Ukraine acts to prevent coronavirus spread
The Ukrainian government has decided to ban mass gatherings and to close schools and universities for three weeks in a bid to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. The government said in a statement on March 11 that it was banning all mass events with more than 200 expected participants. Some sporting events might go ahead with the agreement of the relevant international organizations, but without spectators. The government also banned until June 1 the export of masks and other gear to ensure there are no shortages of protective equipment. The statement did not say when the measures would come into force. The coronavirus outbreak has infected more than 117,000 people globally and killed over 4,200. Ukraine’s only confirmed coronavirus patient is a resident of the southwestern region of Chernivtsi who had recently traveled to Italy. Earlier in the day, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that schools and universities in the Ukrainian capital would be closed until the end of March, as part of “preventive measures” against the spread of the novel coronavirus. In a video message posted on his Facebook page, Mr. Klitschko said mass events such as concerts and conferences would also be restricted in the city from March 12, while cinemas and entertainment areas in shopping malls would remain closed. Public transport will continue to operate as usual, he said. “Even though not a single case of the coronavirus has been registered in Kyiv, we have decided not to wait and protect the residents of the city,” the mayor said. On March 10, Mr. Klitschko announced that Kyiv had received rapid test kits for the virus. “Right now, there are 1,200 [kits], by the end of the week we’ll have 5,000. The test kits will be distributed to seven designated hospitals that will accept patients suspected of being ill with the coronavirus,” he wrote on Facebook. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, with reporting by Reuters and AFP)
Iran agrees to hand over black boxes
The Iranian Civil Aviation Organization has agreed to send the flight recorders from a downed Ukrainian passenger plane to Kyiv for analysis, an Iranian diplomat said. Tehran has also invited other interested countries to participate in reading the data from the black boxes, Farhard Parvaresh, who heads Iran’s delegation at the U.N.’s Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization, told Reuters on March 11. The Iranian military said it accidentally shot down the Ukrainian jet on January 8, killing all 176 people on board. The victims included 82 Iranian citizens and 63 Canadians, many of them of Iranian origin. The shooting occurred with Iran’s air-defense forces on high alert following an Iranian ballistic-missile attack a few hours earlier on U.S. forces in Iraq. The strikes came days after Iran’s most prominent military commander, Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike outside Baghdad. Iranian officials have for two months refused to hand over the recording devices for deciphering. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters)
298 empty chairs recall MH17 victims
Relatives of victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) have set up 298 empty chairs in front of the Russian Embassy in the Netherlands to protest the Kremlin’s continued refusal to admit its role in shooting down the passenger airliner in July 2014. The March 8 protest in The Hague was staged a day before the trial began in the Netherlands against three Russian citizens and a Ukrainian militant who are charged with murdering all 298 passengers and crew members aboard the ill-fated flight. “This is for me a very beautiful symbol for 298 people who perished,” said protester Piet Ploeg, whose older brother Alex was killed when a Russian antiaircraft missile struck MH17 in July 2014 while it was flying from the Netherlands to Malaysia. “They are gone. My brother never returned,” Mr. Ploeg said. “The idea of the action is to make perfectly clear to the Russian state that they have to cooperate with the investigation.” The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement in the MH17 tragedy – despite dossiers of evidence collected by a Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) and the Britain-based Bellingcat open-source investigative group. The independent investigators determined that MH17 was shot down over separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine by a Russian anti-aircraft missile that was sent to help the Moscow-backed separatists fight Ukrainian government forces. The victims included 193 Dutch citizens, 43 Malaysians, and 38 Australians. Russia has been held politically responsible by the Netherlands and Australia. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP and DPA)
MH17 trial opens in the Netherlands
The trial of three Russians and a Ukrainian citizen over the July 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine has opened in the Netherlands on March 9. The defendants were not present in the dock of the high-security court located near Schiphol Airport from where the doomed flight took off, but judges ruled that the hearing could continue in their absence. In a somber moment, a prosecutor read out the names of each of the 298 passengers and crew who were killed when MH17, flying to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a Russian-made antiaircraft missile. “Many people have long waited for this day,” Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said in opening remarks. The four men accused of murder – Russian citizens Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko – remain at large despite the issuance of international warrants for their arrest. The suspects all held senior positions with Russia-backed militia formations that have been fighting Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine since the spring of 2014. Mr. Girkin had been the so-called defense minister of a Russia-backed Donetsk people’s republic. The other suspects were members of the formation’s military intelligence unit. Despite evidence that Russia’s military was directly involved in shooting down MH17 with a missile fired from separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement. Mr. Pulatov, the only suspect whose defense attorneys were present at the trial, denied his guilt, his lawyer, Sabine ten Doesschate, said on March 9. According to the lawyer, her client decided to defend himself because he insists he bears no responsibility for the MH17 crash and all its consequences. The other three suspects weren’t represented in the courtroom. Dutch-led investigators who probed the incident for several years have charged that the four suspects colluded to carry out the attack, although they did not actually shoot down the airliner. The JIT also concluded in May 2018 that the Buk anti-aircraft system that shot down MH17 belonged to Russia’s 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. Investigators said in 2019 that there was “almost daily telephone contact” between the Donetsk separatists “and their contacts in the Russian Federation using secure phones provided by the Russian security service.” Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova charged on March 6 that an “unprecedented” media campaign in the run-up to the trial was “accusatory toward Russia… and its citizens.” The trial is expected to last through most of 2020. (RFE/RL, with reporting by AP, Reuters, DPA, AFP and CNN)
Rada votes no confidence in prosecutor
