Yanukovych slams treason conviction
Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s pro-Russia former president, has again rejected his conviction by a Ukrainian court on charges of high treason over attempts to quash a 2014 pro-Western uprising known as the Maidan protests. Speaking at the Moscow headquarters of Russia’s state-run Rossiya Segodnya media agency, Mr. Yanukovych told journalists on February 6 that the verdict and 13-year prison sentence against him at his trial in absentia was “written on the instructions of the [Ukrainian] authorities.” He said pressure on the Kyiv court had been “unprecedented.” Judge Vladyslav Deviatko, of Kyiv’s Obolon District Court, announced the January 24 ruling that Mr. Yanukovych “committed a crime against the foundation of Ukraine’s national security” and was found guilty of “complicity in waging an aggressive war against Ukraine.” Mr. Yanukovych abandoned his office in late February 2014 and fled to Russia in the face of growing protests triggered by his decision to abandon a landmark trade deal with the European Union and, instead, pursue a Russian loan bailout and closer trade ties with Russia. He fled Ukraine just days after dozens of people were killed in and around Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosty, or Independence Square, when his government attempted to clamp down on pro-EU demonstrations. More than 100 people were killed and more than 1,100 people injured in clashes between Maidan protesters and Mr. Yanukovych’s security forces. Some were shot dead by snipers. The dead included 13 members of the security forces. Mr. Yanukovych denies the charges against him, contending that the case against him was politically motivated. “The verdict has nothing to do with the law,” Mr. Yanukovych told journalists in Moscow on February 6. “Everything [in the case] was built up on lies and hatred,” he said. “The mass shootings at the Maidan were organized by the Maidan’s masterminds.” He suggested that “An independent group must be established to investigate the crimes on the Maidan.” He said such an investigatory group should include “the countries that mediated agreements” between his government and opposition leaders in 2014 before his ouster. Those countries included Russia, France, Germany, and Poland. “If such a group had started investigations five years ago, there would have been no catastrophe,” Mr. Yanukovych said, claiming that there “most likely would not have been war” in eastern Ukraine and that “the situation in Crimea would have been different.” Mr. Yanukovych also claimed that European leaders “double-crossed me, betrayed me” and “were and remain responsible” for what happened in Ukraine in 2014. “I would like them to answer my questions publicly,” he said. “Why have I not received any answers from the leaders of those [European] countries to my questions? I have been asking them for many years.” (RFE/RL)
83 file as presidential candidates
Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has completed acceptance of registration documents for the March 31 presidential election, saying 83 candidates have put forth their names. The CEC on February 4 said it had approved 28 of the applications, rejected 22 others, and have left open 33 for consideration. The commission is to officially announce no later than February 9 the final registered list of candidates. Recent polls indicate current President Petro Poroshenko, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky are the likely front-runners. The 53-year-old Poroshenko announced his candidacy on January 29 to seek a second five-year term and has vowed to press for European Union and NATO membership for the country. In what was widely seen as a bid effort to bolster his sagging public support ahead of the election, Mr. Poroshenko spearheaded successful efforts to secure the creation of an independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The 58-year-old Tymoshenko, who announced her presidential bid on January 22, was a leader of the 2004 Orange Revolution but was defeated by Mr. Poroshenko in the 2014 presidential election. Ms. Tymoshenko has presented herself as a pro-NATO, pro-European Union candidate and has declared her backing for the Ukrainian military in the fight against the Russia-backed militants in eastern Ukraine. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters, Kommersant, UNIAN, TASS and Interfax)
Treason probe against Medvedchuk
