fled abroad, mostly to the Russian Federation. As many as 5,000 people fled to Russia – that number included officials, their relatives, and support and service staff.
Meanwhile in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, President Poroshenko on January 21 accused Russia of sending more than 9,000 troops into Ukrainian territory. He demanded that Russia immediately implement all of its obligations under the Minsk peace plan, close Russia’s border with Ukraine, “and withdraw all the foreign troops from my territory.” Mr. Poroshenko said that in addition to the thousands of troops in Ukraine, Russia had about 500 tanks, heavy artillery, and armored personnel carriers. The president asked: “If this is not aggression, what is aggression?”
Ukraine’s Parliament on January 27 adopted a statement branding Russia an “aggressor state” – a move that deputies hoped would pave the way for punishment under international law. The Verkhovna Rada also voted that day to define self-styled “people’s republics” in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as “terrorist organizations,” and to appeal to the international community for additional nonlethal military aid and stronger sanctions against Russia.
Russia continued sending its “humanitarian” convoys into Ukraine throughout the year. On January 8, the 11th such convoy was reported. By the end of the year, there’d been at least 47 so-called humanitarian convoys from Russia into eastern Ukraine. All but one of the 44 vehicles crossing the border on December 24 were labeled “Humanitarian help from the Russian Federation,’’ the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported.
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Aidar Battalion members carry the coffin of a fellow fighter on February 2 on Independence Square in Kyiv.
Political prisoners in Russia
Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian air force pilot who was fighting in the east with the volunteer Aidar Battalion when she was abducted on Ukrainian territory by pro-Russian forces in June 2014 and taken to Russia, was on a hunger strike at the beginning of 2015. She had begun this protest against her illegal imprisonment on December 13, 2014, and continued it for 83 days. Ms. Savchenko was charged by Russian authorities with complicity in the deaths of two Russian journalists and, remarkably, with illegally crossing the border – never mind that she was kidnapped with a sack over her head. She faces a sentence of up to 25 years in prison if found guilty.
In April, Ms. Savchenko’s mother launched a global campaign to free her daughter. Maria Savchenko, 78, told the Associated Press that Nadiya is a political prisoner and that Russian prosecutors have showed “no evidence” that her daughter provided guidance for a mortar attack that killed two Russian state TV journalists at a checkpoint in eastern Ukraine, as Moscow claims. Mrs. Savchenko launched her global campaign in Germany, where she pleaded for help from lawmakers and wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel. New York was her second stop. She was traveling with her daughter’s Russian lawyer, Mark Feygin.
Among the political prisoners being held in Russia during 2015 were Nadiya Savchenko and Oleh Sentsov.
On December 18, Ms. Savchenko, 34, started a second hunger strike, vowing to continue until the end of what is clearly a politically motivated trial, at which time she would go on a “dry” hunger strike, refusing both food and water.
Another political prisoner being held in Russia was Oleh Sentsov, a filmmaker from Crimea who opposed Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. Mr. Sentsov and three other Ukrainian citizens were arrested in May on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in the Crimean cities of Symferopol, Yalta and Sevastopol. At his trial in Rostov-on-Don, which started on July 21, Mr. Sentsov, who denied all the charges, said, “I don’t consider this court a court at all, so you can consider whatever you want.” In his final statement, he said: “A court of occupiers by definition cannot be just.”
The court founded him guilty on August 25 and handed down a sentence of 20 years in a maximum-security prison. His co-defendant, Oleksander Kolchenko, received a sentence of 10 years. Earlier, two others arrested with Messrs. Sentsov and Kolchenko on the trumped-up charges, Oleksiy Chyrniy and Hennadiy Afanasyev, were each sentenced to seven years in prison. When asked by the judge if the ruling was clear to them, Messrs. Sentsov and Kolchenko sang the Ukrainian national anthem and chanted “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!”
Amnesty International likened the proceedings in the Sentsov-Kolchenko case to the Soviet “trials” of the Stalin-era and called them “fatally flawed.” On November 24 the Russian Supreme Court upheld the verdicts in the Sentsov-Kolchenko trial. Among those speaking out in support of Mr. Sentsov, who is an internationally known film director, were prominent members of the European Film Academy.
Sanctions against Russia
Sanctions on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine continued to be extended and ramped up during 2015. The European Union’s Foreign Ministers Council voted on January 29 to recommend extending Crimea-related sanctions until September and imposing new economic sanctions. The day before, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted to extend sanctions restricting Russian activity in the organization until the end of April. The consideration of new sanctions was prompted by the January 24 terrorist attack by pro-Russian forces on a residential neighborhood of Mariupol, where 31 residents were killed and more than 100 were injured. The attack was condemned by PACE and the EU Foreign Ministers Council, which both cited the direct responsibility of the Russian government.
Sanctions were widened by the U.S. and the EU in September on dozens of Russian and Ukrainian individuals and entities with connections to Crimea’s annexation and the ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine. In an announcement published in the U.S. Federal Register on September 2, the U.S. administration said it was adding 29 people to its sanctions list. Some of those added had ties to Kremlin-linked insiders and companies who were previously sanctioned, including Gennady Timchenko, a wealthy oil trader believed to be close to President Putin. A total of 33 companies or other entities were cited, including subsidiaries of state-owned oil giant Rosneft and the company that manufactures Kalashnikov assault rifles. The European Union, meanwhile, said it would extend the freezing of assets and visa bans for 150 Russians and Ukrainian separatists, along with 37 companies and entities either located in Crimea or having ties to separatist units in eastern Ukraine.
At the end of 2015, the United States added another three dozen people and companies to its sanctions list. The European Union on December 18 agreed that it would extend economic sanctions against Russia for another six months over its role in the war in Ukraine.
Fighting continues despite ceasefire
A second attempt at a ceasefire in Ukraine’s east was brokered on February 12 in Minsk by the heads of state of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine after Western leaders warned it was the last chance to avoid an escalation in violence in the Donbas war, particularly with the U.S. leadership considering providing lethal arms. The Minsk II ceasefire agreement – signed by the representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian governments, the “separatist” forces and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (collectively known as the Trilateral Contact Group) – consisted of 13 points, including a establishing a ceasefire as of midnight February 15, removing all foreign armies from Ukrainian territory and withdrawing heavy weaponry from what was in effect a newly created buffer zone.
The new agreement emerged after a week of negotiations involving the leaders of what’s known as the “Normandy format” countries: French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Merkel, Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Poroshenko. Western and Ukrainians leaders hailed the new agreement as a critical step towards de-escalating the war. “It’s not a complex solution and of course not a breakthrough, but Minsk II can be a step that can remove us from the spiral of military escalation towards a political impulse after weeks of violence,” said German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
At the same time, much skepticism surrounded its prospects – even in the short term – particularly since many of the agreement’s points were repeated from the first agreement, which was never upheld by the Russian-backed forces. The Weekly editorialized: “It remains to be seen whether Minsk II will be any better than Minsk I. Should we expect this ceasefire to work, when the previous one failed so abysmally? The devil is in the details and, most importantly, hinges on the willingness of the aggressor to cease and desist.”
