News

Activists call for united front against Ukraine’s corrupt oligarchs

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KYIV – If there’s anything that Ukrainians can agree on, it’s that the country’s headed for an enormous crisis next year that promises to alter the current state of affairs, particularly the ongoing domination of the nation’s corrupt oligarchy. Not only have Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk failed to pursue structural reforms or rein in the oligarchs, but they’ve been exposed in corrupt schemes, and so have the entourages they brought with them. Increasingly, prominent figures such as Donbas oligarch Serhiy Taruta are warning of political-economic collapse within months. “We’ve already passed the bifurcation point of where we can’t doubt it any longer – there’s no possibility of survival in this existing model,” said Yuriy Romanenko, the director of the Strategema Center of Political Analysis in Kyiv. The big question now is what the new model will look like.

Letters to the Editor

A response to Fedynsky’s column on immigration

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Dear Editor:

In his “Immigration” column (October 25), Andrew Fedynsky expressed his shame for those of us who have found long-awaited relief in Donald Trump’s brave stand on immigration. Perhaps he should examine some facts instead of relying on emotions. In the July 6, 1948, issue of The Ukrainian Weekly (the year that Mr. Fedynsky arrived in America), the columnist G.H. penned a column called, “Americans First.”

“There is gratitude owed to America by the immigrant and his descendants, gratitude and undivided loyalty, which demand him to be American first,” he wrote. Compare that with the 60 percent of Muslim Americans under age 30 who said they’re more loyal to Islam than America, according to a poll conducted in 2007 by the Pew Research Center. Let’s examine another excerpt from G.H.’s 1948 column.

News

Tatar activists disrupt electricity to Crimea

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KYIV – Crimean Tatars last weekend 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. Authorities declared a state of emergency on the morning of November 22. 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. Half of the peninsula’s supermarkets were closed, while schools and nurseries were closed on Monday. “Putin was caught with his pants down,” said Petro Oleshchuk, a political science lecturer at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv.

News

Two years after Euro-Maidan’s dispersal, still no criminal convictions of perpetrators

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KYIV – It’s been two years since the launch of the Euro-Maidan protests in November 2013 that sent geopolitical tremors around the globe. The authorities’ crackdown on the three-month revolt that became known as the Revolution of Dignity claimed 121 lives and injured more than 2,000, including law enforcement officers. Yet not a single criminal conviction has come as a result of the violent events, according to a report on the Euro-Maidan investigations presented to reporters on November 17 by Serhii Horbatiuk, the head of the special investigations unit of the Procurator General’s Office (PGO) of Ukraine. Although 270 criminal cases have been opened against law enforcement officials – including judges, prosecutors and investigators – none of them have been punished, Mr. Horbatiuk indicated in his remarks, without saying so directly. Additionally, no one from the government of former President Viktor Yanukovych has been charged with a crime related to the Euro-Maidan.

News

New round of Western criticism targets Procurator-General Shokin

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KYIV – Ukrainians eagerly anticipating a visa-free regime with the European Union were dealt two major setbacks on November 5 as the result of their government’s actions. The Verkhovna Rada failed to muster enough votes to support legislation, required by the EU for a visa-free regime, which would forbid workplace discrimination based on race, political position, religion, gender identity and sexual orientation. That same afternoon, the EU Delegation to Ukraine informed one of its Ukrainian partners that it is refraining from financing Ukraine’s attempt to create the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, another requirement for the visa-free regime. “The trust in the final outcome of the procedure depends on the integrity and credibility of all steps leading to it,” stated a letter written on November 4 by an EU delegation official that was published on the pravda.com.ua news site. “In this context, we very much hope that concerns raised with regard to some people who participate in the selection will be soon duly addressed, thus allowing the completion of the technical part of the selection with assistance from the EU.”

At the center of those whose integrity and credibility have been called into question is Ukraine’s Procurator General Viktor Shokin – an increasing target of criticism by high-ranking Western officials – after he resisted EU recommendations that he replace the four prosecutors he had appointed to a commission to establish a Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.

News

Kolomoisky ally Korban is arrested

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KYIV – Ukrainian authorities on October 31 arrested and detained Hennadiy Korban, a longtime business associate and political confidante of Igor Kolomoisky, Ukraine’s second-biggest oligarch. Arrested at his home in Dnipropetrovsk, Mr. Korban was 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. He added that he had no involvement in any kidnappings. Mr. Korban’s arrest sparked mixed reactions among the public, which has been waiting for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to prosecute crimes committed by the oligarchs, particularly those of the Yanukovych entourage.

News

Local elections held with lower-than-expected turnout

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Euro-Maidan opponents re-elected

KYIV – Exhausted by war, economic depression and ongoing government corruption, Ukrainians turned out less-than-expected to elect their local councils and heads on October 25. Tallies conducted locally were still being registered by the Central Election Commission on October 29 but observers were already drawing conclusions. 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 Self-Reliance (Samopomich) party 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.

News

Complicated local election rules draw wide criticism in Ukraine

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KYIV – Just as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko failed to ensure open party list voting in the 2014 parliamentary elections, now the local elections to take place on October 25 will also occur without genuine open party lists, which is widely considered the optimal voting system for Ukraine. Instead, Ukraine’s Parliament in July approved an election system that is a complex mutation of single-mandate voting and closed party lists, which most voters will not understand when casting their ballots, political observers said. “The system is the most complicated of all that existed in Ukraine,” said Serhii Vasylchenko, the board chairman of the Ukrainian Center for Social Data. “The citizens don’t understand it. State officials don’t understand it.

News

U.S. officials criticize Ukraine’s prosecutors for failure of reforms

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KYIV – High-ranking U.S. officials have targeted the Procurator General’s Office of Ukraine for criticism in recent weeks for actively obstructing government reform efforts. Most recently, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland called for an overhaul of the body, more than a year after Petro Poroshenko assumed the presidency and vowed to support reforms. He has since appointed two procurator generals who have strongly disappointed the public. Most of the top officials of the Yanukovych administration remain at large, while few of their subordinates have been brought to trial, let alone convicted. Corrupt businessmen and politicians remain active in Ukraine, even those widely suspected of supporting the Russian-backed terrorists in Donbas. “Like Ukraine’s police force, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) has to be reinvented as an institution that serves the citizens of Ukraine, rather than ripping them off,” Ms. Nuland said in her October 8 testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

News

Ukraine, Russia agree to remove arms, cancel Donbas elections

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KYIV – 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 in the next few weeks, with plans to hold elections in the occupied territories next year. The meeting also succeeded in extending the ceasefire that has been in effect since September 1 with few injuries and casualties. It 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 under a special law to be drafted. Ongoing disagreements were apparent after the talks. Ukrainian President Petro 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.