RFE/RL via Facebook/Anton Gerashchenko
Mark Paslawsky, “Franko,” who was killed in action in eastern Ukraine on August 19.
Then, a week later, the Verkhovna Rada voted to approve amendments to the budget and tax code that it had rejected earier, and it refused to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk. Mr. Yatsenyuk pushed to get Ukrainian citizens to foot a larger bill for the armed forces and the reconstruction of ruined infrastructure in the Donbas region. In particular, he targeted the biggest businessmen. As a result of the July 31 legislation, Mr. Yatsenyuk would be able to secure the next loan package of $1 billion from the International Monetary Fund and $500 million from the World Bank, expected to be issued in late August. Mr. Yatsenyuk and his Cabinet were to remain in their posts until after pre-term parliamentary elections were held.
Also in late July, the European Union and the United States unveiled their toughest measures yet against Russia over its support for separatists fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine. European Council President von Rompuy said the measures will restrict access to EU capital markets for Russian state-owned banks, impose an embargo on trade in arms, and restrict exports of dual-use goods and sensitive technologies, particularly in the field of the oil sector. The U.S. Treasury Department added three banks to a list of sectoral sanctions and sanctioned one shipbuilding company in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The EU on July 29, and again on September 8, November 27 and December 18, added the names of more individuals and entities to a growing list of those subject to sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. By year’s end, the European Union’s lists of sanctions had expanded to over 120 individuals and some 30 entities.
The sanctions were upped due to Russia’s role in the conflict in Ukraine and the holding of illegitimate elections in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts on November 2. President Poroshenko, it should be noted, depicted those elections as “a farce at gunpoint” organized by “terrorist organizations” and underscored that they were not an expression of the people’s will. Nonetheless, the newly “elected” leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DNR and LNR) were sworn into office.
Before those “elections” were held, President Poroshenko had travelled to Minsk on August 26 for the trilateral summit that included leaders of Ukraine, the European Union and the Eurasian troika (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan). The meeting participants discussed how to end the war, a new natural gas agreement and the remaining issues surrounding the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. The players reached only minor arrangements, which consisted of consultations between the Ukrainian and Russian joint chiefs of staff and border agencies to address the war, activating the work of a trilateral contact group to produce a road map for peace and renewing gas talks.
Mr. Poroshenko also met one-on-one with Mr. Putin. The two failed to agree to de-escalate the Donbas war or even seriously discuss a ceasefire. Mr. Poroshenko reminded Mr. Putin of the need to release all hostages, as well as to close the border to transfers of arms and military hardware from Russia. These demands fell on deaf ears. While he shook hands with Mr. Poroshenko with one hand, Mr. Putin was escalating the armed fighting with the other as the Russian forces accelerated the delivery of military hardware, arms and fighters, according to the press service of the Ukrainian government’s ATO. Those reports were confirmed by the U.S. government. “The new columns of Russian tanks and heavy armaments that are crossing Ukraine’s border are evidence that a direct counteroffensive has already begun,” tweeted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on August 26, during the Minsk summit.
On September 5, agreement on a second ceasefire for Ukraine’s east was reached in Minsk between former President Leonid Kuchma, representing the Ukrainian government, and the self-proclaimed leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.” Among its 12 points were ceasing warfare, exchanging hostages and withdrawing Russian soldiers and hardware. The Russians nonetheless continued their offensive, reportedly shelling the outskirts of Mariupol with mortar fire, shooting up the Donetsk airport under Ukrainian control and evacuating a village outside of Debaltseve in the Donetsk region in preparation for an attack on the town, our Kyiv correspondent reported in The Weekly’s September 14 issue. In that same issue, a report from the Eurasia Daily Monitor headlined “Mariupol says no to Novorossiya” noted the failure of Mr. Putin’s Novorossiya project to attract popular support in southeastern Ukraine. Another RFE/RL report, dated October 8, noted that there is not even the pretense of honoring the truce that was supposed to pave the way for ending the conflict, as night after night, “separatists near the airport shell army positions inside the airport perimeter, and the soldiers respond with fire of their own.”
There was some good news in the realm of education, as President Poroshenko on July 31 signed into law the bill “On Higher Education” passed by the Verkhovna Rada on July 1. The legislation was described by political observers as the first comprehensive, structural reform to be achieved since the Euro-Maidan movement. Among the legislation’s biggest changes were provisions to involve universities in autonomously recognizing foreign diplomas and degrees (without ministry involvement); remove barriers for foreign professors, university faculty and students electing their rectors; and enhance university autonomy in managing finances. The reforms draw Ukrainian higher education closer to European principles and standards, said Marta Farion, the president of the Kyiv-Mohyla Foundation of America. She particularly credited the “perseverance and drive” of current Education and Science Minister Serhiy Kvit (previously president of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), National Technical University of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute Rector Mykhailo Zhurovskyi and Parliamentary Committee on Education and Science Chair Lilia Hrynevych, who is also the deputy chair of the Batkivshchyna party. “These are changes that will affect generations to come. The law makes it possible to separate politics from education and to integrate higher education with the world’s academic and research community, making it possible for Ukrainian universities to comply with ranking standards on an international level,” said Ms. Farion.