Ukrainian Orthodox church firebombed
Unknown assailants firebombed the historic 18th century St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kyiv and attacked a priest early on November 15, a church spokesman said. The attack comes amid rising tensions between Ukraine and Russia over Ukraine’s move to create a national independent Church and sever centuries-old ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Molotov cocktails did not explode and no damage was done to St. Andrew’s Church, which sits on a steep slope on one of Kyiv’s best-known tourist spots. The church spokesman, Archbishop Yevstratiy, said the attackers, of whom police said there were four, used pepper spray against a priest. Kyiv authorities handed over the use of St. Andrew’s to the ecumenical patriarch, the global spiritual leader of Orthodox Christianity who sits in Istanbul, while courting the patriarch’s support for Ukrainian Church independence. “We see that Moscow’s henchmen are dropping clear hints to intimidate representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarch,” Archbishop Yevstratiy said. Ukraine in October secured approval from the ecumenical patriarch to set up an independent Church, a move fiercely opposed by Russia. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said it was “very concerned” by reports of an attack on St. Andrew’s Church. “We support the right of all religious groups to practice their beliefs free from persecution, interference, or attack,” the Embassy said on Twitter. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by AFP and Reuters)
Poroshenko blasts Putin’s comments
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he doesn’t expect any progress toward establishing peace in eastern Ukraine until after Ukrainian elections, which he said he hopes will produce a new president next year. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s office blasted Mr. Putin’s statement on November 15, saying the Russian president is “meddling” in the Ukrainian presidential contest even before it has started. Speaking at a news conference in Singapore, Mr. Putin said efforts by the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine – the so-called Normandy Four – to press for progress carrying out a peace plan forged in the Belarusian capital in 2015 would be “pointless” for the time being. Mr. Putin said he hopes a new presidential administration in Kyiv next year will dedicate itself to peacefully resolving the conflict between the government and Moscow-backed separatists that has killed more than 10,300 people since 2014. “The current Ukrainian authorities have not shown any desire to implement the Minsk agreements – they are not doing anything to implement them, nothing is happening,” Mr. Putin said, claiming that as long as the Poroshenko administration remains in power “a peaceful resolution of issues in these territories can hardly be counted on.” Ukrainian presidential press secretary Sviatoslav Tseholko wrote on Facebook that Mr. Poroshenko wants a peaceful settlement in eastern Ukraine, but “will never agree on peace on the terms of an aggressor country.” Kyiv and Western governments accuse Russia of providing arms and troops to help the Ukrainian separatists, and say that Russia is not carrying out its part of the Minsk peace plan by withdrawing that support. The Kremlin denies the accusations. (RFE/RL, with reporting by DPA and Interfax)
Yanukovych trial postponed
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s treason trial in Kyiv has been postponed due to his hospitalization in Russia. Judge Vladyslav Devyatko of the Obolon district court in Kyiv ruled on November 19 that the trial will resume on December 5 and Mr. Yanukovych is expected to make his final statement via video link, even from his hospital bed if he is still ill. Mr. Yanukovych was scheduled to make his statement in the case via video link from Russia on November 19, but his lawyer, Oleksandr Horoshynskyy, said his client’s current physical state did not allow him to do so. Mr. Horoshynskyy said earlier on November 18 that Mr. Yanukovych received emergency treatment at a Moscow hospital on November 16 for injuries to his spine and his knee. Mr. Horoshynskyy is one of two lawyers representing the exiled Mr. Yanukovych at his trial in absentia in Kyiv. Prosecutors in Kyiv are seeking life imprisonment for the ex-president on charges of high treason, taking deliberate actions that violated Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and complicity with Russian authorities. Dozens of people were killed when Mr. Yanukovych’s government attempted to clamp down on the pro-European Union protests known as the Euro-Maidan. Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster was soon followed by Russia’s seizure and illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and by Moscow’s support for pro-Russia separatists fighting against Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Ukrayinska Pravda and Gordon)
Hungary’s conditions for Ukraine-NATO
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on November 19 that Budapest will continue to block meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission at a ministerial level, amid a diplomatic spat between the two neighbors. However, Mr. Szijjarto also said that his country would give its consent to the Ukrainian foreign affairs minister attending a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled for next month if Georgia’s top diplomat also participates. Relations between Hungary and its eastern neighbor began deteriorating last year after a language bill was approved by Kyiv that Budapest said limited ethnic Hungarians’ rights to receive education in their mother tongue. Since March 2017, Hungary has blocked all the meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission – the key format for bilateral cooperation between Kyiv and the Western military alliance – at all levels above that of ambassadors. “We cannot lift our veto when it comes to the