Kyiv to boost defense spending
Ukraine plans to increase annual spending on defense and security next year by 16 percent to more than $9 billion even as Kyiv gradually moves toward securing talks to end the conflict in the eastern part of the country. Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk’s Cabinet on November 5 unveiled a $44 billion 2020 spending plan that it will send to Parliament for approval. About 5.5 percent of economic output will go toward defense and security – nearly three times higher than NATO’s recommended spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product. The Defense Ministry specifically is earmarked $4.8 billion and the Interior Ministry $3.4 billion. The budget foresees an exchange rate of 27 hrv to the U.S. dollar. Ukraine has one of the European continent’s most formidable standing armies, which is battle hardened after more than five years of fighting against Russia-backed separatists in the easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. The conflict has killed more than 13,000 people. Kyiv’s proposed defense spending hike comes after Ukraine withdrew forces from two settlements in the Luhansk region as a condition that was set with Russia to reconvene four-way peace talks that would include Germany and France. Ukrainian and Moscow-backed militants are supposed to pull back troops and hardware from a third settlement in the Donetsk region as part of the conditions. (RFE/RL)
Britain extends training mission
Britain’s Defense Ministry announced on November 4 that it is extending its training mission of Ukrainian servicemen to March 2023. Called Operational Orbital, Britain established the training mission after Russia sent masked troops with no military insignia to take over Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in early 2014. Thus far, more than 17,500 members of the Ukrainian armed forces have been trained since the operation started in 2015. Following his visit to the Donbas conflict frontline in September, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said: “My recent visit to the Donbas region made clear not only the costs inflicted by Russian-backed separatists, but also the resolve the Ukrainian Armed Forces have demonstrated in defending their territorial integrity.” For this reason, Britain is “extending our training mission to Ukraine for another three years – so we may train thousands more Ukrainian personnel and continue to make a difference.” Britain’s navy and marines mostly train their Ukrainian counterparts. (RFE/RL)
Linkevicius: Russia ‘obstacle’ to peace
Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Linas Linkevicius says Russia represents the biggest obstacle to the peace process in Ukraine, as it misleadingly represents itself as a “neutral party” in the conflict. “Perhaps the greatest obstacle in this [Ukrainian peace] process is that Russia is positioning itself as a neutral party while it is an active participant of the conflict, although officially they are not being treated as such,” Mr. Linkevicius said on November 5 in an interview in Prague with Current Time TV, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. Mr. Linkevicius said Moscow tells separatists in Ukraine that “you need to reach agreement, and we will help, while exactly the opposite is happening on the ground.” Moscow has repeatedly denied that it has provided weapons, training, and personnel to support the separatists. However, independent observers, journalists and official monitors have gathered a substantial body of evidence to the contrary. NATO and European Union member Lithuania, which has an ethnic Ukrainian population of some 44,000 people, has expressed strong support for Ukraine in its battle against Russia and has sent military equipment to back Kyiv’s efforts in the war. Four-party talks – with Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany, and known as the Normandy format – have sought to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine. “These Normandy [format] talks and a search for a compromise are on everyone’s lips. I understand that it is very difficult to do all that, but I felt current [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s] sincere intention to resolve this issue. It is hard to say, though, how successful he will be,” Mr. Linkevicius said. (RFE/RL)
HRW: Conscription in Crimea violates law
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Russian authorities are continuing to conscript men in occupied Crimea to serve in the Russian armed forces in violation of international law. “As an occupying power, Russia not only has no right to conscript people in Crimea, but its draft is blatantly violating international law,” Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement on November 1. “Doubling down on this violation, Russian authorities are also pressing criminal charges against people who refuse to serve in its armed forces.” HRW noted: “Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Russia is a party, an occupying power may not compel residents of the occupied territory to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. It also explicitly prohibits any ‘pressure or propaganda which aims at securing voluntary enlistment.’ ” The New York-based rights watchdog added, “These prohibitions are absolute, and their violation is a grave breach of the conventions.” Occupation authorities have imposed criminal penalties against those who refuse to comply with the draft, with the numbers of men being punished increasing over the years. “Russia should immediately cease these practices, release Crimeans who have been forced to serve in the Russian forces, and abide by its obligations as an occupying power,” said HRW. The rights watchdog said it reviewed dozens of judgments from courts in Crimea relating to alleged criminal draft-evasion cases and identified 63 guilty verdicts since 2017. “The true number of such cases is most likely higher,” it said, “as not all cases and judgments have been made public.” In most cases, men were fined between 5,000 and 60,000 rubles ($77 to $1,000), HRW reported. Overall, since Russia occupied Crimea, authorities have conscripted 18,000-18,900 men there, HRW said, citing estimates based on data provided by Russia’s Defense Ministry. For the fall 2019 campaign, Russian authorities plan to enlist a total of 135,000 men, including about 2,600 from Crimea. HRW said that, since 2016, Russian authorities have been sending conscripts from Crimea to serve at military bases throughout Russia. The Ukrainian government has repeatedly protested Russia’s conscription actions in Crimea. (RFE/RL)
Taylor saw link between U.S. aid and probe
The leaders of the Democratic-led committees spearheading an impeachment inquiry of U.S. President Donald Trump have released the transcript of their interview with William Taylor, the top U.S. envoy to Ukraine, saying it clearly shows improper behavior by Mr. Trump. House of Representatives committee chairs Adam Schiff, Eliot Engel, and Carolyn Maloney said in a joint statement on November 6: “The testimony of Ambassador Taylor… shows how President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine and conditioned its release, as well as a vital White House meeting, on the president of Ukraine publicly announcing investigations into debunked conspiracy theories” involving political rivals. Ambassador Taylor, the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Kyiv, testified on October 22 in a 10-hour closed-door session as part of the first phase of the impeachment inquiry. The text of his opening statement at that session was previously made public. The November 6 release consisted of transcripts of Taylor’s question-and-answer session with House lawmakers. According to the new transcripts, Mr. Taylor was asked if aid to Kyiv was contingent upon the Ukrainians holding investigations demanded by Trump. “That was my clear understanding, security-assistance money would not come until the president [of Ukraine] committed to pursue the investigation,” the transcript read. He said Trump wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to publicly announce an investigation into Democrats and the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which was linked to Joe Biden’s son, prior to agreeing to a White House visit for Mr. Zelenskyy and before Washington would release military assistance. “By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelenskyy wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections,” Mr. Taylor said in his opening statement. In the latest transcript, the chargé d’affaires said he understood the reason for investigating Burisma was to cast Biden, the former U.S. vice president, “in a bad light.” Mr. Taylor told lawmakers the demand was being “driven” by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who has pushed an unfounded theory that Ukraine interfered in the last U.S. presidential vote. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters, AP and AFP)
Yovanovitch says she felt ‘threatened’
Marie Yovanovitch, who was abruptly recalled as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine earlier this year, told congressional investigators that she felt unsupported by the State Department prior to her departure, and threatened by President Donald Trump afterward. Ms. Yovanovitch, testified before U.S. lawmakers last month; excerpts of her October 11 testimony had previously been leaked, but the Democratic-led committees spearheading the impeachment effort released the entire transcript of her appearance on November 4. A veteran Foreign Service officer, Ambassador Yovanovitch said she was the victim of a shadowy smear campaign, conducted by allies of Mr. Trump, when she was prematurely recalled from her post in Kyiv in May. Two months after she left, President Trump had a phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he criticized Ms. Yovanovitch as “bad news.” Asked for her reaction when she learned how Mr. Trump criticized her during the phone call with Mr. Zelenskyy, Ms. Yovanovitch said she was shocked that Mr. Trump would speak about her, or any ambassador, in that way. She also said she felt threatened. Ms. Yovanovitch also said she was told by Ukrainian officials late last year that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in touch with Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko “and that they had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me.” (Mike Eckel of RFE/RL)
Sondland revises his testimony
