UWC offers preliminary observations
The Ukrainian World Congress (UWC) International Election Observation Mission released its preliminary observations during a press conference held on July 22 at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center in Kyiv, confirming that the parliamentary elections in Ukraine met international standards for the conduct of democratic elections. The UWC Mission, which numbered 142 short-term observers (STOs) from 30 countries, closely cooperated with the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, a UWC member organization, which registered 32 STOs. The missions of the UWC and the UCCA monitored the electoral process in 20 oblasts of Ukraine and in Ukrainian diplomatic missions in 23 countries. Although the UWC’s STOs recorded minor irregularities at certain polling stations, these irregularities were not systemic and did not impact on the election results. Russian hybrid aggression against Ukraine had the worst impact on the elections since it did not allow the Ukrainian people to elect national deputies from Crimea and the occupied territories of the Donbas. (Ukrainian World Congress)
EU demands Hryb’s immediate release
The European Union has called for the immediate release of ailing 20-year-old Ukrainian national Pavlo Hryb, who was convicted in Russia of “promoting terrorism.” On July 23, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld a six-year prison sentence given to Mr. Hryb, who was convicted by the North Caucasus Regional Court in March. Mr. Hryb has said the charge against him was fabricated by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). In a statement on July 24, EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said the young man “suffers from a very serious medical condition which could become life-threatening at any moment” and said Ukrainian doctors have not been allowed to see him. Ms. Kocijancic called on Russia to release all “illegally detained Ukrainian citizens.” 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 promoting terrorism. Ihor Hryb said that his son was detained when he was returning from Belarus to Ukraine. (RFE/RL)
Two killed on ceasefire’s first day
Ukraine’s military on July 22 said that two soldiers were killed and as many wounded on the previous day when an unknown explosive device was set off by an “enemy sabotage and reconnaissance group.” The casualties in the armed conflict with Russia-backed militants came on the first day when a ceasefire was supposed to go into effect based on an agreement in Minsk on July 17 between Ukrainian and Russian envoys as well as members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Ceasefire road maps announced as part of the Minsk accords – September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed at resolving the conflict – have contributed to a decrease in fighting but have failed to hold. The OSCE recorded 75 ceasefire violations through 4 p.m. on July 21. They included “three explosions, 21 projectiles in flight, and 51 shots of heavy machine-gun and small-arms fire,” the OSCE said in a report.
About 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict since April 2014 when Moscow-backed militants took up arms against Ukrainian government forces. An additional 1.5 million people have been internally displaced, the largest displacement of people on the European continent since World War II. (RFE/RL)
Ukrainian soldier killed in Donbas
The government in Kyiv says one of its soldiers has been killed and nine others wounded in a battle with Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The Defense Ministry said on July 11 that separatist fighters violated a ceasefire 28 times in a 24-hour period, using 120- and 82-millimeter mortars and 122-millimeter artillery shells that are banned under the Minsk peace agreements. Meanwhile, the Russian-backed militants claimed on July 11 that an elderly woman was killed after Ukrainian armed forces shelled the outskirts of the industrial frontline town of Horlivka. Ceasefire deals announced as part of the Minsk accords – September 2014 and February 2015 pacts aimed at resolving the conflict – have contributed to a decrease in fighting but have failed to hold. A new cease-fire agreement was reached on March 8, but both sides have accused each other of repeated violations since then. (RFE/RL)
Chaly: Replacement should come ASAP
Valeriy Chaly, Ukraine’s outgoing ambassador in Washington, says that given the importance of the United States as a country, his replacement “should come sooner than later.” In a July 21 interview with Voice of America, Ambassador Chaly said his dismissal by presidential decree on July 19 “was absolutely normal” because the requisite four years tenure for his post had expired. “This wasn’t news for me,” Mr. Chaly said. “As the acting ambassador, I’m ready to as soon as possible submit the new candidate here for approval by the U.S. government. If this is done quickly then that is the right way to do it.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed him and 11 other ambassadors on July 19, including the envoys to Morocco, South Africa, and Armenia. Ambassador Chaly has represented Ukraine since July 2015 and helped gain support for sanctions to be imposed and periodically extended on Russia for illegally annexing Kyiv’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and for backing pro-Kremlin separatists in the easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. He also pushed for the United States to continue providing technical assistance and lethal weapons to combat the Russian-supplied militants in the Donbas where an armed conflict has raged since April 2014, killing more than 13,000 people. “In general, I’m satisfied, I will leave with pride and my head up high,” he told Voice of America. Prior to his appointment, he was briefly deputy head of ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s office. In 2006-2009 and 2010-2014, Mr. Chaly was the deputy director general of the leading Razumkov Center policy center in Kyiv. In April 2010, he resigned as deputy foreign affairs minister after occupying that post for six months in protest of the security policy that former President Viktor Yanukovych pursued. (RFE/RL)