Authorities in Ukraine say they are investigating allegations that Viktor Medvedchuk, a shadowy Ukrainian political operative with close personal ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, has committed high treason and sought to undermine the country’s territorial integrity. The spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office, Larysa Sarhan, wrote on Facebook on February 5 that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) will investigate the case that was launched following a complaint filed by lawmaker Andriy Teteruk. Mr. Medvedchuk heads the Opposition Platform – For Life party and Ukrainian Choice, two political organizations that many in Ukraine consider to be pro-Kremlin. Mr. Teteruk claimed that Mr. Medvedchuk told his party congress on January 29 that territories controlled by Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine must be granted autonomous status within the country, according to Ms. Sarhan. She cited the Constitution, which stipulates that Ukraine is a “unitary country” and guarantees the country’s “territorial integrity.” The spokeswoman also said that Russia was “conducting aggressive operations against Ukraine” by supplying militants in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with military “personnel, weaponry and other materials.” Granting autonomy to the eastern region known as the Donbas would “legalize temporarily occupied territories,” which would contradict the Ukrainian Constitution and help “a foreign country to conduct sabotage operations against Ukraine,” Ms. Sarhan explained. In a statement, the Opposition Platform – For Life party denounced the accusations against Mr. Medvedchuk as “delusional,” and said the investigation had been ordered by Kyiv’s pro-Western authorities ahead of the presidential election set for March 31. Mr. Medvedchuk is a regular participant in negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,300 people since April 2014. (RFE/RL)
Volker: Russia may face more sanctions
The U.S. special envoy for Ukraine says Washington and Europe are considering measures against Russia for its detention of 24 Ukrainian crew members captured in the Kerch Strait. Speaking in a telephone briefing on January 31, Kurt Volker said Russia continues to “illegally” hold the sailors and appears to intend to hold them until after Ukraine’s March 31 presidential election. “This creates the impression that this is more of a political move to use the held sailors to put pressure on Ukraine than that there are legitimate grounds for their detention,” he said. “I can say that the U.S. and Europe are looking for what additional measures need to be taken if Russia does not return sailors. The United States will revise the ‘Crimean sanctions’ in February. EU discusses additional sanctions, though not yet agreed, but in February will also be a meeting of foreign ministers,” he added. On November 25, 2018, Russia seized three Ukrainian Navy ships and 24 crewmen in the Kerch Strait that links the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov. The incident escalated tensions in the region and prompted international calls for the sailors’ release. Russia has alleged that the vessels had illegally entered Russian territorial waters near the Crimea region. Ambassador Volker said that both the United States and the European Union had looked into the possibility of measures targeting Russian ships that are servicing Russian ports on the Sea of Azov. “I know this is among the basket of options that is being reviewed in the United States as well. We don’t have any decisions on these things yet, but it is exactly in that space that I think we need to be thinking,” he said. (Rikard Jozwiak of RFE/RL)
Putin accuses Kyiv of ‘blatant interference’
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine’s government of “blatant interference” in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine after a new national institution split from Moscow’s patronage. Speaking at a Russian Orthodox Church event attended by Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, Mr. Putin said on January 31 that the push for the new Church was rooted in “the struggle for power” and provoked “animosity and intolerance.” He added, “Russian authorities believe that any interference in the affairs of the church is absolutely unacceptable.” In early January, the Orthodox Church in Ukraine was granted independence, or autocephaly, ending more than 330 years of Russian religious control in Ukraine. Russia long opposed such efforts by the Ukrainians for an independent Church, which intensified after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in March 2014 and began supporting militants shortly thereafter in parts of Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. “We have always respected the independence of Church life, particularly in a sovereign neighboring state. Nevertheless, we reserve the right to respond and do everything possible to protect human rights, including freedom of religion,” Mr. Putin said. “It is a blatant interference in Church life and those who initiated it seem to have learned from the godless people of the last century, who expelled believers from churches and prosecuted the clergy,” he added. (RFE/RL’s Russian Service, with reporting by Reuters and AP)
G-7 ambassadors identify key reforms
The ambassadors of the Group of Seven identified the key reforms in Ukraine that they will support during the French presidency of the G-7. “The G-7 Ambassadors’ Support Group recognizes the reform progress that has been made in Ukraine since 2015, and will continue its efforts to make further progress. It has identified the key reforms it will support in 2019 during the French Presidency of the G-7,” the group wrote on Twitter. The key reforms include the creation of an anti-corruption court, reform of the Prosecutor General’s Office, implementation of the Law on National Security of Ukraine, the modernization of the Security Service of Ukraine, decentralization, and education reform. The G-7 Ambassadors’ Support Group for Ukraine was established as a result of the G-7 Summit that took place in June 2015 in Elmau, Germany, to ensure progress in the process of economic reforms in Ukraine by providing coordinated advice and assistance to the Ukrainian authorities. In 2018, Canada held the presidency of the G-7. (Ukrinform)