The Ukrainian Parliament has passed a no-confidence vote in Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka, the latest move in a reshuffle that saw the prime minister and most of his government ousted. At an extraordinary session on March 5, 263 members of the Verkhovna Rada backed the no-confidence resolution against Mr. Ryaboshapka, who had been holding the position of prosecutor-general since August last year. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party has proposed one of their lawmakers, Serhiy Ionushas, as Mr. Ryaboshapka’s replacement. The vote in parliament came a day after lawmakers accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, who had been in office for six months, and backed Mr. Zelenskyy’s choice for his successor, Deputy Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. Public trust in President Zelenskyy has slid from nearly 80 percent in September 2019 to around 50 percent last month, polling figures from the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center show. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters)
UCC welcomes additional support for Ukraine
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) on March 11 said it welcomes the additional Canadian support to improve security in Ukraine. Canada will provide $2.2 million over three years to the Police Assistance Project on Strategic Reform Capacities of the National Police of Ukraine. The announcement of the additional support was made by Minister of Foreign Affairs François-Philippe Champagne during his recent visit to Ukraine. Minister Champagne stated, “Throughout my meetings in Latvia, Ukraine and Poland, I had the opportunity to discuss the close ties between Canada and these three countries and to underline our close collaboration – particularly in support of regional security, trade and political cooperation – which is essential to upholding the rules-based international order, and promoting peace and stability for all.” UCC CEO Ihor Michalchyshyn accompanied Minister Champagne on his visit to Ukraine, where meetings took place with political leaders and civil society. Minister Champagne also visited Canadian Armed Forces personnel deployed on Operation UNIFIER, Canada’s military training mission in Ukraine, at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center in Yavoriv, Ukraine. “It is crucial that Minister Champagne was able to see first-hand the complex reform challenges which Ukraine faces and hear the perspectives of Ukrainian civil society leaders,” said UCC National President Alexandra Chyczij. “At a time when the Ukrainian people face increasing political and economic instability, and Russia continues to escalate its war on Ukraine, it is vitally important that Ukraine’s Western allies continue to support the Ukrainian people. The UCC applauds Canada’s leadership role in the international community’s support for Ukraine.”
Two killed, eight wounded in east
Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and eight wounded from projectile fire on March 10 in the eastern part of the country where a war has raged since 2014 with Russia-backed separatists. Ukraine’s military said that an anti-tank missile struck a military truck near the town of Pisky in the Donetsk region. One soldier inside the truck was killed immediately and another died from his wounds later. Seven service members were wounded as well, the Joint Operations Forces reported in a daily briefing. Another soldier was wounded from shelling at a different juncture of the front line the same day. Fifteen Ukrainian service members were killed in January-February and more than 13,000 people have been killed between March 2014 and October 31, 2019. The war in Ukraine has uprooted more than 1.5 million people from their homes in the easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Markiv appeal in Italy postponed
An Italian appellate court in Milan has postponed a hearing in the case of Ukrainian citizen Vitaliy Markiv, who is challenging a 24-year sentence for his role six years ago while serving in the Ukrainian National Guard that involved the deaths of an Italian photojournalist and his Russian interpreter. Lawyers for the defendant told RFE/RL on March 8 that the court in the Lombardy region had decided to hear the case on March 31 due to government-imposed measures that have banned public gatherings. The measures were introduced on March 7 in much of the country’s north and have since been extended nationwide amid an outbreak of a new respiratory illness known as COVID-19 that has killed 463 people and infected 9,172 in Italy. The contagion became known near Italy’s financial capital on February 21, some three months after it originated in China and spread to at least 106 countries. The rising numbers of deaths and infection have stunned Italy’s health-care system. Following his June 30, 2017 arrest in Bologna, Mr. Markiv, a dual Ukrainian-Italian national, was given a 24-year prison sentence in July for actions he allegedly committed while being posted near Sloviansk, a town in the Donetsk region that was held by Russian national Igor Girkin, a former colonel in the Federal Security Service, and the forces he was leading composed of other Russians and local militants. At the time, Mr. Markiv and about 150 Ukrainian servicemen were stationed atop the Karachun hill, surrounded by Mr. Girkin’s forces and approximately 2 kilometers from where the group of journalists were located at a ceramic factory on the edge of Sloviansk. Mr. Markiv, a native of Ternopil, was found guilty of directing mortar fire that led to the May 24, 2014, death of Italian photojournalist Andrea Rochelli and Russian interpreter Andrei Mironov, who was also known as a rights activist. A third person, French photographer William Roguelon, was wounded during the shelling. In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on his first official visit to Italy, spoke about the Markiv case in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)
Vakarchuk steps down as Holos leader
Ukrainian rock star Svyatoslav Vakarchuk has said he is stepping down as leader of Holos (Voice), the political party that he founded last year, to concentrate on using his star power to recruit new members. Mr. Vakarchuk, who won a seat in the Verkhovna Rada in July 2019, announced the decision in a video posted to the party’s website following a party congress that took place on March 11. Kira Rudyk, who previously served as the CEO of Ring Ukraine, a home-security and smart-home company owned by Amazon, will take his place. “The [current] government, under the guise of new faces, actually installs old ones,” Mr. Vakarchuk said. “We, by example, demonstrate the opposite: we elevate new professional people to leadership roles in the party and parliament. That is why today, Holos has elected the best manager from our team as the new [party] head.” The singer-turned-lawmaker said he will continue building the political party with the aim to win more seats in the next election. “My mission is to continue bringing new, honest, professional people into politics. This mission of political providence is my format in Ukrainian politics,” Mr. Vakarchuk said. Ms. Rudyk was elected to Parliament in the third spot on the party’s list. She is the deputy head of the parliamentary committee on digital transformation. “Kira embodies modernity. And she will bring that modernity into the work of the party, along with the invaluable experience of managing large teams,” Mr. Vakarchuk said, commenting on her new leadership role. There are 20 Holos members in the parliamentary faction. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)