NATO-Ukraine Commission meetings because there was no forward progress,” Mr. Szijjarto told RFE/RL in Brussels. He also said that Hungary would not oppose inviting Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin to NATO’s ministerial meeting set for December 4-5 in Brussels if his Georgian counterpart also attends. At the NATO summit in July, the alliance created a special format in which the presidents of both Georgia and Ukraine were invited in order not to exclude Kyiv from the meeting. The diplomatic spat between Hungary and Ukraine escalated in September, when an undercover video emerged that appeared to show a Hungarian diplomat in Ukraine handing out passports to ethnic Hungarians. Kyiv responded by expelling the Hungarian consul in Zakarpattia, prompting Budapest in turn to expel a Ukrainian consul in Hungary. In October, Budapest summoned Kyiv’s ambassador to protest what it called a “death list” targeting ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine as well as military movements on their common border. (Rikard Jozwiak of RFE/RL)
EU to sanction five over Donbas vote
The European Union is set to add five individuals involved in the organization of the elections in the areas controlled by Russia-backed “separatists” in eastern Ukraine to its sanctions list, according to sources in Brussels. The bloc’s foreign affairs ministers were due to agree to the move when they met in the Belgian capital on November 19, several EU sources familiar with the matter who could not speak on the record told RFE/RL on November 15. A formal decision is expected to be taken later in the month, they also said. The five individuals would join 155 other people from Russia and Ukraine who are currently subject to EU asset freezes and travel bans. The bloc has also frozen the assets of 44 entities from both countries since Moscow’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region in March 2014 and its support for militants in a conflict that has killed more than 10,300 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. Kyiv and its international backers, including the European Union and the United States, denounced the November 11 polls in the areas held by the separatists in the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions as a sham. They say the elections to choose the leaders in the two regions will further hamper efforts to put an end to the fighting between Ukrainian government forces and the separatists. However, Moscow argues that the vote didn’t violate the Minsk agreements signed in September 2014 and February 2015, laying out steps for settling the conflict. (Rikard Jozwiak of RFE/RL)
Pushilin vows closer Russia integration
The newly elected leader of the Donetsk “people’s republic” controlled by Moscow-backed militants in eastern Ukraine has promised closer integration with Russia following polls denounced as a sham by Kyiv and the West. “A course toward the Russian Federation will be continued,” Denis Pushilin, the head of the separatists in the DPR, said on November 14 in his first media appearance since the weekend elections. “This is not only cultural and social integration, but also economic,” he said. “We have already learned to live without Ukraine.” The “separatists” said on November 14 that the polls in Donetsk and Luhansk endorsed the two men who were already acting as leaders – 37-year-old Mr. Pushilin and 48-year-old Leonid Pasechnik. The previous separatist leader in Donetsk, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, died in an explosion in August. Moscow pointed the finger at Ukraine, while Kyiv blamed internal fighting between the separatists and “their Russian sponsors.” Kyiv’s Central Election Commission dismissed the results of what it said were “illegal” votes in Donetsk and Luhansk and said the polls were simply an excuse for Moscow to cement its grip on the regions. The United States and other Western countries have condemned the elections as a “sham” and “illegal.” However, the Kremlin said the regions had “nothing left but to self-organize” after being “abandoned” by Ukraine. (RFE/RL, with reporting by AFP and Interfax)
Hryb refuses to testify at Russia trial
A 20-year-old Ukrainian man charged with abetting terrorism has refused to testify at his trial in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. “I am not guilty and refuse to give any testimonies,” Pavlo Hryb told the North Caucasus Regional Military Court where the trial resumed on November 15. Mr. Hryb, whose family contends he was set up by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), went on trial on July 23, but the court halted it after finding that the formal charge against the defendant was based on a clause of the Criminal Code that had not been in place at the time of the alleged crime. Prosecutors sent the case back to the court in October after correcting what Russian media called a “procedural mistake.” Mr. Hryb went missing in August 2017 after he traveled to Belarus to meet a woman he met online. Relatives believe he walked into a trap set by the FSB, which later told Ukraine that Mr. Hryb was being held in a detention center in Russia on suspicion of abetting terrorism. Russian investigators accuse Mr. Hryb of using the Internet to instruct a teenage girl in Russia’s southern city of Sochi to carry out a terrorist act using an explosive device. The young man’s father, Ihor Hryb, has argued that the case against his son was Russian retaliation for Internet posts that were openly critical of Russia’s interference in Ukraine. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by TASS and Interfax)
March for transgender rights canceled