Analyst Vladimir Socor, writing for Eurasia Daily Monitor, pointed out that, “At no point does the agreement acknowledge Russia’s role as a party to the conflict, or the presence of Russian weaponry and military personnel on Ukraine’s territory.” Furthermore, he noted, “The Minsk II agreement’s military and security clauses leave Ukraine in a position of even greater vulnerability; while the political clauses threaten (more directly than Minsk I) to insert Russia through its proxies into Ukraine’s constitutional processes.”
And still the fighting continued.
Ukraine’s armed forces suffered a major military defeat on February 18 when President Poroshenko announced their retreat from the key railroad hub of Debaltseve, about 47 miles northeast of Donetsk, after the fiercest battle of the Donbas war so far that raged since mid-January. Rather than adhering to the February 12 ceasefire, the Russian-backed forces threw all their resources at the battle and slaughtered Ukrainian soldiers as they retreated, news reports said, citing eyewitnesses.
On May 12, the long-awaited report by Boris Nemtsov on Russia’s involvement in the war in Ukraine – titled “Putin. War.” – was released in Moscow by colleagues of the murdered Russian opposition leader. The report documented the deaths of 220 Russian soldiers in the fighting in Ukraine’s east – a number that surely represents merely the tip of the iceberg. It was prepared by Mr. Nemtsov’s allies, who pieced together information he left behind, even though Russian authorities had seized his computer hard drives and documents, and despite the fact that many sources were not willing to speak with them after Mr. Nemtsov was killed – some say precisely because of his work on this topic. The report noted that Russia had spent at least $1 billion on the war in Ukraine during its first 10 months, and it documented the use of Russian state funds to pay Russian citizens to fight in Ukraine.
The report showed how “the Russian government provided active political, economic, personnel and also direct military support to the separatists.” It noted the types of Russian military hardware used by the so-called separatists in eastern Ukraine and said Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed by these “separatists” with a Buk missile system. In addition, it detailed how the Russian government paid off families of Russian soldiers killed in the war to ensure their silence. Yet another interesting finding: Russian personnel were compelled to resign from the Russian military before being deployed to Ukraine, thus making possible the deniability of the presence of Russian forces.
Opposition activist Ilya Yashin said at the May 12 press conference at which the 64-page report was released: “We want to tell people the truth about what is happening in Russia, about what is happening in eastern Ukraine. We want to catch Putin in his lies. We want to tell people that the president of Russia – a man who controls nuclear weapons and leads an enormous country – is lying to the Russian people and to the entire world.”
The war in Ukraine’s east continued throughout the year, despite the Minsk II ceasefire. Significant escalation was reported in mid-August when Russian-backed terrorists intensified attacks on towns in the Donetsk region where Ukrainian military forces were based. Intense battles were reported at the same time near the government-held city of Mariupol; they were focused on a strategic highway that connects Mariupol with Donetsk.
Speaking on September 27 at the United Nations summit on development, President Poroshenko said the conflict in Ukraine’s east was costing the country $5 million a day – money that could better be spent on development. He added that the war with Russian-backed militants had made Ukraine lose about one-fifth of its economic potential and that the insurgency in the east had led to “the emergence of a new form of poverty, sudden or unexpected poverty” for tens of thousands of people.
Meeting at a summit in Paris on October 2, Russia and Ukraine reached verbal agreements towards resolving the war in the Donbas, including withdrawing armaments from the conflict line beginning on October 4 and canceling illegal elections planned that were to be held in the next few weeks. The meeting, which also involved the leaders of Germany and France, also set a basic framework for fulfilling the Minsk accords – though without any revealed dates – that is based on granting immunity and amnesty to the Russian-backed terrorists and allowing them to run in elections next year under a special law to be drafted. Ongoing disagreements were apparent after the talks. President Poroshenko and his advisors vowed not to allow the elections to occur until Russian soldiers leave Ukraine and Ukrainian control of the border is restored. Yet French President Hollande said elections should occur before these conditions were met, with monitoring performed exclusively by the OSCE.
The downing of MH17
The Netherlands said on April 16 that, with nearly all of the victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) identified, efforts had shifted to finding those responsible for shooting the plane down over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board. In March, Dutch media had reported that a metal fragment from the crash site matches a Russian-made rocket. On April 22 it was reported that more remains had been found at the crash site. The Dutch Justice Ministry said in a statement that along with human remains investigators also found passengers’ jewelry, passports and photographs.
On May 13, evidence emerged that a large Russian military convoy that traveled to eastern Ukraine in June 2014 had brought Buk anti-aircraft systems to Russia-backed separatists. That was a month before MH17 was downed. A group of pro-Ukrainian citizen activists published a report purportedly identifying a Russian soldier who was a driver in that convoy and showing photographs of Buk systems being escorted across Russia to Ukraine. Eliot Higgins, the founder of the citizen’s journalism website Bellingcat, said the information jibed well with Bellingcat’s own probes into the convoy that allegedly brought the Buk systems to eastern Ukraine, including the one he believes was used to shoot down MH17. “We’ve been looking at this same convoy, and there’s quite a lot of interesting information,” Mr. Higgins told RFE/RL. “We’ve found much, much more additional material. We’ve got the names of the people who were in the convoy. We’ve got a good idea of which vehicles they were driving. In fact, the guy who they feature in the article was actually almost certainly driving just one vehicle in front of the actual missile launcher that [we believe] shot down MH17.”
On July 2, Malaysia told the United Nations Security Council that it planned to push for a U.N.-backed tribunal to prosecute those suspected of shooting down MH17. The proposal was developed jointly by the five nations investigating the downing. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country had the greatest number of nationals among the victims of the crash, said a U.N. tribunal is “the best option to prosecute those responsible for the MH17 disaster, as it is the best chance to get them before a court of law.”
On the first anniversary of MH17’s downing, Ukrainians, a deeply religious nation, mourned the citizens of 11 countries who had perished. Local residents in the towns where the plane’s remnants, and passengers’ bodies, rained from the sky, had erected memorials and they continued to pray for the repose of the souls of the passengers and crew. Memorial services were held throughout Ukraine; in Kyiv, people laid flowers on the steps of the Dutch Embassy. President Poroshenko explained in an address that “the Ukrainian people took this catastrophe as a personal tragedy.”
At the same time, previously unseen video footage was released by News Corp. Australia of “separatists” sifting through the wreckage of MH17 soon after it was shot down by a Buk missile, realizing that this was a civilian aircraft, and then callously going through the belongings of the dead. Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said it was “sickening to watch.” The country’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, said the images show the downing was an atrocity – that the rebels were “deliberately shooting out of the sky what they knew was a large aircraft.” Mr. Abbott stated that he had no doubt the aircraft was shot down with a Russian-supplied surface-to-air missile because “rebels don’t get hold of this kind of weaponry by accident. I mean, this was obviously very sophisticated weaponry.”
