Kyiv to participate in G-7 meeting
Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister has been invited for the first time to a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Group of Seven countries, which will begin in Toronto on April 22, Ukraine’s Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko has told the Ukrainian Internet newspaper Yevropeiska Pravda. He confirmed that Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin had received an invitation to the meeting from his Canadian counterpart, Chrystia Freeland. “The time has come for serious, strategic decisions on Ukraine and Russia… We are happy that Ukraine will be able to join the difficult but critically needed conversation, and we hope to make a valuable contribution to future joint decisions,” Mr. Shevchenko said. According to him, Ukraine hopes that this conversation will be continued at the upcoming summit of G-7 leaders, which will be held in Charlevoix, Quebec, in June. (Interfax-Ukraine)
Merkel on Nord Stream 2
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that a new natural-gas pipeline linking Russia with Germany cannot go ahead without clarity on Ukraine’s role as a gas transit route. “I made very clear that a Nord Stream 2 project is impossible without clarity on the future transit role of Ukraine,” Ms. Merkel said at a news conference with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Berlin on April 10. She said that “it is not just an economic issue but there are also political considerations.” The chancellor had in the past called Nord Stream 2 a purely “economic project” with no need for political intervention. Nord Stream 2, which is to run from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany – the European Union’s biggest economy – would double the existing Nord Stream pipeline’s annual capacity of 55 billion cubic meters. But critics argue it will increase dependence on Russia and enrich its state-owned energy companies at a time when Moscow stands accused of endangering European security. Ms. Merkel said she had told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call on April 9, “It cannot be that through Nord Stream 2 Ukraine has no further importance regarding the transit of gas.” She insisted that Ukraine relied heavily on income from transit fees. In an interview with German business daily Handelsblatt on April 9, Mr. Poroshenko urged Berlin to abandon plans to build Nord Stream 2, saying it would enable an “economic and energy blockade” against Ukraine and blasting it as “political bribe money for loyalty to Russia.” He accused Russia of being an “extremely unreliable partner” as a gas supplier, citing state-owned energy firm Gazprom’s refusal to pay Ukraine billions of dollars after shutting off supplies in the middle of winter. Poland and the Baltics oppose Nord Stream 2, and U.S. officials have spoken out against it. In Warsaw in January, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that “the United States opposes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” adding, “We see it as undermining Europe’s overall energy security and stability and providing Russia yet another tool to politicize energy as a political tool.” (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters and AFP)
Savchenko’s home, office searched
Ukrainian law enforcement officers have searched the home and office of lawmaker Nadiya Savchenko, who is in jail pending trial on charges of plotting a terrorist attack on Parliament with grenades and automatic weapons. Two lawyers for Ms. Savchenko, Dmytro Buhay and Oleh Solovey, said that Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officers conducted the searches on April 10. Ms. Savchenko’s mother, Maria Savchenko, said the officers confiscated a pistol that her daughter received as an award as well as some ammunition for the gun. SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlyanska said that the searches were linked to investigations into Ms. Savchenko, a former military aviator who spent two years in Russian prison before returning home in a swap connected to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. A court in Kyiv placed Ms. Savchenko under two-month pretrial arrest on March 23, a day after fellow lawmakers voted to strip her of her immunity from prosecution and authorized her arrest. Ms. Savchenko and Volodymyr Ruban are accused of plotting to overthrow the government, carry out a “large-scale terrorist attack” in central Kyiv, and kill senior officials. Mr. Ruban was detained earlier in March while crossing into government-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, allegedly with large amounts of weapons and ammunition hidden in a shipment of furniture. Ms. Savchenko maintains her innocence and says her arrest was illegal. Ms. Savchenko says she was abducted in 2014 in the Donbas. She spent two years in prison in Russia, defying the Kremlin with a series of hunger strikes, and returned to a hero’s welcome in Kyiv when she was released as part of a prisoner swap in May 2016. Elected to the Verkhovna Rada on an opposition party ticket while still held prisoner in Russia, Ms. Savchenko became a vehement critic of President Petro Poroshenko’s government after her return. She has drawn fire from several political camps, facing criticism for holding talks with the separatists without government consent and for comments nationalists said indicated she advocated accepting Moscow’s seizure of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. (RFE/RL, with reporting by bykvu.ua, obozrevatel.ua, and pravda.ua)
Tables turned on anti-corruption activists