Putin widens citizenship offer
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree expanding the simplified procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship for all residents of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions. The July 17 move comes after Mr. Putin, just days after Volodymyr Zelenskyy won Ukraine’s presidential runoff on April 21, issued a decree to simplify the process for Ukrainian citizens in “certain areas” of the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions – a reference to those parts held by separatists – to get Russian citizenship. Decried by Ukraine and the West as an attempt to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty, the move was seen as an effort to provoke Mr. Zelenskyy and undermine his electoral win. Kyiv has declared Russian passports issued under this procedure illegal. The expanded decree now allows all those who were permanent residents of the two regions in April 2014, when fighting began between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed militants, to benefit from a simplified procedure to get a Russian passport. The Russia president has already widened the categories of people eligible for fast-track passports by adding Ukrainians who once lived in Ukraine’s Crimea region before it was annexed by Russia in 2014, as well as citizens of Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan who were born in Russia during the Soviet era. (RFE/RL’s Russian Service, with reporting by Reuters)
Volker on Moscow’s passport move
Kurt Volker, the special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, says Russia’s move to fast-track the granting of citizenship to all residents of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk runs counter to efforts to achieve peace in an armed conflict that is in its sixth year. Ambassador Volker said in a tweet posted on July 18 that by expediting Russian passports for Ukrainian citizens, the measure “flies in the face [of] the spirit of the Minsk agreements.” He added, “Russia needs to fulfill its Minsk obligations.” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s July 17 decree expanded qualification for the simplified procedure that had only applied to residents in the non-government-controlled parts of the easternmost area of the Donbas. Ukraine and the West decried the move as an attempt to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and was seen as an effort to provoke Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and undermine his electoral win in April. Kyiv has declared Russian passports issued under this procedure illegal. In response, President Zelenskyy ordered the Foreign Affairs Ministry to simplify the procedure for diaspora Ukrainians to receive citizenship, according to a July 17 post on the official presidential Facebook page. Mr. Zelenskyy said he also wants the citizenship procedure to be simplified for foreigners who are deprived of their rights or liberties. Russian President Putin has already widened the categories of people eligible for fast-track passports by adding Ukrainians who once lived in Ukraine’s Crimea region before it was annexed by Russia in 2014. (RFE/RL)
Sentsov-Vyshinsky swap is proposed
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office has proposed a prisoner exchange with Russia involving Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who is jailed in Russia, and Russian journalist Kirill Vyshinsky, who is in detention in Ukraine. The proposal came after President Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed by telephone a possible prisoner swap on July 11. Mr. Zelenskyy’s press secretary, Yulia Mendel, announced the proposal on Facebook late on July 18, hours after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged Kyiv to release Mr. Vyshinsky as a first step toward the normalization of relations between the two countries. Mr. Vyshinsky, who headed the office of Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency in Ukraine, was arrested in May 2018 on treason charges and faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty. A Kyiv court on July 19 extended his pretrial custody by two months, to September 19. Mr. Vyshinsky’s arrest came amid accusations in Kyiv that RIA Novosti-Ukraine was participating in a “hybrid information war” waged by Russia against Ukraine. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said Mr. Vyshinsky, who at the moment of his arrest had dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship, received financial support from Russia via other media companies registered in Ukraine in order to disguise links between RIA Novosti Ukraine and Russian state media giant Rossiya Segodnya. They also said he was receiving some 53,000 euros (about $60,000) a month from Russian sources for his work and that the money was sent to him through Serbia. Weeks after his arrest, Mr. Vyshinsky announced that he had given up his Ukrainian citizenship, called his arrest a “political order,” and suggested that he was arrested in order to use him in a swap with Moscow for a Ukrainian being held in Russia. Mr. Sentsov, a Crimean native who opposed Russia’s 2014 takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula, was arrested by the Moscow-imposed Crimean authorities in May 2014 and charged with planning the firebombing of pro-Russia organizations in Crimea. A Russian court convicted him on multiple terrorism charges in August 2015 and sentenced him to 20 years in a maximum-security prison. Human rights activists and Western governments have called on Russian authorities to release the film director, saying his arrest and trial were politically motivated. In recent weeks, Ukrainian and Russian officials have been talking about a possible swap of all Russians and Ukrainians held in the two countries. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Ukrinform)
Seamen’s pretrial detention extended
A Moscow court has prolonged by three months the pretrial detention of 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russian forces along with their three naval vessels in November near the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. The Lefortovo district court ruled on July 17 that 13 of the sailors must stay in detention until October 24, while the remaining 11 will be held until October 26. Russia has held the Ukrainian sailors since its forces fired on, boarded, and seized their vessels near the Kerch Strait on November 25, 2018. Moscow claims the Ukrainian vessels illegally entered Russian territorial waters near Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia occupied and took over in 2014. The sailors face up to six years in prison if convicted. The United States and other Western countries have called for the Ukrainian sailors’ release, calling their detainment illegal. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, with reporting by TASS and Interfax)
Court postpones verdict on Crimean gold
A Dutch appeals court has postponed its verdict on the ownership of a collection of gold artifacts from Crimea that was on loan to a Dutch museum when Russia seized the peninsula in 2014, saying it needed more information. The items, known as the Scythian gold, are in the Netherlands because they were borrowed from four museums in Crimea and one in Kyiv for an exhibition in early 2014 at Amsterdam’s Allard Pierson Museum. They were sent before Russia forcibly annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014. In 2016, a court in Amsterdam ruled that the collection was part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage and should be returned to Kyiv. The court stated that only sovereign states could claim objects as cultural heritage. Museums in Moscow-controlled Crimea appealed the ruling, saying that the artifacts are part of Crimea’s heritage. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters and TASS)
Meeting to restart “Normandy format”
Foreign affairs advisors of Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia met in Paris on July 12 to relaunch the “Normandy format” of negotiations, reported Europeyska Pravda (European Pravda), citing Deutsche Welle. The German side said the negotiations were based on the latest positive developments in eastern Ukraine. Meeting participants were designing further steps for implementation of the Minsk agreements that first of all include a ceasefire, the DPA news agency reported. The meeting of foreign affairs advisors of the Normandy four was agreed upon during President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Paris and Berlin in June. (Ukraine Crisis Media Center)
Canada increases police deployments
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on July 8, said it was is “pleased to coordinate the extension and expansion of Canadian police deployments to Ukraine.” Following a renewed commitment by the government of Canada to support Ukraine’s reform agenda, up to 45 Canadian police will deploy to the country, more than doubling the previous maximum of 20, the RCMP noted. The additional deployments will extend an additional two years, to 2021. Canadian police deployed to Ukraine serve in one of two missions: a bilateral mission with the National Police of Ukraine or the European Union Advisory Mission for Civilian Security Sector Reform (EUAM Ukraine). “Our continuing contribution of highly skilled police officers will help train and mentor Ukrainian police, with the ultimate goal of improving safety and security in their communities,” said RCMP Commiss-ioner Brenda Lucki. “Having professional, well-trained and well-equipped police services is key to fostering stability, making people and communities feel more secure, and enhancing the rule of law in fragile and conflict-affected states.” Led by the RCMP, Canadian police serving in Ukraine support Ukraine’s police reform efforts. They offer training and strategic advice to strengthen the capacity and effectiveness of the National Police of Ukraine in the realms of police safety, criminal investigations, and preventing and responding to gender-based violence. (Ukrainian Canadian Congress Daily Briefing)