Then, on July 29, Russia vetoed a U.N. draft resolution to create an international tribunal to investigate and try those responsible for firing the missile believed to have brought down MH17. Eleven other Security Council members backed the proposal by Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, while Angola, China and Venezuela abstained. The supporters of the resolution were three out of the five permanent members of the Security Council: France, the United Kingdom, the United States; and eight of the 10 non-permanent members: Chad, Chile, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria and Spain. Dutch Prime Minister Rutte said Russia had “failed to stand up and be counted in the quest for international justice.” He added that countries involved in a Dutch-led investigation will now focus on other legal options “at both the international and national level… supported by a broad international coalition” because “the perpetrators… must not be allowed to escape punishment.”
The long awaited Dutch Safety Board report on the MH17 disaster was released on October 13. It said the passenger plane was downed by a Russian-made Buk missile. It did not specify the exact location from which the missile was fired, but it did identity a 320-square-kilometer area mostly under the control of the separatists at the time. The missile detonated less than a meter to the left of the aircraft’s cockpit, according to the report, killing the pilots instantly and causing the aircraft to break apart.
Board head Tjibbe Joustra stressed that investigators sought to answer the question of why Malaysia Airlines was flying over a conflict zone. He said the airline should have recognized the risks, but noted that the carrier was not alone: 61 airlines were flying over eastern Ukraine at the time, in the apparent belief that their aircraft were flying at high enough altitudes to avoid danger. Mr. Joustra also said Kyiv should have closed the air space over eastern Ukraine because of the conflict with pro-Russian separatists. Predictably, the Kremlin criticized the report and investigation as “biased,” with Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Ryabkov saying that, despite Moscow’s efforts to organize an MH17 probe, “there are obvious attempts to carry out a political order.”
Maidan anniversaries
In 2015, Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the massacre on the Maidan, when security forces of the Yanukovych regime killed over 100 people. President Poroshenko designated February 20, the day most of the victims lost their lives, as an official day of remembrance. RFE/RL reported: Church bells rang across the country and a minute of silence was held. Hundreds of people marched in Kyiv to honor their memory, and mourners laid flowers and candles at sites where protesters were shot dead. A religious service was held in Independence Square, where the protests took place. Another religious service took place at a church situated on a nearby street that saw some of the worst bloodshed. Mr. Poroshenko addressed the nation later in the day from Independence Square, promising to “do the maximum I can, so those huge loses our people suffered during the past year won’t be wasted. We will stop the war and within the few years everyone will notice how Ukraine is changing.”
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Foreign leaders join with Ukraine’s president on February 22 in the city center of Kyiv to remember the fallen on the first anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity.
In November, the country noted the second anniversary of the beginning of the Euro-Maidan movement. Unfortunately, the anniversary also brought to the fore the fact that not a single conviction had come about against those who perpetrated violent events on the Maidan resulting from the authorities’ crackdown on what came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity. “Was it necessary to wait until the second anniversary of the Maidan to announce what we already knew on the Maidan?!” Oleh Rybachuk, a former head of the Presidential Secretariat, wrote on the gazeta.ua news site. “The law enforcement bodies aren’t reformed,” he added.
Corruption and lack of reforms
Ukraine’s top law enforcement officer, Procurator General Vitaliy Yarema, submitted his resignation on February 9 amid mounting criticism of his failure to prosecute any officials in the Yanukovych administration for alleged economic crimes, violence against the historic Euro-Maidan protest and separatism in the Donbas region. “It’s very good that we achieved the resignation of the procurator general, who showed no results,” Self-Reliance National Deputy Yegor Sobolev told the February 10 parliamentary session during which Mr. Yarema’s resignation was approved. “That’s the first time in Ukrainian history that a procurator general left who suited the president, suited the majority of political forces but didn’t suit society.”
Mr. Yarema resigned ahead of a February 17 report in the Wall Street Journal that stated the European Union would soon begin to drop sanctions against members of Mr. Yanukovych’s entourage – starting with four out of 22 targeted – for lack of evidence provided by the Ukrainian government to back up corruption allegations. “I stated several months ago that, in the event that EU sanctions are removed from the Yanukovych entourage through the fault of the procurator general, Vitaliy Yarema should be held politically responsible and resign,” wrote National Deputy Serhiy Leshchenko on his Facebook page the same day as the resignation.
To replace Mr. Yarema, the Verkhovna Rada on February 10 approved the president’s nomination of Viktor Shokin, who had served as deputy procurator general since December 2004. Fiery debate preceded the vote in which critics warned he’d perform just as badly as Mr. Yarema, having served at the heart of Ukraine’s corrupt law enforcement system for more than a decade, including under the Yanukovych administration.
The Ukrainian government soon afterwards unleashed a new round of criminal investigations and arrests against Yanukovych administration functionaries, among them “the three odious judges” – as they were widely labeled – who were involved in illegal rulings that drew global attention. They are two other Yanukovych functionaries of a higher profile – the former chair of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction, Oleksandr Yefremov, and his deputy, the late Mykhailo Chechetov – were arrested by Ukrainian authorities. Mr. Chechetov, a key functionary in the Party of Regions most famous for leading the January 2014 vote in the Verkhovna Rada for what was dubbed the dictatorship laws, was found dead on February 28 outside his 17th floor apartment in what was determined by police to be suicide. Just a week earlier, a Kyiv court had ordered that Mr. Chechetov, 61, be placed under house arrest.
“At first glance, the efforts of the new procurator general, Viktor Shokin, would inspire optimism that President Petro Poroshenko is finally punishing the crimes committed under his predecessor after a year of inaction,” Mr. Zawada wrote. “But political experts contacted by this correspondent insist the latest moves are largely for show and to cool boiling public discontent, and may not even lead to punishment. All the key insiders of the administration of President Viktor Yanukovych remain at large, many hiding in the Russian Federation, and some have even begun to get their sanctions dropped by the European Union.”
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine was finally launched on April 16 by President Poroshenko at a ceremony in which he revealed its first head will be Artem Sytnyk, a former prosecutorial investigator who has distinguished himself with investigations that led to incarcerations. The announcement came after months of delay in creating the bureau and criticism that the government wasn’t doing enough to address corruption.
“Everything’s in the hands of the new chair. He has time, society’s support and healthy forces,” said Mustafa Nayyem, a national deputy with the Poroshenko Bloc. “Mr. Sytnyk can go down in history as the first fighter against corruption, who was able to put behind bars top-tier officials, from ministers to judges, prosecutors, etc. Or he can become yet another inglorious official from the dark masses.” Mr. Sytnyk was granted exceptional authority – with influence rivaling other top law enforcement officials – in accordance with legislation approved by Parliament in October 2014 that created the bureau and then amended in February of this year. His task is to uncover crimes at the highest levels of government and conduct pre-trial investigations, without any politician having the legal authority to interfere with the bureau’s work.