Ukraine’s revolutionary electronic asset-declaration system has been praised by the country’s Western partners and local anti-corruption activists as a crowning achievement of the post-Maidan government. But those same partners and activists have more recently warned that the transparency project is being undermined and used as a tool to quash the work of government critics. Alarm bells began ringing well before Ukrainian lawmakers on April 3 failed to pass laws that would abolish subsequent e-declaration requirements for activists and NGOs who fight against entrenched corruption that were signed into law by President Petro Poroshenko last summer. Proponents of the NGO requirements argued they were needed to promote transparency. But the U.S. State Department and European Union representatives said otherwise of the NGO requirements, and urged Ukrainian officials to repeal them as soon as possible. They said the requirements would put undue burdens on those NGOs and activists, and hamper their work. “Colleagues, frankly this is one of those days when, unfortunately, I am ashamed of our decisions,” Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy told lawmakers after the failed votes. Lawmaker and anti-corruption campaigner Serhiy Leshchenko said afterwards that Mr. Poroshenko, who had called for the NGO law to be scrapped but failed to get most members of his own political faction and those of its coalition partner to vote to repeal it, was playing a “cynical game” that would “destroy Ukraine’s relations with partners in the West.” Michael Carpenter, the senior director at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and former deputy assistant secretary of defense, tweeted: “If only Ukraine’s politicians showed as much zeal at fighting corruption within their own ranks as they do in going after civil society organizations.” Ukraine’s anti-corruption activists and NGOs were given until April 1 to file their assets and income in e-declarations, or else face prosecution. As expected, attacks meant to discredit the activists began almost immediately afterward, with populist lawmakers taking the lead. Radical Party lawmaker Ihor Mosiychuk called them “foreign agents,” echoing the label assigned by the Russian government to describe NGOs there who receive outside funding. “Those so-called anti-graft activists have been working in Ukraine for foreign money, helping to turn Ukraine into a raw material base for the rest of the world,” Mr. Mosiychuk said, according to the Kyiv Post. (Christopher Miller of RFE/RL)
Russian convicted of joining Azov Battalion
A Moscow court has sentenced a Russian man in absentia after convicting him of fighting against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Roman Zheleznov, who is currently in Ukraine, was found guilty of mercenary activity and sentenced to four years in prison in absentia at a hearing on March 29. Prosecutors said that Mr. Zheleznov had joined the pro-Kyiv Azov Battalion, which has fought against the separatists in the four-year-old war in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russia denies it has sent its soldiers to fight alongside the separatists, despite what Kyiv and NATO say is clear evidence that it has done so. There are no known cases in which Russia has pressed mercenary-activity charges against anyone for joining the separatists, but it has prosecuted citizens accused of fighting on Kyiv’s side. In June 2017, a court in the city of Samara sentenced a local man, Artyom Shirobokov, to five years in prison in absentia after convicting him of joining the Azov Battalion. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Interfax and RIA Novosti)
CPJ defends Azerbaijani journalist
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Ukrainian authorities to “immediately” return the Dutch passport of a journalist who fled his homeland of Azerbaijan a decade ago, and stop any extradition procedures against him. In a statement on April 4, the New York-based media watchdog urged Kyiv’s regional prosecutor’s office to comply with a court’s ruling that Fikret Huseynli be allowed to move freely. “Ukraine must not succumb to the demands of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian regime, which is notorious for persecuting critics both at home and abroad,” CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. On April 2, a Kyiv district court judge ruled that the journalist should not be extradited to Azerbaijan or have his movements restricted. Earlier, Kyiv prosecutor Serhiy Ostapets took Mr. Huseynli’s passport from a court secretary and left the courtroom without waiting to hear the court decision, according to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union. Mr. Huseynli, a correspondent for the independent Azerbaijani online television channel Turan, fled to the Netherlands in early 2008 after he was stabbed, beaten, and left for dead by unknown assailants in Baku in 2006. He was later granted political asylum by the Dutch government and obtained Dutch citizenship. In October 2017, Ukrainian authorities stopped Mr. Huseynli from boarding a flight to Germany at Boryspil International Airport, seizing his documents under an Interpol red notice requested by the Azerbaijani government. It accused him of “crossing a border illegally” and “fraud.” (RFE/RL)
Five killed in train-minibus collision
Authorities in Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Crimea region say five people were killed when a commuter train collided with a minibus on the peninsula. At least three other people were hospitalized with injuries following the April 8 accident, which occurred at a railway crossing in Crimea’s northern city of Armiansk. Two people reportedly were in intensive care. All the dead and wounded were said to be passengers of the minibus. Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by TASS and Interfax)
Ukraine tests new missile system
The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine reported on April 10, “The state tests of the Vilkha missile system were carried out today in the Odesa region. According to secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchynov, the current tests are “the final stage of a large-scale project of Ukrainian scientists, designers and manufacturers.” Mr. Turchynov stressed that after the completion of these large-scale state tests, the Vilkha missile system would be taken on armament, and the Ukrainian defense-industrial complex will launch their mass production. “I want to emphasize that the first stage of the state tests, during which the missiles struck particular targets at the maximum shooting range, was successful – the test program was fully implemented,” the NSDC secretary of said. (Interfax-Ukraine)