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has revised his earlier testimony before congressional impeachment investigators, now acknowledging he knew the administration withheld military aid to Ukraine while pressuring Kyiv to investigate President Donald Trump’s rivals. The remarks made public on November 5 were part of transcripts released this week by the Democratic-led committees spearheading the impeachment effort of Trump in the House of Representatives. Following Mr. Sondland’s testimony last month, the ambassador’s lawyers gave House investigators a new sworn statement in which he updated his earlier remarks, also made under oath. In the statement, Mr. Sondland claims his memory was refreshed after he read the opening statements of two other key witnesses who testified in the inquiry. He said he now remembers a conversation in Warsaw with a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he told Andriy Yermak, an aide to the Ukrainian president, that “resumption of U.S. aid would not likely occur until Ukraine provided the anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for weeks.” Mr. Sondland said the remarks were the culmination of months of pressure placed on Kyiv, mainly through Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, to open “anti-corruption” investigations into the Bidens and into Trump’s unsubstantiated belief that Ukraine assisted the Democrats in the 2016 election. Mr. Sondland admitted to House investigators that he understood the linkage was “improper.” (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters, AP and AFP)
Zelenskyy snaps at volunteer soldiers
In an unannounced move, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the settlement of Zolote, where the next stage of disengagement of forces is set to take place, to talk with volunteer troops stationed in the area, the UNIAN news service reported on October 26. In a video published on social networks, one of the soldiers is heard telling the president: “We are hospitable here – have a seat and let’s talk.” Mr. Zelenskyy accepted the invitation but later in the conversation he apparently snapped at a question about whether he is going to meet with war veterans regarding the “No to surrender” rallies held across Ukraine [in protest against the implementation of the so-called Steinmeier formula for settlement of the Donbas conflict.] “People demanded a meeting,” the serviceman told the president. Mr. Zelenskyy answered: “I came to tell you to withdraw weapons. And you’re flipping the topic. You can’t be voicing any ultimatums to me in the first place.” To the military’s claim that someone might have handed the president information about the protests in Ukraine and the desire of the participants to meet with him, Mr. Zelenskyy replied: “Who did? It was raining across Ukraine yesterday – that’s what they told me.” The soldier, who identified himself as Denys, explained that the veterans had handed a letter to the governor of the Mykolayiv region with a demand to see the president. “He did hand it to me, and I’ll read it. Listen, I’m the president of this state. I’m 42. I’m not some loser. I came here to you, telling you ‘take away your weapons.’ So don’t you flip this all to rallies,” Mr. Zelenskyy said. “I don’t see understanding in your eyes. But what I’m seeing is a guy who thought he’s talking to some softie, trying to shift topics,” the president added, once again vowing to read the letter. As reported earlier, disengagement of troops in the Luhansk region was agreed during the round of Minsk talks on October 1. (UNIAN, via Ukrainian Canadian Congress Daily Briefing)
RFE/RL reporter addresses Rada committee
An RFE/RL journalist has challenged lawmakers and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government “to do their job” and ensure a free press amid a campaign by a former high-level official against the editorial staff of investigative journalism group Skhemy (Schemes), a joint project run by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service and UA:Pershy television. Mykhaylo Tkach, a reporter for Skhemy, on November 6 addressed a session of the parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Expression devoted to journalists’ safety, vowing to continue investigative journalism even though reporters are attacked on a regular basis with what seems to be impunity. Mr. Tkach blamed much of the current anti-press climate on Mr. Zelenskyy’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, who created an “atmosphere of hatred and negligence toward journalists,” during the five years that he ruled the country until losing an election in May. “Will [Mr. Zelenskyy] personally initiate the fight against journalists who criticize his government and damage therefore his rating? Will he silently observe other people’s efforts against journalists… ?” Tkach asked lawmakers present at the session. “I demand the authorities do their job, which is to secure the rule of law. I just want to do my job, but very often I’m unable to do so. You are always able to do your job, but do you actually want to do it?” The hearings came a day after Andriy Portnov, a former lawmaker and deputy head of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration, followed through on his threats to disclose further personal data of members of Skhemy. The move, which has been condemned by RFE/RL President Jamie Fly and press-freedom groups, was apparently prompted by a Skhemy investigation into him and his relations with officials currently in the Ukrainian government. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)