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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko presents former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as the new head of the Odesa Oblast State Administration to local residents on May 30.
Amidst rising criticism that reforms in Ukraine were proceeding too slowly, President Poroshenko in late May appointed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as head of the Odesa Oblast State Administration to lead the president’s initiatives in the region, as well as oversee the spending of funds earmarked by the central Kyiv budget. Mr. Saakashvili is among the most popular post-Soviet politicians in Ukraine and the West after leading reforms that turned Georgia into a competitive economy. He has a long history in Ukraine, having studied alongside Mr. Poroshenko in Kyiv and learned the Ukrainian language. Mr. Saakashvili had spent recent months criticizing the Ukrainian government for failing to quickly carry out needed reforms.
Odesa is among the main sources of corruption in the Ukrainian economy, being the nation’s biggest port and having a reputation for contraband for decades, dating back to the Soviet era. Odesa is also the nation’s third-largest city, behind Kyiv and Kharkiv. In presenting Mr. Saakashvili, the president referred to him as an “independent, decisive person” and assigned him the priorities of deoligarchization, fighting corruption, ensuring transparency in the state customs and tax-collecting services, and defending the rights of citizens. As 2015 drew to a close, a lot remained to be done in Odesa.
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Some of the first graduates of a new training program for Kyiv patrol police.
On June 18, the Verkhovna Rada voted to approve President Poroshenko’s request to dismiss Valentyn Nalyvaichenko as head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). While the president argued that Mr. Nalyvaichenko had failed to fulfill his responsibilities, Mr. Poroshenko’s critics argued that the dismissal was revenge for Mr. Nalyvaichenko’s unapproved attempts to eliminate the president’s allies – alleged to be corrupt – from both the SBU and the Procurator General’s Office. The conflict over Mr. Nalyvaichenko, who some alleged was aligned with oligarch Dmytro Firtash, was the biggest since the coalition government emerged in November 2014. Most political observers commented that the conflict was merely the latest chapter in the power struggle among Ukraine’s oligarchs, including Mr. Poroshenko himself.
Another Yanukovych insider who eluded arrest was Serhii Kliuyev, who apparently fled the country within days after Ukraine’s Parliament voted on June 3 to strip him of his political immunity. By June 10, he was declared missing by Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the internal affairs minister, who confirmed a week later in Parliament that he fled to Russia through the occupied territories of Donbas. The government’s failure to make arrests of key Yanukovych officials infuriated critics, who believed that top state officials could have reached deals enabling their avoidance of detention and prosecution for their alleged crimes. “I think that I’m not alone in suspecting that a non-aggression pact, a ring of protection exists between the current and past leadership of the country,” said National Deputy Yegor Sobolyev, chairman of the parliamentary Committee on Preventing and Countering Corruption.
Charges of selective justice emerged yet again with the case of Hennadiy Korban, a business associate of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who was arrested on October 31 and charged with stealing from the private Country Defense Fund, as well as organizing the kidnapping of two government officials. In his defense, Mr. Korban said through his lawyers that he didn’t steal from the fund, which he himself had created to aid the war effort, and that he had no involvement in any kidnappings. Mr. Korban’s arrest sparked mixed reactions among the public, with many saying the president was targeting his opponents.
Mr. Poroshenko was widely criticized also for pursuing his business interests while serving as president, and there were allegations in September that he was involved in orchestrating attempts to bribe national deputies from the Radical Party faction to remain in the coalition government. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk also was suspected of involvement in corruption scandals; indeed, such accusations were made by Mr. Saakashvili, head of the Odesa Oblast State Administration. Mr. Saakashvili told Channel 5 television: “All the oligarch interests control the Ukrainian government.” He also spoke about the lack of reforms: “Decisions about reforms are not being made. …What the government is calling reforms, I can’t call reforms.” The result of Mr. Saakashvili’s TV interview was a war of words with the prime minister.
Procurator General Shokin himself was the target of much criticism from the West. His integrity and credibility were called into question after he resisted European Union recommendations that he replace the four prosecutors he had appointed to a commission to establish a Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. These prosecutors were identified by Transparency International as Yanukovych administration holdovers who were loyal to the current president and would compromise the independence of the specialized prosecutor’s office.
Criticism that had been circulating among Western circles became public in late September, when U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said in a speech to the Odesa Financial Forum that corrupt prosecutors are “openly and aggressively undermining reform.” Ambassador Pyatt underscored: “the true measure of Ukraine’s commitment to fight corruption is the number of officials from the current administration in prison for corruption. The authorities’ willingness to prosecute all corrupt officials and oligarchs, regardless of their political party or personal wealth, is a critical indicator of its commitment to the rule of law. On this indicator, Ukraine post-Revolution of Dignity still comes up short.”
EU Representative to Ukraine Jan Tombinski warned that the consequences extended beyond Ukraine’s dysfunctional law enforcement system. In an October 22 letter to Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin, Mr. Tombinski warned that the failure to launch by year’s end the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and, in turn, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, would cost Ukrainians their visa-free regime planned for launch in 2016.
But there was some good news in the battle against corruption and implementation of reform in Ukraine. A graduation ceremony of new Kyiv patrol police officers trained with the support of the project coordinator in Ukraine of the OSCE was held on July 2. According to the official website of the government of Ukraine, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk presented certificates to the graduates and greeted them by saying: “Millions of Ukrainians have hope in you. And each of you will take an oath of loyalty to the Ukrainian nation. You are the new face of Ukraine. You are the new Ukrainian police. You are also the representatives of our new European Ukraine.”
The establishment of the new patrol police in the Ukrainian capital, initiated in January by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, was the first step in nationwide police reform. Over 33,000 persons – 35 percent of them women – applied and undertook tests to evaluate their general and individual skills, as well as health and physical abilities. As a result of the selection, about 2,000 recruits underwent initial training courses between April and June. “We are going step by step in developing police reform in Ukraine,” said Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov. He said some 6,000 new police officers would be trained by the end of the year and that about 170,000 police officers require re-training country-wide.
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Participants at the rally of mourning held on May 18 on Kyiv’s Independence Square to mark the 71st anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatar people.
On November 25, a group of activists, including 15 national deputies of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc – most of whom were involved in the Euro-Maidan – announced they were forming a group, the Anti-Corruption Platform, within the faction to expose and fight corruption both within their faction and beyond. The announcement came a day after a closed-door meeting of faction deputies in which the reformists accused establishment politicians of not only indulging their own corrupt business schemes, but even undermining their reform projects. “These were situations of the so-called ‘deoligarchization’ that began last year but was never completed and it’s happening now, when each of us is being persecuted and being destroyed in the media. All of our attempts to bring this information to the country’s leadership, to the procurator general, to law enforcement bodies merely ended with us being on our own. We decided to unite our efforts,” said Mr. Nayyem.