Activists for transgender rights were forced to disband a demonstration in Kyiv after counterdemonstrators assaulted several protesters and attacked a Canadian journalist trying to cover the event. The organizers of the event criticized Ukrainian police for failing to protect about 40 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights activists who had planned to gather in Shevchenko Park on November 18 for a legally sanctioned march through the streets of the Ukrainian capital coinciding with International Transgender Remembrance Day. The demonstrators, who were holding rainbow flags and banners with slogans such as “Transphobia must be stopped,” were forced to relocate to a nearby location after about 100 “religious radicals and far-right groups” arrived in the park for a counterdemonstration. The counterdemonstrators included members of the far-right groups Tradition and Order, Right Sector and the Religious National Front. LGBT rights activists who moved their gathering place by two blocks to a location near Kyiv’s University subway station were followed by a small group of counterdemonstrators who confronted them by shouting slurs and setting off smoke bombs. Ukrainian police did not try to remove the counterdemonstrators, but shoved the LGBT rights activists through turnstiles of the subway station while swearing at them and shouting slurs. The police officers then blocked the entrance to protesters to avoid further clashes. An RFE/RL correspondent saw two female activists who remained on the street being physically assaulted by the counterdemonstrators. The two women were attacked with pepper spray and were given first aid at the scene, according to the AFP news agency. Canadian journalist Michael Colborne was also assaulted with pepper spray and punched in the face by two counterdemonstrators near the metro station, suffering a swollen lip and cuts on his face from his broken glasses. Police said they have opened an investigation into the attack on Mr. Colborne, classifying the assault as hooliganism, and said officers were searching for the two suspects. Mr. Colborne tweeted that the attack against him was “further proof” that Ukraine “has a huge far-right problem,” and that Ukrainian officials should “stop downplaying it.” In a tweet later on November 18, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Kateryna Zelenko said that “attacks on journalists, like any manifestations of intolerance and violence, are considered unacceptable. We are awaiting the results of the investigation by law enforcement organs.” In June, no serious incidents occurred when thousands of activists marched in Kyiv to mark an annual celebration of gay and lesbian rights that had been marred by violence in the past. Police dispersed far-right protesters ahead of that march and detained more than 50 members of radical groups. (Christopher Miller of RFE/RL, with reporting by AFP)
Kremlin warning on Azov shipping
Russia has warned Ukraine that it may take measures to protect Russian ships crossing the Sea of Azov should Kyiv stop or seize any. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call on November 16 that Russia would take measures to protect Russian businesses, sailors or other individuals if necessary. He did not give any further details, saying only that “the situation is being closely monitored.” He said any actions taken would be in line with international maritime law. On November 15, Ukrainian border security spokesman Oleh Slobodyan said that Ukrainian authorities had seized or imposed restrictions on 15 ships heading for Crimean ports. It was not clear how many of those ships were Russian. He claimed the seized ships were illegally operating in Ukrainian waters. Mr. Peskov said that Russian border guards have also been stopping and inspecting Ukrainian vessels in the Sea of Azov, but he claimed such inspections are “permitted” under international law and are taking place “in strict compliance with the law.” Since 2014, when Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula, more than 940 foreign ships have arrived at Crimean ports, the Ukrainian spokesman said. The Sea of Azov borders Russia, Ukraine and Crimea – and this year has become a key flash point between the two sides. Russia has control over access to the Sea of Azov as it controls the Kerch Strait between Crimea and Russia. Kyiv accuses Moscow of harassing ships heading for ports in Ukraine, such as Mariupol or Berdiansk. (RFE/RL, with reporting by DPA, Reuters, Vedomosti.ru, and Interfax)
Jehovah’s Witnesses’ homes searched
Media reports in Russia say more than 30 houses belonging to Jehovah’s Witnesses were searched by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers in the Moscow-annexed Ukrainian region of Crimea. The reports cite FSB officials as saying that the searches were conducted on November 16 in the city of Dzhankoi. An RFE/RL correspondent in Crimea confirmed searches in five homes of local Jehovah’s Witnesses. The leader of the Jehovah’s Witnesses community in Crimea, Sergei Filatov, and several other Jehovah’s Witnesses, including two members of Mr. Filatov’s family, were summoned to the FSB headquarters in Crimea’s capital, Symferopol, on November 16, for questioning. Mr. Filatov was charged with “organizing an extremist community.” Media reports say that Mr. Filatov’s community was run by the Jehovah’s Witnesses group in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and “may be linked to Ukraine’s Security Service.” Earlier that week, Russian media reports said that Jehovah’s Witnesses had been detained and their homes searched in Siberia and the Far East and Urals regions. Last year, Russia’s Supreme Court labeled Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization, banning the denomination from the country. The Moscow-based Memorial human rights center has recognized 62 members of the religious community as political prisoners. According to Memorial, 23 of them are in detention while others are under house arrest. In June, advisers to Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned the legality of criminal cases opened against the Jehovah’s Witnesses, asking the Prosecutor-General’s Office to protect the group’s freedom of belief. Also in June, some 60 Russian writers, historians, and activists signed an appeal calling on authorities to stop persecuting the group. (RFE/RL’s Russian Service)