Kyiv approves NATO program for 2019
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers reported that it has approved the draft Presidential Decree on Approval of the Annual National Program (ANP) under the auspices of the NATO-Ukraine Commission for 2019. The document was submitted to the president for consideration. The draft was developed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in synergy with the Government Office for the Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers. “We adopt this document for the first time in a completely different form compared to those we approved for many years since the Bucharest Summit in 2008. Finally, it is strategic and systemic. We have improved its structure and content for several years, and finally came to a completely new format, which encapsulates our strategic and concrete goals,” Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze stressed. During consultations with the Ukrainian side, the leadership of NATO positively assessed the government’s new vision during the formation of the ANP and cited the innovative approaches to development of this important strategic document on reforms. The ANP, under the auspices of the Ukraine-NATO Commission, is the systemic strategic document in the sphere of the Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine, providing transition of the security and defense sector to the NATO principals and standards. It is aimed at achieving compliance with the criteria for NATO membership, strengthening democracy, promoting reforms in diverse sectors, fighting corruption and improving the well-being of citizens – all in accordance with the Alliance’s recommendations.” (Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine via Ukrainian Canadian Congress Daily Briefing)
Wagner mercenaries had GRU passports
The international investigative group Bellingcat reported on January 30 that at a press conference in Kyiv, the Security Agency of Ukraine (SBU) announced that it had intercepted passenger manifests from Russian Defense Ministry-chartered airliners transporting mercenaries working for Wagner, a Russian private military company (PMC). The manifests, involving flights from Russia to several African and Middle-East destinations in the latter half of 2018, allegedly transported a total of 1,012 mercenaries to Sudan, CAR and other African destinations. The most explosive allegation made at the press conference by the SBU was that Wagner’s mercenaries were issued Russian international travel passports in sequential batches by a single Moscow-based passport desk that had issued fake identity papers to undercover GRU officers Mishkin/Petrov and Chepiga/Boshirov. Bellingcat first reported in September 2018 that this passport desk, known as Central Migration Office Unit 770-001, is routinely used to issue domestic passports to GRU undercover officers, such as the Salisbury poisoning suspects and two unrelated GRU undercover officers indicted by Montenegro over the alleged 2016 coup attempt in that country. Bellingcat and other organizations later established that this passport desk also issued Russian passports to a handful of foreign VIPs freshly awarded Russian citizenship, people such as French actor Gerard Depardieu. Bellingcat has subsequently discovered that this same office had also issued passports to Russian civilians with links to the Russian Ministry of Defense, either through direct employment or via a close family member. The SBU’s allegations are significant in that, if proven true, they would implicate the Russian government in not simply tolerating Wagner’s overseas military operations (which are actually illegal under Russian law), but in being actively involved in the facilitation of such black ops. Bellingcat noted: “Given the high stakes raised by the SBU’s allegations, Bellingcat set out to independently verify these explosive claims. …While we cannot unequivocally endorse SBU’s assertion that the issuance of the sequential international passports to these mercenaries proves their linkage to GRU, it is certain that no such mass issuance of passports from the central passport issuance agency at the federal level (which is not routinely used for issuance of civilian passports) could take place without the active endorsement of the state apparatus, if not necessarily the GRU. However, the rest of the available evidence, including the audio intercepts and the multiple travel of a senior GRU officer known to be in a commanding position to Wagner’s commander and the location of the PMC’s training camp, strongly supports the hypothesis that PMC Wagner is indeed a proxy and serves at the command of the Ministry of Defense, and in particular the GRU.” (Bellingcat, via Ukrainian Canadian Congress Daily Briefing)