Special status for the Donbas
Ukrainian lawmakers on March 17 approved a draft law to grant special status to the rebel-held areas in the country’s east. It was part of a package of legislative proposals made by President Poroshenko that had been sharply criticized by both Russia and the pro-Russian separatists. The bill outlined the boundaries of particular districts in the areas under pro-Russian separatist control that could be granted special status with limited self-rule. That was a key part of the Minsk II ceasefire deal reached. The bill said rebel-held areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions will be granted their special status after holding elections in accordance with Ukrainian law and under international observation.
On July 16 the Rada voted to send for the Constitutional Court’s review constitutional amendments submitted by the president, including an amendment creating what was now called “specific procedures” for local self-governance on the territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts occupied by Russian-backed terrorists. Although legislation creating specific procedures (previously referred to as “special status”) had been twice earlier approved by Parliament, an amendment was also needed to the Constitution of Ukraine. In his remarks endorsing the amendment on specific procedures, President Poroshenko assured Parliament that it wouldn’t lead to federalization, or creating an autonomous entity within Ukraine like Crimea.
Though insisting he was not being pressured, the president confirmed that the legal mechanism to establish the specific procedures was being demanded by the European Union and the United States. “We simply don’t have the right to create with our own hands a situation that will leave Ukraine on its own against its aggressor,” he said. “That’s why now and in the future, when we will vote to approve the Constitution as a whole, we need to approach this vote with exceptional responsibility.”
A flag from the battle of Ilovaisk that was on display as part of the exhibit “Power of the Unbroken” on Kyiv’s St. Michael’s Square.
Later in the year, on August 31, constitutional amendments shifting certain state authority to local governments, including provisions related to the special procedures for parts of the Donbas, were approved by the Verkhovna Rada with support from the national deputies of the Poroshenko Bloc, the People’s Front led by Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, the Russian-oriented Opposition Bloc and the deputies’ groups will of the People and Rebirth, which consist of big businessmen and former members of the Party of Regions. Three of the five factions of the governing coalition – the Radical Party, Samopomich and Batkivshchyna – voted against the amendments. Part of the specific procedures called for granting full immunity to the Russian-backed terrorists from any prosecution, enabling them to run for political office in local elections, remain in office for the full length of their terms, appoint prosecutors and judges, form local police forces and establish “deep neighborly relations” with districts in the Russian Federation. “This is part of Putin’s plan for splitting and federalizing Ukraine and is practically the legalization of the Russian occupation on the occupied territory of the Donbas,” Radical Party leader Oleh Lyashko said in an August 27 interview with the News One television network.
Outside the Parliament on August 31 were members of the Svoboda Party, the Radical Party, Pravyi Sektor and Ukrop (a party launched by Mr. Kolomoisky, a billionaire and rival of Mr. Poroshenko). They gathered to protest the lack of public discussion on the amendments, which had been approved by the Constitutional Court on July 31. Inside the Rada, Radical Party members blocked the podium and the work of the Parliament. Once the vote on the first reading of the constitutional amendments ultimately took place, violence broke out outside. Simple bombs and explosives were hurled toward the Parliament building and the attacks were capped off by a military grenade that killed three National Guardsmen and hospitalized over 90 people. It was Ukraine’s most serious domestic political conflict since the Euro-Maidan.
Plight of Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars commemorated the 71st anniversary of their mass deportation ordered in 1944 by Joseph Stalin, which displaced around 200,000 people and cost tens of thousands of lives. Nearly half of those deported died of starvation or disease en route to the places of their forcible resettlement. Crimean Tatars were allowed to return to their homeland following the collapse of the Soviet Union. RFE/RL reported that a special event, called “I Am a Crimean Tatar,” was held in Kyiv on May 18 to remember the deportation victims. Organizers said the goal of the gathering was twofold: to commemorate Crimean Tatars who died during the deportation to Central Asia that started on May 18, 1944, and to honor those who lost their lives during and after Crimean’s annexation by Russia in March 2014.
A resolution passed by the Verkhovna Rada on November 12 recognized the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars from their homeland in 1944 as genocide. A Day of Remembrance for the victims of the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people will now be held annually on May 18. The resolution also says that “the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine states that the systemic pressure on the Crimean Tatar people, the repression of Ukrainian citizens on a national basis, the organization of ethnically and politically motivated prosecutions of the Crimean Tatars on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine by the public authorities of the Russian Federation, starting from the date of temporary occupation, are a conscious policy of ethnocide of the Crimean Tatar people.”
On September 8, Crimean Tatar leaders called for a blockade of Crimea. Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, Refat Chubarov, chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, said: “…every day we see evidence of pressure, detentions, searches and pogroms organized by the occupation authorities against the Crimean Tatars and other national minorities.” Pointing out that Ukraine was still delivering goods to the occupied peninsula with almost no obstacles, he said: “We believe that this is wrong, because this way the Ukrainian state feeds those who occupied our land and supports Kremlin power, which now opposes Ukraine.” Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev noted that this was not only a question of foodstuffs. Ukraine supplies 85 percent of electricity and about 80 percent of water, especially irrigation water, to Crimea. “Before the occupation, such costs were covered by tourism or business trips. Now Ukraine does not get anything,” said Mr. Dzhemilev. The Kyiv-based group Crimea Civil Blockade issued a series of demands: release political prisoners; stop interference in Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian media activity; ensure foreign journalists’ and monitors’ access to Crimea; stop criminal proceedings and administrative persecution of Crimean Tatars and other citizens of Ukraine; and lift the ban on Crimean Tatar leaders entering Crimea.
On November 22, Crimean Tatars launched their biggest countermeasure since the beginning of the Russian occupation of their homeland by ruining four electricity lines, situated in the neighboring Kherson Oblast, that account for 70 percent of the peninsula’s electricity. By the time they woke up, the majority of Crimean residents were lacking access to not only electricity, but also water, heat, gasoline and cash, the news.allcrimea.net website reported. Mr. Dzhemilev, the president’s ombudsman on Crimean Tatar affairs, said on November 23 that activists had cut the electricity in order to force the release of political prisoners being held in Crimea and Russia, among other political aims.
To stop the activists, the Ukrainian government dispatched National Guardsmen and fighters of the Kherson Battalion, a division of the Internal Affairs Ministry. At the same time, Mr. Poroshenko held a meeting in the Presidential Administration with Crimean Tatar leaders, who were accompanied by more than 100 demonstrators outside, on Bankova Street, who urged the president not to allow law enforcement officers to interfere with the activists. As a result of the meeting, Mr. Poroshenko agreed to order the Cabinet of Ministers to impose a trade embargo on Crimea. The Cabinet fulfilled the order with the State Border Service implementing it on November 24. Repairs of the electrical lines began as early as November 25. Activists allowed crews to conduct all the necessary repairs, Mr. Dzhemilev told the Deutsche Welle news agency, adding, however, that the Tatars’ demands hadn’t changed.
Changing the narrative
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Volodymyr Vyatrovych speaks during a ceremony at the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv, where the “Remembrance Poppy,” Ukraine’s new symbol of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, was unveiled.
The Ukrainian government in 2015 took a major step in changing the narrative of World War II in Ukraine. Ukraine made the crimson poppy flower a symbol of the victory over Nazi Germany, part of a shift away from the Soviet imagery Kyiv said the Kremlin was using to influence neighbors and promote self-serving myths about World War II. First Lady Maryna Poroshenko attended a “Remembrance Poppy” ceremony on April 7 as part of events marking the 70th anniversary of the Nazi surrender in May 1945. “The time has come when we have to look for the ideas that unite our country and nation,” she said. “The second world war affected each and every Ukrainian family. The poppy is a symbol of remembrance that pays tribute to all heroes who sacrificed their lives for a better future.”
The head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Volodymyr Viatrovych, said that Soviet-era commemorations of the Allied victory had turned the “dreadful tragedy” of World War II into a celebration of the “triumph of Communist ideas” and created a “cult of war.” He noted that the initiative of commemorating fallen Ukrainians with the Remembrance Poppy had been established the previous year. In 2015, the initiative gained legislative basis in the form of a presidential decree that made May 8 the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation. Mr. Viatrovych also stated: “It is extremely important to honor the victims and heroes of this war in a Ukrainian manner, because Ukraine was one of the main arenas of the second world war. According to various estimates, about 10 million Ukrainians were victims of the war. Ukrainians made a decisive contribution to the victory over Nazism in the Red Army, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the armies of Poland, France, Great Britain and other countries. Together, they made the victory over fascism possible.”
In a related development, Ukraine’s Parliament approved several historic bills on April 9 that took decisive steps to part with the country’s Soviet legacy. One of the bills recognized on the state level all those who fought for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century, in armed, paramilitary, underground or political organizations, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, the Ukrainian National Republic, government bodies of Carpatho-Ukraine, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and dozens of others. Another bill required the removal of all public Soviet symbols and monuments, and the renaming of all cities, towns and villages bearing Soviet names. The largest to be affected was Dnipropetrovsk, the city of 993,000 residents named after Grigory Petrovsky, a leader in the Red Terror of 1918-1923 and the Holodomor of 1932-1933.
Presidential Administration of Ukraine
President Petro Poroshenko and First Lady Maryna Poroshenko place symbolic bouquets of wheat before the statue named “The Sad Memory of Childhood,” which is part of the national museum complex dedicated to the memory of Holodomor victims.
“From now on, children won’t ride on carousels in parks named after executioners, students won’t study in institutes named after terrorists, and lovers won’t arrange their dates on squares named after killers,” National Deputy Yuriy Lutsenko, head of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction, wrote on his Facebook page.
Never was it more apparent that Russia and Ukraine were going their separate ways than the 2015 commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, noted Mr. Zawada. Not only will the main commemorations be held on different days, but the Ukrainian state events will be stripped of any symbolism of Soviet communism for the first time. The government also decided to do away with the May 9 military parade on Kyiv’s central boulevard, the Khreshchatyk, once and for all. “This era has disappeared forever, at least in our country,” said Yurii Krykunov, a Kyiv City Council deputy who is among those responsible for organizing the 2015 commemorations. “I think these commemorations will be two absolute contrasts, revealing that we are moving towards civilization and they [in Russia] are moving towards a dead end.”
Victory Day, marked on May 9, has been among the biggest holidays on the Ukrainian calendar ever since 1965, when it was established. Victory in Europe Day (V-E Day) has been commemorated on May 8 in the Western world because that’s when the German Nazi leadership declared its capitulation. Yet Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin declared Victory Day on May 9 because it was 0:43 a.m. Moscow time when the act was signed (22:43 in Berlin). In a symbolic move intended as a break from the past and as indication of Ukraine’s European integration, the government held a larger ceremony for the May 8 commemoration, as compared to the limited events planned for May 9.
Another sign of the changing narrative in Ukraine came on October 14 as Ukraine for the first time marked a new national holiday – Day of the Defender of Ukraine – established to honor the courage and heroism of the defenders of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. The date coincides with the religious feast day of St. Mary the Protectress (Pokrova). On the legendary Khortytsia Island in Zaporizhia, President Poroshenko took part in a special ceremony at which students of the Ivan Bohun Kyiv Lyceum and Zaporizhia Regional Lyceum took their oaths as part of their intensified military-technical training. In his speech to the cadets, he emphasized the importance of historic ties among all generations of Ukrainians who struggled for the independence and freedom of the country and recalled the words of Bohdan Khmelnytsky: “We are a freedom-loving people, always willing to die for our freedom.” Speaking of today’s defenders of Ukraine, Mr. Poroshenko noted that over 93,000 Ukrainian soldiers were direct participants in the war, almost 108,000 took part in the ATO, and 210,000 came to the army in six waves of mobilization – one-sixth of them volunteers.
Poroshenko’s self-assessment
Assessing his first year in office, President Poroshenko offered an uncharacteristically sober view in which he acknowledged disappointments with the government. He also stressed achievements, such as thwarting Russia’s attempts to split Ukraine. The evaluations and political plans came in a June 4 address to the Verkhovna Rada and a June 5 press conference. “I am often asked whether I’m satisfied with the work of the government. No. Am I satisfied with the work of the Verkhovna Rada? Also no, obviously. I’ll say more – I am dissatisfied with my own work,” Mr. Poroshenko said. Mr. Poroshenko confirmed that his government wouldn’t be able to return Crimea to Ukrainian control for at least a year, while insisting, “Crimea remains our top priority.” At the same time, he acknowledged the government had yet to prepare a strategy for returning Crimea – a document that was being preparing by the National Security and Defense Council.
He underscored that Ukraine’s armed forces must remain on guard for a possible full-scale Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory. A “colossal threat” also remains of wide-scale fighting conducted by Russian-backed forces, which currently include 14 battalion-tactical groups with more than 9,000 soldiers on Ukrainian territory, he said.As his biggest success, the president cited the government’s success in undermining the Russian government’s attempts to create a separatist Novorossiya state, encompassing the eight oblasts of southeastern Ukraine. “The Kremlin was counting on the bacilli planted by Russian intelligence services to provoke an epidemic of separatism in the eastern and southern oblasts, but that idea didn’t find support anywhere, including the Donbas,” he told the Verkhovna Rada. “Even in the temporarily occupied districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the separatists are being kept in power only thanks to Russian bayonets.”
Celebrating, remembering
The Ukrainian government commemorated the start of its 25th year of independence from Moscow on August 24 by hosting a march of the nation’s top soldiers along the Khreshchatyk and awarding Anti-Terrorist Operation commanders honorary battle flags. Though it dropped the display of armaments and hardware as was the case in the previous year’s parade, the Ukrainian government emphasized the military theme, which remains relevant as Russian-backed terrorists continue to engage in daily attacks on Ukrainian military and civilian targets.
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President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland addresses the Verkhovna Rada on April 9.
“It was you who made an attack deep into Ukraine impossible for the enemy, who – besides the Anschluss of Crimea and Sevastopol – tried, attempted and planned to annex at a minimum eight other Ukrainian regions in the framework of the so-called Novorossiya project,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a pre-Independence Day speech on August 22 to soldiers at the Chuhuyiv Airfield in the Kharkiv region. “It was you who freed from the occupants a large part of Ukrainian Donbas and contained the fighters in the southeastern districts of these two regions [Donetsk and Luhansk]. It’s you who, in tightly closing off the fighting lines, are holding the defense against the aggressor with an impenetrable fortress. Thanks to you, the price of a likely Russian attack became so high that even the most intoxicated Russian minds sobered up. But that doesn’t insure us against a large-scale escalation of military activity in the east, the likelihood of which grows with Independence Day.”
Speaking on August 24 during the March of Independence in central Kyiv, the president said: “Russian aggression has become a catalyst of our unity. We have been completely formed as a single Ukrainian political nation.” He emphasized that “today, we are stronger than yesterday. …We cannot be enslaved or broken. We were born free on our land. And we are ready to defend it until the end at any cost.” He added these words of caution: “We have to walk through the 25th year of independence as if we are on a thin ice. We should understand: the slightest misstep can be fatal. The war for independence still continues. And one can win it by combining defensive efforts, diplomatic skills, political responsibility and iron self-control.”
On November 28, Holodomor Remembrance Day, Mr. Poroshenko spoke of those he called “people of the truth,” who “broke through the tight blockage of deception and disinformation in which Moscow held Ukraine and the whole world for decades.” Among these people he cited Robert Conquest, James Mace, Lydia Kovalenko and Volodymyr Maniak. He continued: “The truth pierced its way to the people. See how Ukraine has changed over the last two, three, four years. According to today’s sociological research, 80 percent of Ukrainians consider the Holodomor an act of genocide. Such an assessment prevails throughout Ukraine without any exception – in the east and in the west.”
The president also pointed to a historic continuity: Russia’s “hatred of Ukraine and the uncontrollable desire to destroy us, Ukrainians, as a separate nation.” He added, “In this historical continuity, the Holodomor is nothing but a manifestation of a centuries-old hybrid war against Ukraine waged by Russia. Whether they take our grain or fire Grad rockets at our land, their goal remains the same and it is clear.”
Moving Westward
As Ukraine tried to move Westward during 2015, the Eastern Partnership summit in Riga on May 21-22 revealed the European Union had lost the boldness it demonstrated in Vilnius in November 2013, when its participants ostracized President Yanukovych for declining to sign the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. After the military aggression demonstrated by the Russian government since then, EU leaders haddemonstrated heightened caution, refraining from any direct condemnations of Russia and mutedly encouraging the six post-Soviet member states on their Euro-integration efforts. In the summit’s joint declaration, the EU refrained from making clearer Ukraine’s prospects for membership, let alone offering visa-free travel regimes. For the first time, the declaration referred to “trilateral consultations” on the Ukraine-EU Free Trade Area, calling the January 1, 2016, launch date “provisional.”
The declaration “reads like a successful sting operation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB),” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, wrote on May 26, describing the summit as a “disaster” for Ukraine. The consensus among numerous political observers was that Ukraine remains on track for Euro-integration, but both the Russians and the Ukrainians themselves had succeeded in dampening the enthusiasm. “The EU is tired of Ukraine’s desire to gain political results without real work,” said Bohdan Yaremenko, a Ukrainian diplomat and head of the Maidan Foreign Affairs Fund.
Andrey Kravchenko/UNIAN
Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko carries her files at the early morning session of the Verkhovna Rada on December 25, 2015, when the 2016 central budget was approved. Afterwards, she said she’s not sure if the International Monetary Fund will approve of the changes made.
However, the EU and Ukraine did sign a 1.8 billion-euro ($2 billion) loan deal to help revive Ukraine’s ailing economy. The Associated Press reported the agreement, part of the EU’s Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) program, would require Ukraine to adopt a series of reforms, including anti-corruption measures, to remedy structural problems in its economy. The agreement brought the total amount of EU assistance to Ukraine in the past two years to about 6 billion euros. Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko told journalists that the EU support was “critical” to her country. “This third macro-financial assistance package is the largest to date… and a testament to the EU’s belief that Ukraine can and will steer through this challenging period and progress along our path of reform and transformation,” she said.
Poland continued to be a strong supporter of Ukraine during 2015. On April 9, President Bronislaw Komorowski addressed the Verkhovna Rada, stating that Poland has “stretched out its hand to Ukraine and is doing everything – and will do everything – so that other states and peoples of the free Western world stretch their hands out to Ukraine as well.” According to RFE/RL, he also underscored that “Poland’s outstretched hand is not just an indication of the current political trend but our understanding of the historic processes turning Ukraine into an equal and extremely important partner and neighbor.” Without mentioning Russia by name, the Polish president pointed clearly at Moscow and stressed that the West must understand the importance of Ukraine’s security. “One cannot tolerate that the aggressor’s soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers and anti-aircraft installations are present in Ukraine’s east,” he said, adding that “only the blind cannot see their lies today.”
President Komorowski also said that European Union nations recognize Ukraine’s territory in borders established by 1991, reiterating the EU’s refusal to accept the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea by Russia. “The changes of borders against the will of the Ukrainian nation will never be accepted by us and will always be condemned by us.”
Mr. Komorowski’s successor as president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, visited Kyiv on December 14-15. Mr. Duda went to great lengths to demonstrate Poland’s commitment to Ukraine. He announced that he will advocate for Mr. Poroshenko and his delegation to “have a seat at the table” at the next NATO summit, which will occur in Warsaw in early July 2016. In the context of their plans to relaunch a presidential consultation committee to discuss projects and initiatives, the two leaders agreed on settling remaining conflicts over culture in order to ensure regional cooperation on crucial issues of security and defense. “In giving deep honor to the victims of the tragic pages of history, the common responsibility of Ukraine and Poland is to ensure their descendants a peaceful present day. We reached full agreement on this issue,” the Ukrainian president noted.
Among the other key agreements to emerge from the talks was a 1 billion euro currency swap – exchanging that equivalent in Polish zloty and Ukrainian hryvni – in what was described by Mr. Poroshenko as an effort to enhance Polish and Ukrainian trade upon the January 1 launch of the Ukraine-EU Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. The Polish leadership also agreed to offer consultations to the Ukrainian government and business for the free trade area’s launch, and even offered the Polish market as a springboard from which to promote Ukrainian products on the European market.
As for cultural issues, Mr. Poroshenko lauded the cooperation that had begun between Polish and Ukrainian Institutes of National Memory. In the past, Russia has manipulated tragic chapters of history, such as the Volyn massacres of 1943, to ignite enmity between Poles and Ukrainians. “The Ukrainian side is ready for a frank and constructive dialogue on the pages of our common history, and we agreed for this to occur in the framework of our consultation committee,” the Ukrainian president said. “History has taught us well that when Ukrainians and Poles argue, a third party benefits. I am sure we won’t allow that. And our approach will be very responsible.”
Ukraine at the United Nations
On September 17, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.N. Yuriy Sergeyev tweeted that thus far 70 countries of the U.N. General Assembly’s 193 members are in favor of stripping Russia of its veto power on the U.N. Security Council.
On September 17, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.N. Yuriy Sergeyev tweeted that thus far 70 countries of the U.N. General Assembly’s 193 members were in favor of stripping Russia of its veto power on the U.N. Security Council. In a resolution unanimously adopted on September 16, the Ukrainian Parliament called for urgent reform of the Security Council, in which Russia holds veto powers as one of the five permanent members. It said the veto has too often been used to “cover up the crime of aggression by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.”
On September 4, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told Voice of America that Russia should be stripped of its veto power on the Security Council. In his address to the U.N. General Assembly on September 29, Mr. Poroshenko stated: “Abuse of the veto right – its usage as a ‘license to kill’ – is unacceptable. … Ukraine stands for the gradual limitation of the veto right with its further cancellation. Veto power should not become an act of grace and pardon for the crime, which could be used anytime and ‘pulled off from the sleeve’ in order to avoid fair punishment.” He noted that since the beginning of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Russia had used its veto on the Security Council twice when that body was considering questions related to Ukraine.
It was highly significant that Ukraine on October 15 won a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council for the 2016-2017 term as the representative of Eastern Europe. Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who traveled to New York to campaign for his country’s election, said Ukraine has a broader global agenda but that its tone with Russia will “definitely not be conciliatory.” He added, “For the first time, we have an absolutely unique, unimaginable situation… that a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council is an aggressor in Ukraine, waging a hybrid war against Ukraine.”
Local elections held nationwide
Our Kyiv correspondent wrote of the October 25 nationwide local elections that, “Exhausted by war, economic depression and ongoing government corruption, Ukrainians turned out less-than-expected to elect their local councils and council heads.” As expected, the Solidarity Petro Poroshenko Bloc performed well, finishing in the top two parties on most councils in western and central Ukraine. The youth-oriented Samopomich performed surprisingly well, earning seats in the nation’s six largest city councils. On the other hand, Euro-Maidan persecutors were re-elected mayors of numerous cities in southeastern Ukraine, including Kharkiv and Odesa.
Voter turnout was 46.6 percent, far lower than the 60 to 74 percent projected by various experts. “The low turnout at the elections means Ukrainians believe in neither the government nor the opposition. No one without exception,” Serhiy Rudenko, a veteran political observer at the Espreso television network, wrote on his Facebook page. “The absence of tangible reforms, the further decline in quality of life, the prolonged war in Donbas – all this has already fed up Ukrainians.”
Restructuring Ukraine’s debt
Kyiv reached a debt-restructuring deal with a group of international creditors under which part of its debt will be written off. RFE/RL reported that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk said on August 27 that investors who own Ukraine’s bonds will write off 20 percent of their holdings, shrinking $18 billion in sovereign debt to $15.5 billion. The deal will also extend the payment period on the government bonds by four years through 2027. Finance Minister Jaresko, who was widely lauded for the deal, said Kyiv will use the saved 20 percent to spend on social welfare and national defense. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the agreement will “help restore debt sustainability and – together with the authorities’ policy reform efforts – will substantively meet the objectives” set by an IMF bailout program. She also appealed to other bondholders to endorse the deal.
Our correspondent Mr. Zawada explained that the main success of the debt restructuring was that it postponed the first debt payments to 2019. This enabled the government to avoid a possible default, as well as continue building its international reserves, which are critical for supporting the hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency. “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is elated with this agreement because it means its Ukraine program will be fully financed, while Ukraine is elated because it won’t have to pay anything for the next four years. By then, the Ukrainian economy will be in an entirely different condition, I hope,” said Dr. Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington.
However, the threat remained that Russia, which declined to participate in the debt-restructuring agreement, would insist Ukraine pay its debt by the end of the year. It was then-President Yanukovych who in 2013 took on a loan of $3 billion from Russia, which was offered as an incentive for Ukraine not to move toward the European Union. Now that loan was a danger, since Russia threatened to bloc future IMF funds to Ukraine if its loan was not fully paid back by the end of December 2015. Russia said on December 9 that it would take Ukraine to court if it defaulted on the payment. Kyiv responded by saying it was ready to fight Moscow in court.
And, at the end of the year…
As 2015 came to a close, Russia issued a new banknote dedicated to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed illegally by the Kremlin in 2014. RFE/RL reported that the new banknote, worth 100 rubles ($1.41 U.S.), depicts a memorial to sunken ships in the port of Sevastopol, where Russia keeps its Black Sea Fleet, and the Swallow’s Nest, a clifftop castle near Yalta. The yellow-colored note also features a watermark of Empress Catherine the Great, who extended the borders of the Russian Empire in the 18th century to absorb Crimea. Russia’s central bank said in a statement it would issue 20 million of the new notes.
There was news that highly destructive computer malware infected power authorities in Ukraine and caused a power failure that affected hundreds of thousands of homes on December 23, leaving about half of the homes in the Ivano-Frankivsk region without electricity. Researchers from the security firm iSIGHT Partners, who studied samples of the malicious code that infected at least three regional operators, confirmed the malware led to “destructive events” that in turn caused the blackout. “It’s a milestone,” John Hultquist of iSIGHT told Arstechnica.com. “It’s the major scenario we’ve all been concerned about for so long.” Trend Micro researcher Kyle Wilhoit told Reuters: “This is the first time we have proof and can tie malware to a particular outage. It is pretty scary.” Antivirus provider ESET said multiple Ukrainian power authorities were infected by “BlackEnergy,” a package discovered in 2007 that has been repeatedly updated to include new destructive functions. A Moscow-backed group, Sandworm, is suspected of using it for targeted attacks.
The leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine renewed their support for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. The office of the French presidency said in a statement on December 30 that the four leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to the “concerted withdrawal without delay of heavy weapons.” German Chancellor Merkel, French President Hollande, Russian President Putin and Ukrainian President Poroshenko reportedly spoke by phone for two hours. The four leaders emphasized the need to follow through on the Minsk peace accords over the coming year, including preparations for local elections at the start of 2016 in areas of eastern Ukraine held by pro-Russian rebels.
Finally, as January 1, 2016, approached – the date that the free trade agreement between Ukraine and the European Union was to go into effect – last-ditch negotiations aimed at addressing Russia’s concerns and its demands that its trade interests be taken into account, ended without result. The trade deal went ahead after the parliaments of all 28 member states of the European Union had ratified the EU Association Agreement with Ukraine, a milestone that had been attained on November 20.